Determinism and Divine Intervention: Divine Punishment in Stoic Theology

Abstract

The Stoics' natural theology and deterministic world view do not seem to leave much room for the idea of God actively intervening in human affairs and inflicting impromptu punishment on criminals and vicious people. Indeed, we find several Stoics reinterpreting divine punishment more philosophico in terms of wickedness (i.e. moral evil) being its own punishment, much in the same way many ancient philosophers regarded virtue as its own reward. There is evidence, however, that suggests that certain Stoics did in fact recognize what appears to be a more traditional form of divine punishment as well, viz. God 'intervening' in the cosmos in order to punish vicious people, e.g. by sending plagues and famine. In this article I will try to reconstruct how they conceptualized such god-inflicted punishment, and argue that they did so in order to emphasize God's providence and justice towards human beings.