Tool Alpha
The Stoic Reader
Stoic texts read beside the New Testament passages that share their words or their argument, and where the New Testament turns.
Family affection
Paul tells the Romans to be philostorgoi, devoted with family affection, to one another. The word was a Stoic virtue, and Marcus praises his teacher Sextus for having it while free of passion.
Romans 12:10, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: when Paul asks the church for family affection, is he naming a Stoic virtue or a different kind of love? He says his friends from the army are closer than his brothers. That might mean his brothers failed him, or that the army made a family where there was none. What does Paul mean by family affection among strangers?
"and he never showed anger or any other passion, but was entirely free from passion, and also most affectionate."
φιλόστοργος (philostorgos), Strong's G5387, tenderly loving, used only at Romans 12:10 in the New Testament: τῇ φιλαδελφίᾳ εἰς ἀλλήλους φιλόστοργοι, in brotherly love, devoted to one another. Marcus 1.9 has the superlative φιλοστοργότατον beside ἀπαθέστατον, most affectionate and most free of passion. He lists φιλόστοργον among the qualities to keep at 6.30, and at 1.11 he says the patricians are ἀστοργότεροι, short of this affection. The site's lexicon defines the word from στοργή, family affection.
Robertson calls philostorgia, natural affection, central to Stoic ethics, says the Stoics believed it should extend to everyone as all rational beings are brothers and sisters, and notes that Paul joins philostorgoi with philadelphia in Romans 12:10. Both writers take a word for the love inside a family and ask for it outside the family.
Marcus's ideal holds affection and freedom from passion together in one man; affection is a virtue of the sage. Paul sets the word inside a run of commands for a church: let love be genuine, rejoice in hope, share with the saints in need, practice hospitality (12:9-13). The family in Romans is not all rational beings but those who are members of one another in Christ (12:5).
Robertson, a modern Stoic scholar, is the source here for the Stoic weight of the word and for the link to Romans 12:10. He compares; he does not claim Paul borrowed it. Robertson says Marcus and Fronto used philostorgia of the patricians in 1.11; the Greek of 1.11 actually has the negative form ἀστοργότεροι.
Not sentiment. Neither writer means warm feelings alone. Marcus pairs the word with self-command; Paul pairs it with honoring one another above oneself.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.9, 1.11, 6.30, Greek text ed. J. H. Leopold, Perseus Digital Library (canonical-greekLit)
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. George Long, Book One, Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.1.one.html
- Donald J. Robertson, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (Yale University Press, 2024), ch. 1, The Mother of Caesar, with notes 7 and 8
- SBL Greek New Testament, Romans 12:10, via MorphGNT
- Site Greek lexicon (Abbott-Smith), word-study-lexicon.json, G5387
