Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Just as knowledge is a state productive of knowing, from which understanding results, and the apprehension it gives is unshakable by argument, so also ignorance is a yielding impression, one that shifts under argument — and what shifts, like what is trained together with it, depends on us and on argument. Now bordering upon knowledge are experience and information, comprehension, intellection, and gnosis. Information would be knowledge of universals according to their form; experience is a comprehensive knowledge, such that one busies oneself with what each particular thing is; intellection is knowledge of an object of thought; and comprehension is knowledge of something combinable, or an unshakable combining, or the power of combining things of which there is both practical wisdom and knowledge — of one thing, of each thing, and of all things reduced to a single account. Gnosis is knowledge of the thing itself as it is, or knowledge in agreement with what actually occurs; and truth is knowledge of what is true, while the state possessing truth is knowledge of true things.
Knowledge is constituted through reason, and it is unshakable by any other reasoning. It is at this point that one must busy oneself closely with gnosis.
The things we do not do, we fail to do either because we cannot, or because we are not willing, or for both reasons together. We do not fly, for instance, because we neither can nor wish to; we do not swim just now, let us say, because though we can, we do not wish to; but we are not as the Lord is, because though we wish to, we cannot. For no disciple is above his teacher, and it is enough if we become as the teacher — not identical in essence, since a thing that exists by position cannot possibly attain equality of being with what exists by nature — but rather in this: that we come to be everlasting, and to have come to know the contemplation of realities, and to be addressed as sons, and to behold the Father solely through what belongs to us. The will to do so, then, takes precedence over all else; for the rational faculties are by nature servants of the will. "Will," it says, "and you shall be able." For the one possessed of gnosis, the will, the judgment, and the practice are one and the same. For if the purposes are the same, the doctrines and judgments are the same too, so that for such a person the words, the life, and the character all follow consistently upon the same fixed disposition. "An upright heart seeks out knowledge and gives heed to it." "God has taught me wisdom, and I have known the knowledge of holy things."
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