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.
What I would, I do not
Epictetus says every wrongdoer does what he does not want and fails to do what he does. Paul says the good he wants he does not do.
Romans 7:19, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: Epictetus and Paul describe the same split in a person in almost the same words. Do they think it can be fixed the same way? He promised himself he would not open the biscuits, and the packet is empty. Did he just not understand his own good, or is something in him stronger than his understanding?
"Every error implies a contradiction; for since he who errs does not wish to err, but to be in the right, it is evident that he acts contrary to his wish. … He, then, is gifted in speech, and excels at once in exhortation and conviction, who can disclose to each man the contradiction by which he errs, and prove clearly to him that what he would he doth not, and what he would not, that he doth. For, if that be shown, he will depart from it of his own accord."
θέλω (thelō), to want, with ποιέω (poieō), to do. Epictetus 2.26.4: πῶς ὃ θέλει οὐ ποιεῖ καὶ ὃ μὴ θέλει ποιεῖ, how what he wants he does not do, and what he does not want he does. Romans 7:19: οὐ γὰρ ὃ θέλω ποιῶ ἀγαθόν, ἀλλὰ ὃ οὐ θέλω κακὸν τοῦτο πράσσω, for the good I want I do not do, but the evil I do not want, that I practice. Same verbs, same relative clauses. Higginson's English for Epictetus reads like the King James wording of Romans 7, which is a choice of the translator.
Both describe a person divided against himself, wanting one thing and doing another. Wright, on Romans 2, says Seneca and other philosophers reflected in a puzzled way on how one might know the right thing and fail to do it.
The cure. Epictetus says show the man his contradiction and he will leave it of his own accord (2.26.5); the problem is ignorance, and argument fixes it. Paul says knowing the good law made things worse: sin dwells in him (7:20), and he cries out, wretched man, who will deliver me from this body of death? (7:24). The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says many philosophers, especially Stoics, believed reason could help one overcome the passions, while Paul's picture sounds more like ancient portrayals of Medea, whose passions conquered her reason; for Paul, merely knowing what was right only solidified defeat.
The wording is about as close as two Greek texts can be without quoting. The study note sets Paul against the Stoic view rather than beside it. No source in hand says either writer knew the other; Wright calls them near contemporaries. This is filed as same word on the Greek, with the warning that the shared words carry opposite diagnoses.
Not agreement. The same sentence leads Epictetus to confidence in argument and Paul to a cry for rescue.
- Epictetus, Discourses 2.26.1-5, Greek text ed. Heinrich Schenkl (Teubner, 1916), Perseus Digital Library (canonical-greekLit)
- Epictetus, Discourses, trans. Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1890), 2.26, Perseus Digital Library
- SBL Greek New Testament, Romans 7:15 and 7:19, via MorphGNT
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016), note on Romans 7:15-21
- N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part One, Chapters 1-8 (SPCK and Westminster John Knox, 2004), on Romans 2:1-11
- N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (HarperOne), ch. 8, Athens, calling Seneca and Epictetus Paul's near contemporaries
