📜 Jesus and the Stoics: Not So Different?
A review of Brittany Polat’s collection of parallel sayings.
Jesus and the Stoics may not seem like obvious companions.
One belongs to a religion founded on divine revelation, the other to a philosophy grounded in reason.
And yet, as Brittany Polat points out in her new book, when you place their ethical teachings side by side, something remarkable happens: they often seem to be pointing in the same direction.
Jesus & Stoicism: The Parallel Sayings places some of the strongest-matching verses from both traditions together. The book doesn’t deny the differences between the two, but does turn refreshingly away from the all-too-common modern tendency to be argumentative.
There’s no claim that Stoicism and Christianity are the same thing. We’re simply asked to accept their compatibility.
The result is an invitation to the reader to take their time. To read the parallel sayings slowly, and think about the significance of them arriving at such similar conclusions.
Surely that says something about the human experience? Surely it’s important that such advice can still apply 2,000 years later?
The book isn’t merely a modern matching of quotations. Stoicism was “in the air” of the first-century Mediterranean world, and Polat gives enough background to show why these traditions can be read together without forcing the comparison.
To give you an idea what to expect, here are a few of my favorite parallel sayings from the book.
If anyone sues you to take away your coat, let him have your cloak also. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and don’t turn away him who desires to borrow from you.
—Matthew 5.40–42
However quick he may be, a man gives too late when he must be asked to give. We should, instead, guess what each person needs, and when we have discovered this, set them free from the hard necessity of asking. You may be sure that a benefit which comes unasked will be delightful and will not be forgotten.
—Seneca, On Benefits 2.2
Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be given to you. For with the same measure you measure, it will be measured back to you.
—Luke 6.38
I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all human kind. I will live so as to remember that I was born for others, and will thank Nature on this account: for how could she have done better for me? She has given me alone to all, and all to me alone. Whatever I may possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly. I will think that I have no possessions so real as those I have given away to deserving people.
—Seneca, On the Happy Life, 20.3–4
Enter in by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter in by it. How narrow is the gate and the way is restricted that leads to life! There are few who find it.
—Matthew 7.13–14
You can pass your life in a constant state of happiness if you walk the right path, and think and act in the right way.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.34
The strength of Jesus & Stoicism is its simplicity.
It doesn’t over-explain: the parallel texts do much of the work, giving the reader space to notice, compare, and reflect.
That makes it suitable not only for reading straight through but for dipping into slowly—as a devotional, a study aid, or even a source of daily reflection.
This book will especially appeal to practicing Stoics curious about Christianity, Christians interested in ancient philosophy, and readers who are less concerned with winning theological arguments than with becoming more patient, generous, sincere, and peaceful.
I see the questions resurface often: Can a Christian be a Stoic? Can a Stoic be a Christian? This is bound to be a useful book for anyone trying to decide.
I think what Jesus & Stoicism does best is remind us that wisdom traditions aren’t ancient texts or museum pieces. They’re meant to be lived.
Whether the reader comes to the book as a Christian, a Stoic, both, or neither, the effect is the same: a renewed sense that the good life asks for humility, compassion, discipline, and love.
