Augustine rebuts Stoic notions of apatheia and eupatheia in Book 14 of the city of God. He says that Christian experience even those emotions that Stoics denounce – distress and pain and desire – and he roots these experiences in the fact that Christians live in the present age “because they are still groaning within themselves, ‘waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies.’” In glory, the saints will be free from pain, though not free from emotion.
Stoicism is a form of over-realized eschatology. Stoics immanentize the echaton.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Possibility of Possibility
"Might could” is a Southern expression meaning “maybe I could” or “I might be able to,” conveying…
The False Promise of No Contact
Around the time nineteen-year-old Alice began cutting ties with her family, she announced on social media that…
Moral Certitude and the Iran War
The current military engagement with Iran calls renewed attention to just war theory in the Catholic tradition.…
