Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Yes, they say it is written: all who came before the coming of the Lord are thieves and robbers. Now all those who existed in the Word — that is, all those before the enfleshment of the Word — are heard of more universally in this saying. But the prophets, as men sent and inspired by the Lord, are not thieves but ministers. For the scripture says: Wisdom sent forth her own servants, calling with a lofty proclamation to the mixing-bowl of wine. But philosophy was not sent by the Lord; rather, it came, as scripture says, having been stolen, or given by a thief — whether it was some power or an angel who learned something of the truth and did not remain in it, but breathed this into men, and having stolen it, taught it — not that the Lord was ignorant, he who knew even the ends of things that were to be before the foundation of the world and knew the being of each thing, but he did not prevent it; for the theft that then came to men had a certain benefit, not because the one who purloined it had regard for what was profitable, but because providence directed the outcome of the daring deed toward what was profitable.
I know many who unceasingly fasten upon us and say that the one who does not prevent is also a cause; for they say that the cause of a theft is the one who did not guard against it or did not prevent it, just as the one who did not extinguish a fire when it began is the cause of the conflagration, and the pilot who did not furl the sail is the cause of the shipwreck. Indeed those responsible for such things are punished by the law at once. For to whomever the power to prevent belonged, to that one also the responsibility for what happened is attached. We say to them in reply that a cause is understood in doing, working, and acting, whereas the one who does not prevent is, in this respect, inactive. Further, the cause is joined to the activity, just as the shipwright is joined to the ship's coming into being, and the builder to the house's being erected; but the one who does not prevent is separated from the thing that comes to be. It is for this very reason, indeed, that the thing is accomplished — because the one able to prevent it does not act and does not prevent it. For what does the one who does not prevent actually do? And their argument already runs into absurdity, if indeed, for a wound, they will lay blame not on the dart but on the shield that failed to keep the dart from going through; for they will not blame the thief but the one who did not prevent the theft.
And so too they say it was not Hector who set fire to the vessels of the Greeks, but rather Achilles, since, though he had the power to hold Hector back, he refrained from stopping him; yet Achilles acted out of wrath (and it was in his power both to be wrathful and not to be), and indeed he did not keep off the fire, and perhaps he is a contributing cause; but the devil, being self-determining, was capable both of repenting and of stealing, and he himself bears responsibility for the theft, rather than the Lord, who simply refrained from blocking it. Nor indeed was the gift harmful, so that its prevention should have been called for. But if one must speak precisely with them, let them know that the failure to intervene, which we say occurred with regard to the theft, carries no causal weight whatsoever, whereas the one who actively intervenes is liable to the charge of being a cause. For the one who shields another in front is the cause, for the one he shields, of not being wounded, by preventing him from being wounded; and for Socrates the divine sign was a cause not by failing to prevent but by turning him away, even if it did not urge him on. Neither praises nor blames, neither honors nor punishments would be just, if the soul did not possess authority over its own impulse and its restraint.
but rather, if vice is involuntary. Hence the one who prevents is a cause, while the one who does not prevent rightly judges the soul's own choice, so that God may remain, as far as possible, blameless of evil for us. But since it is choice and impulse that initiate sins, and a mistaken supposition sometimes prevails, being a matter of ignorance and lack of learning — when we are slow to depart from it, he might justly punish us (for indeed to have a fever is involuntary, but when someone has a fever through his own fault and through lack of self-control, we blame him for it) — so also, though vice itself is involuntary (for no one chooses evil as evil, but being led along by the pleasure attached to it, supposing it good, he regards it as something to be taken). Since matters stand thus, it lies within our own power to be freed both from ignorance and from base and pleasurable choice, and, before these, not to give assent to those deceptive appearances. The devil is called a robber and a thief because he has mixed false prophets in among the prophets, just as the tares among the wheat. So all who came before the Lord are thieves and robbers — not the whole of mankind, but rather every false prophet, and everyone who lacked a proper commission from him.
The false prophets, too, had this theft: the prophetic name, being prophets, but of the liar. For the Lord says: You are of your father the devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a murderer from the beginning, and he takes no stand upon truth, since truth has no place within him. When he speaks falsehood, he speaks from his own resources, because he is a liar and so is his father. Yet among their falsehoods the false prophets also spoke some true things, and in truth these men prophesied in ecstasy, as ministers of an apostate. The Shepherd, too — the angel of repentance — says to Hermas concerning the false prophet: for he speaks certain true sayings; the devil, you see, fills him up with his own spirit, hoping thereby to shatter some among the righteous. All things, then, are administered from above toward the good, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known, according to the foreknowledge of the ages which he made in Christ. And nothing is opposed to God, nor does anything stand against him, who is Lord and Almighty.
But even the plans and activities of those who have apostatized, being partial, arise from a base disposition, just as bodily diseases do; yet they are governed by universal providence toward a healthful end, even if the cause is disease-producing. It is indeed among the greatest achievements of divine providence that it does not permit the evil sprung from voluntary apostasy to remain idle and fruitless, nor allow it to turn wholly destructive; for the doing of good belongs not only to divine wisdom, virtue, and power — this being, one might say, simply what God is by nature, just as warming belongs to fire's nature and giving light to light's — but above all it is the work of that same wisdom to bring about, through the evils devised by certain persons, some good and useful end, and to make profitable use of what seems base, just as it does with the testimony that comes from trial.
There is, then, even in philosophy — stolen, as it were, by a Prometheus — a small fire, kindled to useful advantage for a fitting light, some trace of wisdom and some motion concerning God. In this sense the philosophers among the Greeks would be thieves and robbers, having taken portions of the truth, before the coming of the Lord, from the Hebrew prophets — not by way of true knowledge, but appropriating them as their own doctrines, some falsifying them, some sophistically working them out through unlearned meddlesomeness, and some also discovering them for themselves; for perhaps they too had received some spirit of perception. Aristotle also agreed with scripture, calling sophistry a theft of wisdom, as we have already noted. The apostle says that the things we speak we speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit. For with regard to the prophets he says, we have all received of his fullness — evidently, of Christ's. So the prophets are not thieves. And, the teaching that is mine is not mine, says the Lord, but the Father's who sent me. But regarding thieves, he says, the one who speaks from himself seeks his own glory. Such are the Greeks, self-loving and boastful. And when scripture calls them wise, it does not mean to slander those who are truly wise, but those who merely seem wise to themselves.
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