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Christian Approval of Epicureanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Richard P. Jungkuntz
Richard P. Jungkuntz
Affiliation:
Concordia Theological Seminary, Springfield, Illinois
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Extract

In view of the rancor and vehemence which characterize much of the patristic condemnation of Epicureanism, it seems remarkably incongruous that there should be in the Fathers any expressions of approval at all for the philosophy of the Garden. Nevertheless, such expressions do occur and with reference to all three divisions of Epicurus's system, canonic, physics, and ethics. No doubt the best explanation for this apparent inconsistency of attitude is suggested by Clement's definition of philosophy and the tolerance that it implies: “By philosophy I do not mean the Stoic nor the Platonic, or the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but everything that has been well said by each of the schools and that teaches righteousness along with science marked by reverence; this eclectic whole I call philosophy” (Strom., i. 7. 732CD).

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , September 1962 , pp. 279 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1962

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References

1 By this qualification Clement seems to exclude Epicureanism from consideration (cf. his stricture on Epicurus, Protrep. 5); but in fact he does not exclude it, as will appear in this article.

2 Cf.Justin, Apol. ii. 13.

3 De Praeser. 7.

4 Tertullian attributes erroneous ideas or illusions, not to the doxa, as did Epicurus, but to the special causes which force the senses to transmit images in a certain, though perhaps illusory, form.

5 Cf. Lucretius, iv. 438–442; Usener, frg. 252.

6 Cf. Lucretius, iv. 353ff.; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 208f. Waszink notes that in speaking of the aequalitas circumfusi aeris Tertullian departs from the Epicurean explanation, because he refers the effects of the medium to the tower, rather than to the images as in the atomist view. Cf. Waszink, J. H., De Anima (Amsterdam, 1947), p. 246f.Google Scholar

7 Cf. Lucretius, iv. 500–512; Cicero, Acad. ii. 10. 31.

8 The same example of the oar is adduced by Jerome, C. Ioann. Hieros. 35, and Nemesius, De Nat. Hom. 7. 29.

9 Cf. D. C. D. viii. 7; Ep. 118. 19f.

10 According to the Epicureans the basis and foundation of all knowing is the enargeia, that is, the distinct or palpable sense-perception; cf. Sext. Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 216; also, Zeller, , Die Philosophie der Griechen (4te Auflage; Leipzig, 1909)Google Scholar, III, Part I, 401. This is not the Stoic katalēptikē phantasia, the actual comprehension of the object when the logps has given its assent to the perception. Cf. , Pohlenz, Die Stoa (Göttingen, 1948)Google Scholar, I, 60. Zeller, pp. 398–401, shows that Epicurus uses enargeia as a synonym for aisthēsis and phantasia (pace De Witt).

11 The expression is Festugière's in his Epicurus and His Gods, trans. Chilton, C. W. (Oxford, 1955), p. 68.Google Scholar

12 Cf. Camelot, P. Th., Foi et Gnose (Paris, 1945), pp. 28f.Google Scholar

13 Völker, Walter, Der Wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Berlin, 1952), pp. 235f.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Usener, frgs. 266, 307; also, Lucretius, iii. 847–860, although here the point is the discontinuity of personality due to tne annihilation of memory.

15 Lucretius, i. 304.

16 Cf. Luke 4:16–30.

17 Though not admissible as evidence in this connection, it is interesting that in a descriptive catalog of the moral shortcomings and vices of a dozen philosophers from Thales to Aristippus, Tertullian does not even hint at Epicurus, Apol. 46. 8–16.

18 Demarchus for Hermarchus.

19 Besides this slightly bowdlerized version of Ad Men. 132, the same passage in Ambrose's letter contains, as Usener has noted (p. xliii), an inaccurate version of Ad Men. 130 and an allusion to frg. 181.

20 The Epicurean sentiment comes to Jerome by way of Seneca, frg. 45; cf. Usener, p. 98, 6.

21 Cf. Kyr. Dox. IV; Sent. Vat. IV; Usener, frg. 447; Cicero, De Fin. i. 12. 40; ii. 7. 22.

22 In another passage Clement goes so far as to say, “Our goal is imperturbability,“ telos hēmin hē ataraxia (Paed. ii. 7. 461B); but the context— an admonition, based on grounds of etiquette, against contentiousness in discourse—suggests that here he does not have Epicurus's ideal in mind.

23 The statement which Clement attributes to Metrodorus is included in the fragments published by A. Koerte, “Metrodori Epicurei fragmenta,” Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, Supplementband XVII (1890), 557. With only slight variation, however, it appears also as a fragment of Epicurus in the Vatican collection. Cf. Sent Vat. X.

24 Diogenes Laertius, x. 122.

25 De Latenter Vivendo.

26 Cf. Kyr. Dox. XIV; Usener, frgs. 548, 554. Paul Elmer More comments aptly: “Gregory's apology … might seem almost to be a sermon on the Epicurean text ‘Live concealed,’ which no doubt he had heard discussed from every point of view during his student days at the university of Athens. Yet if the seductive phrase of Epicurus, as we may suppose, had sunk into his mind so as never to be absent from his thoughts, it is no less true that the hidden life for which he pined was divided, as pole is separated from pole, from that, in some ways not ignoble, withdrawal of the Athenian hedonist into his garden.” Hellenistic Philosophies (Princeton, 1923), p. 32.

27 Our idea of how the Athenian man in the street felt about the notion of a golden age is, of course, largely colored by Plato. Before Epicurus, Democritus had raised objection to it, and probably most of the sophists had protested as well. On the Democritean view of the state, cf. Bailey, Cyril, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford, 1928), pp. 208–212.Google Scholar

28 Cf. Lucretius, v. 925–1160.

29 Apparently the first to detect this partial dependence of Nemesius on Epicurean ideas of society is Telfer, to whose acute commentary this paragraph is largely indebted. Cf. Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, ed. William, Telfer, Vol. IV of The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, 1955), p. 243.Google Scholar

30 Cf. Diogenes Laertius, x. 118; Usener, frg. 601; Cicero, Tusc. ii. 7. 17; v. 10. 31; In Pison. 18. 42; Seneca, Ep. 66. 18; Lactantius, Div. Inst. iii. 27. 5. H. M. Werhahn, however, though allowing the possibility that Gregory simply mentionéd Stoics for Epicureans by mistake, thinks it more likely that he actually had later, perhaps less orthodox, Stoics in mind, Gregorü Nazianzeni SYGKBI8IS BION (Wiesbaden, 1953), p. 90.Google Scholar

31 Lucretius, v. 222–227; cf. ii. 576f.

32 Cf. Stoic. Vet. Frg. II, frg. 764; Diels, Dox. Graec. 434, 5; 646, 5–7; Seneca, Ep. 124. 8.

33 Cf. Lactantius, De Opif. Dei 3, 1, where the Lucretius passage is combined with a similar one from Pliny, Nat. Sist. vii. 2.

34 Cf. Dewitt, N. W., Epicurus and His Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1954), p. 185Google Scholar, although he restricts this pessimism to the Epicurean view of inorganic nature only, in spite of Lucretius, v. 395–221.

35 Cf. Lucretius, ii. 1150–1174; v. 821–836.

36 Grant, R. M., Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam, 1952), pp. 100f.Google Scholar

37 It should be observed that this is not necessarily Epicurus's belief, who offers three possible explanations of the phenomenon, Diog. Laertius, x. 94; Lucretius, however, considers it a possibility, v. 731–750.

38 Epicurus, of course, has no interest whatever in such a providential purpose, concerning himself rather with the possible physical causes. Cf. Diog. Laertius, x. 102.

39 Diogenes Laertius, x. 77, 92, 113.

40 Lucretius, i. 73, 76f.; v. 443–508.

41 Lucretius, v. 235–246. The Stoic Zeno is reported to have used the same argument, cf. Diog. Laertius, vii. 141. According to Robbins, F. E., The Hexaemeral Literature (Chicago, 1912), p. 47Google Scholar, n. 3, the scholiast on Basil says that with this argument Basil is criticising Aristotle and Theophrastus. Epicurus's hostility to the latter is well-known; cf. Plutarch, Non Posse., 1095c.

42 Cf. Lucretius, v. 449–479. In ii, 184ff., Lucretius makes clear that this upward motion of the atoms of fire is the consequence of external forces or impulses.

43 Cf. Lucretius, ii. 114f.; also, Theodoret, Therap. 4. 901AB.

44 Cf. Aristotle, De An. 404a5–25.

45 Cf. Diogenes Laertius, x. 45, 89; Lucretius, ii. 1048–1080; Filastrius, Haeres. 115; Augustine, D. C. D. xii. 12; Acad. iii. 10. 23; Ep. 118. 28; Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 22. 36; Claudianus Mamertus, De Stat. An. ii. 12.

46 Jerome, Comm. in Eccl. 1. 1020A.

47 Cf. Timaeus 32c-33a; also, Aristotle, De Caelo i. 8–9 (276a18 and 277b27).

48 Lucretius, ii. 367–370.

49 Lucretius, v. 918–924; cf. i. 584–598.

50 The first definition is borrowed from Epicurus, cf. Usener, frg. 321; the second, inspired seemingly by Archelaus (cf. Diog. Laertius, ii. 4), was adopted by the Stoics, cf. Diog. Laertius, vii. 55 and Seneca, Nat. Quaest. ii. 6.

51 Kyr. Dox. XXIX; Sent. Vat. XX.

52 Cf. Sent. Vat. XXXIII.

53 As Telfer, p. 353, observes (crediting Evangelides with having noted it first), it is ironic that Nemesius has no qualms about establishing a d o u b l e ethical standard for Christians on the basis of the distinction between pleasures made by Epicurus.

54 Cf. TJsener, Spicilegium Fragmentorum 469; frg. 181. Praechter, Karl, Die Philosophie des Altertums, Vol. I of Friedrich Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (5 vols.; Basel and Stuttgart, 1909–1927), 452Google Scholar, n. 1.

56 D. N. D. i. 16. 43.

57 Jup. Trag. 42; cf. Deor. Conc. 12. Significantly, it is Lucian also who implies that in the minds of common people Epicureans and Christians were closely linked or even identified as enemies of the conventional belief in the gods, fate, and divination. Cf. Alex. 25 and 38. On this association of the two movements in the popular mind, cf. A. D. Simpson, “Epicureans, Christians, Atheists in the Second Century,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, LXXII (1941), 379.

58 Cf. Lucian, Jup. Trag. 41.

59 Geffcken, J., Zwei griechische Apologeten (Leipzig und Berlin, 1907), p. 77Google Scholar; Waszink, p. 91. The latter lists some twenty additional occurrences in Justin, Ps. -Justin, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Clement, Jerome, and Filastrius.