Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As we noted earlier, we do not mean by philosophy the pursuit peculiar to each sect, but what philosophy really is — rightly, a technical wisdom, that which supplies experience in the affairs of life — while wisdom itself is the settled knowledge of things divine and human, a certain sure and unshakable comprehension, embracing things that are, that have been, and that shall be, which the Lord taught us both through his presence and through the prophets. And it is unshakable by any argument, since it has been handed down by that same will by which it is also altogether true, as known through the Son. And the one wisdom is eternal, the other useful for a time; the one is single and the same, the other kinds are many and indifferent; the one is without any passionate movement, the other accompanied by passionate desire; the one is perfect, the other deficient.
It is this wisdom, then, that philosophy desires — the wisdom of the soul, and of rightness of reason, and of purity of life — being disposed toward wisdom with love and affection, and doing everything for the sake of attaining her. Among us, those are called philosophers who cherish the wisdom belonging to the Maker and Instructor of everything — that is to say, acquaintance with God's Son; among the Greeks, those who lay hold of arguments about virtue. Philosophy would then be that collection, gathered into a single choice selection, of the unobjectionable doctrines found in each of the sects — I mean the sects that pertain to philosophy — together with the way of life that agrees with them. And these very things, stolen from the God-given grace given to the barbarians, have been dressed up in Greek style: for some things they are thieves of, and other things they misheard; and as for the rest, some things they said when moved by inspiration but did not work out completely, and other things by human conjecture and reasoning, in which they also go astray; and they suppose they lay hold of the truth completely, whereas, as we understand them, they grasp it only in part.
In any case they know nothing beyond this world. And just as geometry, occupied with measures and magnitudes and figures by means of drawing on flat surfaces, and painting too, which seems to encompass the entire range of what the eye sees in scene-painting, but thereby deceives the sight, employing marks placed according to the impact of the visual lines in a technical manner (whence highlights and shadows and gradations of tone are preserved, and some things seem to project, others to recede, and others still to appear otherwise on a flat and smooth surface) — so too the philosophers, after the manner of painting, imitate the truth. And self-love is in each case and at each time the cause of all errors. Hence one must not, by choosing the opinion of men, be a lover of self, but rather, loving God, become truly holy together with prudence.
If, then, someone happens to treat particular things as though they were universal, and honors the servant as though he were lord and ruler, he strays from the truth, not understanding what was said by David in confession: I have eaten earth and ashes like bread. For self-love and self-conceit are, for such a one, earth and error. And if this is so, knowledge and understanding come from learning. And since there is learning, one must necessarily seek the teacher. For Cleanthes claims Zeno, and Theophrastus Aristotle, and Metrodorus Epicurus, and Plato Socrates; but even should I trace matters back to Thales, Pherecydes, and Pythagoras, and the earliest sages, I still pause to ask after their instructor; and even should you name the Babylonians, or the Indians, or the Egyptians, or the Magi themselves, I will keep demanding who taught them. And I take you back further still, to humanity's very first generation, and there I begin to inquire: who serves as teacher? Of men, none, for they had not yet learned; nor of angels either, for men do not hear as the angels communicate, insofar as they are angels, nor do those beings have a tongue as we have ears. Nor could anyone give organs of voice to angels — I mean lips and the parts adjoining them, and throat and windpipe and viscera and breath and struck air. Far be it that God should cry out, separated as he is even from the archangels themselves by inaccessible holiness. And we have already received the tradition that even the angels, and the rulers set over them, have learned the truth, for they are created.
It remains, then, that having risen above these we must yearn for their Teacher as well. Since the almighty God is the one unbegotten being, and there is likewise one being begotten before all else, through whom all things came to be and without whom not one thing came to be (for God is truly one, who made the beginning of all things — Peter writes this, pointing to the firstborn Son, understanding precisely the words: In the beginning God made heaven and earth), and every prophet has named this same one Wisdom; he is the Instructor over all things made, the counselor of a God who has known everything beforehand. And out of the heights, from when the world was first laid down, he has, through many means and in many portions, both taught and carried toward completion. Hence it was rightly declared: Call no man upon earth your teacher. You perceive, then, whence genuine philosophy takes its footing. And even granting that the Law amounts to an image and shadow of the truth — the Law indeed being a shadow of what is true — still it is Greek vanity and self-regard that hails certain men as teachers.
As, then, every family traces its origin back to God the maker, so too does the teaching of noble things, and that which justifies, and that which leads and gathers one toward this, trace back to the Lord. But if some, having received seeds of the truth from some sort of making, in whatever manner, did not nurture them, but consigned them to barren and rainless soil, and let them be choked by wild weeds together — just as the Pharisees departed from the Law once they brought in teachings devised by men — the teacher bears no blame for this, but those who chose to disobey. And those of them who were persuaded, both by the Lord's presence and by the clarity of the scriptures, come to full knowledge of the Law, just as those who come from philosophy, through the teaching of the Lord, are established in full knowledge of the true philosophy. For the sayings of the Lord are pure sayings, silver refined by fire, purified of earth, seven times over.
That is, just as silver often refined becomes fit for testing, so the righteous man, having become a coin of the Lord and having received the royal stamp, becomes fit for testing; or else, since Solomon also says that the tongue of the righteous is refined silver, he is signaling that tested and wise teaching is praiseworthy and acceptable, whenever it happens to be richly purified of earth — that is, whenever the gnostic soul is sanctified in many ways through abstention from earthly burnings. And the body too, in which it dwells, is purified, being made its own peculiar possession unto the purity of a holy temple. Now this purification of the soul in the body is the first purification of all, namely abstention from evils, which some consider to be perfection — and this is simply the perfection of the ordinary believer, whether Jew or Greek. But for the gnostic, after the perfection reckoned by others, righteousness advances into the activity of doing good; and for whomever the intensification of righteousness has developed into doing good, for that one perfection abides in an unchangeable condition of doing good, in likeness to God. As for those who form Abraham's offspring, still servants under God, they are the ones called; but the sons of Jacob are his chosen, who have tripped up the working of evil by the heel.
If, then, we say that Christ himself is Wisdom, and likewise his working through the prophets, through which one can thoroughly learn the gnostic tradition, just as he himself taught the holy apostles during his presence, then wisdom would be knowledge — being understanding and a sure and secure comprehension of things present, future, and past, as handed down and revealed by the Son of God. And indeed, if contemplation is the end of the wise man, one who is still a philosopher reaches out for divine understanding but does not yet attain it, unless by learning he receives the prophetic voice made clear to him, through which he receives the things that are, the things that will be, and the things prior to what is, in the manner in which they are, have been, and will be. And this knowledge, handed down without writing by succession to a few from the apostles, has come down to us.
From this, then, knowledge or wisdom must be trained into a habit of contemplation that is eternal and unchangeable.
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