EPICTETUS’S GOSPEL
I went somewhat unwillingly to the next day’s lecture. It would
probably be interesting, I thought; but I could no longer deny that I
was beginning to feel doubtful about that. And certainly I was more
interested in Paul’s letters. Soon after I was seated, Glaucus came in.
He looked worn and haggard, but there was no time to ask him questions.
The subject of the lecture was, How are we to struggle with adversity?
The answer was, By bearing in mind that death is no evil; that defamation
is nothing but the noise of madmen; and that only the rich, the lords
and rulers of the earth, are the subjects of tragedies. But the main
point was that “the door” is always open: “Do not be more cowardly
than children. The moment they are tired, they say, ‘I won’t play any
more.’ Say you the same, ‘I won’t play any more.’ And be off. But if you
stay, don’t keep on complaining.” This topic had become familiar. What
followed, though not quite novel, interested me more, because it seemed
to bear on the Jewish Law.
First came a general descant on the advantages of being absolutely free
from fear. Why should a man fear? Had he not power over everything that
might cause him fear? Then a pupil was supposed to ask for more rules of
life, saying, “But give me commandments.” The reply was, “Why am I to
give you commandments? Has not Zeus given you commandments? Has He not
given and appointed for you what is your own, unhindered and unshackled;
but what is not your own, hindered and shackled? Well, then, what is the
commandment? Of what nature is the strict injunction with which you have
come into the world from Zeus? It is this, ‘Keep in all ways the things
that are yours, desire not the things that are for others’.… Having such
suggestions and commands from Zeus, what further commands can you crave
from me?” He finished this section of his discourse thus, “Bring these
commandments, bring your preconceptions, bring the demonstrations of
the philosophers, bring the words you have often heard and have often
yourself spoken, read, and pondered.”
I could not feel sure whether “bring” meant “bring to bear on each
point,” or “bring to your aid”; but, in either case, this conclusion, to
me at least, was disappointing. “It is all very true,” I thought, “and
strictly according to reason. We are sure we have ‘preconceptions.’ We
are not sure that we receive strength, in this or that emergency, from
any being except ourselves. And yet how tame—and, in emergencies, how
flat and unhelpful—such an utterance as this appears in comparison with
the oracle that the Christian believed he had heard from his Lord, ‘My
grace is sufficient for thee. For Power is made perfect in weakness’!”
The rest of the lecture was more lively and expressed with more novelty,
but old in substance—addressed to those who wanted to enjoy the best
seats in the theatre of life but not to be squeezed by the crowd. His
prescription was, “Don’t go to see it at all, man, and then you will not
be squeezed. Or, if you like, go into the best seats, when the theatre
is empty, and enjoy the sun there.” Then he added something that made my
companion Glaucus shrug his shoulders and cease taking notes, “Remember
always, _We squeeze ourselves, we pinch ourselves_. For example, we
will suppose you are being reviled. What is the harm in that? Why pinch
yourself on that account? Go and revile a stone. What harm will you do
the stone? Well then, when you are reviled, listen like a stone. And then
what harm does the reviler do you?”
We went out together, Glaucus and I. I think I have said before that
Glaucus had some troubles at that time in his home at Corinth, but of
what kind I did not exactly know. “Silanus,” he said presently to me,
with a bitter smile, “I am pinching myself with my shoe.” “Then take it
off,” said I. “By the immortal Gods,” he exclaimed, “I wish I could! But
what if my shoe is the universe? What if it is⸺” He stopped. I replied
at once, like a faithful disciple of Epictetus, “Not the universe,
Glaucus, but your opinions about the universe.” “Well then,” said he, “my
‘opinions about the universe.’ What if my ‘opinions about the universe’
include ‘opinions about’ certain persons and things—home, father, mother,
sister, and other such indifferent trifles? To put an imaginary case,
could I by ‘taking off’ my ‘opinion about’ my father, take my father
out of prison, or save him from death, or others from disgrace worse
than death? No, Silanus, I am beginning to be a little tired of hearing
‘Remember always, _You pinch yourselves_.’ Often it is so. But not
always. What say you?”
What ought I to have said? I knew exactly what was the correct thing
to say. “In such cases, give up the game. The door is open. Do you say
the universe pinches you? Then take off your shoe by going out of the
universe.” This would have been the orthodox consistent answer. But I
was inconsistent, not indeed in words, but in a heretical glance of
sympathy, which Glaucus—I could see—interpreted rightly. We parted. As I
walked slowly back to my rooms, I had leisure to reflect that the gospel
of Epictetus had no power to strengthen Glaucus, and—I began to fear—no
power to strengthen me, except to bear comparative trifles. It was not
strong enough—at least in me—to stand up against the great and tragic
calamities of human life.
With these thoughts, I sat down once more to study Paul’s epistles from
the beginning. Once more (but now for the last time) I was led into a
digression. It was the word “gospel” that thus dragged me away, coming
upon me (in Paul’s first sentence) just when I had been deploring the
failure of the “gospel” of Epictetus. Reading on, I found that Paul’s
“gospel” had been “promised beforehand, through God’s prophets, in the
holy scriptures concerning His son.” A little later, the writer said, “I
am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is God’s power tending to salvation
for every one that hath faith, Jew first, and then Greek. For God’s
righteousness is therein revealed, from faith tending to faith, even as
it is written, ‘Now the righteous shall live by faith’.”
The next words surprised me by mentioning “God’s wrath” as a part of the
gospel: “For there is revealed therein _God’s wrath_ from heaven against
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that hold down the truth in
unrighteousness.” But I immediately perceived that it might be regarded
as “gospel” or “good tidings” to be informed that God does really feel
“wrath” at unrighteousness, or injustice, and that He will sooner or
later judge and punish it. Accordingly I was not surprised to find Paul,
soon afterwards, connecting “gospel” and “judging” thus: “In the day when
God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel, through Jesus
Christ.”
From this I perceived that Paul’s gospel promised a righteous judgment
as well as immortality. But how could it be proved that there would be
this righteous judgment? Paul said that it was “revealed _from faith to
faith_.” He added, “_as it is written_”; and a note in the margin of my
MS. shewed me that he was referring to a certain prophet named Habakkuk.
I unrolled the passage. It seemed that this Habakkuk was living in times
when his nation was grievously oppressed. The oppressors were like
fishermen catching the oppressed at their pleasure. The prophet, standing
on a tower, said to the people, “Wait and have faith. The righteous shall
live by faith.” Paul meant that if we would begin by having some faith
in a righteous God, in spite of appearances on the surface of things, we
should be helped to rise “from faith to more faith,” and consequently
that we should “live”—that is have _real_ life. Faith seemed to Paul
needful for life. Life without faith seemed to him no real life but a
living death.
As I read on, I saw that this kind of “faith” was regarded by Paul as
the foundation of all righteousness. He quoted scripture thus, “Abraham
had faith in God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.” Then
I remembered that he had quoted the same passage in writing to the
Galatians, in order to prove to them that the seed of Abraham did not
obtain righteousness by doing the works prescribed in the code of Moses,
but by following in the faith of their forefather. Now this faith, in
the case of Abraham, had seemed to me at first of a narrow and selfish
nature:—“God will keep His promise to _me_, God will give _me_ a child in
my old age.” But Paul shewed that the promise concerned “all the nations
of the earth,” and that Abraham was not selfish in his faith—any more
than in his pleading with God for such righteous people as might be in
Sodom and Gomorrah when he said, “Shall not the judge of all the earth
do right?” This faith in God’s truth and righteous judgments was at the
bottom of Paul’s gospel, and Paul taught that it was at the bottom of all
righteousness both of Jews and Gentiles.
But here came a great difficulty and obstacle in the way of faith,
because, when men departed from God’s righteousness, God Himself (so
Paul taught) departed from them for a time, allowing them to do the
unrighteousness that was in their hearts and to judge unjustly. For
this cause (according to Paul) God introduced Law into the world, and
especially the Law of Moses. The Law was brought in to represent His
righteousness in a poor rough fashion, until the time should come when
He would send into the world the real righteousness or justice, the real
judge or spirit of judgment. Such a judge (according to Paul’s gospel)
was Jesus Christ, judging the world already to some extent, but destined
to judge it in complete righteousness, “in the day when God shall judge
the secrets of men according to my gospel,” said Paul, “through Jesus
Christ.”
At this point came the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, enabling
Paul to say, “Wait, and you will see justice done”; whereas Epictetus was
forced to say, in effect, “Justice will never be done,”—not at least what
a plain man would call justice—“since the justice of this life was, is,
and will be, oppression, and no second life is ever to exist.”
The only passage in which Epictetus (as far as I could recollect)
described a good judge, was one in which the philosopher was supposed to
hold a dialogue with the Censor, or Judge, of Nicopolis. The man was an
Epicurean; and Epictetus, after representing him as boasting that he was
“a judge of the Greeks,” and that he could order imprisonment or flogging
at his discretion, replied that this was coercing, not judging. “Shew
us,” said he, “the things that are unprofitable for us and we shall avoid
them. Make us passionate imitators of yourself, as Socrates made men
of himself. He was really a ruler of men. For he, above all others, so
framed men that they subordinated to him their inclinations, aversions,
and impulses.”
This seemed to me, at first, a fine ideal of a spiritual judge. I
contrasted it with Paul’s picture of the Lord as Judge taking vengeance
in fire upon His enemies; and Epictetus seemed to have the advantage. But
on consideration it appeared that Epictetus was confusing his hearers by
passing suddenly from a judge to a ruler. According to his own account
elsewhere, Socrates did not persuade a thousandth part of those to whom
he addressed himself. On the other hand Paul distinguished two aspects
of Christ. In one, He appeared as constraining His subjects to love Him
and to become “passionate imitators” of Him. In the other, He appeared
as a judge, making the guilty shrink from their own guilt, and feel pain
at their own sin, when the light of judgment reveals them to themselves.
Paul spoke of “fire” according to the metaphors of the scriptures. He
appeared to be describing the Supreme Judge as destroying the evil while
purifying the good—as fire may destroy some things but purify others.
This was not the only occasion when the gospel of Epictetus seemed to
me—not at first, but upon full consideration—inferior to the gospel of
Paul in recognising facts fairly and fully. For example, Paul, in the
epistle I was now reading, adopted the ancient Jewish tradition that
death came into the world as a result of the sin of the first man Adam.
According to this view, death was a “curse.” Now Epictetus appeared to
be directly attacking this doctrine when he spoke as follows, “If I knew
that disease had been destined to come upon me at this very moment, I
would rush towards it—just as my foot, if it had sense, would rush to
defile itself in the mire. Why are ears of corn created? Is it not that
they may be parched and ripened? And are they to be parched and ripened,
and yet not reaped? Surely, then, if they had sense, the ears of wheat
ought not to pray never to be reaped. Nay, this is nothing short of a
curse upon wheat—never to be reaped! So you ought to know that _it is
nothing short of a curse upon men, not to die_. It is all the same as not
being ripened—not to be reaped.”
How much finer, thought I at first, is this doctrine of Epictetus than
the doctrine of Paul! And how superstitious is that Hebrew story about
a serpent, causing death to fall upon man as a curse from God! But
coming back to the matter again after I read some way in the epistle,
and thinking over what “death” meant to Epictetus and what it meant to
Paul, I began to waver. For Epictetus thought that “death” meant being
dissolved into the four elements. And how was this like “being ripened
and reaped”? When corn is reaped, men get good from it. But when I am
“reaped,” that is to say, distributed into my four elements, who will get
any good from that? So, once more, the gospel of Epictetus, as compared
with the gospel of Paul, seemed to be deficient not only in power but
also in directness and clearness of statement.
It reminded me of the saying of Paul when he said that God sent him to
preach the gospel “_not in wisdom of word_ lest the cross of Christ
should be made of no effect.” “Wisdom of word” appeared to mean “calling
old facts by new names without revealing any new truth.” So far as I
could understand the gospel of Epictetus, his language about my being
“ripened and reaped” was like that other earlier promise that I should
find “friends” in the four elements when I passed into them in the
dissolution of death. It was all “wisdom of word.”