ROMAN INFLUENCE on the Christian Good News via Seneca
Since we don't seem to have English translations of the claims of Bruno Bauer
related to the Roman influence on the writings of Paul and the Apostles
I have extracted the following from Lightfoot's treatment.
The source may be found between pages 278 and 283.
I have renumbered the footnotes sequentially for this extract.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029294398
Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians; a revised text (1888)
Author: Lightfoot, Joseph Barber, 1828-1889
Publisher: London : Macmillan and co.
Book contributor: Cornell University Library
- ST.PAUL and SENECA
p.278/279
... we might imagine ourselves listening to a Christian divine,
when we read in the pages of Seneca that
' God made the world because He is good,
' and that Goodness ' as the good never grudges anything good,
He therefore made every thing the best possible'.[1]
Yet if we are tempted to draw a hasty inference from this parallel,
we are checked by remembering that it is a quotation from Plato.
Again Seneca maintains that in worshipping the first thing
is to believe in the gods,' and that
' he who has copied them has worshipped them adequately'; [2]
and on this duty of imitating the gods he insists frequently and emphatically'. [3]
But here too his sentiment is common to Plato and many other of the older philosophers.
'No man,' he says elsewhere, 'is good without God [4].
Between good men and the gods there exists a friendship —
a friendship do I say? nay, rather a relationship and a resemblance [5]';
and using still stronger language he speaks of men as the children of God". [6]
But here again he is treading in the footsteps of the older Stoic teachers,
and his very language is anticipated in the words quoted by St Paul from Cleanthes or Aratus,
'We too His offspring are [7]'
From the recognition of God's fatherly relation to man important consequences flow.
In almost Apostolic language Seneca describes the trials and sufferings of good men
as the chastisements of a wise and beneficent parent :
' God has a fatherly mind towards good men and loves them .stoutly; and, saith He,
Let them be harassed with toils, with pains, with losses, that they may gather true strength'.[8]'
p.280
Those therefore whom God approves, whom He loves, them He hardens, He chastises. He disciplines'.[9]
' Hence the'sweet uses of adversity' find in him an eloquent exponent.
'Nothing,' he says, quoting his friend Demetrius, 'seems to me more unhappy
than the man whom no adversity has ever befallen [10]'
'The life free from care and from any buffetings of fortune is a dead sea [11]'
Hence too it follows that resignation under adversity becomes a plain duty.
'It is best to endure what you cannot mend, and without murmuring to attend upon God,
by whose ordering all things come to pass. He is a bad soldier
who follows his captain complaining [12].'
Still more strikingly Christian is his language, when he speaks of God, who
' is near us, is with us, is within,' of ' a holy spirit residing in us,
the guardian and observer of our good and evil deeds [13],'
'By what other name,' he asks, 'can we call an upright
and good and great mind except (a) god lodging in a human body [14]?'
The spark of a heavenly flame has alighted on the hearts of men'. [15]
They are associates with, are members of God.
The mind came from God and yearns towards God". [16]
From this doctrine of the abiding presence of a divine spirit
the practical inferences are not less weighty.
' So live with men, as if God saw you; so speak with God, as if men heard you'. [17]
'What profits it, if any matter is kept secret from men ? nothing is hidden from God'[18]
'The gods are witnesses of everything".[19]
But even more remarkable perhaps, than this devoutness of tone
in which the duties of man to God arising out of his filial relation
are set forth, is the energy of Seneca's language, when he paints
the internal struggle of the human soul and prescribes the discipline
needed for its release.
"The soul is bound in a prison-house, is weighed down by a heavy burden.' [20]
"Life is a continual warfare." [21]
p.281
From the terrors of this struggle none escape unscathed. The Apostolic doctrine
that all have sinned has an apparent counterpart in the teachiag of Seneca ;
'We shall ever be obliged to pronounce the same sentence upon ourselves,
that we are evil, that we have been evil, and (I will add it unwillingly)
that we shall be evil'. [22]
' Every vice exists in every man, though every vice is not prominent in each".' [23]
' If we would be upright judges of all things, let us first persuade
ourselves of this, that not one of us is without fault' [24]
'These are vices of mankind and not of the times.
No age has been free from fault.' [25]
' Capital punishment is appointed for all, and this by a most righteous ordinance'.[26]
'No one will be found who can acquit himself; and any man calling himself innocent
has regard to the witness, not to his own conscience'.' [27]
Every day, every hour,' he exclaims,' ' shows us our nothingness,
and reminds us by some new token, when we forget our frailty'. [28]
Thus Seneca, in common with the Stoic school generally, lays great stress
on the office of the conscience, as 'making cowards of us all.'
'It reproaches them,' he says, 'and shows them to themselves". [29]
'The first and greatest punishment of sinners is the fact of having sinned'. [30]
'The beginning of safety is the knowledge of sin.' ' I think this,' he adds,
' an admirable saying of Epicurus".' [31]
Hence also follows the duty of strict self-examination.
"As far as thou canst, accuse thyself, try thyself :
discharge the office, first of a prosecutor,
then of a judge, lastly of an intercessor" [32]
Accordingly he relates at some length how, on lying down to rest every night,
he follows the example of Sextius and reviews his shortcomings during the day :
'When the light is removed out of sight, and my wife,
who is by this time aware of my practice, is now silent,
I pass the whole of my day under examination, and I review my deeds and words.
I hide nothing from myself, I pass over nothing' [33]
Similarly he describes the good man as one who
' has opened out his conscience to the gods, and always lives
as if in public, fearing himself more than others'. [34]
In the same spirit too he enlarges on the advantage of having a faithful friend,
'a ready heart into which your every secret can be safely deposited,
whose privity you need fear less than your own"; [35]
and urges again and again the duty of meditation and self-converse [36],
quoting on this head the saying of Epicurus,
'Then retire within thyself most, when thou art forced to be in a crowd [37].
Nor, when we pass from the duty of individual self-discipline to
the social relations of man, does the Stoic philosophy, as represented
by Seneca, hold a less lofty tone. He acknowledges in almost Scriptural
language the obligation of breaking bread with the hungry [38]
'You must live for another,' he writes, ' if you would live for yourself'. [39]
' For what purpose do I get myself a friend ? ' he exclaims with all the
extravagance of Stoic self-renunciation,
'That I may have one for whom I can die, one whom I can follow into exile,
one whom I can shield from death at the cost of my own life.' [40]
'I will so live,' he says elsewhere, ' as if I knew that I was born for others,
and will give thanks to nature on this score' [41]
Moreover these duties of humanity extend to all classes and
ranks in the social scale. The slave has claims equally with the
freeman, the base-born equally with the noble. ' They are slaves,
you urge ; nay, they are men. They are slaves ; nay, they are
comrades. They are slaves ; nay, they are humble friends. They are
slaves ; nay, they are fellow-slaves, if you reflect that fortune has
the same power over both.' ' Let some of them,' he adds, ' dine
with you, because they are worthy; others, that they may become
worthy.' ' He is a slave, you say. Yet perchance he is free in spirit.
He is a slave. Will this harm him? Show me who is not.
p.283
One is a slave to lust, another to avarice,
a third to ambition, all alike to fear'.'
FOOTNOTES
p.279
[1] Ep. Mor. lxv. 10.
[2] Ep. Mor. xcv. 50.
[3] de Vit, heat. 15
[4] Ep. Mor. xli ; comp. Ixxiii.
[5] deProv. 1; cojnp.Nat. Quaest. prol.,
[6] de Prov. r, de Benef. ii. 29.
[7] Acts xvii. 28.
[8] de Prov. 2.
[9] de Prov. 4 ; oomp. ib. § i.
p.280
[10] de Prov. 3.
[11] Ep. Mor. Ixvii. This again is a saying of Demetrius
[12] Ep. Mor. cvii ; comp. ib. Ixxvi
[13] Ep. Mor. xli; comp. ib. Ixxiii
[14] Ep. Mor. xxxi
[15] de Otio 5.
[16] Ep. Mor. xcii.
[17] Ep. Mor. x.
[18] Ep. Mor. Ixxxiii; comp. Fragm. 14 (in Laotant. vi. 24).
[19] Ep. Mor. cii
[20] AdHelv.matr.ii,Ep.Mor.lxv,cii.
[21] See below, p. 287, note 9.
p.281
[22] de Benef,i. 10.
[23] de Bene/, iv. 27.
[24] de Ira ii. 28; comp. ad Polyb. 11, Ep. Mor. xlii..
[25] Ep. Mor. xcvii.
[26] Qu. Nat. ii. 59
[27] de Ira 1.14.
[28] Ep. Mor. ci
[29] Ep. Mor. xcvii. 15
[30] Ep. Mor. xcvii. 14
[31] Ep. Mor. xxviii. 9
[32] Ep. Mor. xxviii. 10
p.282
[33] de Ira iii. 36.
[34] de Benef. vii. i.
[35] de Tranq. Anim. 7. Comp. Ep. Mot. xi.
[36] Ep. Mor. vii
[37] Ep. Mor. xxv
[38] Ep. Mor. xcv
[39] Ep. Mor. xlviii
[40] Ep. Mor. ix.
[41] de Vit. beat. 20: comp. de Otio 30 (3)
This is just the beginning.
Lightfoot then deals with the influence of Seneca's thinking on ......
the "Sermon of the Mount" (p.283 to 285).
the Gospel narratives (p.285 to 287)
the Apostolic Epistles (p.287 to 288)
the Pauline Epistles (p.299 to 290).
from p.293
' Though doing no wrong,' Socrates is represented saying, 'he will have the greatest reputation for wrong-doing,'
'he will go forward immovable even to death, appearing to be unjust throughout life but being just,' 'he will be scourged,'
'last of all after suffering every kind of evil he will be crucified (afao-p^ivSuAewSifo-eTai)".' [piato Resp. ii]
Not unnaturally Clement of Alexandria, quoting this passage, describes Plato as 'all but foretelling
the dispensation of salvation." [Strom. V. 14]
LC