The Scientific God of the Stoics

The Scientific God of the Stoics

James Daltrey

In this article, we will see that with a closer understanding of the subject, the Stoic God sits perfectly well within a scientific worldview.

To do so, we first need to clarify some of the key terms used by the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics—namely, Nature, Cosmos, and God. Beyond the specialist vocabulary they used, we need to understand the theoretical underpinning of Stoic thinking, including their idea of a natural order to the world and a physicalist understanding of causality, all contained within a holistic concept of the interconnectedness of the processes that form all things.

To be sure, some of the ideas that come out of Stoic philosophy may appear unusual to modern minds and could seem contrary to scientific thinking; however, once the core concepts are understood, I will argue they can be readily understood in scientific terms. The Stoics referred to the universe as the Cosmos, which they held to be not only alive but also rational, providential, and benevolent.

When we understand that the Stoics used the words Nature and God interchangeably, we must consider that, against our background of Christian or post-Christian culture, we have different ideas of what these words mean. To unpack these terms, I will unpack what Stoics mean by Nature, Cosmos, and God, and also related concepts like Logos and Providence.