From a Stoic point of view, a God with whom you trade in virtue to obtain eternal favors wouldn’t be worth a prayer. For somebody like Marcus [Aurelius], virtue’s value lay precisely in its being a gamble, not an investment.
-Joseph Brodsky, “Homage to Marcus Aurelius”
When we compare Stoic and Christian ejaculations, we learn much.
I engage with “virtue”, when I think about it, because that’s how I want to lead my life. The supernatural and divine doesn’t enter into it.
I liked the quote because it illustrated (especially in a fuller context) how Christianity was in most ways a backsliding away from at least the pursuit of rationality, from the (admittedly limited but real) progress made by the Greek and then Roman traditions.