l l .

COTTA AGAINST THE STOICS

I. R. Howe s *

'Natural theology never was the attempt of the human mind to find its way to God by rational means alone quite unaided by revelation. It is and always has been nonsense to imagine a man speaking a western language and totally ignorant of the Church's persistent preaching.'~IJ

As it stands, this is philosophical and cultural m~opia. It is true, and important, that much so-called natural theology has been the work of people steeped in the Christian tradition: but it is also true, and perhaps more important, that people quite outside that tradition (including speakers of the western languages Greek and Latin) have engaged in natural theology.

Why should ancient arguments in natural theology concern us? Philosophers are not curators of the past, but critics of the present: and critics of the concepts employed by their own society, by themselves..... Are we not yet able to perceive the hollowness of that plea, and to recognize the many considerations it ignores? In ethics, for example, the attempt to find interesting things to so~. about the most oolourless terms 'we' employ, rather than to e~_age in a much wider comparative study, has stultified the subject. ~2) But once admit that it is by such comparison, by the noting of similarities and contrasts, that philosophy thrives, and you begin to be in danger of realizing that (i) we are not always sure what 'our" concepts are; (ii) we may be helped to find them by the study of other cultures past and present, different from us in their presuppositions; and (iii) we might in the process discover, or develop, better concepts and arguments, more lucidity and perspective. Moral, religious ~nd educational philosophy seem to me to illustrate this thesis abundantly. The old liberal and humane dictum 'I am a man- I consider nothing human alien to me' has not lost its relevance to philosophy.

I shall deal here with one ancient discussion between the Stoics and their opponents 9 expounding some of the arguments employed in part of Cicero's The Nature. of the Gods, and showing their relevance to modern discussion. ~y primary aim is to persuade someone that Cicero might join Flew and MacIntyre on the reading-list. However, since the role of

(1) G.E. de Graaff, 'The Theistic Proofs: A Modern Protestant Attitude', Sophia, April 1962, p.17

(2) cf. Iris Murdoch, 'Vision and Choice in Morality', Aristr3oc. Supp. Vol. xxx (1956).

* Dept. of Classics, University of Queensland.

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uncritical curator is parasitic, inhumane, and a slow poison to classical studies, I shall conclude by asking what kind of reply the Christian can make to one of these arguments.

Cicero himself is no mere curator of Hellenistic philosophy, though we cannot put him in Plato's class as an original and seminal thinker. He has the penetration and skill to find vivid examples and language~ he has re-enacted and rephrased the arguments. In The Nature of the Gods there are four speakers. Velleius is the Epicurear~ and Balbus the Stoic. Cotta is the Academic~ the New Academy of the third and second centuries B.C. was critical, not system-building~ Cicero describes their method as '~l~.~ against everything and giving no clear verdict on any topic' (I.v. Hence Cotta argues against both Velleius and Balbus. Cicero himself says little, and his position is not fully clearz he commends the Academic approach when the topic is such a disputed one as theology (l.vi), and yet along with some later Academics, he has revolted against the scepticism which denies the possibility of knowledge, ard in ar~ case he is full of respect for religious tradition. Cotta says that he holds on the authority of his ancestors without argument (nu]la ratione reddita) their views of the gods, yet if the weapon of the due~ is not author fty but reason, the Stoic theology - and presumably the Roman- cannot be vindicated (III.ii,iv). We've heard that before. At the end of the book, Cicero says (hesitantly?) that he felt that Balbus' s discourse seemed nearer than Cotta's to the semblance of the truth (III.xl.95).

Cotta's arguments against Stoicism occupy the third and last book. I shall outline those which seem of special interest and significance.

(i) The Stoic appeal to the universal belief in gods of some kind is philosophically useless, because it is possible that almost all men are foolish - indeed Stoics themselves have often regarded most of the world as mad (iv.ll). (C.S. Lewis remarks. 'When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most.' (4). Cotta is saying 'So what?').

(ii) Nor will it do to adduce the 'evidence' of divination, auguries and the like, since this is so confused. Balbus has said 'But doctors are often wrong'~ and Cotta rejects the comparison because he can see the rational basis of medicine, but not that of divination (vi.15). (In our terms, we might say 'Medical theories are publicly verifiable - are religious ones? ' ).

(iii) Since Balbus cannot find an explanation for certain natural events, he 'flies to a god, as though to an altar of refuge' (x.25). (We may compare C.A. Coulson's rejection of the 'God of the gaps' approach, which only s~s 'God' because it hasn't yet found a scientific explanation of, e.g., the origin of life. Coulson argues that 'God' must be the ro~pons~. ~ to our experience as a whole~.

(~) The references are to the Loeb text, ed. H. Rackham.

I ~I ]~ere Ch'istianit~ (Fontana ed.) P.39

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(iv) Cotta employs an argument which we might call 'Carneades' razor'. The Academic Carneades had scorned the mythologies because they were so arbitrary. The pretexts given for X being a god would serve equally well for a host of others; why, for example, should one and not another be hailed as a god because he was the son of a god? There is no clear criterion for divinity: so since 9 if we accept some as gods, we have to take innumerable others with the same qualifications, which is intolerable, we must accept none as gods. (This raises the question of the criterion by which claims of divinity are judged. Or is there none? Clearly Christ did not satisfy the criteria of most of his contemporaries. Revelation, St. Paul argues, shows up our a priori standards of accept- ability as 'foolishness'~ yet perhaps .afterward. s, with intellects not destroyed but broken (repentant?), we are able to see the reason in it all).

(v) Now for the claim that man' s possession of reason suggests divine providence and beneficence. In fact, says Cotta, man has far more often used this 'gift' for harm than for good. If the gods cared for man 9 they would have realized that to give reason to man was like giving wine to an invalid - much more chance of damage than of cure. The gift of reason p.estifera est multis I admodum paucis salutaris: to most it's noxious and beneficial to very few. We cannot allow that the gods should have cared only for a few, so it follows that they cared for none (xxvii.69-70). What worse gift could the gods have given to man to do him harm? It is man's power to reason which enables him to be a criminal (xxxvii ff).

Nor will it do to say that the gods are not to blame for man's misuse of his reason. To a god who made that excuse, says Cotta, one might reply~ 'You could have given man reason of a kind that would have made vices and crime impossible' (xxxi.76). And do not plead that man could be wise, though he is not. If only a few men do in fact attain wisdom, what a miserable place the world is (xxxii.79). (H.J. McCloskey has argued almost exactly as Cotta does~ ' (God) could avoid all this evil by creating men with rational wills predestined to virtue, or He could eliminate much of it by making men' s natures and the conditions in the world more conducive to the practice of virtue. He is said not to choose to do this. Instead, at the cost of the sacrifice of the many, He is said to have ordered things so as to allow fewer men to attain this higher virtue and higher beantitude that result from the more intense struggle.' (5)). It is the Christian response to this part of Cotta's argument which I shall discuss�9

(vi) If the gods cared, at least they could have protected the good. 'Why was Narius 9 the most treacherous man of all, able to put to death Catulus, the most noble?' (xxxii.80). It is the old question - why do the wicked prosper? There can be no beneficent divine control of the world which does not discriminate between the good and the bad (xxxv.85). The famous story of Diagoras 'the Atheist' is told. Diagoras looked at the pictures of shipwreck painted in Samothrace by those who had made vows to the gods and been saved, and he observed that there

(5) 'God and ~il' Philosophical ~arter~, April 1960, p.l13

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were no pictures from those who had been lost (xxxvii.89). (Christians have argued successfully, I think, against the attack of 'Why do the wicked prosper?' They have shown the absurd immorality of imagining religion as a way of avoiding the dangers of life, and yet they have also pointed to the fact that wickedness corrupts and ruins human life, so that the wicked man brings judgment upon himself. The traditional doctrine of hell has often been so stated as to obscure both these sound arguments. As for D iagoras, he is relevant to a good deal of Christian thinking, which, for example, when the subject is the liberation brought by the Gospel, is not always prepared to look steadily at the moral weaknesses and cramps of Christians and churches past and present. (6) Yet this is not to deny the importance of H.A. Hedges' proposed criterion: 'What kind of endeavours, leading by what stages to what ultimate en~ does this system throw open to. its disciples? V~hat new dimension does it add to life and experience?' (7)

At the end of the book, Cotta says he is confident that Balbus can refute him~ perhaps :~ doubt it. Certainly Cotta has brought forward a number of arguments which are still, sometimes in different clothing, seriously urged against theism. That they, and the Stoic counter-arguments from 'design' and the glory of man, were developed outside the Christian tradition seems to me of interest and importance for both Christians and non-Christians. They provide us ,'~ith part of an answer to the question: 'How does the pre-Christian (not the Christian or the post-Christian) see the world?'

I propose now to look at what happens when the Christian is faced by argument (v) above. Let us recall it. Balbus has spoken of the glory of man's newer to reason. Cotta's claims are~

(A) that in fact the power of human reason has proved to be noxious to most men and beneficial to very few!

(B) that a god could have given man reason of a kind that would have made vice and crime impossible~

(C) that he would have done a better job if he had.

Cotta then concludes

(D) that the gods cannot care for mankind at all.

It is important to see how different these arguments are. (A) is in a sense empiric:al, yet consider the difficulties of investigating it or even answering honestly the question 'Has the possession of the power of human reason been on the whole beneficial to you?' (B) depends on a ~lu~stion of logical possibility, calling for analysis of the notions of

6) cf. John Elsom, 'Charges against Christianity', The Listener, 25 January 1962.

) L/!ar ~uages Standpoints and Attitudes (O.U.P. 1953)9 p.64.

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reason and freedom, and (C) states a preference which will demand from us a fundamental judgment of value. (D) involved for Cotta the assumption that to believe that the gods might care for some and not for others was less coherent and so less likely than that they cared for all or cared for none: either the gods lived in remote bliss (as the Epicureans thought) or they were conoerned for all men's good. The clarity with which this was seen compares favourably with some exclusivist ter~lencies that have appeared in Judaeo-Christian thought, but that need not detain us here: let us assume that the Christian is concerned with the belief that God is all-loving and all-powerful.

What then can Christians reply? It is worth noting that if faced with this question~ they ought to attempt a reply, out of sheer intellectual honesty and beoause it is this problem - allied with that of physical evil or pain - which is perhaps the greatest stumbling-block to faith. A.M. Fairbairn has put it well:

'Indeed there is no problem that has so perplexed our finest spirits, reducing some to silent despair, rousing some to eloquent doubt, and forcing not a few into unbelief; while probably a multitude no man can number have saved faith by forcing their reason to ~ dumb and blind before the mystery it could not penetrate or unravel.'

It is certainly true that the mark of that shallowness which St. Paul has in mind when he disparages sophia (the 'wisdom' which is foolishness) is a refusal to tolerate mystery, a desire that everything be cut-and-dried, that nothing should surprise the sophisticated man. By contrast, the Judaeo-Christiantradition exclaims: 'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, 0 Lord'. Yet one must have reasons for tolerating the strain of the Christian position rather than giving it up. One must be able to show that one is not merely indulging in a fantasy, a 'magnificent obsession'. The Christian who believes that he can only say 'God calls me' is in fact unlikely to be silent if his brother says 'The spirits call me to be an animist'.

Look at Cotta's proposition (B) first. Everything hangs on what we mean by 'reason'. It seems to me impossible to get past the radical distinction between the automaton, whose behaviour depends entirely on initial structure and external stimuli, and the person, who is able to choose, to determine his own way, his own goals. Christianity certainly depends on the validity of this distinction. ~cCloskey and Cotta may wish that the conditions in the world were 'more conducive to the practice of ~irtue'; but when they wish for 'rational wills predestined to virtue' or 'reason of a kind that would make vices and crime impossible', they cannot offer a coherent picture of a new type of being, neither automaton nor free moral agent: I do not think there is between these a t~rtium quid. Are we not forced to a contrast between a creature which can choose and can therefore love - and hate - and one which can merely make predetermined responses?

(8) The Philosophy of,the Christian Religion (Hodder & Stoughton 1907) P.94.

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So to the value judgment (C). If 'reason' in (B) is so construed as to make (B) mean that God could have created 'rational automata', then we ma x say 'Yes' to (B). But not, I thir/% to (C). Fairbairn again merits quotation:

'If we could conceive a universe of automata .... which would be as if nature had become the storehouse for an infinite multitude of logical machines, what would they be but a universe of mere contrivances, the diversions of a curious mechanic, no creatures of a moral Creator?' (p.157)

Yet perhaps the important point is not, as Cotta put it, the claim that God would have done better to produce other creatures, but simply that he should not have created man; or that man has no reason to think that his creation is anything but a disaster. And indeed this has been widely believed.

'Of all thin6z not to be born into the world is best, nor to see the beams of the keen sun; but being born, as swiftly as may be to pass the gates of Hades, and lie under a heavy heap of earth' (Theognis, translated J.W. Mackail).

What move does the Christian make at this point? Here there is a parting of the ways, and one which is far too little examined. St. Paul is invoked to point each way, since he says of the pre-Christian Gentile that ~;od's power and deity have been knowable to him through the things that are m~de (Romans 1.19) and that he may do by nature what God' s (moral) law requires (2.14,15), yet he is concerned in Romans 1 to point to the fact that the Gentile world reveals a scene of ghastly corruption and degradation, in which the light men have been given has been ignored. It is the second of these positions which mar~v Christian theologians now concentrate on: the first is shelved, and St. Paul's fascinatir~ attempt in his Areopagus speech to find common ground before going on to speak of Christ is uncomfortably forgotten or even thought mistaken.

The difference is illustrated when Bishop Newbigin says, against Toynbee's syncretism, 'In the face of all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, what is our ground for believing that the creator and controller of this whole sul:~ of things is really motiw~ted by nothing but self- sacrificing love for his creatures? It is not obvious. I submit~ as a Christian, t:~at the only ground I know is what may be called the total fact of Christ.' ~)

Yet, and zhi~ is of great significance, ~ewbigin adds:

'We ca~ :~iso understand, since Ood has not left himself without a • !! a1~ ti~:%(10) that men have always been haunted by the thought ~;~:t sacrii~ial love ~as the greatest reality. And the Christian must

'," T.E.L. New~ i gin, A Faith For This One World?~ (SCM 1961) p.44.

i My italios~ ~'eu, i icin is quoting Paults words at Lystra (Acts 14.17).

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surely welcome these thoughts wherever he finds them' (P.45).

So Newbigin reveals in himself the tension in Christian thought at this point. Some Christians will say, about Cotta's proposition (A), that apart from Christ the debit of misery resulting from man's freedom and reason blots out ar~v credit of happiness. (To say this is, of course, to say a great deal more than that in Christ is the unique revelation of God, bringing to men a new fulness of life: but unfortun- ately the two propositions are too often hazily combined). The Christian view of the world then seems to me untenable, for it offers us a world in which only in sound of Christian preaching has there been ar~ kind of worthwhile life.

The alternative, which seems to me binding on the Christian, is to draw our attention again and again to the splendour and wonder in the life of this rational creature, man - to love, and co-operation even amid suffering, to enquiry and knowledge, to the efforts of man to combine with and subdue nature, to the perception and creation of innumerable forms of beauty. Then it is possible to speak of Christ as a fulfilment and not a negation of the natural world.

If Christians can, without appealing to Christ, show grounds for believing that life is not a tale told by an idiot, then they can also speak the word of revelation. Or, as I.M. Crombie has put it, (ll) there is both a logical mother - what he calls undifferentiated theism - and a logical father - revelation - to Christian belief. Or, as Temple used to maintain, there can be no special revelation without general revelation.

To believe this is not to attribute less importance to the revelation in Christ~ it is rather to give grounds for believing that God would act in that way. It is to point to a world in which there is joy as well as degradation; it is to reckon with the fact that the life God has given to most of his earthly creatures has lacked the Christian revelation. If the life of the 'natural man' were totally lacking in awe, love and joy, I for one would find it impossible to be a Christian.

Certainly the Christian revelation, and its implication that this life is not the end of human development, transforms our view of the world; but it does not transform a picture that is otherwise totally black. 'Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it's this is a philosophical as well as an evangelical necessity.

(ll) ,, ,j , ,, , . . . . . . _ , ,

New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp Iii ff.