Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
That the word "pedagogy" means the leading of children is clear from the name itself; what remains is to examine the children whom Scripture hints at, and then to set the Pedagogue over them. We ourselves are those children. Under many guises and through varied devices Scripture, transforming the unadorned simplicity of the faith into differing titles, celebrates us allegorically. In the Gospel, for instance, it says: "the Lord, standing on the shore before the disciples" — who happened to be fishing — "called out, 'Children, do you have any fish?'" addressing as children those already established among his acquaintances. "And they brought to him," it says, "little children," for the laying on of hands in blessing, and when the disciples tried to stop them, Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." What this saying means the Lord himself will make clear when he says, "Unless you turn and become like these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven" — not allegorizing regeneration here, but commending to us the simplicity found in children as a pattern for imitation. The prophetic spirit too chooses us out as "children": "Plucking branches of olive or of palm," it says, "the children went out to meet the Lord and shouted, crying, Hosanna, son of David — blessed the one arriving in the Lord's own name" — radiance and glory and acclaim joined with entreaty rendered to the Lord, since that is the sense carried by "Hosanna" once rendered into Greek. And it seems to me that Scripture, hinting at this very prophecy already spoken, rebukes the indifferent as a kind of reproach: "Have you never read that out of the mouth of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise?" This too the Lord goads his acquaintances with in the Gospel, urging them to pay attention to him as one already hastening to the Father, making his hearers more eager by forewarning that he would soon be gone, showing that they ought to gather the fruit of the truth the more ungrudgingly, since the Word was on the very point of departing into heaven. So again he calls them children: "Little children," he says, "yet a little while I am with you." And again he likens the kingdom of heaven to children "sitting in the marketplaces and saying, We piped to you and you did not dance, we mourned and you did not lament," and whatever else he added in keeping with this. And it is not the Gospel alone that thinks this way — prophecy agrees with it too. David says, at any rate, "Praise the Lord, you children, praise the name of the Lord." And he says too, through Isaiah, "Behold, I and the children whom God has given me."
Do you wonder to hear that among the nations too there are men called children before the Lord? You seem to me not to be acquainted with Attic speech, from which one may learn that beautiful and blooming, indeed even freeborn, young women are called little maidens (paidiskai), while female slaves — themselves also young — are called paidiskaria, honored with a diminutive on account of the blooming freshness of childlike age. And where he says, "Let my lambs take their place on the right," he is pointing to the simple, naming them children under the figure of lambs — not men, as being sheep by race — but the lambs he judged worthy of special favor, preferring the tenderness and simplicity of mind found among men, that innocence. And again when he says, "like sucking calves," he again allegorizes us; and "like a harmless and gall-less dove," again us. And he commands that two young pigeons or a pair of turtledoves be offered through Moses for sin, saying that the sinlessness of the tender, and the harmlessness and freedom from resentment of the nestlings, is acceptable to God, thereby suggesting that like is purified by like; but also the timidity of the turtledoves figures caution against sins. That he calls us the nestlings, Scripture is witness: "As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings," so are we the nestlings of the Lord — the Word wonderfully and mystically sketching the simplicity of the soul under the figure of a childlike age. For in one place he calls us children, in another nestlings, sometimes infants, elsewhere sons, and often children (offspring), and a new people and a fresh people. "To my servants," he says, "shall be given a new name" (calling the new and eternal name "new" — undefiled and simple and infant-like and true) "which shall be blessed upon the earth." And again, allegorizing, he calls us colts — the unyoked to vice, the untamed by wickedness, but simple and given to leaping only before the Father himself — not "the horses that neigh after the wives of their neighbors, subject and given over to lust," but the free and newborn, exultant through their faith, swift runners toward the truth, quick toward salvation, trampling and pawing down the things of the world. "Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion; proclaim it, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king comes to you, righteous and saving, and he himself, meek, rides upon a pack animal and a foal still young." Saying "foal" by itself would not suffice, so he added "young" besides, thereby displaying the youthfulness of humanity found in Christ, together with its timelessness and its simplicity. Such young colts, as infants, does our divine colt-tamer rear up. And even if the young one in Scripture should be a donkey, still it is a colt, the foal of a donkey, even so. "And he tied the colt," it says, "to the vine" — binding this simple and infant people to the Word, whom he allegorizes as the vine; for the vine bears wine, as the Word bears blood, and both are a drink for men unto salvation — the wine for the body, the blood for the spirit. And that he calls us lambs too, the spirit through Isaiah is a trustworthy witness: "as a shepherd will shepherd his flock and will gather the lambs with his arm" — allegorizing as lambs, for their simplicity, those even more tender than the sheep.
Naturally, then, we too have honored with the name of "child" the finest and most perfect of the possessions of life, and have called them paideia (education) and paidagogia (child-rearing). And we acknowledge that paidagogia is a good leading from childhood toward virtue. The Lord, then, reveals the meaning conveyed in the appellation "little child" still more vividly for us: "when a dispute arose among the apostles as to which of them was greater, Jesus set a little child in their midst and said: whoever humbles himself as this little child, this one is greater in the kingdom of heaven." He has not, therefore, used the appellation of little children as referring to an age of the unreasoning, as it has seemed to some, nor should it be taken ignorantly when he says, "Unless you become as these little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of God." No longer, then, do we infants roll on the ground, nor do we crawl upon the earth as before in the manner of serpents, coiled with our whole body about senseless desires, but we stretch upward in our understanding, having renounced the world and sins, "touching the earth with but a slight foot," only so much as to seem to be in the world, and we pursue holy wisdom — which to those sharpened for cunning seems folly.
Children, then, fittingly, are those who have known God alone as Father — simple and infant-like and unmixed, lovers of the horns of the unicorn. To those, at any rate, who had advanced in the word he proclaimed this saying, bidding them not to be anxious about the affairs of this life and exhorting them to attend to the Father alone, imitating little children. Hence in what follows he says, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for sufficient unto the day is its own trouble." Thus, having laid aside the cares of life, he commands us to cling to the Father alone. And whoever keeps this precept is genuinely both infant and child alike, with respect to God on one side and the world on the other: toward the world as a wanderer gone astray, toward God as one held dear. And if "there is one teacher in the heavens," as Scripture says — as is agreed — then all on earth would fittingly be called disciples. For the truth stands thus: perfection belongs to the Lord who ever teaches, while what is childlike and infant belongs to us who are ever learning. It is for this reason that prophecy has honored perfection with the appellation of "man," and through David, speaking of the devil, says, "The Lord abhors a man of blood" — calling him a man as being perfect in wickedness; and the Lord too is called a man because he is perfect in righteousness. Thus the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, says: "For I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" — whether as infants and holy ones, yet still to the one Lord alone. Most clearly of all, writing to the Ephesians, he unveiled what is sought here, speaking to this effect: "Until, every one of us, we arrive together at oneness in belief and in knowing God, at full manhood, at the measure belonging to the fullness proper to Christ's stature — so that we should no longer remain infants, driven and swept along by each fresh gust of teaching, through the cunning of men and their craft in devising error, but holding to truth in love, might grow up in every respect into him" — and this, he adds, "unto the building of Christ's body," "he being the head," the sole man made perfect in righteousness. But we the infants, guarding ourselves against the blustering winds of the heresies that puff up toward inflation, and not trusting those who would lay down other fathers for us, are made perfect then, when we, being the church, have received back Christ as our head.
Here it is right to pause over the appellation "infant," because "infant" is not applied to the foolish. For the nēpytios is one thing, and the nēpios is another — the newly-born (neēpios), just as ēpios (gentle) means tender in mind, that is, one who has become gentle and mild in manner but newly so. This blessed Paul most clearly indicated when he said, "Though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ, we became gentle among you, as a nurse cherishes her own children." The infant, then, is gentle, and in this way rather tender, soft and simple and guileless and unpretending, straightforward in judgment and upright — and this is the very substance of simplicity and truth. "For upon whom shall I look," it says, "except upon the meek and quiet one?" For such is the virgin word, tender and unfeigned; hence too it is customary for the virgin to be called a tender bride, and the child to be called tender-minded. And we are tender — pliant toward persuasion and well-worked toward goodness, free of bitterness and unmixed with malice and crookedness; for the old generation is crooked and hard-hearted, but the chorus of infants — we, the new people — is delicate as a child. And the apostle, writing to the Romans, admits that he takes delight in "the hearts of the guileless," and indeed he gives, so to speak, a certain definition of infants when he says: "I want you to be wise as to what is good, but guileless as to what is evil." For indeed the name of the infant (nēpios) is not understood by us according to a privation, since grammarians' children lay down that "nē" is privative. For if those who run down our infancy call us fools, see how they blaspheme against the Lord, supposing to be fools those who have taken refuge in God; but if — as should rather be understood — they too take "infants" in the sense of the simple, let us rejoice in the appellation; for infant minds are the young minds, newly wise amid an old folly, minds that have but now risen up according to the new covenant. For indeed God has but lately been known, according to the coming of Christ: "No one has come to know God, save the Son, and whoever it is to whom the Son chooses to disclose him." The new people, then, is young, in contrast to the older people, having learned the new good things. And this ageless youth is for us the very cream of our age, in which we are ever at our prime for understanding — ever young, ever gentle, ever new; for those who have partaken of a new word must themselves be new. And that which has partaken of eternity is wont to be made like the incorruptible, so that for us the appellation of the childlike age is the springtime of all our life, because the truth within us, and we within the truth, are ageless, our manner of life poured forth anew. And wisdom is evergreen, always the same and in the same way, and never changing.
"Their children," it says, "shall be carried upon shoulders and shall be comforted upon knees; as one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." The mother brings her children forward, and we seek the mother, the church. That which is weak and tender in every way, needing help because of its weakness, is a thing gracious and sweet and delightful, God not withholding his help from such a one; for just as fathers and mothers take more pleasure in the foals of horses, in the little calves of cattle, in a lion's cub and a deer's fawn and a man's little child, so too the Father of all welcomes those who have taken refuge in him, and having begotten them anew by the spirit unto adoption, knows them as gentle and loves these alone, and helps and fights on their behalf, and for this reason calls them "little child." I refer even Isaac to the child; his name is interpreted "laughter." This one the meddling king saw playing with his wife and helper, Rebecca. The king, it seems to me (his name was Abimelech), is some wisdom above the world, spying out the mystery of the play; and they interpret Rebecca as "patience." O the prudent play — laughter helped along by patience, and the king its overseer! The spirit of those children in Christ exults who conduct their lives in patience, and this is the divine play. Heraclitus says that his own Zeus plays some such game as this. For what other becoming work is there for the wise and perfect than to play and rejoice together with the patience that attends good things and the ordering of good things, keeping festival together with God? It is also possible otherwise to understand what is signified by the prophecy: that we rejoice and laugh over our salvation, as did Isaac. For he too laughed, being freed from death, playing and exulting together with the bride who is our helper unto salvation, the church — to whom the fixed name of "patience" has been given, either because she alone abides forever, ever rejoicing, or because she is built up from the patience of the faithful, those who form Christ's members; and the witness given by those enduring to the very end, and the thanksgiving offered for these things — this is the mystic play, and the salvation that helps along with solemn gladness. The king, then, Christ, looks down from above upon our laughter, and "peering through the window," as Scripture says, watches over the thanksgiving and the blessing and the exultation and gladness, and further the patience that works together with them, and their interweaving, which is his own church — showing only his own face, which the church lacks — the church being perfected by its royal head. And where, then, was the window through which the Lord was shown? The flesh, through which he has been made manifest. Again, Isaac is (for it is possible to understand it otherwise too) a figure of the Lord — an offspring in the character of son (Abraham's own, just as Christ belongs to God), and likewise a sacrificial victim, in the way the Lord was. But he was not offered up as the Lord was — only that. Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice, as the Lord carried the wood. And in a mystical way he laughed, foreshowing that the Lord would fill us with gladness, we who have been redeemed from corruption by the blood of the Lord. But he did not suffer — not only, then, fittingly does Isaac yield the primacy of suffering to the Word, but he also hints at the divinity of the Lord in not being slain; for Jesus rose after his burial, not having suffered, just as Isaac was released from the sacrifice. I will add one more thing of the greatest weight in support of what lies before us. He names the Lord himself a little child, the spirit proclaiming this through Isaiah: "Behold, a child is born to us, a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder, and his name is called the Messenger of Great Counsel." What then is the infant child, in whose image we the infants stand? Through the same prophet he describes his greatness: "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, in multiplying his instruction (paideia); and his peace shall have no boundary." What a great God! What a flawless child! The Son within the Father, the Father within the Son. And how is the instruction of that child not perfect — that instruction which extends to all of us his children, pedagogically leading his infants? He has stretched out his hands to us, hands manifestly to be trusted. To this child John also bears witness, "the greatest among those born of women" among the prophets: "Behold the Lamb of God." For since Scripture names the infant children lambs, it has named God the Word — who took on humanity on our account, desiring to be made like us in all things — the Lamb of God — the Son of God, the infant of the Father.
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