Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Much could be said about these matters, which we have set aside to examine later, taking each point up in its proper place. But Valentinus, in a certain homily, writes word for word: "From the beginning you are immortal, and you are children of eternal life, and you wished to divide death among yourselves, so that you might spend it and use it up, and death might die in you and through you. For when you dissolve the world without yourselves being dissolved, you rule over creation and over all corruption." For he, like Basilides, posits a race that is by nature saved, and holds that this distinct race has come here from above for the abolition of death, while the generation of death is the work of the one who created the world. This is why he interprets that scripture in this way: "no one shall see the face of God and live," as though God were the cause of death. About this God he hints at the following, writing in these very words: "To the degree that a portrait falls short of a living countenance, to that same degree does this world fall short of the aeon that lives."
"What then produces the portrait? It is the splendor of the countenance, which gave the painter his model, so that through its name the face could receive honor; for its true form was nowhere to be found, but the name compensated for what the shaping lacked. And God's unseen nature likewise assists belief in what has been shaped." For he called the Demiurge, who is styled god and father, an image of the true God, and a prophet, and he called Sophia the painter, whose molded work is the image, unto the glory of the Invisible One, since whatever proceeds from a conjugal pair is a pleroma, but whatever comes from one alone is an image. And since what appears of him is not the soul that comes from the middle region, that which is distinct comes in, and this is the breathing-in of the distinct spirit; and in general, what is breathed into the soul, the image of the spirit, and universally, what is said of the Demiurge who came into being according to the image — these things, they say, were prophesied beforehand under the guise of a perceptible image in Genesis concerning the origin of man. And indeed they transfer this likeness to themselves as well, teaching that the insertion of the distinct spirit came about unknown to the Demiurge.
Now when we take up the question of the one God proclaimed through the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel, we shall discuss it in its proper place (for the argument governs its own order), but for now we must answer the more pressing point. If the distinct race arrives for the purpose of abolishing death, then it is not Christ who has done away with death — unless he too is said to be of the same substance as they are; but if he abolished it for this end, so as not to touch the distinct race, then these people, the counterfeit imitators of the Demiurge, do not themselves abolish death — they who, into the soul from the middle region, their own image, breathe in the life from above according to the heresy of their doctrine, even if they say this comes about through the Mother. But even if they should say that they wage war together with Christ against death, they would be confessing, by that admission, their hidden doctrine — namely, that they dare to run down the divine power of the Demiurge, correcting his creation as though they were superior, attempting to save the psychic image which he himself was unable to rescue from corruption. And then the Lord would turn out to be better than the God who is Demiurge; for the Son could never contend against the Father — and this among gods, no less.
That this is the Father of the Son, the Demiurge of all things, the Almighty Lord — we have deferred that inquiry to the point at which we promised to argue against the heresies, where we shall show that he alone is the one proclaimed by him. But as for us, the Apostle, writing about endurance in afflictions, says this too comes from God: "it was given to you, for Christ's sake, not merely to trust him but also to endure hardship on his account, waging the very contest you witnessed in my case and now learn is still mine. So if encouragement in Christ counts for anything, if love brings any comfort, if the Spirit gives any partnership, if tenderness and pity are real, then complete my gladness: think alike, hold the same love, be knit together in soul, of a single mind." Yet if he pours himself out like a libation over the offering and priestly service of their faith, delighting and sharing delight with them, and names those he is addressing — the Philippians — as partners in grace, how could he then be branding them "knit together in soul," that is, "psychic," as an insult? So too, speaking of Timothy alongside himself, he writes: "I have nobody else of kindred soul who will truly be concerned for your welfare; the rest are all pursuing their own ends, not the cause of Jesus Christ."
Let not, then, the aforesaid people, nor yet the Phrygians, call us "psychic" as a term of reproach — for these too now call those who do not attend to the New Prophecy "psychic," people against whom we shall argue in our work On Prophecy. The perfect man must practice love, and from this press on toward divine friendship, fulfilling the commandments out of love. Now to love one's enemies does not mean to love evil, nor impiety, nor adultery, nor theft, but rather to love the thief and the impious man and the adulterer — not insofar as he sins and by his particular activity defiles the name of man, but insofar as he is a man and a work of God. Indeed, sinning consists in activity, not in essence; and therefore it is not a work of God.
Sinners are given the name enemies of God — hostile, that is, toward the commandments they have refused to obey, just as those who have obeyed are called friends: some so named because of kinship with him, others because of the estrangement arising from their own choice; for neither enmity nor sin exists apart from the one who is an enemy and the one who sins. And the precept to desire nothing does not teach us to have no longing because the things desired are alien to us — as those suppose who hold the doctrine that the Creator is other than the first God — nor because coming-into-being is something abominable and evil, for such opinions are godless. Rather, we call the things of the world alien not because they are improper, nor because they do not belong to God the Lord of all, but because we do not remain among them for the whole of the age; they are alien in the sense of possession, belonging to a succession of owners, though they become each person's own in the using, for the sake of which use indeed they came to be — yet only to the extent that it is necessary for us to be present alongside them. We must therefore make use, according to natural desire, of things not rightly forbidden, while renouncing all excess and overindulgent attachment.
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