The assimilation of Stoic elements by the Church Fathers was generally better understood by the 4th century. Stoic influence can be seen, for example, in the relation between reason and the passions in the works of St. Ambrose, one of the great scholars of the church, and of Marcus Minucius Felix, a Christian Apologist. Each took a wealth of ideas from Stoic morality as Cicero had interpreted it in De officiis. In general, whereas the emerging Christian morality affirmed its originality, it also assimilated much of the pagan literature, the more congenial elements of which were essentially Stoic.
Earlier, in the 3rd century, Quintus Tertullian, often called the father of Latin Christian literature, seems to have been versed in Stoic philosophy—e.g., in his theory of the agreement between the supernatural and the human soul, in his use of the Stoic tenet that from a truth there follow truths, and in his employment of the idea of universal consent. Even in his polemical writings, which reveal an unrelenting hostility to pagan philosophy, Tertullian showed a fundamental grasp and appreciation of such Stoic themes as the world logos and the relation of body to soul. This is well illustrated in his argument against the Stoics, particularly on their theme that God is a corporeal being and identified with reason as inherent in matter—also to be found in his polemics against Marcion, father of a heretical Christian sect (the Marcionites), and against Hermogenes of Tarsus, author of an important digest of rhetoric. Yet, in his doctrine of the Word, he appealed directly to Zeno and Cleanthes. Another important polemic against the Stoics is found in the treatise Contra Celsum, by Origen, the most influential Greek theologian of the 3rd century, in which he argued at some length against Stoic doctrines linking God to matter.
Also, St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in the 3rd century, revealed the currency of Stoic views—e.g., in his Ad Demetrianum (To Demetrius), a denunciation of an enemy to Christianity, in which Cyprian castigates the ill treatment of slaves (who, no less than their masters, are formed of the same matter and endowed with the same soul and live according to the same law). The beliefs in human brotherhood and in the world as a great city, commonly found in early Christian literature, were current Stoic themes. The Christian attitude appears in what St. Paul said of baptism: “You are all sons of God through Faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26–27). Stoicism in medieval and modern philosophy Stoic undercurrents in medieval thought
During the period when Christian institutions and doctrines were developing (230–1450 ce), Stoicism continued to play a popular role. The De consolatione philosophiae (524; Consolation of Philosophy) of Boethius (died 524/525 ce) was widely known and appreciated as a discourse on the mysterious questions of the nature of good and evil, of fortune, chance, or freedom, and of divine foreknowledge. If the plan of Boethius was to serve as an interpreter of Plato and Aristotle, he succeeded only in working through some logical theories of Aristotle, together with several commentaries on those theories. In the Consolatione, however, the themes are quite different; in the fifth book, for example, he attempted to resolve the apparent difficulty of reconciling human freedom (free will) with the divine foreknowledge, a problem that among Stoic thinkers—though by no means uniquely among them—had been in general currency for a long time. This work of emancipation from worldly travail through the glories of reason and philosophy, which included Stoic doctrines as found in the writings of Cicero and Seneca, was much more influential for later medieval thought than that of Lactantius, of the late 3rd to early 4th century, who was largely concerned with the writing of a history of religion—a summary statement of Christian doctrine and life from earliest times. Lactantius also wrote a not unimportant work called De ira Dei (313; On the Anger of God). It poses a problem of how to deal with the essentially Greek, or philosophical, view that God cannot feel anger because he is not subject to passions and that apatheia (“apathy,” or “imperturbableness”) is not merely the mark of the wise person but also a divine attribute. That view, which had been most thoroughly developed among Stoic thinkers and particularly by Epictetus, raised a peculiarly Christian problem, the concern of the power of God to reward the righteous and punish the transgressor; thus, it challenged the very idea of providence. Other manifestations of anthropopathism, the attributing of human feelings to God, had also been charged against the early Christian religionists; and the writers of the time—Lactantius and Tertullian among them—took great pains to refute the largely Stoic formulations of these charges. Although the refutations took the form—in St. Augustine, for example—of denying that the wrath of God is a perturbation of the soul and of holding that it is rather a judgment, the concept of the divine essence excludes all passions. Within the monastic tradition, there remained more than a residue of concern over apathy as a divine attribute and as a model for the truly religious.
Preti, Mattia: Boethius and PhilosophyBoethius and Philosophy, oil on canvas, by Mattia Preti, 17th century. 185.4 × 254 cm.In a private collection
Other significant Stoic influences appeared in medieval discussions of the popular origin of political authority and of the distinctions made in law between jus naturale (natural law), jus gentium (law of nations), jus civile (civil law)—doctrines of Stoic origin—found in 3rd-century Roman juridical texts gathered together by St. Isidore of Sevilla (died 636 ce), a Spanish encyclopaedist and theologian. The Stoic belief—as against Aristotle—that humans are by nature equal was an integral part of the knowledge that certain rules of law are universally recognized, laws that all people might naturally follow. In this way, the Romans—whose genius lay in organization and in law—fostered the conception of natural, or common, law, which reason was supposed to make evident to all people. Thus, in the second half of the 11th century, the Stoic texts of Cicero and Seneca became important doctrinal sources for the initial discussions of social and political philosophy. These early theories of law, of natural equality, and of the rights of prince and populace were to become the basis for 13th-century systems of social and political privilege and obligation.
In the 12th century, John of Salisbury, an English critical scholar, produced, in his Policraticus (1159), the first complete attempt at a philosophy of the state since Classical times. Stoic doctrines of natural law, society, state, and providence were important elements in his effort to construct a social philosophy on ethical and metaphysical principles. The impact of these doctrines and the lengthy history of their use in the earlier Middle Ages can also be found in the views of St. Thomas Aquinas on the philosophy of the state and of human nature. Revival of Stoicism in modern times
If the influence of Stoic doctrines during the Middle Ages was largely restricted to the resolution of problems of social and political significance, it remained for the Renaissance, in its passion for the rediscovery of Greek and Roman antiquity, to provide a basis for the rebirth of Stoic views in logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, as well as the documentation of the more familiar Stoic doctrines in ethics and politics. Late in the 16th century, Justus Lipsius, a Flemish scholar and Latin humanist, was responsible for the first restatement of Stoicism as a defensible and thoroughgoing (Christian) philosophy of human nature. His treatises De constantia (1584; On Constancy) and Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589; Six Books of Politics or Political Instruction) were widely known in many editions and translations. His defense of Stoic doctrine in Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam (1604; Digest of Stoic Philosophy) and Physiologia Stoicorum (1604; Physics of the Stoics) provided the basis for the considerable Stoic influence during the Renaissance. About the turn of the 17th century, Guillaume du Vair, a French lawyer and Christian philosopher, made Stoic moral philosophy popular, while Pierre Charron, a French theologian and skeptic, utilized Stoic themes in De la sagesse (1601; Of Wisdom), as did the skeptic Michel de Montaigne in his Essais (1580; Essays). Through the work of Lipsius, Stoic doctrines were to influence the thought of Francis Bacon, a precursor of modern philosophy of science, and, later, the De l’esprit des lois (1748; The Spirit of Laws), by the political theorist Charles-Louis, baron de Montesquieu. In the continuing and relentless war against the Aristotelianism of the later Middle Ages, the doctrines of Stoicism influenced many prominent figures of the Renaissance and Reformation periods.