Just like we agnostic and atheist Stoics have to struggle to reconcile our beliefs with the Stoic tradition we have claimed for our own (see “Zeus for Atheists“), Christians who become interested in Stoic literature also have to navigate the question of how their tradition and doctrines mesh with philosophy.
Both questions are deeply interesting to me, in no small part because I have a Christian family and I’m in an interfaith marriage (aside: shoutout to Dale McGowans’ excellent book, In Faith and in Doubt!)—and so I regularly engage with Christianity, Humanism, and Stoicism, sometimes all at the same time!
In fact, the title of this blog—Euthyphroria—is a subtle shoutout to exactly the question of how humanistic and religious morality do or don’t mesh together (a question that Socrates discusses in Plato’s Euthyphro).
The question of Christian-Stoic compatibility comes up frequently in social media. The topic has been treated a number of times in Stoicism Today, and several relevant full-length books have been published in the last few years—but perhaps a brief explanation would be more helpful to you than a long scholarly treatise!