Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But the knowledge of those who merely think themselves wise — be it a non-Greek sect or one of the Hellenic schools of thought — puffs up, according to the Apostle; whereas knowledge is trustworthy only when it is the scientific demonstration of the things handed down according to true philosophy. We would say that it is a reasoned account which, from things agreed upon, procures conviction for the things disputed. Since belief is twofold — the one scientific, the other a matter of mere opinion — nothing prevents us from calling demonstration likewise twofold, the one scientific, the other opinionative. For knowledge too, and foreknowledge, are each spoken of in two ways: the one possessing its own nature in exact and finished form, the other deficient. And perhaps the demonstration current among us alone would be true, seeing that it is supplied from divine writings, from the sacred letters and from the God-taught wisdom spoken of by the Apostle. Learning, then, and the obeying of the commandments, is what it means to believe God. And faith is a certain power of God, being the strength of truth.
Thus he says: if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall remove the mountain; and again: according to your faith be it done to you; and the one is healed, having received healing along with his faith, while the other, dead, is raised up through the strength of him who believed that he would rise. But the opinionative demonstration is a human thing, and comes about through rhetorical arguments or dialectical syllogisms. For the highest demonstration, which we have hinted is scientific, implants belief through the setting-forth and opening-up of the scriptures in the souls of those who reach out to learn — and this would be knowledge. For if the premises taken toward what is sought are received as true, inasmuch as they are divine and prophetic, it is plain, surely, that the conclusion drawn from them will likewise follow as true; and thus knowledge would rightly be, for us, demonstration.
When, at any rate, it was commanded that the memorial of the heavenly and divine food be consecrated in a golden jar, it says that the gomor was the tenth part of the three measures. For in ourselves three measures, three criteria, are signified: sense-perception of things perceived by sense, reason of the things spoken — both names and words — and mind of things thought. The one who possesses knowledge, then, will hold back from sins in respect of reason, in respect of thought, and in respect of sense and act, having heard how the one who looked with desire committed adultery, and having taken to mind the saying that those clean of heart are fortunate, since sight of God awaits them, and knowing further that a man is not defiled by whatever enters his mouth, but rather by what issues forth from his mouth is he defiled; since it is out of the heart that base reckonings arise. This, as I judge it, is the measure — the one that is true and rightly proportioned in God's sight — by which the things measured are measured — the decad that holds a man together, which the three measures spoken of above signified in their totals. And this would be body and soul, and the five senses, and the vocal and generative faculty, and the discursive or spiritual faculty, or whatever else you wish to call it.
One must, so to speak, mount above all the rest and come to stand upon the mind — just as, indeed, in the cosmos too, one leaps over the nine spheres: first the sphere composed of the four elements set in one region because of their equal turning, then the seven wandering spheres and the ninth, the fixed sphere, arriving at the perfect number that lies beyond the nine — and the tenth sphere is where one comes to the knowledge of God, longing, to put it concisely, for the Maker after the creation. For this reason the tithes of the oiphi and of the sacrificial victims were brought to God, and the feast of the Passover began from the tenth day, being a passing-over of every passion and of everything perceived by sense. The one who possesses knowledge, then, stands firm in faith, while the one who merely thinks himself wise does not willingly lay hold of truth, being given over to unsteady and unfixed impulses. Rightly, then, it is written: 'And Cain departed from before God's presence, settling in the land of Naid, facing toward Eden'; and Naid is interpreted as 'tossing,' while Eden is 'delight'; and faith and knowledge and peace are the delight, from which he who disobeys is cast out, while the one who merely thinks himself wise is unwilling even to begin to give heed to the divine commandments, but, as though self-taught, breaks free and willingly removes himself into surging tossing, descending into things mortal and begotten out of the knowledge of the unbegotten, holding now this opinion, now that. Those who lack a steersman fall like leaves; whereas reasoning and the ruling faculty, remaining unstumbling and going before the soul, is called its steersman; for indeed the approach is made by the unchangeable toward the Unchangeable.
Thus Abraham stood before the Lord and, drawing near, spoke; and to Moses it is said, 'But you, stand here with me.' Those about Simon wish to be made like in character to the One who Stands, whom they worship. Faith, then, and the knowledge of truth, produce a soul that has chosen them as ever holding to the same things in the same way. Akin to falsehood are change and deviation and apostasy, just as to the one who possesses knowledge belong stillness and rest and peace. Just as, then, conceit and self-opinion have brought philosophy into disrepute, so too has false knowledge — that which is called by the same name — brought knowledge into disrepute, concerning which the Apostle, writing, says: 'O Timothy, guard the deposit, turning away from the profane empty talk and oppositions of the falsely-named knowledge, which some professing have gone astray concerning the faith.' Being refuted by this very utterance, those of the heresies reject the letters to Timothy. Come, then: if the Lord is God's wisdom and power and truth, which indeed he is, it would be shown that the one who has truly come to know him, and through him the Father, is in reality the one who possesses knowledge; for he perceives along with the one who says: 'The lips of the righteous know lofty things.'
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