Hello all, i decided to write a summary post for others on how scholars think Epicurus viewed the gods, along with a few free academic articles to help others learn more, since these things are often hard to find.
For articles on academia.edu simply stick with the single download option on the right to access them on their free tier if you're interested.
First of all, the general principle must first be established, everyone agrees that Epicurus does not believe, and categorically denies, that the gods are or were at any point invested in creating the world, maintaining the world, or handing out rewards or punishments of any sort, he also believed they patently did not feel emotions of anger or partiality toward others, as these feelings imply weakness contrary to a god's blessedness and happiness, rather they simply enjoy perpetual bliss and comfort for all eternity.
However, after this basic principle there is a actual and interesting controversy among scholars, with two main positions being established on how Epicurus thought the gods actually existed, if they really did exist in any real way, which i think anyone interested in Epicurus will find interesting, along with some resources to help people out.
Good introductory resources.
God, Epicureanism by David Sedley. Outside this chapter summary also a good introduction to Epicureanism as a whole.
The Polytheism of the Epicureans by Paul T . M . Jackson (2016), pgs. 19-24 specifically, but the entire work is very good introduction for understanding the Epicurean religion as a whole.
The First View: The Realist View
This view is very simple, and supported by the majority of scholars and people generally, it says that the gods do in fact exist, are made of atoms like everything else, but simply are enjoying their own life in heaven.
As Epicurus seems to plainly say in the Letter to Menoeceus for example: For gods there are - knowledge of them being self-evident - but they are not as the many regard them. (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 10.123)
Velleius, the Epicurean spokesman of Cicero also says: It must be admitted that gods exist (On The Nature of the Gods, 1.17)
This is contrast to the newer, second view below, since this is the more popular and easier to explain view i won't elaborate much more on it, except to say that it is still strongly defended by the majority of scholars as the correct interpretation.
Even those who support the second reading below usually admit that the plain reading seems to heavily lend itself towards the realist view, and usually say that this is even how most later Epicureans understood these writings.
David Sedley, the biggest proponent of the Idealist view below for example, says
"I do not deny that his forthright statement 'There are gods' lent itself to a realist interpretation, perhaps not unintentionally at least so far as the school's public reputation was concerned (they did after all seek to participate in local religious worship). It may well also have misled certain of his own followers into the same error. (Epicurus Theological Innatism, pg. 50)
Sedley also says that while he is skeptical that Epicurus himself and his contemporaries believed the gods to really exist, he does not deny most Epicureans later on believed them to really exist saying
"I aim to suspend judgement on Philodemus...although I note that Obbink 1996 and Purinton 2001 have been able on the evidence so far available to interpret him in accordance with some form of idealism. I am confident that Lucretius, despite accurately transmitting in the main body of his poem the vital data favouring an idealist reading, himself assumed the realist interpretation, as witnessed in his very independent proems.. also a realist is Cicero's Velleius and therefore, quite possibly, Cicero's Epicurean source or the doctrinal part of his exposition (who may or may not be Philodemus), despite the act that, much like Lucretius, he transmits doctrinal material which in practice tends to favour idealism. (Epicurus Theological Innatism, Pg.50, note 60).
Main Resource.
Epicurus on the Gods by David Konstan (2011)
Especially helpful as it explicitly attacks the recent arguments of the second view below.
The Second View: The Idealist View.
This view is also very simple, it says that for Epicurus, the gods are not like everything else in the universe, and are accurately understand as "mental constructs", this view mainly finds it's evidence from how Epicureans describe the gods as being know thanks to the mind.
For example from Diogenes Laertius, the main biographer of Epicurus, comments on Principal Doctrine 1, which discusses the gods, says
Elsewhere he (Epicurus) says that the gods are discernible as mental impressions (also translated as knowable thanks to reason), some being unique, while others look similar, owing to the continuous flow of similar images to the same place, culminating in human form. This seems to work particularly well as understanding the gods as mental constructs formed from similar images.
Sextus Empircus and Cicero as well seem to give evidence that Epicurus did not say God had a solid body at all, but as Sedley says "Others (following Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors IX 43–7) favour an idealist interpretation of Epicurean theology, whereby god, properly understood, just is our own idealization of a happy human life.
On this view, when god is said by the sources to consist of visual ‘images’, this is simply because according to Epicurean cognitive psychology all imagination consists in the apprehension of images which enter us from outside. The images which provide the raw material for our conception of god need not flow to us from any objectively real divine being, but may be ordinary locally generated human images. Epicurus’ main point in identifying god with a stream of images was apparently the negative one of denying that god is a ‘solid body’ at all (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods I 49). (Epicureanism, God, David Sedley).
Velleius, the Epicurean spokesman of Cicero, also oddly says we have "we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of the gods (On the Nature of the Gods, 1.17), but Epicurus clearly does not believe these ideas are innate as in "implanted by the gods", as in Plato, but rather must mean innate to mean "natural disposition to believe gods exist", which can support either receiving images of them from the various atoms hitting our eyes from outer space, or by forming a mental construct of them.
There is also the issue of translating Velleius in Cicero as saying "because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams from us towards the gods.", (On Nature of the Gods, 1.18) and this is what the Latin actually says and seems to support the idealist view.
However this is usually emended to say images flow from the gods to us, as the Latin is thought to be a scribal error, but scholars disagree on this, unsurprisingly usually depending on what school scholars support on this issue.
There is also the issue that Lucretius explains how mental images of Minotaurs and Centaurs exist, but also patently denies that these creatures ever actually existed as biologically impossible, which means images of the gods in Lucretius can't be inherently understood as evidence of their existence.
Main resource
Epicurus Theological Innatism by David Sedley (2011)
Hope you all enjoy!
