Paul was brought to Seneca chained to a legionary. From his judgment seat Seneca briefly inquired into the nature of the crime on which the apostle had been arrested.
“It’s for the hope of Israel, which I preach, that I’ve been thrown in chains,” answered Paul.
“The hope of Israel?” asked the consul, frowning. “To revolt against Rome and conquer the world? Is that why your countrymen imprisoned you?”
“Yes, conquest of the world,” answered Paul, “but not through revolt against Rome. Rather through the savior and redeemer God has raised through Israel, to bring the world under the rule of the one living God of Israel.”
“I’ve heard that the people of Israel believe that they alone worship the one living God, and that their Temple is the one place on earth where the God of the universe lives,” said Seneca, with a faint smile. “But this is the first I’ve heard of a savior and redeemer sent for the benefit of the whole world. What conceit! Couldn’t the God of the universe find some more fitting people to raise a redeemer for mankind than this barbarous Asiatic-Syrian-Palestinian horde? If He’d at least chosen us Romans, or let us say the wise Greeks. . .”
“God chose Israel because it is the Jews alone whose forefathers recognized the one living God. We have worshipped Him from ancient days,” answered Paul.
“This too is the impudent conceit of an impudent people,” said Seneca, contemptuously. “All of us recognize and pray to the one living God of the universe, not just Jews. The gods are only agents, intermediaries between ourselves and the one God of the universe.”
Paul was astounded, not so much by Seneca’s views, but by his daring in expressing them. He cried out, “O Seneca! How near you are to salvation! But it’s not the gods who are intermediaries, but the chosen Christ, the man-God and God-man, Jesus of Nazareth. He was sent down to earth by God in the likeness of man to be intermediary. He alone acts between us and the one living God, his Father.”
Seneca was suddenly interested, and the philosopher in him awakened. Not the gods, then, but a man-God had been appointed as the sole intermediary between man and divinity. He signaled to Paul to continue.
Paul knew this man’s reputation, and all his old longing to win the high representatives of the Greek-speaking world over to the faith came to life.
“Who and what are we, O Seneca, with all our wisdom and achievements? How far have these carried us? Can these break the iron ring of our earthly destiny? For all our lofty thoughts that carry us into the highest heavens, don’t we remain just crawling things subject to the laws of nature like every other earthly creature? How can we, with our created intelligence and emotions, achieve what we are not, the Creator? But God our Father has compassion on man. He has desired to lift him out of the chain of all other created things and to bring him nearer to Himself. Therefore He breathed a soul into us, which is part of us, and that awakens the longing for divinity in us.
“But the soul can only give us the thirst for divinity, as it has in you, O Seneca. It cannot give the actual drink. Therefore God took a part of His divinity and confined it in a man. And He sent this man down to earth, giving him all the nature of man. And He made him endure all the physical sufferings of man that he might bind himself to us and purify us of our earthly, beastly nature with his blood and tears, and lift us up with him. God is a portion in Christ. Thus we too are a portion in Christ. For Christ partakes of both natures, and we who believe in him are thereby bound through him to God. Christ alone is the bond between man and God, and there are no other gods besides.”
Seneca listened attentively. He had little use for any of the many religions that poured into Rome from the Orient. To him they were no better than the star-gazing Chaldeans, with their snake-charming and soothsaying and all their other superstitions.
But this struck him as entirely different. There seemed to be some philosophic perception in it. He couldn’t deny that faith acquired a universal appeal through a medium that shared both human and divine natures. Seneca was courageous and consistent in these thoughts, even if he kept them to himself. He didn’t shrink from truth, wherever he found it. But as a Roman he couldn’t understand how God could choose the lowest of the low, the Jews, as the dwelling place of His spirit. Not even a king of the Jews, a Herod brought up in the Roman court, was chosen. Instead, one who had died the death of a slave.
To Paul he said, “It’s all well and good that the God of the universe is filled with love toward man, His creature, and He wants to see man happy, joyous, and above all free in him. So why did God choose to incorporate His nature in a man who suffered and was killed? Why not choose one of the great one’s of the earth?”
“O Seneca!” cried Paul. “How do you measure greatness? With God’s measure or man’s? Are they great who debase humanity with the power that chance has placed in their hands? Or are they great who lift up the human species by their heroic deeds, in which they pour out their blood?
“Christ had the power to put away the bitter cup; he didn’t have to drink it. But he took on himself the death of a slave for all of us, and for all who will come after us. This is who you show such contempt for. He went down to the lowest rung of hell to lift out the last of us who’ve been thrown into it. Not in his heavenly garb alone does Christ shine for us. He shines in the royal raiment he won on earth, and stands before us as an example, bidding each of us bear his cross in love and humility and gratitude toward our Father in heaven.”
But still the great philosopher couldn’t see it. Divinity for him was wisdom, the path in the midst of chaos, the thread in a lightless maze. Without it man falls into primeval confusion. Intellectual perception is man’s perfection, whether it leads to the earthly or the non-earthly. But this man was talking about something higher than intellect, something that would burst the bonds of intelligence.
This Seneca dreaded. If divinity were united with the intellectual perfection and harmony of a Socrates, he could accept it. But it terrified him to think that it could be united with goodness instead. Goodness was the god of the weak, who had need of it. It wasn’t the god of the mind. Truth was accessible only to the intelligence.
After a pause he answered, with a serenity that imparted a suggestion of alabaster to his face. “Your God has settled in the man of pain, not in the man of mind. Such a man cannot strive to divinity of his own free will like the man of mind can, but he is under the compulsion of a destiny prescribed for him long in advance. And as the God of suffering, he’s the God of those who suffer. He’s a God for slaves. They’ll find consolation and comfort in Him to help them bear their fate and to inspire them to obedience to their lords. From that point of view, I see no objection to the spreading of such a faith among the slaves of Rome.
“But beware of spreading this faith among the Romans. You can go.”
With that Seneca rose from his seat and walked out to the litter waiting for him. He ordered the carriers to make haste, for the Jewish prisoner had broken in on his routine, that is, on his discipline and intelligence, and he’d spent more time with him than he’d intended.
On the way to the Palatine Seneca busied himself trying to come up with new words of adulation to greet the compositions that Caesar would undoubtedly have. But his mind kept coming back to the conversation with the man who would sooner or later appear before Caesar.
“Spiritual barrenness paralyzes the intellect, and fruitful thoughts make it alive,” he meditated.
A dreadful boredom spread over his features.
“I don’t know which death is easier, Nero’s poison, or his mediocre verses.”
He decided in favor of poison.
Later, when he met up with Burrus, he brought up his conversation with Paul. “The faith he preaches is a good one for the slaves. It’ll make them more obedient. That makes it a good thing for the state. But his doctrines are not ones that freedmen will accept.
“By the way, you might be interested in what he has to say about a second life in a world to come.”
And Seneca smiled into the face of the old soldier, who was also under the shadow of Caesar’s disfavor.
“And mark this, Burrus, that second life is not for sages and philosophers. It’s reserved for old soldiers like you.”
“If there is a Nero in Pluto’s world, then let the man keep his second life,” muttered Burrus into Seneca’s ear.
“No, he’s not there. But you’ll find a certain dead slave, who is the lord of the other world. His name, hang on a second, I just had it. I think his name is Jesus Christ.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard soldiers in the Praetorium call on it,” answered Burrus.
“Really? Then the Jews have already been active here in spreading his faith,” said Seneca. “Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe he is a danger to the state.”
Then he added, “No, no. It’s a faith that only the wretched and enslaved will accept. Never will the free Roman bow to it.”
And with these words he decided Paul’s fate for some time to come.
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