Paul and Stoicism: Romans 12 as a Test Case

The recent resurgence of interest in ancient Greco-Roman ethics has prompted many studies of NT ethical thought in the light of Aristotelian and Stoic approaches to ethics. The purpose of this article is to compare Rom 12 with Stoicism. Rather than looking for similarities between Stoic ethics and Pauline moral teaching, however (as Troels Engberg-Pedersen does in Paul and the Stoics), it is argued that a comparison between Paul and the Stoics is better achieved by a comparative process more interested in differences rather than similarities. Such a comparison undertaken in relation to Rom 12 reveals Paul's interaction with Stoic ethics, but in the interests of presenting a radically different moral vision.