Becoming Like God

Epicurus put happiness in not being hungry, not being thirsty, not being cold — and then produced that godlike saying of his, claiming, with no reverence at all, that on these terms he would compete even with Father Zeus. He taught that happiness is winning that contest, as though he were talking about pigs that live in filth and not about reasoning philosophers. For the schools ruled by pleasure are the Cyrenaics and Epicurus. They said outright that living pleasantly is the end, and that pleasure is the only complete good. Epicurus also says that the removal of pain is pleasure, and that what is to be chosen is whatever first draws us from itself toward itself — being, that is, wholly in motion. Dinomachus and Calliphon said the end was for a man to do everything in his power to get pleasure and enjoy it. Hieronymus the Peripatetic said the great end was to live without being bothered, and that the only final good is happiness; and Diodorus, who belonged to the same school, says in the same way that the end is to live undisturbed and well. Epicurus and the Cyrenaics do say that pleasure is the first duty, since it was for pleasure’s sake, they say, that virtue came in — and virtue then produced pleasure. Calliphon’s followers say that virtue came in for the sake of pleasure, but that afterwards, catching sight of its own beauty, it made itself prized as highly as the thing it began from, which is pleasure. [a]

The Aristotelians, on the other hand, lay it down that the end is to live in accordance with virtue, but that not everyone who has virtue reaches happiness or the end. The wise man who is worn down and caught up in misfortunes he never chose, and who on that account would gladly run from life, is neither fortunate nor happy. Virtue needs time. What exists only in a full-grown man is not picked up in a single day, and so, as they say, a child is never happy. A whole human life is the complete stretch of time, and therefore happiness is filled out by the three kinds of good things. On their account, then, no poor man, no man of low birth, no sick man and no slave can be one of the happy.

Zeno the Stoic thinks the end is living according to virtue; Cleanthes, living in agreement with nature by the right use of reason, which he held to consist in picking out the things that agree with nature. Antipater, his friend, supposes the end is to go on choosing, steadily and without swerving, the things that agree with nature, and rejecting the things contrary to it. Archedemus explained the end this way: that in picking out the greatest and chief things that agree with nature, it is impossible to overstep it. Besides these, Panaetius pronounced the end to be living according to the means nature has given us. And last of them Posidonius said it was to live contemplating the truth and the order of the universe, and shaping oneself as well as one can, in nothing led by the unreasoning part of the soul. Some of the later Stoics defined the great end as living in agreement with the constitution of a human being. Why should I bring up Aristo? He said the end was indifference; but what is indifferent simply gives up the indifferent. Shall I put forward the opinions of Herillus? Herillus states the end to be living according to knowledge. Some think the more recent men of the Academy make the end the steady drawing back of the mind upon its own impressions. And Lyco the Peripatetic used to say that the final end was the true joy of the soul, as Leucimus said it was the soul’s joy in what is good. Critolaus, also a Peripatetic, said it was the completeness of a life running rightly according to nature, meaning the completeness that the three kinds of good things bring about, as the tradition has it.

We must not rest satisfied with these, though. We should do our best to bring forward what the natural philosophers laid down on the point as well. They say that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae held the end of life to be contemplation and the freedom that flows from it; Heraclitus of Ephesus, contentment. Heraclides of Pontus reports that Pythagoras taught that knowledge of the perfection of numbers is the soul’s happiness. The men of Abdera also teach that there is an end. Democritus, in his book On the Chief End, called it cheerfulness, which he also called well-being, and he often exclaims, “Delight and the absence of delight are the boundary for those who have come of age.” Hecataeus said it was self-sufficiency; Apollodotus of Cyzicus, enjoyment; Nausiphanes, being undaunted — this, he said, is what Democritus called being unshaken. Besides these, Diotimus declared the end to be the completeness of what is good, which he said was called well-being. Antisthenes said it was humility. And the followers of Anniceris, who come down from the Cyrenaics, laid down no fixed end for a life as a whole; they said that each action has its own end, namely the pleasure that comes out of that action. These Cyrenaics reject Epicurus’ definition of pleasure as the removal of pain, calling that the condition of a dead man, since we take joy not only in pleasures but in company and in honors — while Epicurus thinks that all the soul’s joy arises out of sensations the flesh had first. Metrodorus, in his book On the Fact That the Source of Happiness in Ourselves Is Greater Than the One That Comes from Things Outside, says: “What else is the good of the soul but the sound condition of the flesh, and a confident hope about that condition?”

Plato the philosopher says that the end is twofold. There is the end that can be shared, which exists first of all in the ideal forms themselves — he also calls this “the good” — and there is the end that shares in it and takes its likeness from it, as happens in men who make virtue and true philosophy their own. That is why Cleanthes too, in the second book of his On Pleasure, says that Socrates teaches everywhere that the just man and the happy man are one and the same, and that he cursed the first man who split the just off from the useful, as having done an irreverent thing. And in truth it is those who separate the useful from what is right according to the law who are irreverent. Plato himself says that happiness — eudaimonia — is having one’s daimon in good order, and that the ruling part of the soul is what is called the daimon; and he calls happiness the most perfect and complete good. Sometimes he calls it a life that agrees with itself and holds together, sometimes the highest completeness that comes with virtue; and he puts this in the knowledge of the Good and in likeness to God, showing the likeness to be justice and holiness together with wisdom. Is this not how some of our own writers have taken it — that a human being received what is “according to the image” straight away at his making, but that what is “according to the likeness” he will receive later, when he is brought to completion? And Plato, teaching that the good man will have this likeness along with humility, is working out these words: “Whoever humbles himself will be lifted up.” [n]

He says accordingly in the Laws: “God, as the ancient saying has it, holding the beginning and the middle and the end of all things, goes straight through, and as he goes he circles round. And Justice always attends him, punishing those who revolt from the divine law.” You see how he ties fear to the divine law. And so he adds: “The man who would be happy must hold to her, and follow her humble and well ordered.” Then, joining what comes next to these words and warning by means of fear, he adds: “What conduct, then, is dear to God and in keeping with him? One kind, marked out by a single old saying: like will be dear to like, when both keep measure; things without measure are dear neither to one another nor to the things that keep measure. And so the man who would be dear to God must, as far as he is able, become such as God is. On the same reasoning, our self-controlled man is dear to God; but the man with no self-control is unlike him and out of tune with him.” In saying that it was an ancient teaching, he shows that it had come to him from the law. And having granted in the Theaetetus that evils go the rounds of mortal nature and of this place of ours, he adds: “So we must try to escape from here as quickly as we can. And escape is becoming like God as far as that is possible; and to become like him is to become holy and just, with wisdom.”

Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, says that happiness is the complete condition of those who live according to nature, or the settled state of good men — a condition every man wants, though only good men come to the quiet of it; so the virtues are what bring happiness about. And Xenocrates of Chalcedon defines happiness as the possession of virtue in the strict sense, together with the power that serves it. Then he says plainly that the place where it lives is the soul; that what brings it about is the virtues; that its parts are made out of praiseworthy actions, good habits and dispositions, motions and relations; and that bodily and outside things are not found apart from these. Polemo, the pupil of Xenocrates, seems to hold that happiness is having enough of all good things, or at least of the most and greatest of them. He lays it down that happiness never exists without virtue, and that virtue, apart from bodily and outside things, is enough for happiness. Let that stand. The objections to the opinions I have listed will be brought forward at the proper time.

Our own business is to reach the end that has not yet been reached: to obey the commands — which is to say, to obey God — and to live by them blamelessly and with understanding, through knowledge of the will of God. And the end is to become like him, as far as that is possible, in accordance with right reason; and to be restored to the perfect adoption as sons through the Son, an adoption that always glorifies the Father through the great High Priest, who has seen fit to call us brothers and fellow heirs. The apostle, describing the end in a few words, writes in the letter to the Romans: “But now, set free from sin and made servants of God, you have your fruit toward holiness, and the end is eternal life.” And seeing hope as twofold — the hope that is expected and the hope that has been received — he now teaches that the end is the restoring of hope. For, he says, “endurance produces tested character, and tested character hope; and hope does not put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us.” On account of that love, and of the restoring to hope, he says in another place, “the rest that is laid up for us.” You will find the like in Ezekiel, as follows: “The soul that sins, that soul will die. But the man who is righteous, who does judgment and justice, who has not eaten on the mountains, and has not lifted his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, and has not defiled his neighbor’s wife, and has not gone in to a woman during her uncleanness — for he does not want the seed of man to be dishonored — and will not wrong anyone; who gives the pledge back to the man in debt to him, and takes no interest; who turns his hand away from wrongdoing; who does true judgment between a man and his neighbor; who walks in my ordinances and keeps my commandments, so as to do the truth: he is righteous, he will surely live, says Adonai the Lord.”

Isaiah too — urging the man who has not believed to take life seriously, and the knower to pay attention, and proving that a man’s virtue and God’s are not the same — speaks this way: “Seek the Lord, and on finding him call on him. And when he comes near to you, let the wicked man leave his ways, and the unrighteous man his ways; and let him turn back to the Lord, and he will find mercy” — and so on, down to “and your thoughts from my thoughts.” We, then, according to the noble apostle, “wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.” And: “we want every one of you to show the same diligence toward the full assurance of hope” — and so on, down to “made a high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” In the same way as Paul, the All-Virtuous Wisdom says, “The one who listens to me will dwell trusting in hope.” For the restoring of hope goes by that same name, “hope.” To the word “will dwell” it has most beautifully added “trusting,” showing that such a man has come into rest, having received the hope he hoped for. That is why it adds, “and he will be quiet, with no fear of any evil.” And openly and expressly the apostle says, in the first letter to the Corinthians, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ,” so that this may come about: if you are of me, and I am of Christ, then you are imitators of Christ, and Christ of God. So he lays it down that becoming like God — a man’s becoming, as far as he can, righteous and holy with wisdom — is what faith aims at, and that the end is the making good of the promise, which faith brings about. From these teachings gush the springs, which we set out above, of the men who have laid down doctrines about “the end.” But enough of them.