Filiación divina, dignidad y tolerancia: de Epicteto a Gregorio de Nisa - Divine Sonship, Dignity and Tolerance: from Epictetus to Gregory of Nyssa (original) (raw)

The Ancient Stoic doctrine of the human soul as a spark (apóspasma) of the Divine Nature is specially important in the authors of the Imperial era. Some Roman philosophers rely on the universal Fatherhood of God to attribute an impregnable inner freedom to all humans. In Epictetus, this dignity - shared by men and women, slaves and free men- demands to be protected in each person by an appropriate use of their faculties, and requires also to tolerate (anékhomai) other humans as brothers and sisters. Now the tolerantia of the Stoic sage is still very far from challenging the rigid political structures and social roles of their time, which supported strong inequalities and abuses of all kinds. Meanwhile, the authors of the Patristic tradition inherited the link between Divine filiation and the value of each person, very akin to the Biblical topic of the 'Image of God', but we have to wait until the late Fourth Century for this thesis to be carried into further consequences and for some of the social models and asymmetries to be put into question. This is evident in the work of Gregory of Nyssa, whose view of women, children and slaves distances itself from many of the Ancient paradigms prevailing in his time.