Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The sacrifice acceptable to God is the unrepented-of separation of the body and its passions. This is true piety in reality. And is it not fittingly for this reason that philosophy was called by Socrates a practice of death? For he who neither sets his sight before him in thinking nor draws on any of the other senses, but with the mind itself made pure encounters realities, pursues true philosophy. This, then, is also what the five years' silence Pythagoras enjoined on his associates intends, namely that turning away from things perceived by sense they might, with the naked mind alone, behold the divine. It was from Moses that the foremost of the Greeks philosophized in such matters. For he commands that the whole burnt offerings, after being flayed, be divided into their members, since it is necessary that the gnostic soul, having become stripped of the material hide, without bodily foolishness and all the passions which empty and false suppositions produce, and having put off the fleshly desires, be consecrated to the light.
But most men, clothing themselves in what is mortal like snails, and coiling themselves ball-like about their own intemperances like sea-urchins, hold such opinions about the blessed and incorruptible God as they hold about themselves. And it escapes them, even should they happen to be near us, how many countless things God has given us as gifts, of which he himself has no part: being ungenerated, he has no part in generation; being without need, he has no part in nourishment; being ever in equality, he has no part in growth; being immortal and unaging, he has no part in a good old age or a good death. Therefore let no one imagine that feet, hands, mouth, eyes, comings and goings, fits of wrath, and threats, as these are spoken of God among the Hebrews, count as passions of God — by no means — but rather that certain of these names are to be allegorized in a more reverent way, which indeed, as the discourse proceeds, we shall clarify at the proper time. "Wisdom is a cure-all remedy for everything," Callimachus writes in his epigrams; "one wise man from another, both of old and now," says Bacchylides in his Paeans; "for it is not easiest to find the gates of unspoken words."
Well then does Isocrates in the Panathenaicus, having put forward the question "Whom then do I call educated?", add: first, those who make good use of the matters that fall to them each day, and who possess an opinion that hits the mark of the occasions and is generally able to aim at what is advantageous; then those who deal fittingly and justly with those they encounter, bearing the unpleasantness and heaviness of others easily and readily, while presenting themselves as light and moderate as possible to their companions; further, those who master their pleasures and are not overly overcome by misfortunes, but bear themselves manfully in them and worthily of the nature which we happen to share; fourth, and this is the greatest thing, those who are not corrupted by good fortune nor driven out of themselves nor made arrogant, but remain within the order of those who think rightly. Then he adds the capstone of the statement: people whose soul's disposition is well attuned, not merely to one of these matters but to all of them together — these I call both prudent and perfect men and possessors of every virtue. Do you see how even the Greeks, though not knowing how one ought to have knowledge, deify the gnostic life? But what knowledge itself is, they do not know even in a dream.
If, then, it has been agreed among us that knowledge is our rational food, then truly blessed, according to Scripture, are those who hunger and thirst for truth, because they shall be filled with everlasting nourishment. Quite marvelously the philosopher of the stage, Euripides, is found in harmony with what we have said before, through these lines, hinting somehow, I know not how, at Father and Son together: "To you, ruler of all things, I bring libation and offering-cake, whether you delight to be named Zeus or Hades; but do you receive from me a fireless sacrifice, a full libation-offering of all fruits." For Christ is, on our behalf, a fireless whole burnt offering. And that he speaks these things without knowing the Savior himself, he makes clear by adding: "For you among the gods of heaven wield the scepter of Zeus, and among those of earth you share in the rule of Hades." Then he says outright: "Send up into the light the souls of the dead, for those who wish to learn beforehand from what source their trials sprang, what the root of evils is, and to whom of the blessed ones they must offer sacrifice to find rest from their toils." It is not unreasonable, then, that among the Greeks too the purifications stand at the head of the mysteries, just as among the barbarians there is the washing.
After these come the lesser mysteries, which have some basis of instruction and preparation for what is to come, while the greater mysteries concern the sum of all things, where there is no longer any learning left to do, but only beholding and comprehending nature and realities. We might take the purificatory manner as corresponding to confession, and the beholding manner as corresponding to analysis, advancing by analysis to the primary act of understanding, making our starting point from the things that underlie it — stripping away from the body its natural qualities, taking away the extension into depth, then that into breadth, and after these that into length; for what is left over is a point, so to speak, a unit having position, and if we take away its position, a unit is conceived. If then, having stripped away everything that belongs to bodies and to the things called incorporeal, we should fling ourselves toward the vastness of Christ and from there press onward into the boundlessness through holiness, we would in some way draw near to the understanding of the Almighty — not knowing what he is, but knowing what he is not. But as for shape and motion, standing, seat, site, or right hand or left hand of the Father of all, none of this must be conceived at all, even though these things too are written; but what each of them means will become clear in its own place. That primary cause, then, is not in a place, but above place and time and name and thought. For this reason Moses too says, "Show yourself to me," hinting most clearly that God is not teachable by men nor expressible in speech, but is knowable only by the power that comes from himself. For the seeking is formless and invisible, while the grace of knowledge comes from him through the Son.
Most clearly of all will Solomon bear witness to us, speaking in words like these: "Human shrewdness has no place in me — rather God supplies me with wisdom, and so I have knowledge of sacred things." At once, giving an allegory of divine wisdom, Moses named it the tree of life set within paradise — and this paradise may equally be the cosmos, where everything born of creation flourishes. Within this the Word likewise flowered and yielded fruit, taking on flesh, and granted life to those who tasted his goodness, since even apart from the tree no knowledge could reach us; for our life hung in the balance for the sake of our faith. Solomon says further: "She is a tree of immortality for whoever holds firmly to her." And for this reason he adds: "See, I lay before you life and death: to cherish the Lord your God, walk in his paths, listen to his voice, and put your trust in life — yet if you break the statutes and judgments I have handed to you, ruin will overtake you utterly; for this is your life and the measure of your days, to cherish the Lord your God."
Again: "Abraham, having come to the place which God told him, on the third day, lifting up his eyes, sees the place from afar." For the first stage is the longing for beautiful things through sight, the second is the soul's desire for the best things, and on the third the mind discerns spiritual things, the eyes of the understanding having been opened by the Teacher who arose on the third day. The three days might also be a mystery of the seal, through which one truly believes in God. Fittingly, then, he sees the place from afar; since the realm of God is difficult to reach, a realm Plato termed the realm of the Ideas, having taken from Moses that it is a place, as encompassing all things and the whole. And it is reasonably seen by Abraham from far off, because he is still within the realm of becoming, and he is initiated into the mystery immediately through an angel.
Hence the apostle says, "We see now as through a mirror, but then face to face," referring to those alone, pure and incorporeal, acts of apprehension by the understanding. And it is possible even in dialectical discourse to divine something of God, if one attempts, apart from all the senses, through reason to press on toward what each thing itself is, and not to fall away from realities, until, ascending to the things that lie above, one grasps by the understanding itself that which is the Good itself, arriving at the very end of the intelligible, according to Plato. Again, Moses, not permitting altars and sacred precincts to be built in many places, but establishing one single temple of God, proclaimed the cosmos to be only-begotten, as Basilides says, and God to be one — though this is no longer Basilides' own view. And because the gnostic Moses does not enclose the incomprehensible within a place, he placed no image within the temple, showing that God, an object of reverence, is invisible and uncircumscribed, while yet in some way bringing the Hebrews toward a notion of God through the honor of the name attached to the temple. But indeed the Word, forbidding the constructions of temples and all sacrifices, hints that the Almighty is not contained within anything, through the words: "What kind of house will you raise for me? says the Lord — the heavens are my seat," and the rest that follows. Likewise regarding sacrifices: "I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls or the fat of lambs," along with everything else the Holy Spirit forbids through the prophet on these matters.
Most excellently, then, Euripides too sings in harmony with these things, writing: "What house, fashioned by builders' hands, could enclose the divine form within the folds of its walls?" And likewise concerning sacrifices he says: "God, if he is truly God, needs nothing; these are the wretched words of poets." For it was not out of need that God made the cosmos, in order that he might reap honors from men and from the other gods and daimons, as Plato says, as though gaining some revenue from creation — smoke from us, and their proper services from gods and daimons. Most instructively, then, Paul speaks in the Acts of the Apostles, saying: "The God who fashioned the cosmos and everything within it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by hands as if he lacked anything, since he himself gives breath, life, and all things to everyone."
And Zeno too, founder of the Stoic school, says in his book on the Republic that one ought to build neither temples nor images; for nothing worthy of the gods is a construction, and he is not afraid to put it in exactly these terms: "No need will exist to raise temples at all, for one must count nothing a temple unless it is of great worth and holiness, and nothing fashioned by builders and craftsmen is of great worth and holiness." Reasonably, then, Plato too, knowing the cosmos to be the temple of God, showed the citizens a place in the city where the images were to be set up, but privately forbade anyone to possess images of the gods. "Let no one," he says, "consecrate sacred things to the gods in any other way; for gold and silver, in other cities as well, both privately and in temples, is an envied possession; and ivory, from a body that has left its soul, is not a pure offering; and iron and bronze are instruments of wars; but of wood, let one dedicate a single piece of whatever kind one wishes, and likewise of stone, for the common temples."
Reasonably, then, in the great letter he says: "It is in no way expressible in words as the other branches of learning are, but out of much shared living with the thing itself and dwelling together with it, suddenly, as a light kindled by a leaping fire, it is born in the soul and from then on nourishes itself." Are these not similar to what was said by the prophet Sophonias? "And a spirit lifted me and carried me up into the fifth heaven, where I saw angels termed lords, wearing diadems set upon them by the Holy Spirit, and the seat of each one shone sevenfold as bright as the rising sun, as they dwelt in temples of salvation, singing praise to the ineffable, most high God."
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