The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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PRESENT-DAY VALUE OF STOICISM 243
Pauline. No wonder that the Encheiridion should have
been "adopted as a religious work in the early Chris
tian Church,"
and should have been twice paraphrased
about the sixth century of our era, once specially
"for the use of monastic bodies!" 1 Human nature
was not to the later Stoic, any more than it is to the
"
Christian, summed up in the one word reason
;
and
the religious, no less than the moral, sentiments, were
duly recognized and definitely provided for by him.
II
Hence, the answer to our question must not lay the
stress on the absence of dogmatism in Stoicism ;
nor
must it
put the Stoical philosophy in flat opposition to
modern dogmatism. The "spot"
to which Renan
refers, even in Marcus Aurelius s Meditations, is more
than "little" and "insignificant";
and if it be the
criterion of "a veritable eternal gospel, which will
never grow old,"
that "it affirms no dogma," then
Aurelian Stoicism cannot stand the test no philosophy
can, which bases its positions on metaphysics
: would
it be a real gospel (good news) if it did ? Moreover, if
religion results "from the simple fact of a high moral
conscience placed face to face with the universe," that
conscience must discern under the universe a Person,
for moral relations can exist only between persons, and,
however much you may admire, you cannot worship
abstract law or order. But what the answer must
emphasize are points such as the following, each of
which has its own significance for to-day.
1
Simplicius s famous commentary on the Encheiridion^ from the
Neo-platonic point of view, belongs to the same sixth century A.D.