Did God Care? Providence, Dualism, and Will in Later Greek and Early Christian Philosophy

‎Contents
‎Acknowledgments
‎Abbreviations
‎Author’s Note on Translations and References
‎Introduction
‎Part 1. Providence
	‎Chapter 1. The Pronoia Problem(s)
		‎1. Introduction: Did the Gods Care?
		‎2. The First ‘Likely Stories’ about Providence: From the Presocratics to Plato
		‎3. Epicurus, Aristotle, and (Pseudo-)Aristotle: “What Difference Is There …?”
		‎4. “Call Him Providence. You Will Still Be Right”: The Stoa on God
		‎5. “What Do I Care? For I Have Done My Part”: The Stoa on Fate and Determinism
		‎6. Three Providences! Pseudo-Plutarch and the Doctrine of ‘Conditional Fate’
		‎7. Conclusions: Aesop and Xanthus in the Weeds
	‎Chapter 2. Which God Cares for You and Me?
		‎1. Introduction: The Personal God of Early Christianity?
		‎2. Philosophers’ Personal Gods: Daimonic Intervention in the Stoa and Plutarch
		‎3. Fortune’s Favorites: Providence in Early Roman Historians
		‎4. A Different God, Present and Absent in Hellenistic Jewish Literature
		‎5. “So You Do Not Neglect the Nation of the Jews after All!”: Philo of Alexandria
		‎6. Flavius Josephus: Providential History is Jewish History
		‎7. Prayer or Care?—Justin Martyr and Trypho the Jew ‘Investigate the Deity’
		‎8. Conclusions: A God Personal Enough for a Stoic
‎Part 2. Dualism
	‎Chapter 3. The Other Gods
		‎1. Introduction: Dualism in Doubt
		‎2. Matter, Evil, and Dualism from the Pythagoreans to a Neo-Pythagorean
		‎3. ‘Mitigated Dualism’ and Jewish Apocalyptic Literature
		‎4. Athenagoras on “the Archon over Matter and Material Things”
		‎5. Living Idols and Questions That Deserve Punishment according to Clement of Alexandria
		‎6. “Nothing Happens without God”: Origen on Evil, Demons, and Other Absences
		‎7. Marcion asks, “Doth God Clothe the Grass?”
		‎8. Conclusions: ‘Religious Dualism’ in Roman Philosophy
	‎Chapter 4. Did God Care for Creation?
		‎1. Introduction: Gnostics without ‘Gnosticism’?
		‎2. No Idle Hands: The Creation-Theology of Irenaeus of Lyons
		‎3. Archons and Providences at Work in Creation: ‘On the Origin of the World’ and the ‘Apocryphon of John’
		‎4. “These Senseless Men Claim That They Ascend above the Creator …”
		‎5. “The Will of the Father” and the ‘Tripartite Tractate’
		‎6. Conclusions: The Gnostics on Providence, Creation, and ‘Gnosticism’
‎Part 3. Will
	‎Chapter 5. Did God Know All Along?
		‎1. Introduction: Origen ‘On Fate’ (Philocalia 23)
		‎2. Origen’s Digression on Divine Omniscience and Future Causes in ‘On Fate’
		‎3. Chrysippus and Cicero on “Things That Are Simple, Others Complex”: The Oracle to Laius
		‎4. Upholding the Appearance of Civic Piety: Alexander of Aphrodisias and Alcinous Respond to the ‘Oracle to Laius’
		‎5. Origen’s Oracles to Laius—and David, against Marcion
		‎6. Conclusions: ‘The Book of Heaven’
	‎Chapter 6. What We Choose Now
		‎1. Introduction: Where Does Free Will Emerge in Ancient Philosophy?
		‎2. Aristotle on Action and Pseudo-Plutarch on Determinism
		‎3. “All These Things Depend on One’s Thinking”: Autonomy and Fatalism in the ‘Book of the Laws of the Countries’
		‎4. “Say Anything Rather Than Call Providence Bad”: Clement of Alexandria against Basilides the False
		‎5. Origen ‘On Free Will’ (Princ. 3.1), “Older Causes,” and Gnostic Determinism
		‎6. Conclusions: Birth, Death, and Eden
	‎Chapter 7. How God Cares
		‎1. Introduction: The One’s Providence, Will, and Omniscience
		‎2. “Neither Actuality nor Thought before It”: Plotinus (Enn. 6. 7–8 [38–39]) and the ‘Tripartite Tractate’ on the Knowledge and Will of the Good
		‎3. Plotinus ‘On Providence’ (Enn. 3.2–3 [47–48]): Another Engagement with the ‘Tripartite Tractate’?
		‎4. The “Unspeakable First Thought” according to Porphyry and the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s ‘Parmenides’
		‎5. ‘First Thought’ and Providence in the ‘Platonizing’ Sethian Treatises of Nag Hammadi
		‎6. Conclusions: A Christianizing Turn in Platonist Conceptions of Divine Foreknowledge
‎Conclusions
‎Bibliography
‎Index