Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
So much on the gnostic, then, as a running sketch; let us now move on to what follows, and treat again of faith. For there are those who mark off our faith as concerning the Son, and knowledge as concerning the Father. But it has escaped them that one must truly believe in the Son—that he is truly a Son, that he arrived, in what manner and for what cause, and about his suffering—while it is necessary also to know who the Son of God is. Indeed, knowledge apart from faith does not exist, nor faith apart from knowledge, nor indeed the Father apart from the Son; for at the same instant that one is a father, he is father of a son, and the Son is the true teacher concerning the Father. And in order that one may believe in the Son, one must know the Father, toward whom the Son also points; and again, in order that we may come to know the Father, we must believe the Son, because it is God's own Son who instructs us. For out of faith we arrive at knowledge, and through the Son to the Father; and the knowledge of Son and Father, according to the gnostic canon that is truly gnostic, is an apprehension and comprehension of truth by means of truth. We, then, are the ones who are faithful in what is disbelieved and gnostic in what is unknown—that is, in what remains unknown and is doubted by everyone, yet is trusted and recognized by only a handful, we are the gnostics; and gnostics not in word, merely inscribing deeds, but by contemplation itself.
Blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who hear; and faith is the ears of the soul, and it is this faith the Lord hints at when he says, "Let the one who has ears for hearing pay heed"—in order that, having believed, one may understand what he says, in the way he says it. And indeed Homer too, eldest of the poets, when speaking of perceiving by hearing, using the specific in place of the general, writes especially "they themselves heard well"; for the whole concord and harmony of the faith of both parties comes together to a single end—salvation. Our unerring witness is the apostle, who says: "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end that you may be established"—that is, that we may be mutually comforted among you, through the faith that is in one another, both yours and mine. And again, going on a little further, he adds: "For in it God's righteousness stands revealed, out of faith unto faith." The apostle, then, appears to be proclaiming a twofold faith, or rather one faith capable of increase and completion; for the shared faith serves as a foundation (indeed to those who longed to be healed and moved in faith the Lord would say, "Your faith has saved you"), while the special faith, being built up upon it, is brought to completion in the believer and is likewise perfected together with that faith which comes from instruction and from fulfilling the commandments of the Word—such as the apostles were, of whom it is said that their faith was able to move mountains and transplant trees.
Hence, perceiving the greatness of this power, they asked that faith be added to them—faith like a grain of mustard seed, which usefully bites into the soul and grows within it to a great size, so that upon it the accounts of lofty matters may find their rest. For if someone knows God by nature, as Basilides supposes, calling the special understanding faith at once also a kingdom and a fair creation—†being worthy of the substance of the Maker, close to him†—interpreting it as substance, but not as authority, and as nature and hypostasis, an undefined beauty of a creation beyond all surpassing—he is not, then, speaking of faith as the rational assent of a soul possessed of free choice. Superfluous, then, are the commandments, both those of the old and those of the new covenant, if someone is saved by nature, as Valentinus wishes, being by nature both faithful and elect, as Basilides supposes. For it would then be possible for that nature to shine forth at some time even apart from the coming of the Savior. But if they say the Lord's advent among us was necessary, then the properties of that "nature" vanish from them, since being elect is preserved through instruction, cleansing, and the performance of virtuous deeds, and not by nature.
Abraham, at any rate, believed by hearing the voice under the oak at Mamre that promised, "To you I give this land, and to your seed"—was he elect, or not? If he was not, how did he believe at once, as it were naturally? But if he was elect, their whole hypothesis collapses, since election is found—and indeed saved—even before the Lord's coming; for "it was reckoned to him as righteousness." For if someone, siding with Marcion, should venture to claim that the Demiurge saves the one who believed in him even before the Lord's coming, and that his own salvation was thereby preserved, then the power of the Good will be shown inferior to him, coming late, after the Demiurge whom they extol, and undertaking to save in the same manner—either by learning or by imitation of him. But even granting that the Good saves in this fashion, according to them, he neither saves his own nor undertakes salvation in agreement with the will of the one who made creation, but by force or by guile. And how, then, is he still good, being thus later and derivative? But if the place differs, and the abode of the Almighty falls short of the abode of the good God, still the will of the one who saves does not fall short of the good, that will which took the initiative from the beginning.
Senseless, then, are the unbelievers, as is shown from what we have already established; for "their paths are crooked, and they do not know peace," says the prophet. And foolish and untaught inquiries the divine Paul urged us to avoid, because they beget quarrels; and Aeschylus cries out: "Do not labor in vain over things that profit nothing." For the inquiry that proceeds together with faith, building upon the foundation of faith the magnificent knowledge of truth, we know to be the best. And we know that neither is inquiry made into things that are manifest (as, for instance, whether it is day when it is day), nor into things that are hidden and will never become manifest (such as whether the number of the stars is odd or even), nor even into matters that turn back upon themselves (those "reversible" cases where opposing arguers can assert the identical claim with equal force, such as whether the unborn fetus counts as a living being or does not)—there is a fourth kind, when from one of these sides an argument is put forward that is irrefutable and cannot be undone. If, then, the cause for inquiring is removed on every count, faith is confirmed; for we set before them that irrefutable thing, which is God himself speaking, and setting it down in writing concerning each and every matter that I seek.
Who, then, is so impious as to doubt God, and to require evidence of God as though from ordinary men? Again, of inquiries, some require sense-perception, as when someone inquires whether fire is hot or snow is white; others require admonition and rebuke, as Aristotle says, such as that question whether one ought to honor one's parents. And there are some that even deserve punishment, such as demanding proofs of whether there is providence. Since providence exists, then, to hold that all prophecy and the whole economy concerning the Savior did not come about according to providence is impious; and perhaps one ought not even to attempt to demonstrate such things, since divine providence is manifest both from the very sight of all things seen, works of art and wisdom, and from the fact that some things come about in order and others are made manifest in order. And he who has given us being and life has also given us reason, wishing us to live at once rationally and well; for the universe's Father has a Word that is not this spoken utterance, but rather the clearest wisdom and goodness of God, and again a power all-mastering and truly divine, not incomprehensible even to those who do not confess it—an all-sovereign will.
Since, then, some are unbelievers and others are contentious wranglers, not everyone reaches the Good's own completion. For it is not possible to attain it without choice, yet neither does everything, such as the outcome, lie entirely within our own judgment. For we are saved by grace, yet not without good works; but it is necessary that those naturally disposed toward the good should devote a certain earnestness to it; and it is necessary also to possess a sound and unrepentant resolve toward the pursuit of the beautiful, for which above all we need the divine grace of right teaching and pure aptness to learn, and the drawing of the Father toward himself. For being bound within an earthly body, we apprehend things perceptible through the body, but we grasp things intelligible through the rational faculty itself. But if anyone should expect to grasp all things by sense-perception, he has fallen far from the truth; the apostle, at any rate, writes spiritually concerning the knowledge of God: "For now we see through a mirror, but then face to face." For to few is the vision of truth given. Plato too says in the Epinomis: "I say it is not possible for all men to become blessed and happy, save for a few; this I determine as long as we live; but a fair hope is there for one who dies, to attain all things." The words of Moses intend the same: "No man may look upon my face and continue living"; it is plain that no one, while life endures, can grasp God with full clarity. Yet those clean of heart will behold God once they reach that ultimate completeness. Because the soul lacked strength for grasping the things that are, we needed a divine teacher; the Savior is sent down, teacher and giver of the possession of the Good, the unspeakable, holy token of the great providence.
Where, then, is your scribe now? Where has the debater of this age gone? "Did God not turn the wisdom of this world into folly?" so it is written. And elsewhere: "I will bring to ruin the cleverness of the clever, and set aside the intelligence of the intelligent"—meaning those who consider themselves wise, these argumentative types. Jeremiah puts it most beautifully: "Thus the Lord declares: Take your stand at the crossroads and inquire after the everlasting paths—that is the good road—and travel along it, and you will discover rest for your souls." "Inquire," he continues, "of those possessing knowledge, apart from quarreling and apart from contention." Having grasped, then, truth's direct path, let us proceed along it without glancing backward, until we reach what we desire. Fittingly, then, the Roman king—Numa by name—being a follower of Pythagoras, was the very first among men to establish a shrine dedicated jointly to Faith and to Peace. And Abraham, because he trusted, had it counted to him as righteousness. He, having pursued the exalted study of atmospheric phenomena and the elevated science tracking the heavenly bodies' courses, bore the name Abram, meaning "exalted father"; yet later, gazing upward toward heaven—whether he beheld the Son through the Spirit, as certain interpreters hold, or a splendid angel, or came in some other way to recognize a God surpassing creation and its entire arrangement—he obtains the additional letter alpha, acquaintance with the sole and singular God, and takes the name Abraham, transformed from a mere student of nature into one wise and devoted to God. For the name means "chosen father of sound"; since spoken language produces sound, and the source of this is the mind, and the chosen one is the mind belonging to the earnest man.
And it comes to me to praise most highly the poet of Acragas, who hymns faith somewhat in this way: "O friends, I know that there is truth in the tales I shall relate; but very hard indeed for men, and grudging to their minds, is the onrush of faith." For this reason the apostle likewise urges that our faith rest not upon the cleverness of men skilled in persuasion, but upon God's own power, which by itself—without proofs, through faith alone—is capable of saving. †For of those who seem to know, the most approved man knows how to keep guard; and moreover, "justice will overtake the fabricators of lies and false witnesses," says the Ephesian. For he too knows, having learned it from barbarian philosophy, of a fiery cleansing undergone by those whose lives were wicked, a process the Stoics afterward termed "conflagration"; according to which they also teach that the individually qualified person will rise again, cherishing this very thing as the resurrection. And Plato says that the earth is purified at certain times by fire and by water, somewhat as follows: "Many destructions of men have occurred in many ways and will occur, the greatest by fire and water, and countless other lesser ones by ten thousand other causes." And a little after he adds: "But the truth is that it is a deviation of the bodies moving about the earth and in the heavens, occurring over long periods of time, that brings a great destruction of the things on earth by fire." Then concerning the flood he will add: "But when, in turn, the gods, purifying the earth with waters, send a flood, those on the mountains are preserved—herdsmen and shepherds—while those in our cities are carried down to the sea by the rivers."
We demonstrated, in the first Stromateus, that Greek philosophers deserve to be called thieves, since they appropriated the most authoritative of their doctrines from Moses and the prophets without gratitude. To this we shall add also this: that those angels who had obtained the upper portion as their lot, slipping down into pleasures, disclosed to the women the secret things that had come to their knowledge, while the other angels kept them hidden—or rather, kept watch over them for the Lord's coming. From that source the teaching about providence flowed forth, and the revelation of things on high. And since prophecy had already been passed on to the poets of the Greeks, the dogmatic enterprise of the philosophers came about—in part true, insofar as they hit upon it by conjecture, in part erring, in that they did not understand the hidden meaning of prophetic allegory—which is also what lies before us to note briefly, running quickly over the most pressing matters.
Faith, then, we say, ought to advance not idle and alone, but together with inquiry. For I do not mean by this that one should not inquire at all; for "seek," it says, "and you shall find." "What is sought can be caught, but what is neglected escapes," as Sophocles says. Similar things Menander the comic poet also says: "All things sought after, the wisest say, require careful attention." But the discerning faculty of the soul must be stretched out toward discovery, and the obstacles cleared away—rivalry, and envy, and strife itself, which most wretchedly destroys men, must be cast off entirely. Most beautifully Timon of Phlius writes: "There roams man-destroying Strife, shrieking emptily, sister and helper of murderous Contention; she, blind, rolls about over everything, and then fixes upon a mortal's head and casts him into hope." Then, going on a little, he adds: "For who has joined these men to fight in ruinous strife? A crowd that runs together at the sound of Echo; for she, angered at their silence, has stirred up upon men a talkative disease, and many have perished around the falsely-denying argument, and the horned one, and the one that lies hidden unnoticed, and again the crocodile-sorites, and the still further veiled one, concerning ambiguities and sophisms."
To seek concerning God, then, if the seeking tends not to strife but to discovery, is salvation-bringing. As David's psalm has it: "The needy will have food and be satisfied, and those who seek him out will praise the Lord; may their heart live on forever and ever." For those who seek in accordance with the true seeking, praising the Lord, come to be satisfied by the gift bestowed from God, that is to say, by knowledge, and their soul shall go on living; for the soul that supplies life is allegorized as "heart," because it is through the Son that the Father is made known. Nor indeed is it right to give one's ears freely and indiscriminately to all who speak and write, since even wine-cups, when handled by many at their ears (handles), become fouled and lose their handles, and besides this, falling, they are themselves broken. In the same way, those who have fouled the pure hearing of faith with their many idle chatterings, in the end becoming deaf to the truth, become useless and fall to the ground.
It is not, then, at random that we bid children, when taken by the ears, to love their kinsfolk, hinting thereby, surely, that through hearing the awareness of love comes to be in them; and God is love, known to those who love, as God is faithful, delivered over to the faithful through learning. And we must make ourselves at home with him through divine love, so that we may indeed behold like by like, hearkening to the word of truth guilelessly and purely, in the manner of children who are persuaded by us. And this was what he hinted at, whoever it was who inscribed at the entrance of the temple at Epidaurus: "Pure must he be who enters within the fragrant temple; and purity is to think holy things." And "unless you become as these little children, you shall not enter," he says, "into the kingdom of the heavens"; for here the temple of God appears, firmly set upon three foundations: faith, hope, love.
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