>This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fort

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Christanon 12/06/18 (Thu) 02:31:38 fb2019 No.737193

>This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us, one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good without the help of God. Can one rise superior to fortune unless God helps him to rise? He it is that gives noble and upright counsel.

>Just as the rays of the sun do indeed touch the earth, but still abide at the source from which they are sent; even so the great and hallowed soul, which has come down in order that we may have a nearer knowledge of divinity, does indeed associate with us, but still cleaves to its origin; on that source it depends, thither it turns its gaze and strives to go, and it concerns itself with our doings only as a being superior to ourselves.

- Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, A.D. 65

Was Seneca a Christian?

Christanon 12/06/18 (Thu) 03:03:34 80d534 No.737202

>>737198

No, not in all ways lol.

Christanon 12/06/18 (Thu) 11:15:35 14f007 No.737314

>>737193

Was he baptised? If not then no but he may have had a baptism of desire. Indeed the gentiles started to realise the more the nature of God independently of Israel, probably to mark the preparation of the coming of Christ and that their would become the adoptive children of God. Socrates was the first gentile I believe to realise the guiding power of the in dwelling holy spirit as he used soulful intuition guided by what he called the divine to discern good from evil and the Greeks had discovered too the Logos and were trying to understand its nature whilst also beginning to worship "the unknown God" whom St Paul told them was the true God when he discovered an alter to him in Athens

Christanon 12/06/18 (Thu) 12:31:40 0e6026 No.737340

The Stoic pursuit of virtue was honest and so it had to lead them to truth and God.

That is why many of their ways and thoughts directly intersect with Christianity.

Like loving your fellow man:

'It is a man’s especial privilege to love even those who stumble. And this love follows as soon as you reflect that they are akin to you and that they do wrong involuntarily and through ignorance, and that within a little while both they and you will be dead; and this above all, that the man has done you no harm; for he has not made your “ruling faculty” worse than it was before. (Meditations, 7.22)'

"…who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth:for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature;" (Meditations 1.15)