Monday,
12/31/12
Our
Gospel, which is the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, is
concerned with the Word. We must understand what the Word meant to the Greek
audiences for whom John wrote this Gospel.
In
ancient times the Greek people had believed in Zeus and the other gods living
on Mount Olympus, but the great philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
brought them to believe in a single God.
A
century after those three great philosophers, another influential philosopher
named Zeno came along. When the established schools of Plato and Aristotle kept
Zeno from teaching in their academy, he addressed his followers from the steps
of that academy: and since the Greek word for steps was stoa, people called Zeno and his followers the Stoics.
Now,
following Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics taught that there was only one God.
What was different about their teaching was that they saw God not as standing
apart from nature, but as the beautiful core of nature and humanity. They
taught that we all become more Godlike by becoming less a matter of material. They
said we did that by developing the scholarly and artistic sides of our human
nature, so that the Logos is allowed to shine forth. So, the religious outlook
of the Stoics was a good thing. It had people disciplining themselves to become
learned and virtuous.
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