Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Blessed is he who has attained the learning of true inquiry, neither setting out toward the harm of his fellow citizens nor rushing into unjust deeds, but beholding the order of unaging, immortal nature — how it was composed, and where, and how. Upon such men the practice of shameful deeds never settles. Fittingly, then, Plato too says that the contemplator of the ideas shall live as a god among men; for mind is the region of the ideas, and God is mind. He has therefore called the man who contemplates the invisible God "a god living among men," and in the Sophist Socrates likewise named the Eleatic stranger, who was skilled in dialectic, a god — such gods as, "resembling strangers from foreign lands, visit the cities." For whenever a soul, rising up out of the realm of becoming, comes to be by itself and consorts with the forms, it becomes such a one as the chief speaker in the Theaetetus — already become, as it were, an angel — and shall be with Christ, being contemplative, ever looking to the will of God, in truth such a one as is "wise," while the rest "flit about like shadows"; for "the dead bury their own dead." Whence Jeremiah says: "I will fill her with the dead of earth-born men, whom my wrath has struck down."
God, then, being incapable of demonstration, is not an object of scientific knowledge; but the Son embodies wisdom, knowledge, truth, and everything else akin to these, and indeed he admits of demonstration and of discursive exposition. Now all the powers of the Spirit, becoming collectively a single thing, converge upon one and the same object, the Son; yet he is not to be comprehended under the notion proper to each single one of his powers taken separately. And indeed the Son does not come to be simply one as a bare unit, nor many as parts, but as all things being one. Hence he is also all things; for the same circle results when all the powers are rolled together and united into one.
For this reason the Word is called Alpha and Omega, of whom alone the end becomes a beginning, and comes round again to the beginning that is from above, nowhere admitting of separation. Therefore to believe "in him" and "through him" is to become a unity, being indivisibly united in him, whereas to disbelieve is to be divided and set apart and cut into pieces. For this reason the Lord speaks thus: "Every son of a foreign race who bears an uncircumcised heart and an uncircumcised body" — that is, unclean in both flesh and spirit — "shall not enter into the holy things, among the foreigners within Israel's house, except the Levites alone." And by "foreigners" he means those who have not been willing to believe, but have chosen to disbelieve.
Only those, then, who live purely are truly priests of God. For this reason, though all the tribes were circumcised, those anointings that consecrated men as chief priests, as kings, and as prophets were counted holier still. Hence he commands that they not even touch the dead, nor go in to those who have departed — not because the body is defiling, but because sin and disobedience are of the flesh, embodied and dead, and for this reason abominable. Only for a father and mother, a son and a daughter who have died, is the priest permitted to go in, because these alone are kin by flesh and seed, from whom the priest himself has also received the proximate cause of his passage into life. And even these are purified over seven days, the number by which the process of generation is completed; for on the seventh day rest is kept religiously, and on the eighth he offers the propitiatory sacrifice, as is written in Ezekiel, by which propitiation it is possible to receive the promise.
The perfect purification, I think, is the faith that comes through the law and the prophets unto the gospel; and the propitiation is the purity that comes through complete obedience, together with the laying aside of worldly things, unto the grateful rendering of the tabernacle that follows upon the soul's release. Whether, then, it be the time that is restored through the seven periods reckoned unto the highest rest, or the seven heavens, which some number by ascending stages, or the fixed region bordering upon the intelligible world that is called the ogdoad — in any case he says the Gnostic must rise up out of both generation and sin. At any rate, on the seven days sacrificial victims are offered for sins, since caution against turning aside still touches even the seventh revolution.
And Job the righteous himself says, "Naked came I forth from the womb of my mother, and naked shall I go back again" — meaning not stripped of property (that is a trivial and ordinary matter), but that the righteous man goes forth stripped of wickedness and sin and of that shadowy phantom which follows those who have lived unjustly. For this was the meaning of the saying, "Unless you turn and become as little children" — pure in flesh, holy in soul through abstinence from evil deeds — God showing that he wishes us to be such as he has also begotten us from the womb of water; for generation succeeding generation, by way of advance, seeks to make immortal, while "the lamp of the ungodly shall be put out."
Indeed, the purity of both body and soul which the Gnostic pursues, the all-wise Moses signified, employing a striking repetition, when he depicted the incorruption of both body and soul in the case of Rebecca, in something like these words: "And the virgin was fair, a virgin, and no man had known her." Now Rebecca is interpreted as meaning "God's glory," and God's glory is incorruption. This is righteousness in the true sense: not to take more than one's share in either respect, but to be wholly a consecrated temple of the Lord. Righteousness, then, is peace of life and stability, unto which the Lord dismissed her, saying, "Go in peace"; for Salem is interpreted "peace," of which our Savior is recorded as king, whom Moses calls Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of God Most High, who gave the wine and the bread, the consecrated food, as a type of the eucharist. And indeed Melchizedek is interpreted "righteous king," and this is a synonym for both righteousness and peace.
Basilides supposes that Righteousness and her daughter Peace subsist as hypostases, arranged and abiding within the ogdoad.
We must now pass from the more properly physical matters to the more evident, the ethical; for the discussion of those former things will follow after the treatise now in hand. The Savior himself, then, quite simply initiates us into the mysteries, after the manner of tragedy: "seeing, he lets the seeing see," and gives the sacred rites. And should you ask, "But what form do these mysteries have for you?" you will hear again: "Things unspeakable for mortals uninitiated in Bacchic rites to know." And should someone press further to learn what sort they are, let him hear again: "It is not lawful for you to hear, yet it is worthy to be known: the rites of God hate one who practices impiety." And God is without beginning, the perfect and total beginning of all things, the maker of beginning. Insofar as he is being, he is the beginning of the realm of nature; insofar as he is the Good, of the ethical realm; and insofar again as he is mind, of the realm of reason and of judgment. Whence also the Word alone is teacher — the Son of the Father who is mind, he who instructs mankind.
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