by Tang Huyen

In January 2005, Tang Huyen posted to talk.religion.buddhism in response to a description of Christian saints as those who, unable to save themselves, threw themselves open to the "grace" of God. Tang Huyen's reply stripped away the theological apparatus: what happened, he argued, was that they opened up themselves to themselves, forgave themselves for their swamp stuff, and came to peace. "God" was merely the house dialect of the milieu they inhabited. What they were actually practising was Stoicism.

There was no other power. They opened up themselves to themselves, accepted themselves with all their swamp stuff, forgave themselves for it, and that's how they came to peace and reconciliation with themselves. The "God" part was mere embellishment, a concession to their milieu — they were in the Church and had to look the part. It's their version of small talk.

Historically, many Christian saints were heavily learned in Stoicism and Neoplatonism, and Neoplatonism was Stoicism expressed in Platonic and Aristotelian terminology. So when Christian saints talk, they talk of impassivity (apatheia), of self-renunciation (désappropriation or some such), of self-annihilation (auto-annihilation or some such), etc.

All standard Stoic fare, in that in Stoicism one opens oneself up to the logos (reason) that governs the world and lets it govern one, one effaces oneself in its favour. Instead of the Stoic logos, the Christian saints talked of the Christian logos, and they opened themselves up to the Holy Spirit, which is a direct borrowing from Stoicism (pneuma, which is synonym for logos), so that the Holy Spirit lived them, as in Stoicism the pneuma breathes the Stoic sage, lives him and acts him.

The universal (logos, pneuma) breathes, lives and acts the particulars. Wisdom consists in recognising that fact and letting it be, instead of putting up resistance in the form of a self. Self-love (philautia) is the worst sin, whereas the love of God is the greatest blessing. That is almost a rephrasing of Buddhism, too. Just substitute Dharma for logos, pneuma, God.

There is nothing new under the sun, Jewish mythology says. Christian mysticism is largely a recycling of Stoic wisdom, in almost unchanged terminology. Old wine in new gourds. Augustine, the greatest saint of western Christianity, and Gregory of Nyssa, the greatest saint of eastern Christianity, were massively learned in Stoicism and their talk (in Latin and Greek, respectively) is filled with Stoic words and concepts.

Colophon

Originally posted to talk.religion.buddhism by Tang Huyen, January 2, 2005. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a prolific and meticulous contributor to talk.religion.buddhism whose posts constitute some of the most rigorous comparative Buddhist philosophy in the Usenet archive. This essay makes a clean historical argument: Christian mystical vocabulary — apatheia, désappropriation, pneuma, the annihilation of philautia — derives directly from Stoicism, not from revelation. Tang Huyen traces the transmission through Augustine (Latin) and Gregory of Nyssa (Greek), and closes by noting that the same structure maps onto Buddhism if Dharma is substituted for logos. His dismissal of "God" as the practitioners' "house dialect" is characteristic: the phenomenology is real; the metaphysics is local color.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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