Mimetes theou in the Epistle to Diognetus

"Do not be shocked that a human being can become an imitator of God; if God wills it, it is possible."² Despite this claim, found in the tenth chapter of the socalled Epistle to Diognetus,³ the "imitation of God" is not a concept that is uniquely or originally Christian. In fact, the idea is found nowhere in the Septuagint nor in the pseudepigrapha.⁴ Further, while the language of imitation is found in the Pauline literature,⁵ as well as in Ignatius of Antioch⁶ and Polycarp,⁷ it does not seem likely that the unknown author of the protreptikos⁸ addressed to Diognetus is drawing upon them. However, the notion of human beings as imitators of God, and an array of variations on this theme, can be found in both ancient and Hellenistic philosophical texts, as well as in Philo, representative of Hellenistic Jewish thought at the beginning of the Common Era.

In the tenth chapter of the Epistle, which is clearly paraenetic, the author utilizes language common to Hellenistic moral theory. However, while the terminology would be identifiable as part of the Hellenistic koine, it is taken up and transformed in light of God's self-revelation in the and given a meaning that is distinctively Christian.⁹ The discussion of God's and of God's revelation through his in chapters 7–9 of the Epistle gives this later moral claim in chapter 10 its uniquely Christian significance and distinguishes it from earlier uses of the concept. What it means to imitate God, as described in 10.4–6, can be shown to depend upon the description of God's self-revelation through the which is found in 7–9. In fact, attention to the text will show clear verbal parallels among 7.4, 8.7–11, 9.1–6, and 10.4–6 which make this connection quite explicit. It is then clear that to be is to imitate the incarnate . This is what makes the notion of imitation in the Epistle distinct from earlier (Hellenistic and Philonic) uses of a commonplace in moral theory.

The Philosophical Background

Two Platonic dialogues which appear to have exercised considerable influence on Hellenistic thought were the Phaedrus and the Theaetetus, which employ the language of and (cf. 176b and 252c–253b). In these texts, the imitation of the divine is encouraged as a means of inculcating virtue in oneself and in others, and as a means of moving from sensible to intelligible realities, ultimately allowing one to "participate in the divine"— (253a). One can infer that such ethical is based on the cosmological which exists between the world of sense and the realm of the Forms expounded in Timaeus 38a–b. The principal interpreter and exponent of Platonism at the beginning of the Common Era was Eudorus of Alexandria. It was Eudorus who, by a selective use of Platonic texts, combined Platonism with elements of Stoicism, and what emerged was an ethic in which the of human action is .¹⁰

Pythagorean teaching also emphasized the teleological nature of moral action. The central imperative of the Pythagorean was :¹¹ "follow God," an idea easily assimilated to this Middle Platonic notion of likeness to god. For the Pythagoreans, this imperative is achievable because of the divine origin of human nature , and it is participation in this divinity which makes possible the life of virtue . The ultimate goal, according to the Golden Verses, is to become immortal and divine . While, strictly speaking, there is here no language of imitation, nonetheless affinity to—and ultimate convergence with—the divine mark Pythagorean ethics.¹²

The Stoic tradition too maintained that there exists a kinship——between humans and the divine, and it located this specifically within human rationality, which is a participation in divine . Recognition of this kinship with the divine should move humans to virtuous behavior.¹³ Compiled in the first century of the Common Era, Arrian's record of Epictetus' Discourses draws on a tradition going back to Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus^14...