I. Widespread Revolt Against Platonic Positions

There was widespread revolt against the vaunted claims of the Platonic philosophy. Comparatively few were satisfied with Plato’s teaching. Dr. Salmond states significantly, “It made scanty conquests either at the time or in later schools of Greek and Roman thought.” ^{11) Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, pp. 151, 152.} As a matter of fact, it was not even accepted by Plato’s own immediate disciples—not even by his star pupil, Aristotle, as we have seen. Nevertheless it persisted.CFF1 617.2

At best it offered hope mainly for the philosopher cult, rather than for mankind as a whole. No perfection was held out for the souls of the nonphilosophical. Moreover, it proffered immortality for only the half of a man, for it depreciated and degraded the body. It made the body the source of all evils and defilements, as hampering the way to virtue and knowledge. Death alone offered welcome release from oppression by the body, with purity attainable only through the separation of the soul from the body. Plato’s holiness expressly demanded riddance of the body. And the heaven of Platonism’s highest aspiration was a bodiless condition. That was the best that Platonism had to offer.CFF1 617.3

Picture 1: Rome:
While Rome Was Ruling the World, Hellenic Thought and Philosophy Were Still Supreme.
Page 617CFF1 617

1. BARREN COMFORT OF STOICS, EPICUREANS, AND SKEPTICS

The Stoics, whose influence continued for centuries into the Christian Era, though sympathetic with Plato’s moral purpose, thought of the soul of man as destined to reabsorption into the great World-Soul after death, and believed that it survived for a certain time but never beyond the world’s periodic conflagration. ^{22) Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew, vol. 2, p. 140.} To them life was a vast cycle of perpetual birth and death without any abiding personality. And the Epicurean was coldly materialistic and skeptical.CFF1 618.1

The popular refrain of the masses, “Soon we shall fall asleep to wake no more,” was the recurring voice of Greek and Roman anthology-poetry, prose, and sepulchral inscription. ^{33) Ibid., pp. 142-147.} The tombs were silent on a blessed immortality, and were mute as to future rewards or punishments.CFF1 618.2

As before stated, when Christ appeared Hellenic thought ruled the world—a world then controlled by Rome, with Greco-Latin belief and disbelief in mortal conflict. Mankind desperately needed One who could speak with an authority higher than that of the philosophers, One who has the power of an endless life. There was a pathetic longing among Roman thinkers for certainty concerning the soul and the hereafter.CFF1 619.1

2. MANILIUS: HOLDS A FATALISTIC PANTHEISM

Many writers in this crucial period were markedly skeptical, some showing undisguised contempt for the Hellenic views. But the pantheistic strain still echoed. That too is significant. Caius MANILIUS (1 st cent. B.C.), Roman tribune and legislator, in his astronomical poem taught a fatalistic pantheism, probably derived from Stoic sources. ^{44) Döllinger, ibid., pp 136, 137.} To him the world itself is God—the World-Soul-man constituting a portion of Deity, with his life and destiny dependent on the stars, the fates steering the course of the world, and each man responsible for his own destiny. That was one concept.CFF1 619.2

With the exception of Lucretius, we shall present the Roman witnesses with broad rapid strokes, based upon the exhaustive studies of men such as Munich University’s professor Johann J. I. von Döllinger, whose masterful treatise covering this area is well documented. ^{55) Johann J. I. von Döllinger (1799-1890), celebrated German theologian and historian, was professor of ecclesiastical history at Munich University. Opposing the claim of papal infallibility at the Vatican Council of 1869-1870, he was excommunicated in 1871. He was author of about eight books of great value. His two-volume The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple of Christ (Darnell, tr.), affords a definitive coverage of Greek and Roman paganism, religion, and philosophy, and the reaction against the Platonic concept.} We desire only to sketch the scene as a bridge to the next great section.CFF1 619.3

3. CICERO: VACILLATES BETWEEN BELIEF AND DOUBT

Amid the widespread unbelief CICERO (106-43 B.C.), master of rhetoric and celebrated orator, philosopher and statesman, and noted writer of Latin prose, was the only Roman thinker of the day who publicly contended on philosophical grounds for a real and individual existence of the soul after death. And this was because he was a professed Platonist. The Peripatetics Dicxarchus and Aristoxenus denied the existence of soul. And the Stoic Panaetius had renounced the periodic conflagration-of-the-world theory, as well as the temporary duration of the soul. ^{66) Ibid. pp. 121, 122, 141 142.} (On Cicero’s chronological sequence see Chart B, page 616.)CFF1 619.4

At times even Cicero is inconsistent. For example, he sometimes sees nothing but poetic fancy or ancient superstition in the notion of a retributive future. But in his Tusculan Disputations he supported Plato’s positions. The soul, he there says, is an entity, divine in origin and eternal in principle. God and the soul are of the same “texture.” And after death the soul goes to fellowship with the gods.CFF1 620.1

But along with his eternal duration of the soul went the customary pre-existence-of-the-soul concept. And with these went the principle of its own movement, within itself—man’s soul existing as a being from eternity, subsisting by its own power, indistinguishable from deity, with emanation from the divine spirit. Cicero did not say it was god, but it was divine. This led him to look with high anticipation to the day when he would join the divine communion of souls. Yet he recognized that his arguments were only a “probability.” ^{77) Ibid. pp, 141-143.} And while he accepted much of Plato’s doctrine, and reproduced not a little of his reasoning, Cicero nevertheless considered Plato’s speculative arguments on the nature of the soul to be largely “conjecture,” and merely a “possibility.” ^{88) See Cicero, Duputationes Tusculanae i. 27, 31, 38; v 13; in LCL}CFF1 620.2

At times Cicero speaks bravely, saying that if he errs regarding immortality, he delights in his error. However, when faced with the sorrow of personal bereavement he is not so confident. He seeks comfort in the concept of the unconsciousness of death, and records, “If there is nothing good in death, at least there is no evil.” ^{99) Ibid., i. 38; cf. Letters, ad. L. Mesain Epp. v. 21; ad Toran vi. 21.} But he said:CFF1 620.3

“If I err in holding the souls of men to be immortal, I do so gladly; nor while life lasts will I suffer this error, in which I delight, to be torn from me. If we are not immortal, then it is desirable for man that he should be extinguished at his hour of departure.” ^{1010) voted in Döllinger, op. cit,, vol. 2, p. 142.}CFF1 620.4

Cicero’s view of the pre-existence of souls led him to the concept of man’s earthly existence being a state of punishment for sins committed in a previous life. But he repudiated this in his Hortensius and in Consolation upon the death of his own daughter. And he added the disconsolate words, “Not to be born is by far the best thing .... But the next best thing is, if you have been born, to die as soon as possible.” ^{1111) Quoted in Lactantius The Divine Institutes iii. 18; 19, in ANF, vol. 7, p. 90.} In another place he speaks of punishment after death as an “old fancy.” So he vacillated between doubt and hope.CFF1 621.1

However, most of Cicero’s contemporaries were not in agreement with his Platonism. Caesar and Cato held that death was the end of all things, there being neither joy nor sorrow beyond the grave. ^{1212) Döllinger, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 153.} Vergil, Ovid, and Horace sought comfort and protection in the thought of an eternal sleep in the night of the nether world. Catullus cried to Lesbia, “When the short day is past and gone, the sleep of eternal night awaits us both.” ^{1313) Ibid.} And Seneca said, “There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing; you will then be with the unborn.” ^{1515) Ibid., p. 144.} And Pliny declared the notion of existence after death to be an invention of childish folly. Döllinger calls attention to a vital point:CFF1 621.2

“Philosophers utterly failed in grasping the idea of personality. Hemmed in by their material horizon, they understood by the soul a kind of secretion or evaporation of brain, blood, or heart, or a sort of respiration. They described it as a subtle, aerial, or fiery substance; or conceived it to be a mere quality, like the harmony of a musical instrument, which was lost in the dissolution of the body.” ^{1616) Ibid.}CFF1 621.3