Stoicism was the most important philosophical influence on
cultured people during the first century A.D. Stoic philosophers
were materialists, pantheists, and fatalists: they believed that
everything that exists is physical or corporeal in nature and
that every existing thing is ultimately traceable back to one
ultimate universal stuff that is divine. They thought that God
and the world were related in a way that allowed the world to be
described as the body of God and God to be described as the soul
of the world. Unlike the God of Judaism and Christianity who is
an eternal, almighty, all-knowing, loving, spiritual Person, the
Stoic God was impersonal and hence incapable of knowledge, love,
or providential acts. The Stoic fatalism is seen in their belief
that everything that happens occurs by necessity. The major
contribution of the Stoic philosophers was the development of an
ethical system that would help the Stoic live a meaningful life
in a fatalistic universe. To find good and evil, Stoics taught,
we mus