SENECA - A FEW ASPECTS OF A SUI GENERIS CHRISTIANITY

Abstract

The idea of this text is to show that even before Christ, according to Saint Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, a seed of Logos could provide an imperfect form of knowledge even to the one who, through its own contemplation and struggle, wished to come closer to the Truth. In this light can be understood also the way in which Seneca, without having knowledge about the Christian teachings, uses philosophy in a soteriologic sense, in order to provide his times with a Sui Generis Christianity, trying to rebuild the man by virtue, using philosophy. Appreciating the time, the alienation from evil, and the thought to death of which nobody can escape - are fundamental ideas of Seneca's philosophy, which emphasizes the role of freedom which man must exercise throughout life.

Headnote

Abstract: The idea of this text is to show that even before Christ, according to Saint Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, a seed of Logos could provide an imperfect form of knowledge even to the one who, through its own contemplation and struggle, wished to come closer to the Truth. In this light can be understood also the way in which Seneca, without having knowledge about the Christian teachings, uses philosophy in a soteriologic sense, in order to provide his times with a Sui Generis Christianity, trying to rebuild the man by virtue, using philosophy. Appreciating the time, the alienation from evil, and the thought to death of which nobody can escape - are fundamental ideas of Seneca's philosophy, which emphasizes the role of freedom which man must exercise throughout life.

Keywords: Seneca, sui generis Christianity, death, virtue, time, evil, reconstruction.

This article tries to present some of the outstanding similarities existing between Seneca's teaching and the Christian teaching - both occurring in the same time period, but in different places - and to highlight also the fundamental differences between them, apart from the fact that one is philosophy and the other religion.

Seneca lives in the Roman Empire in a time of deep crisis, of attack against the very human being, in an atmosphere of terror, issue that will make his philosophy to have soteriological accents1, and to constitute a means of learning the way in which life must be lived, of saving reconstruction of man.2 For Seneca, in its genuine condition, philosophy must be a work on the human being and not of the structures3, and the scope of achieving this vision was the project of another world and it was an historic one, was that of the present Roman. By putting philosophy not in the service of explanation, but as a life direction, he looks toward a possible history, a better one.

Over time, we notice that certain elements of the philosophy of some great thinkers can be found partially also in a strong or weak form, in the Christian teaching. As of them, some lived before Christ and others during his days or after, but was impossible for them to take note of the Christian precepts, naturally appears the confusion related to this aspect, whereas the Christian religion is revealed.

Saint Justin the Martyr and Philosopher, Christian apologist from the second century, provides an explanation which creates a solid bridge of understanding and appreciation of the profane philosophy of all times, through the theory of the Logos. He claims that each reason has a seed of the Logos, and by this, through its own effort and contemplation, it can provide some imperfect form of knowing the truth, from here deriving also the similarity between some of these theories, and the Christian teaching: "All writers, through the seed of the Word, which was found in them from nature, could see the truth only poorly [...] Each of them, when they saw, partly, his closeness to the word of God, the One spread in the world, could each speak one partial truth."4 And as a philosopher that has passed through many currents in the search for truth, he continues: "... not because the teachings of Plato would be foreign matter from those of Christ, but because they are not entirely similar, as it happens with those of the other stoics and poets and writers, I have distinguished myself a lot from the latter."5 Gh. Vladutescu also, along with other researchers, considers Seneca's teachings as being marked by a Sui Generis Christianity6, unacquired, however, by faith, but built through philosophy and declared as Stoicism, by their supporter himself. Although both teachings wish to rebuild the man and the world, the scopes are essentially different, one being philosophical and the other religious. Jean Bayet considers Seneca as being "an unware precursor of Christianity"7, referring to the disconcerting mixture of realism and spirituality, between commitment and evasion specific to its philosophy, and this opinion also sends us with the thought of the words of the Apostle Paul: "When the pagans who have no law, by their nature abide the law, they, by not having any law, they are law to themselves. Which shows the deed of the law written in their hearts, through the testimony of their conscience."8 To exemplify the similarities and differences, I will refer to the issue of evil, time, and death. Starting from the Pauline approach from The Epistle to the Romans and from Seneca's approach from the Letters to Lucillius, I am going to show the similarity but also the great differences in respect of denunciation and of explaining evil in the world.

In the Epistle it is said that both evil and death, have entered into the world through sin, and thus the gift of Revelation provides the explanation of their appearance: "All have sinned; the wages of sin is death; For wanting is in me, but doing good I do not find; And if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me. Therefore I find in me, who want to do good, the law that evil is present with me."9

Seneca finds the existence of evil even since the beginning of the first letter "we lose most of our life by doing evil"10, but can not provide a non-contradictory explanation of its existence, he raises questions, but the answers given are not satisfactory. Starting from the pantheistic idea, that the world and man are related to divinity (reason), that the divine order is reflected in the world, and the god just does good and can do no harm even if he wanted to11, Seneca is wondering how is it that the evil still occurs, and why is it allowed?

On the basis of the Stoic conception on the fact that man is good and pure by birth, and society is the one that vitiates him: "Nature did not make us inclined toward any vice, but free and unharmed"12 and noting the overwhelming omnipotence and power that vices13 have in relation to the power of good in the life of society, Seneca concludes that the world has been and will always be the same, even if sometimes, for some reason, passions calm down - it will not be perfectly good.14

Because he cannot explain the origin of evil, Seneca strives to give it a utility, saying that it is needed by virtue so that the latter may exercise itself: "for life without worrying is like a dead sea, you have nothing to push you to fight, to test your spiritual strength."15 Therefore, the relentless urging of the philosopher is that man to gather all strengths of his being against evil, weakness and passions, for virtue consists in contemplation of the truth and in the action in accordance with it.16 And yet, although he does not have the concept of sin from Christianity - its connection with the fallen nature, the concupiscence: "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart and they defile a man."17 - for Seneca, passion, evil, are deeply related to the man's soul: "Therefore, we must know that the evil which we suffer from comes not from the places where we are, but on the contrary, within us, right down from or bowels."18 Stressed and explained in Christianity, and highlighted only by Seneca, in order to manifest itself, evil needs one condition - time.

For Christianity time begins with creation, and it is the mode of the existence of the being, whereas eternity is the mode of existence of God. Depending on its characteristics, time can be divided. The Edenic period was given as a possibility of spiritual growth of man, and with all that through by falling it is altered in a certain way, becoming also a measure of the transition toward death, it nevertheless retains its value, in that it offers the chance of gaining repentance, establishing itself as a time of ascension. The time of repentance is the redemption of the time wasted, by restoring communion with God, and on the contrary, after a lifetime well lived, a moment of sin may lose connection with God. Therefore, when addressing the Ephesians, Saint Paul is telling them: "Redeemed time, because the days are evil."19, and the meaning of the verb redeem relates to depleting occasions, to get the best part of this time that is given to us to live. The Christian cannot be enclosed in the present, he is always open toward the future, leaning also toward the past, so that the three are experienced in an existential unit not only among themselves, but also with the people we have met, and with God.

As the acts committed in life have an impact on contemporaneity and on posterity, towards good or evil, hence is amplified the value of time of the present life and also increases the responsibility for the way in which we used it. Loss of time without a creative valorization, the indifference towards its extent of ascending, of axiological ascension, constitutes a major damage: "God gave you the time of life - says Saint John Chrysostom - to spend it in His service, and when you are wasting your time of life in the most unworthy manner, you wonder where is evil? Do you not know that nothing should be saved as time should?! The gold that you have lost can be acquired again, but the time may be hard to fix."

Historical time does not flow endlessly, but with the end of the world, it also ends, in order to enter into eternity, the eighth day, the one in which according to the way in which man's time on earth is used, he deals, endlessly, with good or evil. This is how, although in Christianity there was not too much talk about what is time, how important is the way we use it! Temporality and eternity, although ontologically distinct, are not in an opposition or exclusion, because our soul is immortal and has the ability to be, through faith and life in Christ, a meeting place between time and eternal life. Therefore, the man fulfilling and living the commandments, has the chance to make the temporal eternal, i.e. to get out of the present for "an already, but not yet."20

As Saint Pavel advised to use the time meaningfully, Seneca also, right in the very first letter to Lucillius, although he is concerned to find an answer regarding the nature of time, knows that it is an ephemeral wealth, even if emotionally, inside, we can still attract it close to us, and draws attention on the major importance it has in our life, because: "All, Lucillius, is foreign to us, only time is ours"21, thus pointing to the fact that our being is inseparable from time, and cannot be regarded otherwise.

Although time is the only wealth with which man comes into the world, and its capital importance escapes our understanding because we do not grant it its true value, allowing both us and others to waste it: "We waste most of our life by doing evil, a large part of it by doing nothing, and our whole life, doing something else than we should." Hence, here is how time can be stolen or won, and consequently to be used well or bad, specifying that of all kinds of wasting, carelessness is considered the most shameful.

Seneca thinks that the life that has been given to us is not short, but we are the ones who waste the richness received, moreover, not the time interval lived is important, but the value that time has acquired. Speaking of an exterior and an interior time, Seneca highlights on the fact that the second narrows and tends to disappear, if man chooses an existence stranger to virtues.22 Because life cannot be thought and lived outside time, its quality is directly influenced by the way in which we use time, therefore Seneca suggests different ways of relating to it, depending on the time lived: past, present, future.

The past, for the one who has lived his life beautifully, can be updated by remembering it, having so an enlightening quality both for us and for others, as how a foreign past can also serve as a guide or as detour. The present must be lived intensely now, as if it would be the last moment, without wasting the present time in future projections and based on illusory hopes, nor wasting it with useless concerns as regards the social life. As for the future, the thought of it must suppress everything that means hope, and to prepare a scenario in which the darkest expectations are almost fulfilled, in such a way that mind to be prepared for any event, and the spirit will not be troubled, or how we might say otherwise, to prepare for any confrontation in good time.

For both Christianity as well as for Seneca, there is a day in which the world will perish: for the first is the Revelation and the Eschaton with the final judgment - heaven and hell - for at the second, however, the end would be, will bring with it the birth of another world.23 Hence the reason of time cyclicity in Seneca's variant, and without judgment! Although a pantheist, Seneca does various exercises of interpretation, as for example "what if?", so you have the impression that each variant adds something to cover for all existing situations: starting from the idea of a single cause, divinity may be the world's reason, something more than order in a natural way, perhaps the intentional principle which might manifest as providence?24 However, this last possibility, for the stoic pantheism, relates to physics and not to theology25, this not being the case - as in Christianity - of a personal God. Therefore Seneca could say that anything that is under the rule of divinity is not protected from change: "The world will not always have this order. A day will come that shall deviate it from the current path. All come at the time determined: must be born, must grow, must perish....what is compiled will be scattered, and what is scattered shall be compiled... in the everlasting art of divinity who rules over all."26 That means that time is consumed, and then it starts all over again.

For Seneca, the correct appreciation of our own time, its valuation, presupposes man to realize that every day that passes adds more to death, whereas "all the time behind us is under her command"27, i.e. any option to chose and alter the past is unsustainable, because it is already a dead time. This is how example by example, and then directly, Seneca is preparing the ground for the man to get accustomed to the thought of death.

We note from first letter to Lucillius, such as the master wants to prepare his disciple, taking him from the beginning to deep water, i.e. telling him about time, evil, death, and following that later, through rehearsals and thoroughness, the teaching given to sit and bear fruits. Anyway, for the Stoicis, the examination of conscience made in the evening, and morning meditation, marks the fact that death is always available and that is why each action must be analyzed from this perspective, because each pair of day and night is an allegory for life and death.

Noting the inescapable nature of death, Seneca believes that philosophy is the one that teaches you to die. Being aware of the fragility of man, of all things caducity and of the terror with which death reigns, Seneca wishes to liberate man from this awful burden28, trying to reconcile him with a need that can not be escaped from, and offering him as an alternative the variant of the quiet wise, who is waiting unafraid and at peace with the destiny, the great test. The thought of death of which the Holy Parents are talking about, is also present at Seneca, but with a different arrangement, and is present in the letters: 1, 4, 13, 54, 65, 77, 83, 91, 99.

Seneca launches the idea "that death is not only not to be feared, but thanks to it, we have nothing to fear, said with reference to the fact that suicide is not a desertion from the duties of life, but it is an honorable alternative, a sign of man's liberty from death, for certain situations such as illness, tormented old age, humiliating situations. The thought of death and meditation on this supreme test bring us a gift, freedom, in fact death gives us also the date of birth for eternity. Neither the separation from our loved ones should bring an unmeasured pain, because nothing can be changed anyway, and furthermore, since there is the possibility that they may have reached to be a nobody, living in shame, as are many others, it is better that death took them quickly.

According to the various views on death, noting that people are afraid also of a place of torment and of knowing that they will not be anywhere, Seneca urges to despise death through indifference and to practice virtue. This stoic serenity arises from the awareness that pain must be defeated, although it is present everywhere, and that we have no other way anyway. Anyway, Seneca manages to extract mortality from the scope of death, considering it an event for which you have to prepare yourself all your life, and being the biggest confrontation which he himself had to sustain. And like Socrates, but in other direction, the philosophy that he preached, has been updated also by deed, in the hour of the end.

For Seneca, the stake is therefore not life, but a life passed through the filter of moral virtue. When virtue ceases, the role of man in the world fades out, and therefore, the golden rule of the stoic is being one with the universe. At the end of a long apprenticeship which resembles catharsis, Seneca's man can acquire a certain inner balance by discovering the true values - i.e. the price of time, the meaning of death, of friendship, poverty and wealth - and by realizing which are the illusions that have puzzled him, to try to clear himself of them29, in order to be able to use reason better, i.e. in accordance with the reason of the world, or like St. Maximus the Confessor would say 6 centuries later, according to the "reason of things thought by God."

For Christians, death is a passage from earthly life in the one of the private judgment, and by its unavoidable and unexpected nature, is a key moment of man, as we are talking about his salvation or his punishment, and the way he is preparing himself for this event. The mention of death bears fruit if it is unsuppressed, whereas is a watchman against sin, therefore the Holy Parents make this urge: "Saint Gregory of Nazianzus advises his apprentice - It is advisable to live for the age to come and to do of this life a continuous remembrance of death; St. Basil the Great, when asked by philosophers of his time, what is the greatest philosophy, he answered that is the thought of death; Saint John Climacus (of the Ladder) - The thought of death be with you even when you fall asleep and when you wake up."30 As for the Holy Apostle Paul, he considered death "the last enemy that shall be destroyed", and associated it closely to the sin: "the sting of death is sin."31 We die because we all live in a fallen, corrupted, divided, broken world. Although tragic, death is also a blessing. Even though it was not a part of God's plan, is no less a gift of God, being an expression of His mercy and compassion. For us humans, eternal life in this fallen world, trapped forever in the vicious circle of evil and sin, would have been a terrible and unbearable destiny. Because of this, God has given us an escape by breaking the union between soul and body in order to recreate, to reunite them at the universal resurrection and return them so to the plenitude of life.

Footnote

1 Gheorghe Vl a dut escu, Philosophy in Ancient Rome, Bucharest, Albatross Publishing House, 1991, p. 159.

2 Ibidem , p. 158.

3 Ibidem , p. 161.

4 Saint Justin the Martyr, The Second Apology, in The Greek Apologists, Bucharest, Publishing House of the Bible and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1997, XIII, p. 115.

5 Ibidem.

6 Gheorghe Vladutescu, cited work, p. 168.

7 Jean Bayet, The Latin Literature, p. 503, apud. Gh. Vla dut escu, cited work, p. 168.

8 Holy Scripture, Bucharest, Publishing House of the Bible and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1988, Ep. Rom. 2. 14-15.

9 Ibidem , 3.23, 6.23, 7.18-21.

10 Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, translated into Romanian by Gheorghe Gutu, Bucharest, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1967, p. 3.

11 Ibidem, Ep. 95, p. 363.

12 Ibidem, Ep. 94, p. 347.

13 G. Gutu, Lucius Annaeus Seneca - The Life, Time and Moral Work, Bucharest, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1999, p. 189.

14 Seneca, cited work, Ep. 97, p. 372.

15 Ibidem, Ep. 67, p. 181.

16 Ibidem, Ep. 94, p. 347.

17 Holy Scripture, Matthew 15.18.

18 Seneca, cited work, Ep. 50, p. 121.

19 Holy Scripture, Efes. 5.16.

20 Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, The Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Bucharest, Publishing House of the Bible and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1996, pp. 226-232, Vol. I.

21 Seneca, cited work, Ep. 1, p.3.

22 Eugen Cizek, Seneca, Bucharest, Albatross Publishing House, 1972, p. 130.

23 Gheorghe Vladutescu, cited work, p. 179.

24 Ibidem.

25 Ibidem.

26 Ibidem, p. 194.

27 Seneca, cited work, Ep. 1, p.3.

28 G. Gutu, cited work, p. 201.

29 Pierre Grimal, Seneca or the Conscience of an Empire, Bucharest, Universe Publishing House, 1992, p. 319.

30 Jean Claude Larchet, The Christian Facing with Illness, Suffering and Death, Bucharest, Sophia Publishing House, 2004, p. 130.

31 Holy Scripture, I Cor. 15. 26 and 15. 56.

References

REFERENCES

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Justin, Martyr, Saint, (1997), The Second Apology, in The Greek Apologists, Bucharest, Publishing House of the Bible and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Larchet, Jean Claude, (2004), The Christian Facing with Illness, Suffering and Death, Bucharest, Sophia Publishing House.

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