the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Dictionaries
Stoics
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
or Athens was famous for the freedom it gave people to lecture publicly on such matters as religion, philosophy, politics and morals. There was, however, a council of philosophers, called the Areopagus, that exercised some control over public debate in the city. The council consisted of philosophers from two main schools, the Epicureans and the Stoics, and both were keen to hear the travelling preacher Paul give an account of his new religion (Acts 17:18-22; see AREOPAGUS).
Stoics took their name from the place in Athens where their founder, Zeno, taught his philosophy (about 300 BC). The Stoics believed that everything in life is determined by a universal Mind or Reason, which is the ‘soul of the world’. People must therefore accept whatever they meet in life without fear or complaint, and order their lives to fit in with what nature has determined for them. In doing so they will find real contentment. Stoicism therefore had a number of distinctive features: rigid self-discipline, free of both pleasure and pain; moral earnestness, free of all feelings and desires; devotion to duty, free of all emotion; and reliance upon reason, free of all superstition and irrationality.
The Stoics would have agreed with Paul that there is a supreme God who is living, who is the source of all life, and who determines the times and places in which people live (Acts 17:24-26; Acts 17:28). But they dismissed Paul’s belief in the resurrection as unworthy of serious consideration (Acts 17:32).
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Fleming, Don. Entry for 'Stoics'. Bridgeway Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/bbd/s/stoics.html. 2004.
