By Rollin Grams, Bible and Mission.
Introduction
What is the right way of life? How does someone convert to the right religion? How do we choose between religions or philosophies of life? On what basis do we determine how to live well? We might articulate the problems faced by looking at a dialogue in one of Lucian’s writings in AD 2nd century and offer some responses from Scripture.
The problems of choosing the right way of life is raised in Lucian’s Hermotimus, also known as The Rival Philosophies.[1] Hermotimus tells Lycinus that he has chosen to follow the philosophical school of the Stoics. The Stoics set virtue alone as the goal to pursue, whatever the challenges of life. External circumstances, like wealth or social status, had nothing to contribute to the good life, and the process of becoming virtuous was like travelling to a far off city (cf. 2).
Lycinus presses Hermotimus on his choice to follow Stoic philosophy—or to follow any philosophy, for that matter. He presses him on the grounds for choosing any way of life. The general question behind this dialogue is how we, living in the particulars of finite existence and without certainty, can make choices about absolute matters. Thinking of life as a journey, how do we know where to travel? How do we know what life in the city of our destination will be like? What road do we take? How shall we conduct ourselves on the journey? He asks,
when you first went in pursuit of philosophy, you found many gates wide open; what induced you to pass the others by, and go in at the Stoic gate? Why did you assume that that was the only true one, which would set you on the straight road to Virtue, while the rest all opened on blind alleys? What was the test you applied then? (15).
The dialogue investigates answers to that question. I will present a summary of the dialogue and enumerate Lycinus’s objections to Hermotimus’s reasoning. Ultimately, the dialogue ends with Lycinus convincing him that he has no good reason for following Stoicism or any other philosophy. Our question when reading this dialogue goes beyond the discussion itself: ‘How can we defend a commitment to Christian faith?’