Epicurus and the Gospel

by Ben Pugh.

On 17^th October this year, I gave the annual Samuel Chadwick Lecture at Cliff College. My theme was ‘The Gospel in a Material World.’ My talk developed ideas I explored in my earlier post for Theology Everywhere. What had changed since that earlier post was that, by the time I gave the Samuel Chadwick Lecture, I had had a bit of a eureka moment. I now felt I had a clarifying lens for modern secularity: Epicureanism. It captures all the facets of secularism: especially the recurring Western cultural traits of philosophical materialism, religious indifference, and individualism. Not only that, but Epicureanism, a hugely popular philosophy in the Roman world, connects us to a significant aspect of the context in which Christianity first arose. This means that there is the exciting possibility of discovering that Paul, for instance, is already addressing Epicureanism in his letters and thereby supplying those of us who preach and teach today with some made-to-measure ways of putting things that might connect with the recovering Epicureans who sit in our pews. The dampener, of course, is that Epicureans get only one explicit mention throughout the entire New Testament (Acts 17:18). This is a sobering warning to me. Indeed, a certain Norman Wentworth De Witt, in 1954 produced the perfect example of an over-cooked, over-confident reading-in of Epicurean ideas in Paul’s writings.[1] De Witt seemed to believe that most of Paul has been mistranslated and if we only understand all the places where Paul is as anonymously ridiculing Epicurus, we will get Paul’s drift. The book stands as a shining example to me of how not to go about this. However, in this short post I’ll not be attempting much by way of New Testament study. For now, I just want to try on this Epicurean lens to see what becomes clearer about our culture.  

Epicureans were followers of Epicurus (341-270BC) and subscribed to a materialist dogma. De Witt was probably right about that at least: it was the only Greek Philosophy with a fixed dogma. The Epicureans believed in atoms, like we do. They were devout empiricists, believing emphatically that certain knowledge of the universe was to be gained via sense perceptions. Ethically, they were utilitarian like we mostly are, always asking the question: what can promote the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of pain for the greatest number of people? They were ruggedly self-reliant and individualist, adamantly rejecting anything such as fate or divine providence that might unseat their unbridled self-determination. And they were not religious. Indeed, they saw religion as part of the problem. They were castigated by Philo for being atheists, as well for being hedonistic and holding to a view of the cosmos that was too mechanistic.

Sounds familiar! But the most prized doctrine they held to, which emerged logically from their materialistic atomism, was the rejection of the idea of an afterlife. They felt strongly that ideas about facing judgment after we die were among the most troubling things we entertain and the quicker we get rid of such thoughts the sooner we can enjoy an untroubled and happy life. So, they opted for the belief that people’s souls were made of atoms, just like their bodies, and hence disintegrate after death. Epicurus himself stridently asserted: ‘Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling; and that which has no feeling is nothing to us.’[2] Epicureans, then as now, believed they had hamstrung religion’s most persuasive claims simply by disposing of the afterlife. A very common inscription on tombs was the Latin Non fui, fui, non sum, non desidero: ‘I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care.’

Despite its immense popularity among the middle classes of the ancient world, Epicurean materialism did not manage to keep its hold over the popular imagination and does not reappear until the early modern era. Many of the early Enlightenment thinkers were enamoured with Epicurus’ atomism. Inspired by him, Thomas Hobbes offered his famously desolate pronouncement: ‘. . . every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is no part of the universe. And because the universe is all, that which is no part of it, is nothing (and consequently, nowhere).^[3]

The rediscovery of Epicureanism in the early modern period has had a lasting effect upon our culture. Today, the very idea of having a faith is problematic: we don’t understand what it is or why it’s necessary. But there is another blind spot too. It is this: we can’t understand what it looks and feels like to be in union with Christ. Our entrenched individualism gets in the way, and our materialism for that matter.

When teaching the Gentiles Paul learned, perhaps the hard way, to foreground the wonderful ‘in Christ’ life that had come to mean so much to him: a fullness of life enjoyed in the here and now. We too need our eyes opening afresh to what it means to be ‘joined to the Lord,’ and ‘one spirit with him’ (1Cor.6:17); coordinated in thought, feeling, will, speech and action with the crucified and glorified Christ; our seeing, hearing, feelings and tastes occupied and sanctified by Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Watch the 2023 Samuel Chadwick Lecture here

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[1]St Paul and Epicurus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954).

[2] Diogenes Laertius, X. 139

[3] Hobbes, Leviathan, 46.15.