A virtuous and good person, keeping in mind who he is, and where he has come from, and by whom he was created, concentrates on one thing alone: how he may fill his post in a disciplined manner, remaining obedient to God. (Discourses 3.24.95)
I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every year when it was broadcast on live TV. I always loved the famous scene where Dorothy, Tin Man, and Scarecrow enter the scary forest. As a young child, I was gripped by the almost palpable fear in Dorothy’s voice as she asked the Tin Man, “Do you suppose we’ll meet any wild animals?” This is the prelude to the familiar scene where the trio skips through the forest chanting:
Lions and tigers and bears, Oh my!
Lions and tigers and bears, Oh my!
The tension of the scene mounts until the Lion bursts from the forest and confronts the trio with loud roars. Dorothy responded to the impression of the roaring Lion by running and hiding behind a tree; the Tin Man raised his ax in anticipation of an imminent attack, and the Scarecrow fell over backward, trembling with fear. Fortunately, it did not take long for the trio to discover this was a false impression and there was no reason to fear this Lion—he was all roar and no bite. In fact, after a brief, tense introduction the Lion became their friend and trusted traveling companion for the remainder of their journey to Oz.
As strange as it admittedly sounds, this scene from The Wizard of Oz brings to mind my early experience with the Stoic texts in 2011. I had been a committed atheist for more than twenty years by that time. I was not a mere agnostic; I was an antitheist as a result of my personal experience with organized religion as a young man. Therefore, as I turned the pages of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, I found myself in the midst of a scary theological forest, filled with logos and providence and God.
Oh My!
I was not prepared to face my aversion to these religious bogeymen, and I nearly turned and ran from this Stoic text a second time. You see, I tried to read Marcus’ Meditations more than a decade earlier, but my aversion to anything remotely religious made me incapable of dealing with the “God talk” I found within its pages, so I returned it on my bookshelf. Now, here I was, a decade later, in that same scary theological forest. This time, however, there was a sense of desperation. I was grasping for something to help me make sense of my life, and Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Happiness Hypothesis, pointed to the wisdom of Stoicism for guidance. Therefore, I purchased and read William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life, and Lawrence Becker’s A New Stoicism, where I discovered an affinity for Stoic psychological and ethical principles and practices. However, neither of those books included all of this God talk that confronted me within the pages Marcus’ Meditations. At first, I hoped Marcus get this God talk out of his system in the early pages of his Meditations; but alas, the God talk did not cease. It was there on nearly every page:
Logos and Providence and God, Oh My!
In my ignorance about the Stoics, I thought this might be limited to the writings of Marcus Aurelius; therefore, I turned to Epictetus’ Discourses hoping to find some reprieve from the God talk. Oh, my! Was I in for a big surprise. Marcus’ emphasis on a relationship with a divine and providential cosmos paled in comparison to Epictetus’ piety and expression of his relationship with the Stoic divinity in rather personal language.
Logos and Providence and God, Oh My!
As I read, I recoiled each time I encountered the word “God.” Worse, the concept of “providence” truly made my skin crawl. Nevertheless, Lawrence Becker and William Irvine had convinced me that Stoic theology was not essential to the practice of Stoicism, so I continued my effort to glean what I could from the Stoic texts while ignoring the God talk. In late 2011, I enrolled in the School of Essential Studies course (SES) offered by The College of Stoic Philosophers. I remained firm in my atheism throughout the course by naturalizing Stoic concepts like logos and pneuma as much as possible. I simply ignored the word providence because, like Becker, I considered it an untenable concept. Finally, each time I encountered the word “God” in the Stoic texts, I mentally replaced it with the word “nature” in my mind. God and Nature are synonymous in Stoicism; therefore, this seemed to be a reasonable substitution. Upon completion of the SES course, my atheism was intact, and I was still excited about what Stoicism had to offer. I wanted to learn more, so I enrolled in the one-year-long Marcus Aurelius Program at The College of Stoic Philosophers. Erik Wiegardt was my mentor during the SES course, and now he served as my tutor in the MA School. During the second term of MA School, I dove into the physics of Stoicism, and I soon discovered that Stoic physics includes theology.
Oh My!
It soon became clear that I was not going to find any reprieve from these theological concepts because they were an integral part of the Stoic philosophical system I was studying and the Stoic way of life I was attempting to live. Ultimately, I realized I was facing a choice. If I wanted to practice Stoicism the way the ancients did, I could not simply ignore or set aside the Stoic conception of the cosmos as Becker and Irvine suggested. The Stoic conception of the cosmos, including their theology, is an integral part of the holistic system known as Stoicism. The concepts cannot be redacted or ignored without affecting Stoic ethics and the Stoic way of life. Now that I was reading the Stoic texts and the scholarship on those texts, I could see that the departures from the traditional form of Stoicism by Becker and Irvine were significant. When they abandoned the Stoic worldview, they changed Stoic theory and practice at a fundamental level. I knew the ancient Stoics warned against deconstructing their system and offered similes of an egg, animal, and orchard to argue it could not be done without damage to the whole. However, until I read the Stoic texts for myself, I did not realize how different those texts were from the modern versions offered by people like Becker and Irvine. They were not simply updating Stoicism for moderns; they were redacting the Stoic worldview, along with its theology, to make Stoicism palatable for atheists like me. I appreciate their efforts. I likely would not have engaged Stoicism if I thought it required “belief” in God or a conscious and providential cosmos. Therefore, secularized versions of Stoicism serve a need, and many people find satisfaction in them and feel no need to venture into the scary theological forest of Stoicism. I was not one of them.
As strong as my aversion to concepts like logos, providence, and God was, my intellectual curiosity inspired me to push forward. I soon realized that I was facing a choice I did not anticipate. I could remain committed to my atheism and move forward with a modern version of Stoicism like those I found in the writings of Irvine and Becker. Or, I could attempt what I previously considered unthinkable: I could give the ancient version of Stoicism, including its theology, some open-minded consideration. The latter option was a difficult task for a committed atheist. Fortunately, my mentor, Erik, did not push Stoic theology on me; he simply allowed the Stoic texts to speak for themselves. The MA School is not designed to convert anyone; it simply presents Stoic doctrines, unapologetically, and leaves the choice to the student. I faced this existential choice alone. This was a time of genuine intellectual and existential struggle for me. I learned how difficult it is to set the cognitive biases of a worldview aside long enough to even consider other possibilities. As uncomfortable as I was with Stoic theological concepts at that time, I chose the latter path. Nevertheless, I did not overcome my discomfort with the Stoic worldview quickly or easily.
Trying on a New Worldview
Over the course of more than eighteen months of dedicated study and contemplation, I came to two important realizations. First, the God of Stoicism is nothing like the deities of organized religion, with which I was familiar. Second, the Stoic doctrine of a conscious and providential cosmos is not as radical an idea as I first thought. In fact, I discovered that many modern scientists and philosophers were entertaining conceptions of reality that were similar, and in some cases compatible, with that of the ancient Stoics.[1] I began to realize there was a lot of science the infamous Four Horsemen of Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens) avoided in their diatribes against religion. More importantly, most of their hyperbolic criticism of organized religion did not apply to the Stoic conception of God or a providential cosmos, or the practice of Stoicism as a way of life. Slowly, assumption by assumption, I set my atheistic cognitive bias aside and opened my mind to the possibility that the ancient Stoics may have grasped a profound truth: The order of the cosmos is not an accident, and human rationality must have a rational source. Of course, this wisdom was not discovered by the Stoics nor were they the only ones to assent to it. This truth is part of the perennial wisdom tradition that can be traced back to the beginning of human history in every culture. On the other hand, atheism, of the kind which permeates our modern secular age, is a recent intellectual invention. Nonetheless, atheism and its more militant New Atheist warriors influence our culture and our thought in profound ways we frequently overlook.[2]
As moderns, living in a secular age, we are educated and socially conditioned to ignore and even recoil from religious concepts. The word “God” triggers a negative response in many people, and the idea of being “obedient to God” conjures a strong emotional reaction from most. For some, the mention of God or providence on social media appears to trigger an antitheist tic, which elicits a string of pejoratives like “unreasonable”, “irrational”, “flying spaghetti monster”, “cosmic teapot”, “fundamentalist”, “Woo”, “Where’s the evidence”, [insert your favorite snarky “Hitch” quote here], blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam. It appears some people on social media consider the quips above an essential part of any philosophical dialog on theological topics. Unfortunately, in their defense, there are sufficient grounds to partially justify these emotional antitheist outbursts. While religions have provided hope and moral norms for many people throughout human history, on occasion they have also fueled and justified the worst within human nature. In those instances, religion itself helped to discredit the concept of “God.” Additionally, some moderns argue that science requires us to reject such concepts. In place of a conscious and providential cosmos, “modern” science offers us an accidental, mindless, and purposeless universe, and explains away our human consciousness as an illusion or epiphenomenal byproduct of neuronal activity. The hegemony of this modern scientific worldview motivates many modern Stoics to overlook or ignore the religious nature of Stoicism. In fairness, many of these people find satisfaction in Stoic psychological and ethical theory and their accompanying aphorisms without feeling a need to reconcile Stoic physics and theology. There is nothing inherently wrong with extracting the nuggets of Stoic wisdom and making them as useful as possible apart from the whole of the Stoic system. Many brilliant minds have done the same in the last two millennia.
Nevertheless, there is no justification for throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The truth is this: Human cruelty is not the product of religion, and the absence of religion in some communist ideologies during the twentieth century proved even more inhumane and deadly in several instances. Moreover, those who are willing to explore science beyond the hegemony of academia will find a great number of thinkers—scientists and philosophers—who argue against the reductive materialist assumptions of “modern” science. Finally, as Stoic practitioners, we face words like God, providence, and logos throughout the Stoic texts. Those concepts cannot simply be ignored. Likewise, the Stoics tell us we must live in agreement with this providentially ordered cosmos if we wish to live excellent (virtuous) lives and experience psychological well-being (eudaimonia).
Stoicism has a great deal more to offer for those who are interested in digging a little deeper. This path does not require the abandonment of science, as some like to claim. It does, however, oblige moderns to set aside their unquestioned commitment to the belief system known as “scientism” and its reductive materialist assumptions. One cannot approach Stoicism with an open mind while maintaining their loyalty to the prior commitments of scientism. The same level of epistemological scepticism that invokes a negative reaction to words like “God” and “providence” must be deployed against the unprovable assumptions of scientism. There is no need to panic at this thought; this endeavor does not lead to an abandonment of rationality and adoption of religious fundamentalism. Nonetheless, it does require that we come to terms with the words “God” and “providence” by considering with an open mind, from the perspective of Stoic theory.
Many moderns make one of two related mistakes when they read these words in the Stoic texts. They either misunderstand their meaning entirely, or they assume they have little or no relevance to the practice of Stoicism. The philosophical God of Stoicism is not the revealed God of Abrahamic religion, and providence does not entail a bearded divinity continually intervening in the events of nature, punishing wrongdoers, and rewarding the faithful. Nonetheless, the God of Stoicism is more than a metaphor for naturalistic processes; according to the ancient Stoics, our relationship with the providential cosmos helps to mold our moral character (virtue) and thereby allows us to experience well-being (happiness).
As I have written before, I do not believe the Stoic way of life is for everyone. I do believe those who feel some attraction to Stoicism owe it to themselves to give the whole of the Stoic system due consideration. I am convinced that most people will be surprised by what they find. I am also certain those who choose to follow the ancient Stoic path will discover the transformative power of this holistic way of life and rational form of spirituality. Secularized and popularized versions of Stoic theory and practice serve a positive role. For many moderns, these modern versions are all they will consider. Nevertheless, there is also a place for the traditional form of Stoicism in the modern world. Those who disparage the traditional form of Stoicism as fundamentalist, elitist, divisive, unreasonable, irrational, etc., need to stop for a moment and consider the impressions that form such opinions. Some people find value in the Stoic worldview and consider it an essential part of the Stoic way of life they practice. I am one of those people. I discovered profound meaning in the Stoic concepts of God and providence. The traditional form of Stoicism changed my life.
The God of the Stoics is more than a mere metaphor for naturalistic processes as some atheists suggest. Likewise, the God of the Stoics is not the transcendent God some theists may prefer. However, those theists and atheists willing to take a walk through the scary theological forest of Stoicism may find there is nothing to fear from the Stoic conception of a divine and providential cosmos. In fact, you may just discover the not-so-scary God of the Stoics makes a wonderful traveling companion on your journey toward an excellent life.
ENDNOTES:
[1] See my blog post titled A Conscious Cosmos for references to thinkers who openly entertain this concept.
[2] For an insightful and highly acclaimed analysis of our evolution into a secular society see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007).
