Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

Anima Christiana 455
the Bible until he has exhausted the reason of the philosophers. In
Chapter 5 he starts the discussion, in a curiously oblique manner, by
mentioning Plato and the Platonists:
Let him summon in aid Eubulus (whoever he was), and Critolaus, and
Xenocrates, and Aristotle – who on this matter was his friend. Perhaps
there would be more of them concerned to take corporeality away from
the soul had they not seen others – and more – on the other side who
claimed a body for the soul. (5.1)
Against Plato and his little group of supporters, Tertullian draws up a list
of those pagan thinkers who had taken the soul to be corporeal (5.2). At
the end of the list, and as its chief ornaments, come the Stoics; and Tertullian
sets out four of their arguments – one from Zeno, two from
Cleanthes, one from Chrysippus – in favour of psychic corporeality
(5.3 –6).
The Stoics are treated by Tertullian with an exceptional civility –
indeed, they are treated with respect. 14 He introduces them in the following
way: “… but I also invoke the Stoics, who called the soul spirit,
very like us (for breath and spirit are very close to one another) and who
nevertheless would persuade us that the soul is a body” (5.2). In other
words – or so it seems – the Stoics maintain a true theory about the
soul; and they support it by convincing arguments. At 2.5, Tertullian
had implied that, at best, the pagans support true theses with bad arguments
or false theses with good arguments; but now it seems that the
Stoics, pagan though they were, offered – in one instance at least –
good arguments for a true thesis.
But that is not quite what Tertullian says: the Stoic thesis that soul is
spirit is “very like” the Christian thesis that soul is breath – but it is not
the same thesis. That the soul is breath, or flatus, is proved by the Bible;
for when the Lord God breathed into Adam’s nostrils (Gn 2.7), what he
breathed in was, plainly, a soul. Now “breath and spirit are very close to
one another” (and in Greek their proximity is linguistically evident –
pmo^ and pmeOla). But they are not the same thing. Quite the contrary:
when Hermogenes confounded the two, he made a colossal and damning
mistake (11.2), and the Stoic thesis that soul is spirit is not a Christian
truth but a heretical falsehood. So here too the pagans are not adduced
with undiluted admiration: they produce good arguments – but for a
false thesis. (“But how can that possibly be? How can you offer a
14 Note also 6.7, where Tertullian commends the Stoic view that the arts are corporeal;
and 20.1, the celebrated “Seneca saepe noster”.