In our first two articles, we have laid essential groundwork. We began by diagnosing the spiritual malaise of our age and proposing Christian Stoicism as a robust framework for a resilient, masculine faith. We then excavated the foundations of the Stoa, seeking to understand classical Stoicism on its own terms as a comprehensive worldview. This preliminary work inevitably raises a critical, preliminary question—one that every faithful Reformed Christian ought to ask.
Why?
Why should a Christian, committed to the supreme and sufficient authority of Holy Scripture, spend even a moment engaging with a pagan philosophy? Is not the Bible enough? Is this project not, at best, a waste of time, and at worst, a dangerous step toward syncretism? This is a fair and necessary challenge, and it demands a clear, theologically-grounded answer before we can proceed in good conscience. We are not interested in novelty; we are interested in faithfulness. And our warrant for this project comes not from a desire to be fashionable, but from the historic Reformed doctrines of God’s revelation.
Our theological warrant for engaging Stoicism is the doctrine of General Revelation, which affirms that God in His common grace has allowed unbelievers to apprehend truths about His created order; it is therefore our scholarly duty to identify these insights, test them by the infallible standard of Special Revelation, and press them into the service of Christ.
The Two Books of God’s Self-Disclosure
Our theological defense begins with the classic understanding that God has revealed Himself in two distinct ways, or through two “books”: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. This is a foundational tenet of our faith, affirmed confessionally in Article 2 of the Belgic Confession:
We know Him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to “see clearly the invisible things of God, even his everlasting power and divinity,” as the apostle Paul says. All which things are sufficient to convince men and leave them without excuse. Second, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word…
General Revelation (The Book of Nature)
The first book, General Revelation, is precisely what the Confession describes: God’s self-disclosure to all people, at all times, and in all places. Paul argues this case with legal precision in Romans 1, stating that “what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them” (Rom. 1:19). This revelation renders all men “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20), plants a moral law on the heart (Rom. 2:14-15), and gives man an innate, inescapable “sense of divinity” (what Calvin called the sensus divinitatis).
Special Revelation (The Book of Scripture)
The second book, Special Revelation, is God’s specific, redemptive self-disclosure. As the Confession states, He makes Himself “more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word.” This revelation culminates in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1-2), and is now inerrantly, infallibly, and sufficiently recorded in the Bible.
Here we must be absolutely clear. General Revelation is sufficient to condemn us. But it is utterly insufficient to save us. Salvation comes only through the specific, propositional truths of the Gospel, which are found only in the book of Scripture. The Bible is, and must remain, our sole infallible rule for faith and life. It is the supreme standard, the final arbiter, the lens through which all other truth claims must be tested. Our project does not challenge this; it depends upon it.
Common Grace and Apprehended Truth
Because God has truly revealed Himself in nature and conscience, it follows that even unregenerate minds can, and do, discover truths about His world. This is the work of Common Grace. While the unregenerate heart will always “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18), God’s grace mercifully restrains the full expression of sin and allows unbelievers to discover, apprehend, and articulate truths about the world He has made.
John Calvin, far from advocating a fideistic rejection of all pagan thought, argued this very point. In his Institutes, he wrote with admiration of the pagan philosophers, lawyers, and physicians:
“If we hold the Spirit of God to be the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear… If the Lord has been pleased to assist us by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, dialectics, mathematics, and other like sciences, let us avail ourselves of it, lest, by neglecting the gifts of God spontaneously offered to us, we be justly punished for our sloth.”[1]
This is the principle of Common Grace in action. When a Stoic philosopher correctly identifies that virtue is superior to pleasure, or that the human mind yearns for a reality beyond itself, he is not inventing a truth. He is observing a truth that God embedded in the created order, an insight made possible by God’s non-saving grace.
The Apostolic Model on Mars Hill
This method of engaging pagan thought is not merely a post-Reformation inference; it is explicitly modeled by the Apostle Paul. His sermon on the Areopagus in Acts 17 is the locus classicus for our entire project.
Observe his careful, three-step method.
- He finds common ground. He does not begin with condemnation. He begins with observation: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22). He finds a point of contact, an “altar to the unknown god.”
- He affirms their common grace insights. Paul, in one of the most remarkable moments in apologetic history, quotes their own pagan poets—Aratus and, significantly, the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes—to affirm a truth they had grasped: “as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring'” (Acts 17:28). He affirms an insight gleaned from general revelation.
- He corrects and fulfills with Special Revelation. Paul immediately pivots from this common ground to the non-negotiable, saving truth of the Gospel. He says, “Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think…” He uses their own insight to dismantle their idolatry and preach the resurrected Christ and the call to repentance (Acts 17:29-31).
This is our model precisely. We will find the “altars to an unknown god” in Stoicism, affirm the truths they discovered, and then demonstrate how those truths are unintelligible, incomplete, and ultimately fulfilled only in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Our Task: To Plunder the Egyptians
The early church fathers, particularly Augustine of Hippo, used a powerful metaphor for this task: “plundering the Egyptians.” When Israel fled Egypt, they did not go empty-handed. They took with them Egyptian gold and silver (Ex. 12:35-36). Augustine saw this as a divine type for the Christian’s engagement with pagan learning. He argued:
“…in the same way all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies… which every one of us… ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth… Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad… These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself… ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel.”[2]
This, loved ones, is our task. Stoicism is a pagan system. It is the “Egypt” of the mind. But in that system, there is “gold”—real, objective truths about virtue, resilience, reason, and duty that its makers discovered only by the light of God’s common grace. Our job is not to build a hybrid temple, half to Yahweh and half to Zeus. Our job is to enter this pagan land, identify the gold, and “plunder” it—to take what is true, separate it from the dross of its idolatrous context, and press it into the service of our King. We melt it down in the furnace of Scripture and recast it for the building up of the saints and the glory of God.
We have our warrant. We are not syncretists. We are not compromisers. We are conquerors, reclaiming lost territory for its rightful King. Armed with this theological justification, we are now ready to begin the critical work of sifting the gold from the dross, starting with the Stoic’s most central concept: virtue.
Key Terms & Concepts
- General Revelation: God’s self-disclosure to all people, at all times, and in all places through the created order (Ps. 19, Rom. 1) and the human conscience (Rom. 2). It is sufficient to render all humanity without excuse but is insufficient for salvation.
- Special Revelation: God’s specific, redemptive self-disclosure given at particular times and to particular people, culminating in Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1-2) and now inerrantly and sufficiently recorded in the 66 books of the Bible.
- Sensus Divinitatis: (Latin, “sense of divinity”) A term used by John Calvin to describe the innate, inescapable, and universal awareness of God’s existence that He has implanted in every human heart. While this sense is suppressed and corrupted by sin (Rom. 1), it forms the basis for all human religion and a key component of general revelation.
- Plundering the Egyptians: A patristic metaphor, based on Exodus 12:35-36 and articulated by Augustine, for the Christian practice of taking the true and valuable insights found in pagan philosophy and art, separating them from their idolatrous context, and consecrating them to the service of God and His truth.
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John McNeill, trans. Ford Battles (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), II.ii.15-16.
[2] Augustine of Hippo, “On Christian Doctrine,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff and J F Shaw, vol. 2 of 1 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1887), II.xl.60.