Seneca and Paul on the Future of Humanity and of the Cosmos

The Salvation of Creation: Seneca and Paul on the Future of Humanity and of the Cosmos

James P. Ware

Modern scholarship confirms what Seneca says about himself: that he was a convinced Stoic, who was nonetheless not averse to criticism of his Stoic predecessors, who drew eclectically upon a variety of thinkers regardless of school, and also sought to make original contributions to philosophical thought.1 The starting point for our examination, in Part One, of Seneca’s un- derstanding of the future of human beings and of the cosmos will therefore be the ancient Stoic conception of cosmic conflagration and renewal. In contrast with Seneca, there is widespread disagreement (and, I will argue, misun- derstanding) in Pauline scholarship regarding the proper contextualization of Paul’s eschatology within its ancient philosophical and cultural milieu. In Part Two, therefore, our examination of Paul’s future expectation, I will address this debate regarding Paul’s eschatological hope. The aim will be to gain an au- thentic grasp of the content of Paul’s hope of resurrection and new creation, in order to set Paul and Seneca in fruitful dialogue regarding the cosmos, human beings, and their future.

1 Part One: Seneca and the Expectation of Eternal Recurrence

The mainstream Stoic teaching postulated the cyclical or periodic destruction by fire (ἐκπύρωσις) and subsequent renewal (παλιγγενεσία), in its identical form, of the entire created order.2 According to the Stoics, says Origen, “after the conflagration of the universe, which has taken place from infinity and will take place to infinity, the same order of all things, from beginning to end, has

1 See, e.g., Ep. 74.23; 80.1; 82.8-24; 83.8-27; 87.26-27; 90 (passim); 94 (passim); 104.16; 109.3; 113 (passim). 2 See SVF 1.98, 107; 2.590, 599, 625, 626; Cicero, Nat. d. 2.118; Philo, Aet. 47; Dio Chrysostom, Borysth. 55; Epictetus, Diatr. 3.13.4-7; cf. A.A. Long, “The Stoics on World-Conflagration and Everlasting Recurrence,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 23 (1985): Supplement, 13-37; and René Hoven, Stoïcisme et Stoïciens face au problème de l’au-delà (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1971), 31-37. On related currents of thought within the ancient world, see B.L. van der Waer- den, “Das grosse Jahr und die ewige Wiederkehr,” Hermes 80 (1952): 129-55.

© KoninklijkeBrillNV,Leiden,2017 | DOI10.1163/9789004341364 015 286 Ware been and will be.”3 The doctrine appears to have been held universally through the time of Chrysippus. But a number of leading Stoics thereafter either with- held judgment or rejected the doctrine, including Zeno of Tarsus (Chrysippus’ successor as προστάτης of the school at Athens), his successor Diogenes of Babylon, Diogenes’ student Boethus of Sidon, and Panaetius (the chief figure of the Middle Stoa).4 Seneca, in contrast, held to the mainstream Stoic doctrine of cosmic conflagration and recurrence with firm conviction. The universe “replicates itself again and again within the space of infinite time” (se intra huius spatium to- tiens remetiatur).5 Repeated passages reveal Seneca’s familiarity with and ac- ceptance of the dogma.6 It is to Seneca, in fact, that we owe perhaps the most lyrical and poetic statement of the doctrine in antiquity, at the close of his consolation to Marcia:

Consider then that your father, Marcia, speaks to you from that high arch of heaven . . . “For if the common fate can be a comfort for your yearning, nothing will stay in its present state, long time will overthrow and lay low all things. . . . And when the time shall come, in which the world destroys itself that it may be renewed, these things will fall by their own powers, and stars will collide with stars, and, as all the matter of the cosmos kindles to flame, whatever now shines in an ordered way will turn to fire in one universal conflagration. We, too, blessed souls and partakers of eternity, when God decides to build these things anew, will also ourselves, as all things perish, become a small addition to the vast destruction, and be changed back into our original elements.”7

The Stoic doctrine of cosmic renewal, in postulating the everlasting cyclical recurrence of this universe and its history, had a fascinating and existentially significant entailment: in each renewal or παλιγγενεσία, every person who has ever lived will be restored exactly as they were, to lead the identical life again.8

3 Origen, Cels. 4.68 (= SVF 3.626). The translation of this and all other primary source material in this essay is the author’s. 4 SVF 3, Zeno Tars. 5; SVF 3, Diog. Bab. 27; Philo, Aet. 76. 5 Marc. 21.2. 6 See Ep. 9.16; 36.10-11; 71.11-16; 110.9; Nat. 3.28.7-29.3; Herc. Ot. 1102-17; Ben. 4.8.1; Polyb. 1.2-4; perhaps also Ep. 101.9. 7 Marc. 26.1, 6-7. On the Stoic character of the passage, in particular its debt to Posidonius, see Karlhans Abel, “Poseidonios und Senecas Trostschrift an Marcia,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 107 (1964): 221-60. 8 See SVF 1.109; 2.590, 625, 628, 630.