Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp & others · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Above all else, hold this as true: God is a single being, the one who fashioned and arranged the whole universe, calling every existing thing forth out of nothingness, and who holds all things within himself though nothing holds him. Trust in him, therefore, and stand in awe of him, and once you stand in awe, discipline yourself. Hold fast to these things, and you will strip away every trace of wickedness and be arrayed in the full virtue of righteousness, and you will live for God, provided you keep this commandment.
He says to me: Possess simplicity and be free of malice, and you will resemble young children, who have no acquaintance with the wickedness that ruins human life. Before anything else, never speak ill of anyone, and take no delight in hearing another do so; if you do, you who listen share the guilt of the slanderer's sin whenever you give credence to what you hear said against someone — for in crediting it you too store up a grievance against your brother, making yourself guilty along with the one who spoke against him. Slander is an evil thing, an unsettled demon that finds no rest and makes its home continually in strife. Stay clear of it, then, and you will enjoy peace with all people at all times. Clothe yourself instead with seriousness of character, in which nothing evil trips a person up, but all is level ground and gladness. Work at what is good, and out of the earnings God grants you through your labor, give without complication to everyone in want, weighing neither who deserves it nor who does not. Give to all, since God desires that his own gifts reach everyone. Those who receive them will render an account to God of why and to what end they received — genuine need will spare the recipient from judgment, while receiving on false pretenses invites punishment. The giver, then, bears no guilt: having taken on from the Lord this task to complete, he discharged it without complication, drawing no lines about recipients. Rendered in this uncomplicated way, such service becomes something splendid in God's sight. And so whoever ministers to God with such simplicity will have life. Hold to this commandment, therefore, exactly as I have set it out for you, so that both your own turning back and your household's may be discovered genuine, your innocence unspoiled and clean.
He tells me once more: Cherish truthfulness, and let nothing but truth pass your lips, so that the spirit God has lodged within this flesh of yours may prove honest in the sight of everyone, and thereby the Lord dwelling in you will receive glory, since he never speaks a false word and holds no deceit whatsoever within himself. Those, then, who tell lies reject the Lord and turn into thieves who cheat him, failing to hand back the deposit entrusted to them. What they received from him was a spirit incapable of falsehood; if they return it corrupted by lies, they have fouled the Lord's commandment and turned into thieves. Hearing this, I broke into heavy weeping. Seeing my tears, he asks: Why are you weeping? Because, I answered, Lord, I do not know if I can be saved. Why not? he says. Because, I said, Lord, I have never in my whole life uttered one honest word — everything I said to people was said with cunning, and whatever lie I told, I made it look like the truth to everyone listening; no one ever spoke against me, and my word was simply believed. How then, I asked, Lord, can I go on living, given what I have done? Your thinking is correct and sound, he says; a servant of God ought to conduct himself in truth, and no wicked conscience should lodge beside the spirit of truth, nor should you cause grief to that holy and truthful spirit. I told him: Lord, I have never before heard such things laid out with such precision. Well, he says, now you have heard them; hold onto them, so that even the falsehoods you spoke earlier in your affairs may, once these present words prove true, come to be counted trustworthy too — for that, too, is possible. If you hold to this and from here on speak nothing but the truth, you will be able to win life for yourself; and everyone who hears this commandment and turns away from the vilest lying will live for God.
He charges me: Keep purity, and let no thought about someone else's wife climb into your heart, nor any thought of fornication of any kind, nor of similarly wicked fancies; doing so is committing a grave sin. But if you keep your own wife constantly in mind, you will never go astray. Should such a thought arise in your heart, you go astray; and if other equally wicked thoughts arise, you commit sin — for a servant of God, this thought is a serious sin, and whoever carries out this wicked act brings death on himself. Watch yourself, then, and stay clear of this thought. For wherever seriousness of character resides, lawlessness has no business climbing into the heart of an upright man. I say to him: Lord, permit me a few questions. Speak, he says. Lord, I ask, if a man's wife is faithful to the Lord, and he catches her in some act of adultery, does the husband sin by remaining married to her? So long as he does not know of it, he says, he does not sin; but once the husband learns of his wife's sin, and she fails to repent but continues her fornication, and the husband stays with her, he becomes an accomplice in her sin and shares in her adultery. What, then, I ask, Lord, should the husband do if the wife keeps on in this passion? Let him send her away, he says, and remain alone; but should he marry someone else after sending his wife away, he too commits adultery. If, then, I ask, Lord, after being sent away she repents and wishes to come back to her own husband, should she not be received again? Certainly, he says — if the husband refuses to receive her, he sins and draws upon himself a serious sin; one who has sinned and repents must be received back, though not endlessly, since God's servants are granted only a single repentance. It is for the sake of this possibility of repenting that the husband ought not to remarry. The same principle governs wife as much as husband. And it is not adultery alone, he says, when a man defiles his own flesh; anyone who imitates pagan customs likewise commits adultery. So if a person persists in such conduct and will not repent, keep your distance and do not share a household with him, or you too become implicated in his sin. This is why it has been laid down that you remain apart from one another, husband and wife alike, since in situations like these repenting is still open. I do not offer this rule, he says, as license for the deed to be carried out in the first place, but so that whoever has sinned may sin no further. As for what he did before, someone exists who can supply healing — the one who holds authority over everything.
I questioned him again, saying: Since the Lord judged me worthy to have you stay with me at all times, put up with me a while longer as I speak — I am at a loss and my heart has grown callous from my past conduct; grant me insight, for I am utterly foolish and take in nothing whatsoever. He answered: I, he says, am set over the matter of turning back to God, and I supply insight to everyone who turns back. Or do you not think, he says, that this very act of turning back is itself a form of insight? To turn back, he says, is a profound insight; for a person who has sinned recognizes that he has acted wrongly in the Lord's sight, and the deed he committed surfaces in his heart, and he turns back and no longer acts wrongly, but instead does what is good in abundance, humbling and afflicting his own soul on account of his sin. You see, then, that turning back is a profound insight. This is exactly why, I said, Lord, I question you so exhaustively about everything — first, because I am a sinner, and I want to know what I must do in order to live, since my sins are numerous and of many kinds. You will live, he says, provided you hold to my commandments and conduct yourself by them; and everyone who hears these commandments and holds to them will live for God.
Still, I said, Lord, allow me one further question. Speak, he says. I have been told, I said, Lord, by certain teachers, that there is no turning back except the single one granted when we went down into the water and obtained release from our earlier sins. He replies: What you heard is correct, for that is indeed the case. Whoever has obtained release from sins ought never to sin again, but should live thereafter in purity. Yet since you probe every detail so thoroughly, I will spell this out for you as well, without giving those who are yet to believe, or who have only now come to believe in the Lord, any excuse. For those who have only now believed, or are still to believe, are granted no further turning-back for sins, since they already hold release from their earlier ones. But for those called before this present time, the Lord instituted a turning-back; for the Lord, who reads every heart and knows all things in advance, recognized human frailty and the devil's tangled schemes, knowing he would inflict some evil on God's servants and work mischief against them. Being deeply compassionate, the Lord took pity on what he had made and instituted this turning-back, and the charge of overseeing it was placed in my hands. But I tell you, he says, after that momentous and solemn summons, should anyone be tested by the devil and sin, he has one turning-back available to him; yet if he sins over and over and turns back each time, it does him no good at all, for he will scarcely live. I told him: Hearing this from you laid out with such care has brought me back to life; for I know that if I add nothing further to my sins, I will be saved. You will be saved, he says, and so will everyone who does likewise.
I asked him once more: Lord, since you have already been patient with me, clarify this matter for me too. Speak, he says. Suppose, I said, Lord, a wife — or equally a husband — dies, and the surviving spouse marries again: does the one who marries commit sin? No sin is committed, he says; yet a person who stays unmarried gains for himself a higher standing and a more excellent honor in the Lord's eyes; still, marrying again is not a sin. So hold on to purity and seriousness of character, and you will live for God. Everything I am telling you, and am about to tell you, guard from this moment forward, from the day I was entrusted to you, and I will make my home in your house. Your earlier failings will be forgiven, provided you hold to my commandments; and forgiveness will extend to everyone, provided they hold to these commandments of mine and conduct themselves within this purity.
Become someone patient and sensible, he says, and you will gain mastery over every wicked deed and accomplish every kind of righteousness. If you are patient, the Holy Spirit residing within you will remain clean, unclouded by any competing evil spirit, and instead, having room to breathe, it will exult and take delight together with the vessel it inhabits, serving God with abundant cheerfulness, its own contentment intact. But should any flash of temper approach, the Holy Spirit — being a tender thing — is instantly squeezed for lack of clean space and looks to leave that place altogether; it is choked by the evil spirit, left with no room to minister to the Lord as it desires, tainted by that temper. The Lord makes his home in patience, while the devil makes his in bad temper. When these two spirits occupy one and the same place, it spells trouble and harm for whoever houses them. Consider: drop a mere sliver of wormwood into a whole jar of honey — isn't the entire jar spoiled, all that honey wrecked by that one tiny scrap, its sweetness gone, its value to its owner destroyed, now that bitterness has ruined its usefulness? But leave the wormwood out, and the honey stays sweet, remaining valuable to its owner. So you can see that patience outdoes honey in sweetness and remains valuable to the Lord, who makes his dwelling there. Bad temper, by contrast, is bitter and worthless. And if bad temper gets folded into patience, the patience is tainted and its pleading before God loses all value. I wanted to learn, I said, Lord, how bad temper operates, so I could shield myself from it. Indeed, he says, unless you and your household shield yourselves from it, you will have wrecked every hope you had. So guard against it, for I stand beside you. And everyone who turns back with a whole heart will steer clear of it, since I will stand beside them too and keep them safe, for all have been declared righteous by the most holy angel.
Listen now, he says, to how bad temper operates, how wicked it is, and how, by its own operation, it topples my servants and leads them off the path of righteousness. It does not lead astray those who are complete in their faith, nor can it exert any power over them, because my strength stands with them; but it leads astray the hollow and double-minded. Whenever it spots such people standing steady, it hurls itself into that person's heart, and for absolutely no reason the man or woman turns bitter over ordinary matters — food, some petty detail, a companion, giving something or getting something, or other such foolish concerns; all of these things are silly, empty, senseless, and unprofitable for God's servants. Patience, though, is grand and mighty, possessed of real power, sturdy, and it flourishes in wide-open room, cheerful, exultant, untroubled, glorifying the Lord constantly, holding nothing bitter within itself, staying gentle and calm through everything; this patience, then, makes its home among those whose faith is complete. Bad temper, however, is first of all foolish, flighty, and senseless. Out of that foolishness comes bitterness, and out of bitterness, rage, and out of rage, anger, and out of anger, resentment; and this resentment, built up from so many evils, becomes a grave and incurable sin. For when these spirits share one vessel, the same vessel the Holy Spirit also inhabits, that vessel cannot contain it and spills over. So the tender spirit, unaccustomed to living alongside an evil spirit or alongside harshness, withdraws from such a person and seeks instead to dwell with gentleness and calm. Once it has left the person it had inhabited, that person becomes emptied of the righteous spirit and, now filled instead with wicked spirits, grows unstable in every part of his conduct, tossed here and there by those wicked spirits, and loses sight entirely of sound judgment. This, then, is what befalls everyone given to bad temper. Steer clear, then, of bad temper, the most wicked of spirits; clothe yourself instead with patience, and take your stand against bad temper and bitterness, and you will be found alongside the seriousness of character the Lord holds dear. Take care, then, never to disregard this commandment; for if you master it, you will also be equipped to keep the rest of the commandments I am about to give you. Be strong in them and grow stronger still, and let everyone who wishes to walk in them grow strong as well.
I charged you, he says, in the first commandment, to hold on to faith, fear, and self-control. Yes, Lord, I answered. But now, he says, I want to explain to you their powers as well, so that you may grasp what capability and effect each one carries; for their effects run in two directions. They stand, then, over what is right and what is wrong: trust what is right, and place no trust in what is wrong. What is right follows a direct road, while what is wrong follows a twisted one. Travel, then, along the direct, even road, and leave the twisted one behind. The twisted road has no real footing at all — it is pathless, full of countless hazards, and rugged with thorns. It brings harm, then, to anyone traveling it. Those who travel the direct road, however, walk on level ground without tripping, since it is neither rugged nor thorny. You can see, then, that it is far more beneficial to travel this road. It pleases me, I said, Lord, to travel this road. You will travel it, he says — and so will anyone who turns to the Lord wholeheartedly and walks upon it.
← All of Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp & others: The Apostolic Fathers