Vatican Sayings 14

Quote

“Epicurus and Paul and the Soul: The illustrious fifteenth chapter of First Corinithians, where Paul touches his highest point, whether of eloquence or reasoning, is still marred by some imprecisions of interpretation. These may be cured by recognition of the fact that he is arguing against the Epicureans, who ridicule concentrated itself upon the prophecy of the resurrection, just as their logic of the atom claimed the maximum of certainty for itself in denying immortality. Here, as nowhere else so manifestly, may we discern this logic of the atom in competition with the logic of the cross.

The explanation of these residual obscurities may be found in certain assumption fo Paul, which were justified in his day as matters of common knowledge, though long since lost from view in a despised and neglected tradition of learning. Foremost among these neglected items of tradition is the Epicurean lore of the soul, of which the key word in Pauls’ language is psychikos in Greek, that is, 'psychic,' but utterly different in force from our modern word of the same spelling.

Epicurus based his whole system of knowledge upon belief in the atom as the ultimate existence and from this he deduced the mortality of the soul as being by nature a subtle atomic compound. This doctrine gained for itself such wide acceptance that the adjective psychic, from psyche, ‘soul,’ became the antonym of spiritual, as in the Epistle of Jude, verse 19, where the Revised Standard renders it ‘wordly’: ‘wordly people, devoid of the Spirit.’ This rendering possesses merit as a translation and may be adequate for the general reader but greater exactitude is possible. Jude has really furnished us with a precise definition. The ‘psychic people’ are animated only by the mortal soul, psyche, and are ‘devoid of the Spirit’ which animates the person who has experienced the rebirth and thereby attains to immortality.

That Jude had the Epicureans in mind is made clear in the preceding verse: ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly desires.’ The mention of ridicule is the identifying badge for the sect.

It was they who had gained for this concept of the soul its currency in the public mind and a brief account of its development will be helpful. Plato, against whom Epicurus was in rebellion, had taught that the soul is immortal and passed from body to body by a series of reincarnations. The retort of Epicurus to this may be read in one of his sayings: ‘We have been born once and we cannot be born twice, but to all eternity must be no more.’” (De Witt, St Paul and Epicurus 113-114)