Criticisms of Stoicism

I'm still going through some of my friend's notes as I prepare for comps. Here, I want to talk about criticisms of Stoicism.

Platonists were critical of Stoic pantheism (if that's the correct term). My friend quotes Plutarch, a Middle Platonist from the first-second centuries C.E.:

For it is neither probable nor fitting that God is, as some philosophers say, mingled with matter, which is altogether passive, and with things which are subject to countless necessities, chances, and changes.

For Plutarch, God is "far removed from earth, uncontaminated, pure from all matter that is subject to death..."

For the Stoics (if I'm not mistaken), God was in the orderly universe, as the force giving it order. In short, the Stoic God was "mingled with matter."

But Plutarch the Middle Platonists saw God and matter as mutually incompatible, for God is eternal and unchanging, whereas matter is passive, changing, and subject to death. Moreover, Platonists viewed God as apart from nature, not as a part of it.

These issues came up in debates about Jesus' incarnation: How could an eternal, immutable God become a dying, mutable man?

Skeptics also attacked Stoicism, particularly its insistence that the cosmos was rational and could be rationally understood and described. The New Academy was started by Arcesilaus, who lived in 315-240 B.C.E. Arcesilaus denied that sense-perception and reason could arrive at knowledge and certainty, and yet he did believe that a rational life was within the realm of possibility, as people followed a judgment "based on probability of desired effect".

Carneades (214-129 B.C.E.) was a skeptic who disputed the Stoic notion that reality could be represented. Reality may be out there, but is our representation (the words we use to describe it) accurate? The Stoics said "yes"; the skeptics were, well, skeptical!