and world. For example, this is how the Roman statesman and Stoic philoso-
pher Marcus Aurelius summed up the natural order of the universe:‘For there
is one Universe out of all, one God through all, one substance and one law,
one common Reason of all intelligent creatures and one truth.’^30 Platonic
philosophers challenged the materialist pantheism of Stoic philosophy and
introduced the idea that the virtuous life meant the assimilation of the human
soul to the world soul, which was in turn the reflection of higher eternal
principles beyond the created order. Thus, where the Stoics say‘live according
to nature’, Platonists encouraged their followers to assimilate to the divine
image inherent in both the cosmos and themselves.^31 Later Christian thinkers,
such as the apostle Paul and the church fathers, could and did build on the
pagan language of assimilation to the divine image, even if they transformed it
radically based on their belief in Christ as the true image of God.^32
In contrast to our modern cultural mindset, premodern Christians and
non-Christians articulated the purpose of human existence, of society, and
of education on the basis of a participatory, basically religious, framework.
Embedded in a meaningful cosmos, human consciousness participated in a
larger natural rational order and moral law that provided common refer-
ence points for the questions who we are, why we live, and what we live
for. This correlation between mind and intelligible being, specifically in its
later Christian configuration, gave direction and purpose to Western cultural
institutions, such as our universities, courts, and hospitals. The loss of this
configuration is the main reason for our current arguments about the legit-
imacy and intellectual credibility of the Judeo-Christian tradition as the soul of
Western values.
Given the inevitability ofsomephilosophical framework, andsomevision of
humanity to orient social life and political decisions, the only way to avoid
arbitrary decisions or pragmatic ones masking sheer instrumentality governed
(^30) Marcus Aurelius,Meditations7.9, trans. A. S. L. Farquharson, Everyman’s Library (New York:
Knopf, 1994), 45 (caps in original).
(^31) So, for example, in this remarkable passage from theTimaeus:‘For the divine part within
us, the congenial motions are the intellections and revolutions of the Universe. These each one
of us should follow, rectifying the revolutions within our head, which were distorted at our
birth, by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the Universe, and thereby making the part
that thinks like I (ἐξομοισαι) unto the object of this thought, in accordance with its original
nature, and having achieved this assimilation (όμοιωσαντα) attainfinally to that goal of life
which is set before men by the gods as the most good both for the present and for the time to
come’(Timaeus90c–d; quoted in George H. van Kooten,Paul’s Anthropology in Context: The
Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy
and Early Christianity, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 94.
(^32) In his Gifford Lectures (1947–8), Emil Brunner, for example, argues that the anthropology
of Christian humanism differs sharply from Greek anthropology by grounding the individual in
the electing call of God, and thus in the divine–human personal encounter that posits community
and individuality as the very ground of being. SeeChristianity and Civilization, vol. 1, 100.
Introduction 9