Philosophies: Stoic and Epicurean

Philosophy is the love of wisdom. Wisdom is of God just as everything is! However, all good can be misused. King Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived:

1 Kings 4:29 And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore.

 Note that the wisdom of Solomon came from God in tandem with understanding. Understanding is the conclusion of the thought processes coming from knowledge. Knowledge is the input to the mind, thought is  examining the input from different angles. That is essentially reasoning - making sense of the input using logic - the studying of the various arguments to arrive at conclusions.

Let us look at an example. The idea is put into terms of a hypothesis to test for validity.

hypothesis: Existence came about by chance. That is the argument being made by evolutionists. Null-hypotheses are the negative of the argument:

null-hypothesis: Existence was not by chance. The null is what is evaluated. It is either true of false. Hypotheses can never be proved; only null-hypotheses can be tested as either true of false. That means that the argument - chance, is thought to be responsible for the activity but only the negative of that can be tested. That is the acceptable scientific way of reasoning.

This process can only demonstrate that when tested, the null-hypothesis did not happen. The argument today by most scientists is that the null-hypotheses of existence was not by chance failed. In other words, intelligent design failed, hence existence was created by chance. Since the concept of an invisible, all-knowing, ever-existing God created is thrown out because scientists cannot test His existence. In other words, science credits chance for causing existence only because they can't measure God!

That example takes knowledge, the knowledgeable minds use logic -- testing the hypothesis and make a conclusion. Since nothing can be proved, only the null-disproved, then the conclusion reached is not proof but theory. There are two theories and only two for the universe; it was either created or happened by chance. Either one requires great faith, hence one is the religion of atheism and the other theism.  You may now understand, at least on this one argument, how and why philosophy is loved. It attempts to explain what cannot be proved. Hence, the mind is free to wonder! We call that reasoning, and scripture implies that reasoning came about by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Good is crediting God for what He said He did, and evil is testing God by claiming that the first thing He did was lied about His own identity! Therefore, using logic, God is good, and existence without God is evil. It's ironic that  crediting "chance" for what God did, is unreasonable - faulty reasoning, yet people - even Christians, have been deceived!

Without God, mankind can depend only on themselves. Thus, man has become his own god, and atheists are pantheists because there are billions of gods -  most of the people.

 Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.

What is to deny about oneself? That we are not gods, and certainly we are not God! Those who fail to accept creation, deny God, and then they are truly their own gods.

This brings me to Stoicism. Paul spoke against it and it's opposite, Epicureanism. Those "isms" were written about for a purpose. They were to show a difference between the gods of self and God Almighty, the God who was unknown to them.

Acts 17:18 ...certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? ... 23  as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24 “God, who made the world and everything in it

Paul had seen all the statues and temples around the Areopagus, and reasoned that their gods were made by mankind. Essentially, the god of both the Stoics and Epicureans were the Unknown God which I have identified as the God of Chance.. In today's world, his or her formal name is the god of Reason because that is how philosophy derived their god!

Paul reasoned himself. Reason is a trait given to mankind by God. Paul used it for true "good" and the philosophers for a perception of "good". Neither Stoicism nor Epicureanism is about God but the gods and goddesses of Reason - namely themselves, because they loved their own wisdom in that they were philosophers.

Both essentially depended on their own minds and hands for creating "good". God was not even considered! Stoics worked hard to do good things, even setting themselves apart to reach what Maslow later called self-actualization. Most religions are Stoics in that they work for "good". Of course, God considers "good" without Him as filthy rags. (Isaiah 54"6).  Stoics deny themselves just as God says to do, but turn around, and it's still all about the self and what it can do! What they really do is nothing more than oppose the Epicureans whose doctrine is to live for pleasure. Ironically, these opposing doctrines converge on being all about the self!

Positive Christianity is Epicureanism. Those are the name-it-and-claim-it churches. Even some evangelical churches are Epicurean - the service has become for their pleasure rather than to magnify the Lord. Sure, they declare it's for God but God knows men's hearts. He sees people walk away from small churches without the entertainment toward the larger ones whose services are mostly entertainment and positive messages. No one wants to hear about their sins, hell, and punishment; that's not entertaining! They merely want to sing a little louder, and let the world go on without rebuking or even teaching!

On the other end are churches like the Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, and even old time Amish who forget grace to a large degree, and endeavor to work their way to heaven. Also, mainstream denominations who preach a social gospel or liberation theology - the concern for the liberation of the oppressed. Jesus came to free us from sin, not from Caesar. Thus, Jesus's doctrine was not focused on government policy or even diminishing poverty! It was to provide eternal contentment for anyone who would trust in him.

I have said many times before, with His Almightiness Jesus could have been king of the Jews and wiped out poverty with a mere thought. Instead, He was King of the Kingdom of God, and provided spiritual bread.

In summary, those two philosophies, although opposite, are to make do with their own selves. The statues in Athens were not for those non-existent gods but to placate the people who were their own gods. One group sought good works for contentment, and the other pleasure. Both missed the mark, and modern churches do as well!