flu o Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/clementofalexandOOpatrrich Clement of Alexandria €^t Croall lecture for 18994900 Clement of Alexandria BV JOHN PATRICK, D.D. PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1914 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ^\^ ( v\ ^3 Eo ti)e Mtmoxvi at WILLIAM PATRICK, D.D., PRINCIPAL OF MANITOBA COLLEGE, igoo-igii. 300836 PREFACE, The Lectures on which the present volume is based were delivered in 1899-igoo, and their publication is long over- due. The delay has been caused by impaired health, which compelled me for many years to confine myself to the work of my Chair. I have to thank the Croall Trustees for their courtesy and forbearance. Since the delivery of the Lectures there has appeared the edition of the works of Clement by O. Stahlin, the three volumes of which were published respectively in 1905, 1906, 1909. In preparing the Lectures for publica- tion I have used his text throughout. It is impossible to exaggerate the services of Stahlin in the elucidation of the text and sources of Clement. I have also con- sulted the relative literature that has appeared since the Lectures were written, as well as other earlier writings on the subject, to which I had not access at the time. This has led to the reconsideration of some questions touched upon in the Lectures and to the consideration of others not then discussed. For these reasons the work VUl PREFACE in its present form differs in many respects from the Lectures as delivered, though the general plan and order of treatment have been preserved. I desire to acknowledge my obligations to the Rev. Dr Gardiner of Kirknewton for the great care which he has bestowed on the revision of the proofs. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS . . . . . II. THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY ..... III. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD IV. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST . V. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT .... VI. SCRIPTURE : ITS NATURE, INTERPRETATION, AND EXTENT APPENDIX A. ANALYSIS OF THE PROTREPTICUS B. ANALYSIS OF THE P^DAGOGUS C. ANALYSIS OF THE STROMATEIS D. THE ORDER OF THE WRITINGS OF CLEMENT E. LOST WRITINGS OF CLEMENT .... F. THE BIBLICAL TEXT IN CLEMENT G. NON-CANONICAL SAYINGS IN THE WRITINGS OF CLEMENT H. BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... PAGE I 34 65 97 141 188 249 256 267 301 309 311 317 322 INDEX 325 ERRATUM. P. 56, 1. 22— for "Christ," read "Christianity." Clement of Alexandria. LECTURE I. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS. Alexandria occupies an important place in the intel- lectual and spiritual history of the world. Founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C., with the view of bind- ing the East with Greece not only in an external political union but in the bond of a common intel- lectual culture, it amply fulfilled, under the Ptolemies, the end for which it had been established. From its geographical position in relation to Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, it was a natural centre for the commerce of the world; and in the realm of thought in like manner it became a centre of intellectual activity, a bridge between East and West, Greek and barbarian, the gods of Greece and the gods of Egypt. On the institution of the Museum, scholars from Greece of all schools flocked to it, some to study, some to lecture on criticism, or history, or rhetoric, or philosophy. Its two great libraries furnished abundant materials for work in every department of science and scholarship — for the philologi- cal criticism which sometimes degenerated into pedantic a CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS trifling, for the laborious commentaries which took the place of original work, for the dilettantism and end- less controversies of the cloistered literati which called forth the gibes of the satirist.^ Some half a century before Clement began his activity there, the Emperor Hadrian visited Alexandria, and in a letter of his which has been preserved we have a vivid, if one-sided and unsympathetic, picture of the restless life, religious and commercial, of the community. " I have now gained full knowledge," he writes, '*of that Egypt whose praises you were wont to sing. I have found the people vain and fickle, shift- ing with every breath of popular opinion. Those who worship Serapis are in fact Christians ; and those who call themselves Christian bishops are devotees of Serapis. There is no head of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a fortune-teller, or a conjurer. . . . The populace are sedi- tious and turbulent to a degree. The city is rich and opulent ; in it no one lives at leisure. . . . They have but one god — money; him Christians, him Jews, him all the peoples adore." ^ The picture, in part, no doubt, owes its malicious touches to the irritation felt by Hadrian at the rejection by the Alexandrians of his minion Antinous ; but it contains sufficient truth to point the sting, and in some of its features it is confirmed by many details in the ■writings of Clement. To an observer of a different order, the greatness of the city seemed to contend with its beauty, and the people to be rivals of the city.^ To Hadrian, the syncretism of various forms of religious thought might well seem an amalgam of contradictory elements, a confusion of antagonistic systems in which everything that ^ Cf. Athenseus, i. 41 (Meineke). ' Flavius Vopiscus-Saturninus, c. 8 — 'Scriptores Historias Augustae,' vol. ii. p. 209 (Hermann Peter). ' Achil. Tat, v. i. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 3 was most distinctive of each had been toned down and effaced. So with the material luxury. Even if all allow- ance be made for the tendency of all moralists in their eagerness to discourage every form of vice or moral weak- ness to exaggerate its extent, and to ascribe to one city or age the collective vices of all cities and ages, there remains enough in Clement's allusions to show that in spite of its intellectualism the population of Alexandria was passionately devoted to all forms of luxury and enervating pleasure.^ The religious syncretism was in harmony with the aim of its founder. In the centuries that had intervened between its foundation and the Christian era, Alexandria had become a rendezvous of all creeds, all languages, all nationalities, a veritable cosmopolis of intellectual and religious move- ments, a nursery of all forms of eclecticism. Like as the founder himself had built temples to Isis as well as to the gods of Olympus, so there had been effected there a fusion of forms of thought and belief which elsewhere existed in sharp antagonism to each other. Partly from an apologetic motive, partly in harmony with the tendency to syncretism in its environment, Jewish writers before the Christian era sought to show that the great thinkers of Greece were indebted to the Hebrews for their deepest speculations, and, not out of harmony with some aspects in the literary activity of the period, even fabricated and adulterated writings to prove their thesis. The translation of the Old Testament into Greek not only enabled the Jews of Alexandria to read their sacred books in their own tongue, but excited a measure of interest in Greek-speaking peoples of other nationalities, though mainly an interest of antagonism called forth by what seemed to them the preposterous claims put forth on behalf of the religious literature of a despised ^ See Glaser, 'Zeitbilder aus Alexandrien nach dem Paedagogus des C. A.,' 1905. 3 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS trifling, for the laborious commentaries which took the place of original work, for the dilettantism and end- less controversies of the cloistered literati which called forth the gibes of the satirist.^ Some half a century before Clement began his activity there, the Emperor Hadrian visited Alexandria, and in a letter of his which has been preserved we have a vivid, if one-sided and unsympathetic, picture of the restless life, religious and commercial, of the community. " I have now gained full knowledge," he writes, '*of that Egypt whose praises you were wont to sing. I have found the people vain and fickle, shift- ing with every breath of popular opinion. Those who worship Serapis are in fact Christians; and those who call themselves Christian bishops are devotees of Serapis. There is no head of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a fortune-teller, or a conjurer. . . . The populace are sedi- tious and turbulent to a degree. The city is rich and opulent ; in it no one lives at leisure. . . . They have but one god — money; him Christians, him Jews, him all the peoples adore." ^ The picture, in part, no doubt, owes its malicious touches to the irritation felt by Hadrian at the rejection by the Alexandrians of his minion Antinous ; but it contains sufficient truth to point the sting, and in some of its features it is confirmed by many details in the writings of Clement. To an observer of a different order, the greatness of the city seemed to contend with its beauty, and the people to be rivals of the city.^ To Hadrian, the syncretism of various forms of religious thought might well seem an amalgam of contradictory elements, a confusion of antagonistic systems in which everything that ^ Cf. Athenseus, i. 41 (Meineke). ' Flavins Vopiscus-Saturninus, c. 8 — ' Scriptores Historise Augustae,' vol. ii. p. 209 (Hermann Peter). » Achil. Tat., v. i. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 3 was most distinctive of each had been toned down and effaced. So with the material luxury. Even if all allow- ance be made for the tendency of all moralists in their eagerness to discourage every form of vice or moral weak- ness to exaggerate its extent, and to ascribe to one city or age the collective vices of all cities and ages, there remains enough in Clement's allusions to show that in spite of its intellectualism the population of Alexandria was passionately devoted to all forms of luxury and enervating pleasure.^ The religious syncretism was in harmony with the aim of its founder. In the centuries that had intervened between its foundation and the Christian era, Alexandria had become a rendezvous of all creeds, all languages, all nationahties, a veritable cosmopolis of intellectual and religious move- ments, a nursery of all forms of eclecticism. Like as the founder himself had built temples to Isis as well as to the gods of Olympus, so there had been effected there a fusion of forms of thought and belief which elsewhere existed in sharp antagonism to each other. Partly from an apologetic motive, partly in harmony with the tendency to syncretism in its environment, Jewish writers before the Christian era sought to show that the great thinkers of Greece were indebted to the Hebrews for their deepest speculations, and, not out of harmony with some aspects in the literary activity of the period, even fabricated and adulterated writings to prove their thesis. The translation of the Old Testament into Greek not only enabled the Jews of Alexandria to read their sacred books in their own tongue, but excited a measure of interest in Greek-speaking peoples of other nationalities, though mainly an interest of antagonism called forth by what seemed to them the preposterous claims put forth on behalf of the religious literature of a despised ^ See Glaser, 'Zeitbilder aus Alexandrien nach dem Paedagogus des C. A.,' 1905- 6 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS building as such an analogy would suggest. The language of Eusebius with regard to Origen rather suggests that he taught in his own house.^ The picture presented by Gregory Thaumaturgus^ of the school under the guidance of Origen may be regarded as exhibiting the general lines on which it was working from the third quarter of the second century. Christianity was set forth as the crown of all learning, and all liberal arts were represented as its handmaids. The scholars were carefully trained in the art of detecting sophisms and fallacies. They were encouraged to read everything that had been written by poets and philosophers of old, with the exception of the works of atheists. They were trained in natural science, especially in astronomy and geometry, in ethics, and in the discussion of philosophical problems ; but in all these not for their own sakes, but as a means to an end, as aids to the interpretation and defence of the Scriptures. In this lay the essential difference between it and the Stoic and Platonic schools of the Imperial era, though otherwise it ran on parallel lines.^ In this respect, too, it had analogies with the Missionary Colleges of to-day. According to a statement of Philip of Side, the first head of the Catechetical School was Athenagoras. But in view of the notorious inaccuracy of the writer, and especially of his reversal of the relation of Pantaenus and Clement, no weight can be attached to the tradition. The first teacher whose name is definitely known to us, who prescribed the range of its work, and from whom it received the impetus that made it famous and influential in the history of the Church, was Pantaenus. Probably not later than the year i8o he became the head of the school. Of the ecclesias- tical traditions concerning him the one statement that may be admitted without controversy is that, before his con- ^ H. E., vi. 3. 2 Paneg. in Orig,, vi.-xiv. ' Cf. * Rheinische Museum fur Philologie,' vol. Ivi. p. 56. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS f version, he had belonged to the school of the Stoics.^ By his teaching he attracted many scholars, and among others Clement. According to Jerome,^ Pantaenus wrote com- mentaries on many books of Scripture. The accuracy of the assertion is disputed ; ^ in any case, with the excep- tion of one or two passages or allusions, which may have been derived from oral tradition, they have perished; but his teaching, his methods, his principles, in all likelihood even many of the details of his system, survive in the works of his disciple. Titus Flavins Clemens was born in all probability in Athens,* and of heathen parentage, about the middle of the second century. He was endowed by nature with a deeply religious temperament and a burning thirst for knowledge. His religious yearnings he seems to have sought to satisfy by initiation into the mysteries ; ^ he evinced his love of learning by the passionate pursuit of all branches of science and philosophy. The same religious earnestness that had created in his spirit dissatisfaction with heathenism drove him to seek for fuller knowledge and deeper insight into the mysteries of the Christian religion. In many lands — in Greece, Italy, Syria, Palestine — and under many teachers, he studied zealously, but found no lasting satisfaction for his spirit till he came to Egypt. Of the *' truly blessed and memorable men " whom he was 1 Eus., H. E., V. 10. 2 De Vir. 111., c. 36. ' Cf. Ec. Pr. , 27 : ovk €ypaov 5e 01 rrpeafivrfpoi, * Epiph. Haer., xxxii. 6. KAtj^tjs re '6v (pacri rives 'A\e^avdp4a, erepoi 54 'AOvvaiov. Greece was the starting-point of his search for truth (Str., i. i ^). In Prot., ii.^^ referring to the prevalence of the legend concerning Demeter, he says : 8irou ye 'Adrivaiois Kal r^ &\\^ 'EWddi, alSovfiai kuI \eyeiv. His sen- sitiveness on the point suggests that he was a Greek and an Athenian. He is not sensitive as to the details. ^ This is an inference from the knowledge which he displays of the details of the mysteries. Cf. Eus., Praep. Evang., ii. 2, p. 61. It is not regarded as cogent by Bratke. ' Die Stellung des CI. Al. zum antiken Mysterienwesen ' (St. u. Kr., 1887, p. 656). Cf. St. u. Kr., 1894. 8 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS privileged to hear, and of their " convincing and living w^ords," he writes as follov^s : " Of these, one was in Greece, an Ionian. Others were in Magna Graecia, one from Coele- Syria, the other from Egypt. There were others in the East, one of whom was of the Assyrians, and the other in Palestine, a Hebrew by origin. When I fell in with the last of my teachers (he was the first in power), having hunted him out as he lay concealed in Egypt, I came to rest. He was in truth a Sicilian bee who culled the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, and begot in the souls of his hearers an unsullied store of knowledge. These men, preserving the true tradition of the blessed teaching directly from Peter, James, John, and Paul, the holy apostles, the son receiving it from the father (but few are like their fathers), came with God's blessing also to us to deposit these ancestral and apostolic seeds." ^ That these were Christian teachers is manifest; they were six in number. Who the others were is disputed or unknown : some have identified the Ionian with Athenagoras, the Assyrian with Tatian ; but that the last was Pantaenus there can be no doubt. The words of Clement show his eagerness in the search for a solution of the problems that had created un- rest and his complete satisfaction with the solution. He became a presbyter of the Church,^ and for a period of more than twenty years he wrought and taught in Alexandria, first as coadjutor of Pantaenus, and afterwards as his suc- cessor. In the year 202 the persecution of Severus broke out, and in accordance with his own teaching on martyr- dom, as professedly based on the injunction of Christ, he left Alexandria that he might serve the Church of Christ elsewhere.^ Of his subsequent career little is known. We catch a final glimpse of his activity in the year 211, in a 1 Str.,i. i\ 2 Psed., i. 6^. » Matt. X. 23. Cf. Str., iv. 41*""; Stah., vol. iii. p. 226, fr. 56. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 9 letter of Alexander, then bishop of Cappadocia, who had been a fellow-student of Origen in the school of Clement. In sending a letter to the Church of Antioch by the hands of Clement, he describes him as the blessed presbyter, a man virtuous and approved, who had confirmed and advanced the Church of the Lord.^ In a later letter of Alexander to Origen, he alludes to Pantaenus and Clement as those blessed fathers who had trodden the way before them, with whom after a little they would be.^ He died probably about 215. Though the facts of his life are so meagre, the portrait of the man himself stands out in his writings as that of a singularly lovable personality. He gives the impression of a certain intellectual naivete, combined with a moral austerity. He has a lofty conception of the function of the teacher, as well as of the duty of the scholar. If he demands from the student that he shall approach the study of the Christian faith with earnest reverence and not in the merely curious spirit with which men go to strange cities and buildings, and if he insists that the ears of those who seek to become partakers of the truth must be sanctified, he demands from himself as a teacher that he shall keep in view the varied character and temperament of those who are under his tuition, that he shall set aside all ignoble impulses and motives, and have for his sole aim the salvation of his hearers.^ What Gregory says of his scholar Origen may be applied to his master. ** He did not merely discuss ethical matters with his scholars, but incited them to the practice of morals, and stimulated by what he did even more than by what he said."* There can be little doubt that in the representation of the gnostic he sets forth the ideal which was the goal of his own 1 Eus., H. E., vi. II. ^ lb., vi. 14. * Str., i. I *■«. •* Paneg. in Orig., c. 9. 10 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS endeavour. ** I do not know," says Maurice, "where we shall look for a purer or a truer man than this Clement of Alexandria. . . . He seems to me that one of the old fathers whom we should all have reverenced most as a teacher and loved most as a friend."^ Of the writings of Clement many have perished ; many to which he makes allusion as in contemplation were in all probability never written. Of the writings that have sur- vived, the most important are the Protrepticus, the Pseda- gogus, and the Stromateis. Till a few years ago it was universally assumed by writers on the subject that the three works were written in the order named, that though dis- tinctive in aim they were closely and progressively related to each other and formed a series, that they were so intended by the writer himself, and, accordingly, that they may be regarded as one work in three sections, the general aim of which was to transform the Greek pagan by stages into a Christian gnostic, to initiate the reader into the ethics and philosophy of the Christian faith by setting forth different aspects of the activity of the one Logos. But the "dis- covery " of Wendland — to use the phrase of Harnack — has produced a complete reversal of this view, and introduced an entirely novel conception of the literary relationships of these writings. According to Wendland, the order was, Protrepticus; Stromateis, I. -IV.; Psedagogus ; Stromateis, V.-VII. The hypothesis has been supported by Heussi and Harnack, and accepted by Duchesne and others. The question is discussed afterwards ; ^ here it may be said that, if not "ungrounded and improbable," as it is de- scribed by a patristic authority of the first rank,* the hypo- ^ ' Ecclesiastical History of the First and Second Centuries,' p. 239. Clement has no legal right to the official designation of "saint" sometimes ascribed to him. ^ See Appendix D. * Bardenhewer. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS II thesis raises difficulties not less great than the traditional view which it seeks to supplant. It is not a purely literary or academic question, for in some cases the order has a direct bearing on the exposition of the teaching. The * Exhortation to the Greeks ' ^ is the earliest extant work of Clement, and is at once a powerful exposure of the paganism from which he sought to wean them and a power- ful appeal in favour of Christianity. He begins with an invitation to turn aside from heathen myths and listen to the New Song — the Word of God. He then exposes with almost superfluous fulness the corruptions of paganism, its mysteries, the legends as to the gods, the cruelty and impurity of its sacrifices, its worship of images made by men's hands. From this he passes to the imperfect views of God set forth in the works of philosophers and poets, with which he contrasts the truth of Christianity as set forth in the Scriptures. He then refutes the objection that they should not abandon ancestral customs, showing its folly and the loss which it entails. Finally, he exhibits the beneficence of God as revealed in Christianity, and urges them in the name of Christ to choose life, not death.^ It was probably written before 195^ — perhaps some years earlier. With the Psedagogus or Tutor we enter upon the second stage of the work of the Word. Clement himself tells us that the aim of the writing was to set forth the way of life and training from the stage of childhood — that is, the rule of life, derived from instruction, which grows along with faith, and prepares the virtuous soul in the case of those who ^ UpoTpevTiKhs Trpbs''E\\'nvas. ^ For an analysis, which, however, can give no idea of its eloquence and passionate movement, see Appendix A. * Bardenhewer, Patrologie,^ about 195 ; Geschichte der altkirklichen Litt., before 199 ; Zahn, before 189 ; Harnack, in the ninth decade of the second century. 12 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS were reaching the rank of men for the reception of gnostic science.^ An ethical foundation had to be laid before introduction to the higher truths of Christianity, for moral health was the condition of spiritual insight. The Tutor is the Word, the Son of God Himself, who sets forth a system of practical ethics in conformity with a Christian ideal of life. Certain general principles are laid down. Nothing is to be done contrary to nature.^ We must beware of all that is unnatural and all that is excessive.^ Everything is to be done in harmony with right reason.* Moderation should be our aim in everything.^ We are not to take away what is natural to man but to impose upon it a just measure.^ The life of the Christian ought to be a unity .^ It should be a kind of organised whole of rational actions — that is, an infallible fulfilment of what is taught by the Word.^ He ought to live after the image of the Tutor,^ to take on the impression of the truly saving life of the Saviour and follow in the footsteps of God.^^ As his aim is to set forth what a Christian ought to be in every relation of life,^^ Clement gives the most minute details of guidance in everything that affects a citizen of the kingdom of God. The extraordinary minuteness of the instruction, of which he himself at times is conscious,^^ has brought on him the charge of petty pedantry; but it is in large measure due to the fact that he has throughout the needs of the catechumens in mind ; and, it may be, in part due to the fact that he is following the methods of some Stoic teachers,^^ possibly of Pantaenus him- self, who gave to their disciples similarly detailed prescrip- tions. The dominating ethical ideal in Alexandria was non- Christian ; and the emphasising of a negative to it at all 1 Str., vi. 1 1. 2 pged., ii. 13 i^. s lb., ii. ii "*. * ib., ii. 229. » lb., iii. 10". « lb., ii. 5*6. 7 lb., iii. 1 1. s ib., i. 13 102, » lb., i. 12 100. 10 lb., i. 12 "8. 11 lb., ii. 1 1. " lb., ii. I ^ " Cf. Zeller, * Eclecticism,' p. 253 (Eng. trans.) CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 1 3 points was imperative ; and this involved in the circum- stances not merely the inculcation of general principles but definite instruction by way of guidance. As they had to adjust the new force to their intellectual environment, they had also to adjust it to the manifold relations of everyday life. Many of the precepts which seem to us trifling or superfluous were no doubt called forth by antagonism to the immorality or irreligion with which they were associated. If any justification for his procedure is necessary, it is justified by the consideration that the strength of paganism, from the glamour of which the converts were only just emancipated, lay not so much in its religious conceptions, which could easily be overthrown by arguments, as in the social customs which were an inseparable element in it. In this way things in themselves morally indifferent might acquire a moral stamp or stigma for the time. A code of practical ethics, with suggestions, so to speak, on Christian etiquette, was a necessary part of the equipment of the Greek who had entered upon the career of a Christian citizen. From the nature of the case it was inevitable that emphasis should be placed on the restrictions imposed by their Christian profession, rather than on its liberties. Clement certainly did not err in insisting on the necessary relation between the dogmatic and the ethical side of Christianity, or in making the attainment of truth in its highest form depend on the realisation of the moral ideal in every relation of life as its essential prerequisite. It is significant that the first systematic teacher of Christian doctrine, the foremost champion of liberal culture in the Church, should at the same time be the most eloquent exponent in that age, and for many ages that followed, of Christianity in common life. The treatise was divided by the writer himself into Three Books. In the First Book Clement explains who the Tutor 14 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS is, who His pupils are, and what has been and is His method of education. The Tutor is the Word ; babes in Christ are His pupils ; He adopts all methods of training — including punishment, which is consistent with, nay, is a proof of, love — to secure the moral salvation of those under His tuition. In the Second Book he enters into details. Under the subject of the relation of the Christian to the body, he touches on the proper use of food, of drink, of gold and silver vessels, of music, of jesting, condemns all manner of filthy speaking and frivolous talk, the use of floral crowns, and indicates the limits to be placed on the use of ointments and sleep. He sets forth the Christian view of marriage, reprobates all manner of impurity, luxury in clothing, and the use of precious stones in place of cultivating true beauty. In the Third Book he continues the same subject, censures the love of finery in women, as well as effeminacy in men and extravagance in the number of slaves, prescribes the proper use of the public baths, of wealth, of physical exercises, condemns the use of false hair, all forms of gambling, the visiting of racecourses and theatres. He exhibits the duty of the Christian in business, gives counsel as to his conduct on the way to church, in church, and out of it. He con- cludes with some suggestions, based on the words of Scripture, on prayer, civil government, and kindred matters. A prayer to the Tutor brings the work to a close. Two hymns are adjoined to the treatise. The first may have been written by Clement; the second certainly is not by him. The work was written before the Stromateis. The date is put by Zahn about igo, and by Bardenhewer soon after the Protrepticus ; ^ by Harnack, in accordance with his hypothesis of the relative order of composition of the great writings, in the first decade of the second century .^ ^ Patrologie *. * See Analysis, Appendix B. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 15 The third and highest stage of discipleship is set forth in the Stromateis, or * Gnostic notes according to the true Phil- osophy,' as he designates its contents.^ "A * stromateus ' was a long bag of striped canvas in which bedclothes were rolled up." ^ From a statement of his own we see that it was the custom to give fancy designations, such as * Meadow,' * Helicon,' * Honeycomb,' * Robe,' and the like, to works of a miscellaneous order.^ As applied to a literary work, it was not invented by Clement,^ though it was afterwards so associated with his name that he is often described as the Stromatist.^ The title was meant to suggest freedom of movement and artful disorder. He speaks of it as if it were only the reproduction of the teaching which he had received from ** blessed and truly memorable men"; and, if this is not to be taken literally, it may contain a larger measure of truth than is sometimes supposed.^ He tells us that his writing is not to be compared to trim pleasure- grounds, but rather to a dense and umbrageous wood, where all kinds of trees, fruit-bearing and others, are intentionally mingled ; ^ to a meadow, in which the flowers blossom promiscuously, where things are scattered ad- visedly without regard to order or style ; * to the " herbage of all kinds," of which the Scripture speaks.^ One reason for this disorder is the desire to stimulate the reader and encourage the earnest searcher after truth, by making it more precious in his eyes when hunted out instead of making it too easy of access ; to indicate the path to the reader, instead of accompanying him the whole ^ Toov Karb. r))v dA?j0^ (ftiKocrocplav yvoocrriKuu virofiPTJixdTwv ffrpuixareis (Str., iii. iSioi). 2 Hort. 3 Str., vi. I 2. 4 Cf. Aulus Gellius, Praef., 6-8. ^ Cf. Frag. 48, Stah., vol. iii. p. 224. 8Str., i. I". ' lb., vii. i8"i. 8 lb., vi. I 2. 9 lb., iv. 2 « ; Job v. 25. l6 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS way.^ Another reason adduced is the necessity of conceal- ing truth or expressing it in obscure symbol.^ This is hard to account for, unless it be the fruit of an unconscious apologetic impulse, or a concession to the Greek cate- chumens whom he has in view at every stage of his work. He has little interest in, and makes no appeal to, the Jews in Alexandria. To his desire to confirm his hold on the Greeks is due the display, often irrelevant, of his curious scientific, medical,^ philosophical, philological, and religi- ous lore, the digressions, the numerous quotations from, and allusions to, Greek poets and thinkers, and the super- fluous fulness with which he enters into details even when the enumeration brings him into formal antagonism to his own standpoint.* The result of his method is that " readers of the present day are often puzzled to know what he is driving at." ^ And as with the lack of order, so with the style. He tells us that he does not make any special effort at writing pure Greek, as he who cares for truth will not study phraseology.^ As the Christian must cultivate a simple way of living, so he must cultivate a style severely simple and artless, with more nourishment in it than sauce. Style is but the vesture of thought, and clothing should not take precedence of the body.^ Perhaps by way of reaction against the fashionable rhetoric of the day, to write well seemed to him a mark of frivolity.® As a consequence, he is sometimes at once 1 Str., i. 221; iv. 7.\ 2 j[b., V. 8"; vi. ii-2. 5 Cf. Harnack, * Medizinisches aus der altesten Kirchengeschichte,' T. u. U., 1892. 4 Cf., e.g., Psed., ii. 8 69, and Str., i. i6i76. ° Mayor, * Clement of Alexandria ' (Hort and Mayor), p. xiv. * Str. , ii. I ^. " His language swarms with grammatical errors : he lacks dis- crimination in the use of the negatives oh and yA\, of the pronouns '6s and So-rty, and the different forms of hypothetical sentences " ( W. Christ., Phil. Stud, zum C. A., p. 13). 'Str., i. io«. 8 Cf. Croiset, * Histoire de la Litt^rature grecque,' vol. v. p. 752. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 17 both obscure and diffuse, and adds analogy to analogy and epithet to epithet without adding to the thought or sharpening its definiteness. At times it may be that the Stromateis may be compared to a *' confused causerie " ; ^ but it is improperly described as " Miscellanies," if by that is meant a series of disconnected essays. For, while there is a lack of order in details, there is no confusion as to the principles which are fundamental in his thought, which are in no way affected by disorder or irregularity of form. In its extant form the Stromateis contains Seven Books and a fragment of an Eighth.^ The general aim of the First Book is to represent Christianity as the true and final philosophy, and to exhibit the place of Greek philo- sophy in this connection. He condemns those who attacked philosophy, exhibits its usefulness, and marks it off from the sophistry which has usurped the name. He sets forth the succession of philosophers among -^the Greeks, with the aim of showing that it was inferior to the Christian truth both in respect of antiquity and of its secondary origin. To a like end he extols the work of Moses, defends the principles of his legislation, and maintains that, as compared with the Christian philosophy, the Greeks were no better than children, and that their science had no claim to the veneration due to age. The Second Book begins with a statement of the plan which he proposed to follow. It then enters on a dis- cussion as to the knowledge of God, emphasising in this matter the function of faith. It proceeds to set aside erroneous views as to the nature of faith, and exhibits its true nature as the foundation of the highest knowledge and truth. It goes on to discuss the place of fear as a ^ Croiset, ib. : "Causerie confuse, ou se melent tous les tons, ou manquent I'ordre, la lumi^re, le bon godt meme." « The first leaf of the MS. is lost. B l8 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS motive to Christian duty, the relation of the virtues to one another, and, in particular, the nature of penitence. It touches on the anthropomorphic expressions in Scripture, claims a Mosaic origin for the Greek conceptions of virtue, and defends the beneficent character of the Mosaic economy. It then exhibits the attitude of the Christian to pleasure and the passions, discusses various theories as to the highest good, and some aspects of the question of marriage. The Third Book continues the discussion on marriage, and is mainly taken up with the refutation of heretical doctrines on the subject. In particular, the teaching of the school of Carpocrates with its glorification of lust is condemned, and the teaching of Marcion with its false and impious conception of continence. The position of those who taught that all actions were morally indifferent is examined. The scriptural arguments, for the most part taken from the Epistles of St Paul, are adduced in support of his refutation of the false and his exhibition of the true teaching as to continence and marriage in relation to the Christian ideal of life. In the Fourth Book, after a detailed statement of his proposed order of treatment, he proceeds to consider the distinctive excellence of man, the nature of true martyrdom, its motive and end, the attitude of the Christian to perse- cution, and the grounds on which this is permitted by God and held to be reconcilable with His power and righteous- ness. He represents the ideal of gnostic love and its reward as equally attainable by women and men, indicates the difference between legal and gnostic perfection, and exhibits the pre-eminence of the knowledge of God, which was only possible through the Son, by faith in whom our life is unified. The true nature of the body and its relation to the soul in the Christian economy is then set forth. The Fifth Book opens with a discussion on the nature CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 19 of faith and its relation to knowledge, and touches on the nature of hope and its place among the Christian virtues. He proceeds to show that in expressing the deepest mysteries in symbolic guise the Scriptures had followed a method universal in religion as well as in poetry and philosophy. He then explains the anthro- pomorphic language of the Scriptures, points out some analogies between the grades in the mysteries, beginning with purification and ending in contemplation, and the Christian stages towards the knowledge of God ; shows how logical demonstration is from the nature of the case impossible in the case of God, and that, accordingly, He can only be apprehended through grace by faith in the Son as revealed in Scripture. Whatever measure of truth the Greeks possessed had been taken from this source. Though men everywhere had a certain knowledge of God, even when this had reached its highest as among the Greeks, it was imperfect in its range and saving power. The Sixth Book opens with a renewed statement of his plan of writing, touching on the relation of the Stromateis to the Psedagogus in this connection. He confirms his thesis of the theft of the Greeks from the Scriptures by seeking to prove that they stole from each other en masse. The Greeks had but a limited grasp of the truth ; whereas the Jews required only the addition of faith, the Greeks had further to abandon idolatry. He then discusses the nature of true wisdom, and its pre-eminence as having been derived from the Wisdom of God. The gnostic is then delineated in his relation to philosophic culture, to his own body, to the world and its duties, to God and fellowship with Him, to his moral ideals and the method of their realisation, to his fellow-men, to the Scriptures and their interpretation. He gives an exposition of the Decalogue as a specimen of gnostic insight. He again 20 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS touches on the divine origin of philosophy, while showing that it lacked the divine signs that accredited Christian- ity, as well as its universality, and its power to rise above the forces that threatened to crush it. To show that the gnostic is truly pious is declared to be the purpose of the Seventh Book. This piety is portrayed in manifold aspects, alike on the divine and the human sides, which are not to be separated. His devoutness is set forth in relation to God, in his knowledge of the things of God, in his worship free from superstition and all ignoble elements, in his prayer, in his goal of unending contemplation. God accepts service of men as service of Him. So the gnostic is characterised by teaching, by beneficence, by self-sacrifice, by forgiveness of wrong, by striving after Christian perfec- tion in love. In the closing section of the book Clement examines at length the objection that the Christian faith should not be embraced because of its divisions, and demon- strates that such a position was untenable save on grounds which were not in harmony with the real facts as to Christian truth and its heretical caricature.^ The Eighth Book on the face of it does not seem to have any close connection with the previous discussions, and might be a fragment of a logical treatise. It touches on such topics as the necessity of exact definition, the nature and method of demonstrative proof, genera and species. It is a matter of controversy whether it was originally a part of the Stromateis.^ It does not deal specifically with any of the questions suggested in his various programmes. But, on the other hand, he seems to indicate at the close of the Seventh Book that he was about to pass to another subject of inquiry.^ The whole work is unfinished ; many topics which formed ^ See Appendix C. * Cf. Zahn, Supplem. Clem., p. 114 et seq. * Str., vii. 18 "1. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 2£ part of his plan were never touched upon : whether he abandoned his task, as Overbeck suggests, because he despaired of being able to finish a subject that had proved so unwieldy, or, as others think, died before he had com- pleted his task, it is impossible to say. Zahn puts the work at 202-203 ; Bardenhewer substantially agrees ; Harnack puts the earlier portion at a similar period, and the later books after his departure from Alexandria.^ The only other work of Clement that has survived is the tractate entitled ** Who is the Rich Man that is being Saved ? " ^ This is an exposition of the narrative in the Gospel of the rich young man,^ with a discussion on the problem therein suggested — the possibility of salvation in the Christian sense for the rich. The solution of Clement is that wealth is in itself a thing neither good nor bad, that its moral character is determined by its use or misuse, and that it may be so used as to be a stepping-stone towards spiritual progress and final salvation. The question of date turns mainly on the meaning that is to be attached to a phrase in the Homily itself: *'As to the mystery of the Saviour, you may learn from my Exposition concerning First Principles and Theology." * In the Stromateis refer- ence is made to this treatise or section as in contemplation, but it is doubtful whether it was ever carried out. If, as is maintained by Zahn,^ the reference suggests a work already written, then the " Quis Dives " must have been written after the Stromateis ; if, as is held by others,^ it only refers ^ All the chronological data are brought down to the death of Commodus. Str., i. 21. 2 Tis 6 2cpC6iJLfvos U\ov(rios. (Quis Dives Salvetur.) * Mark x. 17-31 ; Matt. xix. 16-30 ; Luke xviii. 18-30. * "Owep iv rf} irepl apxS)v Kal dioKoylas f^rfyfjaei ^varT]piov rov l^wTTJpos virapx^i fiadeiv. Q. D., p. 26. ° Zahn, op. cit.^ p. 39. Barnard agrees with Zahn. See Q. D., p. 44, 'Cam- bridge Texts and Studies,' 1897. ® V. Arnim, de Faye, Harnack. 22 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS to a work contemplated, it may have been written before the Stromateis. There is nothing distinctive in its teaching in its bearing on the question of date, and it may be well with Kriiger and Ehrhard ^ to hold that the date of composition cannot be definitely determined.^ In the only manuscript in which the Stromateis have been preserved, after the fragment of the Eighth Book are found two series of extracts. The first has the title, ** Summaries from Theodotus and the so-called Anatolic School in the Times of Valentinus." ^ These contain quotations from a Gnostic writer, with comments by Clement, and it is often difficult to tell whether we are reading the commentary or the original. Even a scholar like Zahn, who made an exhaustive study of this, as of all other Clementine problems, in his * Supplementum Clementinum,' published in 1884, altered his opinion in regard to the apportioning of the fragments to their separate sources in a further study of the subject, published in 1892.* In view of this difficulty of severing the wheat from the tares, in an exposition of the teaching of Clement, they must be used with reserve, and are of no value as an independent source. They can only be used with confidence when they find complete or partial confirmation in the undoubted writings. Even when there is little doubt that the words are those of Clement, we have to be on our guard, for the simple reason that they are excerpts, and that we are ignorant of the context as well ^ Kriiger, 'Early Christian Literature,' p. 170; Ehrhard, *Die altchristliche Litteratur,* p. 303. 2 The main points in the Homily are noted in Lecture V. ' 'E/c rS>v ©eodSrov Kal ttJs ofOToAt/c^s Ka\oviJ.(vrjs Si^aarKaXias Karek rovs OvaKevrivov xp^^ovs 'Eirtroyitot. * Clem. Supp., p. 126. Zahn assigned the Fragments to Clement thus : Sec- tions 8-15 with certainty ; 18-20, 27, 66-74, 81-86, with more or less definiteness ; perhaps also 4, 5. In his 'Geschichte d. ntl. K.,' vol, ii. pp. 961-964, he regards as Clementine 4, 5, some sentences in 7, 8-15, 17^-20, 27; and regards the whole sections 66-86 as Valentinian. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 23 as of the methods and grounds on which the epitomist proceeded. The second series of Extracts bears the title " Selec- tions from the Prophets."^ The contents are varied in character, the most connected and complete section being a characteristic exposition of the nineteenth psalm. They were probably taken from the same source as the " Ex- cerpts from Theodotus." But as to what that source was there is divergence of opinion. Westcott thinks that there " can be no reasonable doubt " that they were taken from the * Hypotyposes.' ^ Zahn holds that, like the extant fragment, they were taken from the Eighth Book of the Stromateis.^ This hypothesis was accepted by Harnack in the first volume of his * History of Early Christian Literature,' published in 1893, but rejected as ** highly improbable " in a later volume of the same work.* By V. Arnim the suggestion was made that both series of extracts were made by Clement from Gnostic writings, with comments added by himself, as preparatory sketches for a further treatise.^ This conflict and fluctuation of opinion emphasise the lesson already noted as to the limitation to be exercised in the use of materials of such uncertain origin. Of the lost writings of Clement, the most important is the * Hypotyposes ' or * Outlines.' From the statements of Eusebius and Photius, as well as from the fragments that survive, it would seem that it contained a running com- mentary, with notes as to date and authorship, on the ^ *Ek tS)v -jrpocpTjTuv 'EKKoyai. ^ D. C. B., vol. i. p. 564. * Op. cit.i pp. 1 17-129. * * Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur,' vol. i. p. 181. So Preuschen, p. 315. In vol. ii. p. 18 (1904), he expresses approval of the hypothesis of V. Arnim : *'Ich weiss nichts gegen sie einzuwenden " (p. 18, n. 3). » ' De Octavo dementis Stromateorum Libro,' 1894. Cf. Ehrhard, op. cit.^ p. 311. 24 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS books of Scripture. Eusebius and Photius give conflict- ing statements as to its extent. Eusebius says that it embraced abridged explanations of all the Canonical Scripture, not passing by the disputed books — that is, Jude and the rest of the Catholic Epistles, and Barnabas, and the so - called Apocalypse of Peter.^ Photius says that the * Outlines ' contained a brief explanation and in- terpretation of some passages of the Old and the New Scripture. After condemning the impious blasphemies with which, according to him, it abounded, he says that the whole aim was to give interpretations, as it were, of Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, the Epistles of the divine Paul, the Catholic Epistles, and Ecclesiastes.^ If the statement of Eusebius be accurate, Photius must have had an imperfect copy before him, as in his sweeping con- demnation of the errors of Clement he would hardly have refrained from adding Clement's use of Apocryphal writings. A fragment of the section of the * Outlines ' dealing with the First Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of Jude, the First and Second Epistles of John, survives in a Latin version made by Cassiodorus, or at his instance.^ Cassiodorus so far supports the statement of Photius as to its heretical contents, for he says that Clement spoke some things with rashness, and that in translating them into Latin he had purged the teaching from the offending matters.* The more weighty of the heresies charged against Clement — those touching the Person and nature of Christ — will be noted afterwards.^ Here I only touch on the question of his heterodoxy in its bearing on the date of the work. ^ Eus., vi. 14 : . . . irdtrris rrjs ivSiaO^KOv yparis iirirer/iriiAevas veirolrirai SiTfyftaeis, /iTjSe ras dvTi\fyofx4vas irapeXdciv. . . . ^ Phot., cod. 109: d Sh '6\os ffKoirbs wcroj'ei epfjiv]ve7ai rvyx^fovai t^s TfvifftwSf TTjy *E|({5oi/, Tuv "VaXfi&v, rov deiov Ua{>\ov twv iiriffroXSiv koL tuv KaBoXiKwv KoiX Tou 'EKK\Tj(riaasstm. * Rohricht, * De Clemente Alex. Arnobii . . . Auctore,' 1893. ' E.g. , he often quotes passages of Scripture with perfect accuracy, even when he reverses the order of the verses. 30 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS moral elevation of the man and the far-reaching concep- tions of the writer. For the greatness and originality and richness of his central thoughts disprove the idea that he had been " at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps," that he was a mere sewer together of shreds and patches. For if everything were eliminated that he can be proved to have borrowed, it might reduce to small compass his independent knowledge of some departments of Greek literature, but it would otherwise make little difference to his place in the history of Christian thought. After all, the method which he adopted was less important than his aim ; the passages which he quoted or appropriated were not taken for the mere sake of quotation, but in order to give weight to his general design. The problem which Clement raised and endeavoured to solve in his writings has been characterised by Overbeck ^ in a masterly study as perhaps the most daring literary undertaking in the history of the Church. Clement was well aware of the novelty of the task which he had under- taken, and of the suspicion which it was certain to create, apart altogether from the method of solution which he adopted. That he found it necessary to defend the com- position of books at all, is a significant fact.^ He makes no such apology in the Protrepticus or in the Paedagogus ; and it could hardly be the reception of these works that inspired his defence. No one could take exception to the former work, for it was a powerful attack upon heathen polytheism ; few could take exception to the practical ethics of the Paedagogus, at least on principle. Had he restricted himself to a refutation of the teaching of the heretics, his Christian contemporaries would have thanked him. But, without any external stimulus, to formulate and co-ordinate Christian truths in relation to each other as well as in 1 Hist. Zeitschrift N, F., vol. xii. (1882), pp. 417-472- "^ Str., i. i. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 3 1 relation to philosophy seemed to many a superfluous as well as a dangerous task, an imperilling of the unique dignity and claims of the Christian faith by bringing it into the light of common day. To substitute a Christian gnosis for a heretical gnosis might seem to some an indirect recognition of a movement with which there could be no compromise : the transformation of a heretical watchword, which had become an orthodox byword, into a designation for the highest Christian ideal, might seem a superfluous and confusing concession to the spirit of the age. In carry- ing out his task he does not lose sight of the controversies within the Church, but his aim in dealing with them is not mainly polemical, but rather to bring out the truth of which the controverted views were an exaggeration or a caricature. It is in accordance with his early training, as well with his desire to come into rapprochement with Greek converts, that, like Justin Martyr, his ruling thought is not that of a Christian theology but of a Christian philosophy. But it is only a philosophy in the sense of being a philosophy of life. The originality of Clement does not lie in the details or illustrations which he unhesitatingly borrowed, but in the formulating of the unifying conception which bound the scattered elements together, and in the width of outlook which enabled him to co-ordinate all the materials. That unifying principle he found in the doctrine of the Word by whom the universe was brought into order, whose inspiration was the key to a true philosophy of history, in whose Incarnation men could see the ideal of humanity, and who, by becoming incarnate, had not only revealed the close relation of the divine and the human, but had made possible the deifying of all humanity. The peculiar distinction of Clement, in a word, is not that he gave a final solution of the problem which he raised, but his clear recognition of the fact that there was a problem 32 CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS to be solved, that in that place and at that stage in the development of Christianity it was imperative for the Church to realise the relation in which it stood to the intellectual and moral forces that had hitherto been the most powerful factors in moulding the intellectual life of nations and individuals, if it were to escape the certain danger of being stranded or submerged. It was, indeed, a proceeding not without danger ; but not to recognise the necessity of it would have been a still greater danger ; for it would have extinguished Christianity in Alexandria, or reduced it to a mere official ritual, neither influencing its environment nor being influenced by it, or would have left the gnostic misrepresentation of Christianity in un- disputed possession of the field. Clement was the first to see the necessity of formulating a Christian theory of the universe, a Christian philosophy of history, a Christian code of ethics. It was, of course, inevitable that his attempt should be marred by the defects of his age ; that he accepted the current critical theories and literary pre- suppositions of his time without scrutiny, and was satisfied with seeking only to illustrate them ; that he was fettered both in the exposition of principles and details by the consciousness of discouragement, if not of opposition, in his enterprise; that from a scientific point of view his work was hampered by the nature of the instruments with which he had to work ; that, generally, it bears the stamp of the pioneer who is groping in an untried and unexplored province. His principles are not always co- ordinated, but sometimes lie side by side without any attempt to bring them into harmony with one another, or even without any apparent consciousness of the neces- sity of such co-ordination. The conception was greater than the execution ; ** the artist fell short of the thinker ; " ^ 1 Cf. dcFaye, p. 113. CLEMENT AND HIS WRITINGS 33 but the greatness of the conception abides. Nothing can take from Clement the glory of having been the first Christian teacher to find a place in his system of thought for all forms of truth ; of bringing Christianity into the line of historical development without surrendering its absolute uniqueness ; of laying down principles which, when stripped of their temporary cerements, are not dead, but as vital to a true Christian philosophy and apologetic to-day as they were in the closing years of the second century. He neither ignored the rights of the past nor the claims of the future, but sought to assign to each its due place and proportion. *' Large portions of his field of thought," says Hort, ** remained for long ages unworked, or even remain unworked still. But what he at once humbly and bravely attempted under great disadvantages at the beginning of the third century will have to be attempted afresh with the added experience and know- ledge of seventeen centuries more, if the Christian faith is to hold its ground among men; and when the attempt is made, not a few of his thoughts and words will shine out with new force, full of light for dealing with new problems." ^ ^ Aute-Nicene Lectures, pp. 90, 91. 34 LECTURE II. THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY. Every advance of the kingdom of God, every victory of the Gospel, gave rise to new problems. When men of philosophic culture became adherents of the Christian faith, the Church had to decide what was to be its general attitude towards that new force with which it had hitherto for the most part been in conflict. All men of culture. Christian and non-Christian alike, found in philosophy a common ground. The immediate effect of the admission of the new ally was such as to create suspicion. It sought to be a master, not a servant, in the house of God, to assimilate Christianity to itself rather than to assimilate itself to Christianity, and thus created heresies that threatened to break up the unity of the Church. The natural consequence -was that widely antagonistic views were adopted with re- gard to the relation of the Church to philosophic culture generally. The one view is represented by Tatian and Tertullian ; the other by Justin Martyr and Clement. Tatian scoffs at Hellenic culture, recounts with almost savage glee the fables as to the life and death of the Greek philosophers, and abjures altogether any contact with the wisdom of the Greeks. "We have," he says, "bidden farewell to your wisdom." ^ In like manner Tertullian ^ Orat. ad Graec, c. i. CHRISTIANITY & HELLENIC CULTURE & PHILOSOPHY 35 branded philosophy generally as the fountain of all heresies, and maintained that the Church had nothing to do with it save to disown all intercourse with it.^ The influence which it had exercised on the Christian faith made this a natural attitude; and it required men of no ordinary courage and insight to rise above the temptation to attack or belittle a force with associations so sinister. Such were Justin and Clement. Justin, whose intellectual and spiritual life to a certain extent had proceeded on parallel lines to that of Clement, takes up substantially the same attitude as he did. In becoming a Christian, he did not cease to be a philosopher, for he regarded Christianity as the only true and useful philosophy. Like Clement, he supports the hypothesis of theft as a solution of the analogies between Christianity and the philosophy of the Greeks, reads Christian teaching into Plato, and claims all that was akin to Christianity in Greek philosophy as his own.^ At the same time that Tertullian in Carthage was abjuring all con- tact with philosophy, Clement in Alexandria was exhibit- ing and defending Greek philosophy as virtually on a level with Judaism as a preliminary discipline for Christianity. It was not to be regarded merely as an unconscious negative preparation for the Gospel, testifying by its very failure to the necessity of something higher than itself; it had played a positive part, a divinely appointed part, in the history of humanity. What the Law of Moses was to the Jew, philosophy was to the Greek. It was a tutor to the Greeks, just as the law was to the Hebrews.^ It was as a covenant peculiar to them, like a stepping-stone to the philosophy which is according to Christ.* As God gave prophets to ^ Prsesc. adv. Hseret., c. 7. ^ ii. Apol., 13. '6cra oZv -naph. iraat KaKws ftprjTai rifxwv tuv xpicrmi'ftjj/ eVri. « Str.,i. 528. * lb., vi. 8^. ri]v 8e i\oiaj/ Kal fiaWov "EWrjaif, oTov Siad^jKiiv olKtlnv avrois. 36 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO the Jews, so He raised up men of the highest repute among the Greeks, their own prophets in their own tongue, so far as they were able to receive the beneficence of God, and thus marked them off from the great mass of men.^ The Mosaic Law and Greek philosophy alike had each its own place in the divine economy ; each came like the Gospel in its own God-appointed time; each was designed to prepare men for the reception of the truth of Christ.^ Clement assigned this lofty function to philosophy on a variety of grounds. He based it on statements in Scripture, on the unity of truth, on the universality of inspiration, on the nature of philosophy itself, above all, on the nature of God, whose Providence was not to be regarded as local or national. According to the Scriptures, men among the Gentiles are sons in God's sight.^ The statement of the Psalmist that ** God had not dealt so with any nation" as with Israel, implies that though God's relation to the Gentiles was not so intimate as that which He occupied to the Jews, He had a certain relation.* The quaintness of the exegesis is at least convincing proof of the strength of his convic- tion on the matter. When David speaks of the Gentiles " forgetting God," he implies a former remembrance, and that there was a dim knowledge of God among the Gen- tiles.^ The five barley loaves in the miracle are a figure of the law ; the two fishes are a figure of the Greek philo- sophy which was begotten and carried about in the Gentile waves. The quotation from Aratus by St Paul shows that he approved of what was well said among the Greeks.^ The way of truth is one, but into it as into an ever-flowing river various streams flow, some from this side, some from 1 Str., vi. 5*2. a lb., i. 5 28 ; vi. 6 *' ; vi. 13 io« ; vi. 17 ^^^ ; vii. 2 ". » Psed., i. 5I*. " Str., vi. 8 63; pg^. 147. 20. 5 lb., vi. 8«<; Psa. 9. 17. « lb., i. 19 ^i. HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 37 that.-^ The law of nature and the law of the divine educa- tion are from God, and one.^ Injunctions of righteousness pronounced by those who pursue the wisdom of the world are not to be despised. Sayings such as that of Hesiod were spoken by the God of all, even though they were spoken by way of conjecture, not by way of apprehension.^ All apprehension of God is due to His inspiration.* Clement starts with the assumption, based on his own experience, that philosophy in itself was a good thing. The source from which it drew its inspiration was sufficiently proved by its results ; it made men virtuous, and was accorded only to the best among the Greeks.^ To suppose that so powerful a factor in thought and life had come into the world without a direct divine impulse was to put a limit and a dishonour on the omniscience, the beneficence, and the omnipotence of God. It is really a clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks.^ By a different pro- cess of advancement, He led both Greek and barbarian to the perfection which is through faith.^ If the very hairs of our head are numbered, shall philosophy not be taken into account?^ If philosophy were discovered by the Greeks by the mere exercise of human understanding, yet, according to the Scriptures, understanding is from God.* Many things the fruit of human reasoning derived from Him their primal spark.^*^ He is even the source of every artistic device.^^ If, according to Solomon, it was wisdom as artificer that framed the ship, were it not irrational to regard philosophy as inferior to shipbuilding?^^ To deny that philosophy came from God was to run the risk of saying that it was impossible for Him to know all things 1 Str., i, 5 ». 2 lb., i. 29 182. 3 lb., i. 29 181. * Prot., vi. '1. » Str., vi. lyi'^a. « lb., i. 220. f lb., vii. 2". 8 lb., vi. 17 153. 9 lb., vi. 8«2, 10 lb., vi. 17 i«^ 11 lb., i, 425. la lb., vi. II 93, »*. 38 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO individually, and that He is not the cause of all good things.'^ To ascribe philosophy to the devil v^^as to forget that evil had an evil nature, and never could be the source of anything good ; nay, it was virtually to make the devil more beneficent than the Providence of God.^ If the devil be ** transformed into an angel of light," that can only be when he prophesies that which is true.^ Even if the devil had stolen it, the gift was not an injurious one, and there- fore not such as to call forth the intervention of God.* But what necessity, it might be objected, was there for assigning the introduction of philosophy to any divine intervention ? Why not regard it simply as the fruit of human reasoning ? Even so, it was from God, the source of reason. Nothing could have existed at all unless God had so willed. That philosophy did exist, shows that He willed it to exist, and that it existed for the sake of those who would not have abstained from evil save by its means. Did the thinkers of Greece utter some truth by accident ? It was the accident due to the administration of God. Did they do so by mere coincidence ? The coinci- dence had been divinely foreseen. Was it by a so-called natural conception ? God, and not man, was the creator of that natural conception.^ To what philosophy or philosopher did Clement specially assign this work of preparation for Christianity ? What did he mean by the word itself? " By philosophy," he says, ** I do not mean the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean, nor the Aristotelian, but whatsoever things have been spoken in each of these sects well,*giving thorough instruction in righteousness along with a knowledge inspired by piety, all this eclectic matter I call philosophy. But whatsoever things of human reasonings they have appropriated and put 1 Str., vi. 17 "». 2 lb., vi. 17 159. » lb., vi. 8««. *Ib., i. 1783. Mb., i. I9»*. HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 39 a false stamp on, that I would never call divine. " ^ Again,. ** By philosophy we do not propose to discuss that way of life which obtains in each sect, but that which is really philo- sophy, strictly technical wisdom,^ — which furnishes experi- ence of the things that pertain to life. And we say that wisdom is the steadfast knowledge of things divine and human, an apprehension firm and unalterable, embracing the things which are, and the things which have been, and the things which shall be. . . . Philosophy, then, would be the uncontroverted dogmas in each of the sects — philosophi- cal sects, I mean — gathered into one selection, and accom- panied by a way of life correspondent." ^ Philosophy, then, is the apprehension of truth, — in particular, the truth about God, and the attainment of a way of life correspondent to the truth apprehended. Its goal is rectitude of reason and purity of life.* This view of philosophy explains, on the one hand, his admiration for Plato,* and on the other, his detestation both of the theology and the moral teaching of Epicurus. He explains away the teaching of Plato in the Republic as to the community of women, and holds that Marcion found support for his heresies only by a misuse of the Platonic principles at once thankless and ignorant.^ He is in sympathy with all that is best in Stoicism, and has transferred to his own way of thinking many of its technical terms and formulas ; but he is so far from being bhnd to its defects that he describes its conception of the Divinity per- vading all matter as a clumsy degradation of philosophy.'^ He can be fair even to Epicureanism. While he regards ^ Str., i, 7 ^''. (piXoaocpiav Se ov t^v 'Stooik^v X^yco ovdk r^v TiXaTWviK^v ^ r^v EiriKoijpetdu re /cat 'ApiaroTe\iKT]u, aA\' oaa eXprirai Trap' eKaa-Trj tuv alp^aeuv Tovrwv Ka\cos, ZLKaioaijvt\v ixera fvcre^ovs iiriarrjixris iKdiSdcxKouTa, rovro avfivav t6 iKKiKTiKbv (f)i\o(ro, &c. ^ lb., ii. 6 27. 54 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO From the person of the Teacher it follows that, in respect of substance, our teaching is perfect. He who suffered out of love to us would not have kept back anything with a view to our instruction in knowledge.^ In defence of the Christian faith Clement presents some grounds of a more definite character. ** They say that a proof is either the antecedent, or the coincident, or the consequent. The discovery of what is sought concerning God is the teaching through His Son ; and the proof of our Saviour being the Son of God is the prophecies announcing Him which pre- ceded His coming, and the testimony regarding Him which coincided with His birth in the world; and, in addition, His powers proclaimed and openly shown after His ascen- sion." 2 " Undoubtedly of the coming of the Lord, who was our teacher, to men there were myriad indicators, proclaimers, precursors from the beginning, from the foundation of the world, intimating beforehand by words and deeds, prophesying that He would come, and when, and where, and what should be the signs." ^ Thus, apparently, the argument from prophecy is the most weighty argument, but it must be taken along with the evidence of the working of a living Christ. The miraculous in the sphere of knowledge impressed him more than the miraculous in the sphere of action. He speaks of the latter as a concession to men in a lower stage of spiritual development. " God spake by the burning bush, for the men of that day needed signs and wonders." * He admits it as one of the methods by which God saves men.^ This attitude of Clement is to be explained, on the one hand, by his faith in the power of truth, and on the other by his insistence on the liberty of the individual. In no case is the freedom of the individual to be forced or touched. 1 Str., vi. 8 70. 2 str., vi. 15122. 3 ib., vi. i8i««. * Prot., i.8. 5 Str., vi. 328. HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 55 In a striking fragment he says : " I regard it as a form of necessity to astonish and compel the faith of a man by that which is miraculous, seeing that God wishes a man to be saved of himself, taking only the impulse from the commandment. God does not deal in compul- sion, nor would it be right that the self-determined soul should, after the fashion of lifeless images, be influenced by an external cause." ^ In view of the fact that we know nothing of the context of this passage, it may be unwise to push it too far or to its logical issue ; but it is in harmony with Clement's views on human freedom,^ as well as with the absence in his writings of specific and definite arguments for the truth of Christianity based on the miraculous, and with his very scanty allusions to the miracles of Jesus. As a testimony to the divinity of the Christian faith, Clement points to its universality. It is not limited as a philosophical coterie is in the character or number of its adherents. Neither poverty nor lack of reputation can stand in the way of him who is eagerly intent on the knowledge of God.^ And as it is independent of indi- vidual limitations, so it transcends all national or racial boundaries. " The word of our teacher remained not in Judaea alone, as philosophy did in Greece, but was scattered throughout the whole world, winning whole households of Greek and barbarians at once, in nation, village, and city, and individual hearers also, and bringing to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves." * The reality of Christian faith and truth was evinced by the fact of martyrdom. No doubt, there had been iso- lated cases of martyrdom for truth before the coming of Christianity. " But we see the spectacle every day of innu- 1 Stah., vol. iii. p. 217. 2 ^f^ p^g^j^ j^ 5", &c. 3 Prot., X.105. 4 str., vi. i8i«7. 56 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO merable crowds of martyrs roasted, impaled, beheaded."^ The whole Church was filled with those who throughout their whole life " had made a study of death." ^ This whole- sale martyrdom had failed in its aim, and had only proved the impossibility of crushing Christianity by force. Persecu- tion by the State would cause any system of Greek philos- ophy to disappear forthwith ; but it is futile as a check to the progress of Christianity. " Our teaching from the very moment of its first proclamation was prohibited by kings and tyrants together, as well as by rulers and governors in turn, with all their mercenaries, and in addition by count- less men warring against us, and endeavouring to the utmost of their power to cut it down. But it flourishes the more. For it dies not as the teaching of men, nor fades away as a gift without strength, for no gift of God is without strength. It remains unhindered, though it is predicted of it that it is destined to be persecuted to the end."^ The rapidity of its victorious march was all the more noteworthy. With unsurpassable celerity the divine power had shone over the earth, and filled the universe with the seed of salvation.* The divinity of Christ had been attested by the moral and intellectual influence which it had exercised both socially and in- dividually. It had transfigured and ennobled all social relations. "Those who have betaken themselves to the Father for the sake of wisdom have proved good fathers to their children, and those who have known the Son have proved good parents to their sons; and those who remember the Bridegroom good husbands to their wives; and those who have themselves been redeemed from the lowest slavery good masters to their servants."^ To the individual it contributes the greatest of blessings, "the 1 Str., ii. 20 126. 2 lb., iv. 8^8; Plato, Phaedo, (>^ E. » lb., vi. 18"'. 4 Prot., X. "". « lb., X. i<". HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 57 origin of faith, eagerness for heavenly citizenship, the im- pulse towards truth, a spirit of inquiry, a trace of know- ledge, — in brief, the means of procuring salvation. Those who have been really nourished on the words of truth receive a viaticum for eternal life, and are prepared for flight heavenwards."^ In the double role which Clement had to discharge, on the one hand, to maintain the quasi- divine character of Greek philosophy against those in the Church who were jealous of any contact with it, and, on the other hand, to maintain against the Greeks its inferiority to Christianity, while recognising the divine element in it, he wavers a little in his language while he exaggerates now this, now that, side of his polemic ; but his central principles do not vary. This lofty claim on the part of Christianity did not pass unchallenged. Greek and Jew alike pointed scornfully to the divisions in the Church and said, ** We ought not to believe because of the dissonance of the sects ; truth is strained, when some put forth one opinion and some another."^ The careful discussion which Clement gives of the objection is an index of the importance which was attached to it alike by objector and adherent. Clement begins by showing that the application of this principle to other departments of work or study would lead to paralysis of action. Because there were various schools of philosophy, should all study of philosophy be summarily abandoned? So far from being unexpected, heresies were predicted by the Lord Himself. The beautiful is always followed by its caricature. Because some have let the truth go, shall we not believe those who have kept a firm hold of it? To stand aloof from the Christian faith on the ground of such divisions was illogical. Because there 1 Str.,i. I*. a lb., vii. 15 8». 58 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO were conflicting theories of disease in the science of medicine, would the sick man refuse to go to a physician ? Why, then, should the sick of soul put forth divisions as a pretext for indifference or unbelief? If fruit ripe and real is put before us, and fruit made of wax, shall we re- frain from both ? Because there are many byroads, some of which may lead to a precipice, shall we hesitate to travel by the one royal highway?^ Because grass grows among the garden produce, does the farmer give up gardening ? Such divisions of opinion were the inevitable result of endeavours to investigate the meaning of the truth, and from that point of view were a stimulus to the search after truth, and a tribute to Christianity. The attitude of aloofness would only be justifiable if the truth were not to be found anywhere, if demonstration were impossible, and if there were no criterion of truth and error. But truth does exist ; and he who does not seek to distinguish the incongruous and unseemly and contrary to nature and false from their opposites, stands self -condemned.^ And for this there is a criterion. That criterion is the Scripture itself; and the true, because the traditional, interpretation of Scripture is to be found in the ancient Catholic Church. The sophists tear away some fragments of truth with a view to the injury of men and bury them in human systems of their own devising, and pride them- selves on being the head of a school rather than a church.^ They dare to use the Prophetic Scriptures ; but they do ndt use them in their entirety, or mutilate what they use, and do not deal with them in accordance with the analogy of Scripture, as the body and tissue of Prophecy demand. They pick out ambiguous sayings, glean a few words here and there, and consider the bare letter, not 1 Str., vii. 1589, w. 2 lb., vii. 15 ». » lb., vii. is". HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 59 the meaning. To find the truth we must consider what is perfectly fitting and becoming to the Lord and the Almighty God, and must confirm each point that is demonstrated by the analogy of Scripture. When the heretics are proved to be in antagonism to the Scrip- tures, they either make light of the logical consistency of their own dogmas or of prophecy itself. They disclaim the authority of Scripture, and prefer their own concep- tions to that which was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, and attested and confirmed by the Gospels and also by the Apostles. They lack understanding for the majesty of the truth.^ As mischievous boys bar out their tutor, they shut out the prophecies from their own church.2 They quibble at the things handed down by the blessed apostles and teachers which are naturally attached to the inspired words, and oppose human teach- ing to divine tradition. Marcion and Prodicus were not wiser than the men before them, and might well have been contented with learning the previous traditions.^ The heretics have only a false key. We open the main door and enter in through the tradition of the Lord; they cut down a side-door and secretly dig through the wall of the Church. Outstepping the truth, they initiate into the mysteries the souls of the impious. The Catholic Church existed prior to the gatherings of the heretics; all heresy is innovation. The heretics try to break up the unity of the Church ; the true, the ancient Church is one. This oneness it shares with God. The pre- eminence of the Catholic Church, like the First Principle of its constitution, is in accordance with the Monad, sur- passing all other things, and having nothing or like equal to itself.* Even when all allowance has been made for 1 Str., vii. i6^-^-^7. 2 jb., vii. 16 »9. ' lb., vii. 16 103.106, * lb., vii. 17 i^^, ^^\ 60 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO the polemical note in his criticism, there remains enough to show that while Clement claimed for himself an inde- pendent position on some matters held by some of his contemporaries to be vital, and may be considered as a representative of a liberal attitude in respect of doctrine, he regarded himself as loyal to the tradition of the Church. A traditionalist of the type of Irenseus, Clement was not ; questions of ecclesiastical organisation or ritual had little interest for him ; no emphasis is put on the office of the bishop in relation to the Church or to the truth ; but in his conflict with heresy, the main weapon in his armoury with which he confronts his opponents is the authorita- tive standard, the ecclesiastical rule, which he regards as of apostolic origin. At the same time, it is none the less significant that in the Protrepticus the word Church is not mentioned save in an allusion to a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews,^ that he invites the Greeks to enter not into the fold of the Church but into the domain of truth, that his appeal is to the Scriptures, that often as the word '* salvation " occurs, it is nowhere associated with the Church or its ordinances. No doubt, it may be urged that such an appeal would not have been relevant to his immediate aim, that he sought to bring them to the threshold of the truth, in the assurance that they would thereafter enter within the sanctuary ; and that in emphasising the unity and catholicity of the Church in conflict with heresy, he emphasises it precisely at the point where it was most natural to do so.^ From this survey it is plain that Clement held with great firmness that Christianity, though divine in a unique sense, * Prot., ix. ^; Heb. xii. 23. ^ For a temperate statement of the position of the Roman Catholic Church, as against Harnack and Bigg, see Batiffol, ' L'Eglise Naissante et le Catholicisme,' PP- 295-315. HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 6l was not to be regarded as an isolated fact in the history of the world, and that with regard to other forms of truth, it stood not in the relation of antagonism or complete inde- pendence, but rather as the absolute stands to that which is incomplete and undeveloped. Starting from the principle that the Providence of God had been at work in universal history, and that all truth was from Him, he did not regard any aspect of it with jealousy, but welcomed it so far as it was true. To Clement a religion that appealed to the general heart of humanity and claimed for itself universal homage, and at the same time was unrelated to other mani- festations of the spirit of man, was an absurdity; for it would find nothing in man to appeal to, nothing to receive the seed. The possession of partial truth was the best preparation for the attainment of fuller truth. Clement transferred to the world of intellect what St Paul had affirmed of the world of nature, that God never left Himself without witness.-^ He represents Christianity as the true mystery of which the Greek mysteries were only a shadow, and calls on the Greeks to embrace Christianity in the very language of the mysteries which he urged them to abandon ;2 but there is no evidence that he wished to modify Christian institutions in harmony with heathen forms of worship.^ The ascription to theft of what was cognate to Christianity in the great thinkers of Greece was a grotesque recognition of the unity of truth ; but it was surely wiser and more reverent than to deny any relationship whatsoever. It has, indeed, been averred that in seeking to bring Hellenic thought and culture into fellowship with the Christian faith, Clement was endeavouring to carry out an impossible, if not a treasonable task, and that he only seemed to succeed because he abandoned that which was most distinctive of 1 Acts xiv. 17. '^ Prot., xii. "^ "^ ' Cf. Kattenbusch, * Das apostolische Symbol,' vol. ii. p. 109. 62 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO primitive Christianity. It is said that in his conception of Christianity as having for its aim the individual perfection of man, in his presentation of the facts of salvation, in his view of Christian life as an ascent to God, in his exaggera- tion of the human factors of salvation in relation to the divine, Clement is more in harmony with the current of thought in our time than in accord with the early teaching of the Church.^ That such a charge should have been made, now on the conservative, now on the liberal side, in the eighteenth century, is intelligible,^ but it is somewhat of an anachronism to-day. It is plain that our view of such objections to the aim as well as to the results of his method will depend very largely on what our view of primitive Christianity is. Unless it be illegitimate or treasonable to put things in a diiferent perspective, unless it be held that to emphasise certain truths involves disloyalty to others, Clement is not to be blamed for bringing Christianity into the moulds of his early life and training. What teacher, in his discrimination of what is relatively important or un- important, is not influenced by his own intellectual or spiritual history ? To have created a new terminology would have divorced Christianity from all relation to the past — the very thing which Clement was determined to avoid. Platonic, Stoic, Aristotelian terms, definitions, and phrases repeatedly occur. But this power to assimilate is surely a symptom of life, the characteristic of every healthy organism. It is only when it is a question of the introduction of a foreign body, of something actually hostile to that which has assimilated it, of something in the present case that is inconsistent alike with the primitive form of the Gospel or 1 Kutter, * Schweizer Theolog. Zeit.' 1899. ^ Cf. Walch, ' Miscell. Sacr.,' vol. ii. p. 516. * De Erroribus C. A. eorumque causis.' Semler, ' Gesch. d. christ. Glaubens,' vol. ii. p. 133. HELLENIC CULTURE AND PHILOSOPHY 63 its natural inner development, that foreign influence can be established. The elements in the theology and ethics of Clement that may be assigned to the undue influence of Hellenic bias or culture will be noted in the course of the exposition. This at least is certain, that Clement was him- self unconscious of any disloyalty to the teaching of the Church ; and while he faced the situation of the time with intellectual courage, he did not dream of making any con- cession to the Hellenic culture around him that either trans- formed or deformed the Christian faith. On the contrary, he maintained that his teaching derived breath and life from the Scriptures of the Lord ; ^ and he believed that he was loyal to the Church when he sought to bring all truth under its shadow. If all truth were from God, a conflict in truth was impossible. The problem of the Church in Alexandria was to adjust itself to the intellectual impulse from which philosophy in all its schools derived its being ; and Clement held that to make the Church and its doctrine a non-intellectual preserve was fatal to its usefulness, as well as to its claims to master and permeate the world. It has often been observed that he lived in an age of transition. It was so in regard to doctrine, the authority of the Church, and the Canon of the New Testament. In Alexandria, in particular, it was so in regard to the relation of the Church to intellectual culture. In such an age the attitude of a thinker is sometimes of more importance than the results which he achieves. And the attitude of Clement was that of one who believed that a Christianity which could claim for itself all that was highest in the thought of the past could alone face the future with confidence. The problem of the Church to-day is, in loyalty to the past, to adjust itself to the new forces in the thought of our time. And, ^ Str., vii. i^. 64 CHRISTIANITY & HELLENIC CULTURE & PHILOSOPHY surely, there can be little doubt that it will act wisely if it adopts the principles that underlie the attitude of Clement. Intellectual monasticism is as bad for the Church as moral monasticism was for the individual, and can only end in lopsidedness of development or impoverishment. In regard to other forms of religion, for example, there can be no doubt that the wise procedure is that of Clement, to re- cognise what in them is cognate to Christianity and work from that as relatively true ; for Christianity does not call upon us to postulate the absolute falsity of other religions, but its own absolute truth. And of a like nature will be our attitude to all the intellectual forces and movements of the present. The Christian thinker who adopts the position of Clement need not regard these with any hostile or even unsympathetic eye; he can recognise in each of them a manifestation of the one Word who is " the sleepless guard of humanity," ^ and will only be hostile when they claim to represent not one but the only aspect of truth. In this way the pre-eminence of Christianity is maintained: it is not dishonoured, though other gifts of God are honoured; for all science, all art, all philosophy, regarded in their ideal function, are the inspiration of the one God who speaks to-day as He spoke to the fathers of old, " by diverse portions and in divers manners." 1 Psed., iii. 8 4*. 65 LECTURE III. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. To have a right conception of God in Himself, and in His relation to the universe and to man, is the essential basis not only of Christian thought but of all thought whatsoever. The ethical ideal of Clement was an ever-growing likeness to God, but this was inseparably related to intellectual cognition of Him. That this knowledge was hard to realise Clement well knew. But the difficulty of the investigation furnished no ground for abandoning the inquiry, as some suggested, but rather the contrary. We must continue to inquire in order that we may say what ought to be said, and hear what ought to be heard, concerning Him. Only one limitation is necessary. All inquiry must be conditioned by the faith.^ Here, as elsewhere, Clement remains faithful to his eclectic principles. We find in his doctrine of God clear evidence of the influence of Plato, still clearer of the influence of Philo. This eclecticism leads him into paradoxes and apparent contradictions. At times the conception of God seems to be purely philosophical, and the Christian element a mere graft, or even an accretion. At other times his presentation seems to be fundamentally Christian ; and in this case a main interest of his doctrine of God does not 1 Stah., vol. iii. p. 228, fr. 67. E 66 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD lie in what he has appropriated or assimilated, but in his own point of view which made that appropriation possible. No thinker of the early Church realised with more earnestness the necessity and the dignity of the knowledge of God. It has even been brought as a charge against him that to him Christianity is essentially a knowledge of God. **The knowledge of the truly existent God," he says, "is the immutable beginning and foundation of life: to be ignorant of Him is death, but to have full knowledge of Him and become like unto Him is the only life." ^ If it were possible to distinguish between the knowledge of God and eternal salvation, and such alternative choice were put before the ideal Christian, he would without any hesitation whatsoever choose the knowledge of God.^ But to know Him we must first be assured of His existence. " He that cometh to God must believe that He is." This need not be demonstrated. To demand demonstration of the exist- ence of God is to raise a question, the very putting of which deserves punishment.^ Christianity confirms the doctrine of a Providence and presupposes it. With the abolition of theism Christianity becomes a myth.* But though such demonstration is superfluous, we may appeal to the testi- mony borne by the order of the universe, by the spirit of man, and by the universal consciousness of mankind. The Providence of God is manifest from the vision of all things that are seen, the works of skill and wisdom, both of things that come into existence in due order and of those which are made manifest in due order.^ The voice of God — as even the philosophers have noted — may be heard by all who give earnest contemplation to the constitution of the universe, which owes its being and its unceasing subsistence to Him.^ The wisest of the Greeks have ascribed the pre-eminence to 1 Q. D., 7. 2 str., iv. 22 136. 3 lb., V. I «. * lb., i. II 52. 6 lb., V. I «. « lb., V. I4»» ; V. I «. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 67 " the invisible, sole, most powerful, most skilful, and princi- pal cause of all that is fairest." ^ God gave to the Gentiles the stars for worship, that through the worship of the stars they might rise to the Maker of them.^ And to this con- viction, which is borne in upon us by the wisdom and order manifest in the world without, the inner voice of the spirit of man is responsive. " Into all men whatsoever a certain divine effluence has been instilled ; wherefore, though unwillingly, they confess that God is one, indestructible, and unoriginated." ^ A divine power is at work in the Providence which is exercised in relation to us. Such a Providence is inconsistent with the hypothesis of many gods. There is, then, only one God who truly is and subsists.* This belief in the existence of God is universal, and is essential to true life. ** No race of men anywhere, tillers of the soil, or nomads, or even dwellers in cities, can live unless it has previously received faith in One who is better. Every nation alike in the east and the west, the north and the south, has one and the same conception regarding Him who has established the hegemony." ^ In like manner the common consciousness of mankind bears witness by its ordinary forms of speech to the existence of One who is Almighty.^ If the conception of God be thus innate and universal, how comes it that belief in Him is not universal, that His existence is ignored or denied by many ? Such unbelief is moral rather than intellectual in its origin, and arises in part from the apparent victory of unrighteousness in the world and misconception as to the true ground of that apparent victory, and in part from the moral disorders of men themselves. Some men looking at the existence of injustice which passes unchastened think 1 Str., V. 14 134. 2 lb., vi. 14 "0, "1. » Prot, vi. es. Cf. xii. '^o. * lb., X. io» ; Str., v. 13 ^. « Str., v. 14 ^. « lb., V. 14 135. 6S THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD that there is no God. They do not observe, says Clement, the self-determination of the soul, and that it cannot be enslaved. Like these in opinion are those who from in- continence in pleasures fall into pains out of the common course and unlooked-for accidents, and sinking under their calamities say that there is no God, or that, if He exists, He does not oversee all things.^ This universal conviction, however, did not carry with it oneness of conception. That the conceptions of God varied with the moral character of men and were determined thereby, and that this in turn reacted on their moral life, is again and again emphasised.^ A mere belief in God, unless accompanied by a right ap- prehension of the God in whom we ought to believe, was accordingly of no value. Apart from the numerous passages where his conception of God comes out incidentally, there are at least three occa- sions on which he gives a formal definition ; and though the second is professedly based on a saying of the Lord, and there is a scriptural phrase in the third, they are all purely philosophical. "In the case of God," he says, "being is God. The Divine being is something eternal and without beginning and which cannot be circumscribed, and is the cause of things that exist." ^ Again — "What is God? God is spirit, as also the Lord says. Now spirit is truly essence, bodiless, and that which cannot be circumscribed. And that is bodiless which is not completed by means of a body, whose existence is not in breadth, length, and depth. And that cannot be circumscribed of which there is no place, which is altogether in all things, and is in each whole and indepen- dently the same."* Again — *'No one can form any con- ception of God according to His worth ; but to form a conception of Him as far as it is possible, let him conceive 1 Sir., vii. 3". 2 cf. ib., vii. 3^4. y^i ^w * Stah., vol. iii. p. 219. * lb., p. 220. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 69 of * light inaccessible,' great, incomprehensible, and most fair — of light, which has embraced within itself every power that is good, every gracious excellence, which cares for all, is pitiful, passionless, good, knows all things, foreknows all things, is pure, sweet, bright, unmixed." ^ The first two definitions are concerned solely with the essence — the essential nature — of God ; in the third an ethical element enters into the conception. It is important to keep the first two definitions especially in mind, when we find descrip- tions that have caused some to claim Clement, if not as an agnostic, at least as a precursor of Hamilton and Mansel. Clement repeatedly emphasises the transcendence of God. " The God of the universe," he says, ** is above all speech, all perception, all thought." ^ "The discourse concerning God is most difficult to deal with."^ " The subject of God embraces not one thing but ten thousand things. There is a difference between seeking God and seeking things about God. In this, as in everything else, the accidents are to be distinguished from the essence."* "The Governor of the universe is a Being hard to comprehend and apprehend, always receding and withdrawing from him who pursues. . . . God is not in darkness or in place, but above place and time and the property of things that have come into being. Wherefore He is never in a part, neither containing nor contained, either by way of definition, limitation, or ot section."^ A kindred thought is developed elsewhere. " How can that be expressed," he asks, " which is neither genus, nor species, nor individual, nor number, — nay more, is neither an accident nor that to which an accident happens? One cannot rightly call Him whole. For on account of His greatness He is ranked as the whole, and ^ Ec. Pr., 21, Cf. Adum. in I Joan., p. 210. "Quia deus," inquit, "lumen est : non essentiam divinam exprimit, sed declarare volens majestatem dei." 2 Str., V. io6». 3 lb., V. 12 8^ -* lb., vi. 17^^. ^ lb., ii. 2^, ». 70 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD is the Father of the universe. Nor are any parts to be predicated of Him. For the One is indivisible, wherefore, also, He is infinite, not so much because conceived as impossible to be embraced, but with reference to His being without dimensions and not having a limit. And, therefore, He is without form and name. And if we name Him, we do not do so, properly speaking, calling him either the One, or the Good, or Mind, or the Absolute, or Father, or God, or Creator, or Lord.^ We do not speak of de- claring His name ; but by reason of our perplexity we use good names, so that the mind may not go astray about other names, but may be able to lean upon those. For each name by itself does not express God ; but all collec- tively are indicative of the power of the Omnipotent. For things may be described by their attributes or mutual relations ; but none of these qualities can be applied to God. Nor, again, can He be apprehended by the science of demonstration. For demonstration depends on what is anterior to, and better known than, that which is demonstrated. But nothing existed prior to the Unbegotten."'^ ** Everything that falls under a name is begotten."^ "Human speech is by nature feeble and incapable of declaring God. I do not mean declaring His name, — for to name Him is common not to philo- sophy only but to all poets — nor declaring His essence, for that is impossible, but declaring the power and the works of God."* If this be so, how is any conception of God, still less any knowledge of Him, possible ? The method is that of analysis or the elimination of attri- butes that imply definition or limitation. '* By analysis we advance to Him who is the first conception. Start- * KuKovvTcs iiroi %v, fl rdyadbv, ij vovv, ^ auT6 rb %v, ^ irar^pa^ ^ Ofhu, fj Srjjxiovjyyhv, ^ K^piov. Str., v. 12 ^^ 2 Str., V. 12 8\ 82. 3 ib„ V. 1383. * lb., vi. i8i««. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 71 ing with things which are subordinate to it, we begin by abstracting from body its natural properties. Then we cut off the three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth. That which is left is a point, a unit having position, so to speak. Take away position, and you have the concep- tion of the unit. If, then, abstracting all that belongs to bodies and the properties of things called incorporeal, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ, and thence go forward through holiness into immensity, we may attain somehow to the conception of the Almighty, not knowing what He is, but what He is not. And form, or motion, or standing, or a throne, or place, or right hand, or left, are not at all to be conceived as belonging to the Father of the universe, though these things are written of Him. . . . The First Cause is not, then, in a place, but above both place, and time, and name, and conception."^ " God is one, and beyond the one, and above the monad itself." ^ All this description of the Divine Being seems absolutely fatal to the thought to which he has given emphatic expres- sion, that the knowledge of God was life. What possible knowledge of, or fellowship can there be with. One who can- not be scientifically known, because He cannot be logically demonstrated, who is a mere metaphysical abstraction, of whom we can predicate nothing but negations, who seems only " the deification of zero," ^ and whose transcendence seems to put Him out of all possible relation to us ? *' A God out of all relations," says Professor Flint, " is no God at all."* There is a sense, however, in which these sayings of Clement are in harmony with Scripture and express a ^ Str., V. 11'^. ovKovv iv TOTTtf rh TrpSorov atriov, a\\' virepdvoi Kal tottov KoX xP^^ov KoL ov6yLaTos Kal vo-qaews. * Psed., i. 8'^ %v 5c 6 Oebs koI iviKuva rod ei'hs kuI virhp avr^v fjLovdSa. 3 Mayor, p. xxxix. * 'Agnosticism,' p. 521. J2 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD profound truth. That man cannot by searching find out God, that no man hath seen God at any time, that He alone hath immortahty, dwelling in light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen or can see, is but the expres- sion in simple language of what Clement sought to ex- press in the language of the schools. And if, like him, we try to define the essence rather than the nature of God as manifested in that which is external to Him, to express what God is in Himself, apart from any relation to the universe or to man, can we conceive of Him or name Him in any other way than by denying to Him any attributes that imply anything that is distinctive of the finite ? This is but an amplification of the thought that God cartinot be described in terms of Deductive Logic or sub- sumed under its categories. It implies that God, the absolutely First Principle, need not, and cannot, be de- monstrated, because He is a necessary postulate of human thought. What God is in Himself only God Himself can fully know. " God only knows the love of God." We can only guess at what He is in Himself by what He is to us. It is true that no category which implies limitation can be ascribed to God, that no name of man can describe His essence, and that our names are only points of support by which we may give definiteness to our conception of Him. The language of Clement expresses a truth which has been recognised by the highest teachers of all ages, and which forms an essential element in all true theism — viz., that the essence of God must ever escape our analysis, that we may apprehend but cannot comprehend the nature of Deity, that He may be known to be infinite though not known as infinite. This method of conceiving God is due in part to the influence of Plato on his early training, in part to the influence of Philo. But though the lan- guage is similar, Clement's motive of ascribing such THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 73 transcendence to God is different from theirs. The aim of the transcendence in Plato was to keep the Deity from contact with the world. The aim of Clement is rather, in harmony with his view of a universal providence, to main- tain the unconditional freedom of God and to emphasise the necessity of revelation. We can only understand the Unknown by divine grace, and by the Word that came from Him.i "The same One who is very far off has come very near — an unspeakable wonder. I am a God near at hand, says the Lord. He is far off in respect of essence — for how can that which is created apprehend the Un- created — but He is very near by His power in which all things have been embraced. Yea, the power of God is always present, laying hold of us by that power which sees, and is beneficent and disciplinary." ^ Thus the transcend- ence of God, in the thought of Clement, is consistent with His immanence ; rather the immanence is an essential factor in his conception. On the ground of a saying preserved by Maximus the Confessor, it has been affirmed that " Clement expressly denied to God any consciousness of the external world." ^ After having stated that Dionysius the Areopagite says that we are called *' divine volitions" by the Scripture, Maximus quotes in confirmation or illustration a reply that had been given by some of the adherents of Pantaenus or Clement to a question concerning the nature of the divine knowledge. Stahlin assigns the saying to Clement.* Some who were vain of their secular culture wished to know in what way the Christians represented God's knowledge of existent things (the real). They supposed that He knew the things of sense by sensation and the things of intellect by intel- lection. The answer ascribed to Clement is as follows : ** God does not know the things of sense by sensation, nor 1 Str., V. 1282. '^ lb., ii. i^. :« Bigg, p. 64. ^ Stah., vol. iii. p. 224. 74 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD the things of intellect by intellection. For it is not possible that He who is above existent things should apprehend ex- istent things after the manner of existent things. We say that He knows existent things as His own volitions — a reasonable argument to adduce. For if He has made the totality of things by volition — which reason will not gain- say — and if it is aUvays right and pious to say that He knows His own volitions, and He by volition has made each of the things that have come into being, then God knows existent things as His own volitions, seeing that also by volition He has made existent things." The aim of Clement in this answer is not to deny the divine knowledge, but rather to emphasise its nature and method in contrast with human knowledge, and so to deny anthropomorphism both in a grosser and a subtler form. Man, who is himself a part of existent things, can only know them by sense -perception, or by a process of intellection, mediate and partial, bit by bit, as it were. God, who is not a part of existent things but above them, cannot know them as such, not only be- cause He is above them, but because of His immediate relation to them as acts of His will. His argument is : God made all things by volition. He knows His own volition. Therefore, He knows existent things as His own volitions. And His volition, in the thought of Clement, is no barren volition, but a realised volition ; for His volition is work.^ Can that be called a denial of God's conscious- ness of the external world ? If we may judge from human analogy, there is nothing of which we have such immediate knowledge as we have of our own volitions and their realisation or embodiment. Does an artist not know that which he has willed to delineate ? In a real sense does any one else know it, or does he know anything else? If any- ^ Paed., i. 6^ : to B^Xriixa avrov tpyov icrri. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 75 thing be denied of God's relation to the external world in this saying, would it not be more correct to say that Clement denied to God any consciousness of an external world, of the external world, as external ? ^ The universe, according to Clement, owes its continual subsistence as well as its origin to God. He is as essen- tial to the continuance of the universe as He was to its creation. The husbandman who casts in the seed is only an agent. It is God who brings about the growth and perfection of all things, and carries forward things that come into being to their natural end. To attribute growth and changes to the stars as the principal cause is to deprive the Father of the universe, so far as in them lies, of His unwearied power.^ Things created have no power of themselves. " An axe does not operate with- out some one to use it. Things do not energise of themselves, but possess certain natural qualities which accomplish their distinctive work through the energy of the craftsman. So by the universal Providence of God, through the medium of proximate causes, the power to act is transmitted in succession to individual objects."^ From this it would seem that Clement avoided on the one hand the danger of thinking of the transcendence of God in such a way as to place Him entirely out of rela- tion to the universe which He had formed, and on the other hand that of conceiving Him in pantheistic fashion as merged and lost in His own world. The relation of the world to God is not like that of a machine which has been set agoing and endowed with certain qualities that make it independent of the Creator. The axe of a workman has no power to act of itself, and can only realise its end when put into action by the will of man ; so no force in the universe has an independent energy, 1 Cf. * Church Quarterly Review,' 1904. ^ str., vi. 16 1« "' lb. ^^ THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD but has only a potentiality of energy which would cease to develop into actuality were it not for the continuous operation of the Almighty. The same thought is enforced by the illustration drawn from the tillage of the ground. The husbandman can only use the seed with the potencies with which God has endowed it, and take advantage of the laws of growth which God has ordained for its development. But every stage of that growth is not only controlled but directed by God ; and were His energy to be withdrawn, these laws which are not only derived from God but administered by Him would cease to be operative. To attribute an independent energy to anything in itself, or to attribute it to any force external to the world, or to any- thing whatever but God Himself, is to dishonour the untiring power of the Almighty. He Himself created, sustains, and administers the universe. Is this conception of the absolute sovereignty of God in the ceaseless ad- ministration of the universe reconcilable with a dualism of original principles ? If unfettered in administration, must He not have been unfettered in creation? Matter may be conceived as formless ; can it be conceived as existing uncreated before God imparted to it the quality of receiving form ? If it can be so conceived, must we not ascribe to matter a certain independence of God, and therewith a certain limitation of the divine power in creating and administering? But that the creative and administrative activity of God was absolutely uncon- ditioned, Clement again and again asserts. '* There is nothing which God cannot do." ^ "The universe sprang into existence at a mere act of His will." ^ " Nothing at all exists unless He had willed it to exist." ^ If, then, even essentially chaotic matter existed before God fashioned it, He must have been its Creator. In itself 1 P«d., i. 3I 2 prot., iv. 63. 3 paed., i. 8«2. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD jy the doctrine of intermediaries might seem opposed to the doctrine of immanence. But that would only be the case if the underlying conception were that in no other way could the gulf between matter and the transcendent God be bridged. But this conception of immanence being denied, the use of proximate causes is not inconsistent with immanence : it is only a method by which the immanence of God is effected. The employment of men as agents, for example, is in accordance with the divine metjatod. But this does not mean that God can do some things but not other things, nor that some things take place with His will and some things against His will.^ It is important to keep in mind the unconditioned activity assigned to God, as we turn to the controverted question as to the view of Clement on the eternity of matter. On this subject widely different views are, and have been, held. In accordance with a statement of Photius, some have maintained that he held a dualistic theory of the origin of the universe. One of the heresies which Photius found in the * Hypotyposes ' was the eternity or timelessness of matter.^ Some maintain that Photius was right ; some that he was in error, and in any case, that ** timeless " was not synonymous with " uncreated." Some have held that in view of the conflicting statements no conclusion can be drawn, and that the conceptions of Clement remained in a fluid or chaotic form. Take first the positive statements which he makes as to his position. He avers that the Greek philosophers took from Moses the doctrine that the world was created.^ He represents the conception of the creation of the world as the teaching of Scripture. He adduces the *' prophecy " in Genesis* as evidence that "we may be taught that the ^ Ec. Pr., 16. 2 Photius, Cod., 109. 3 Str., V. i4»2. *Gen. ii. 4. 78 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOU world was created, and that God did not make it in time." ^ Still more definitely, in an altogether fantastic exegesis of the sixth commandment — which, as being read into the commandment, all the more certainly expresses his thought — does he make his position clear. It is true that the text of the conclusion of the passage is uncertain, but there is no corruption in the part of the passage to be adduced. He holds that to maintain that the world was uncreated was a transgression of the sixth commandment, to be put on a level with a denial of the providential administration of the universe. Both opinions alike are the introduction of false and pernicious views regarding God and His eternity.^ Now when it is kept in mind, as we have seen, that the denial of Providence was in his judgment not a matter for discussion or argument, but rather only for the punishment of the denier, there would seem to be little doubt as to what his opinion was. So, elsewhere, he says that the earth could not make itself, so that it could not be the cause of itself.^ It may at least be claimed that the other evidence should be read in the light of these positive state- ments. With regard to the creation of man, he says incidentally that God may have formed man either of that which was absolutely non-existent or out of matter.* As he expresses no preference for either opinion, all that can be urged from the passage is that the conception — so far as man was concerned — of a creation from the non-existent was not altogether foreign to his thought. The terms applied to God Himself are opposed to a dualistic view of original principles. He is the absolutely First Principle, and He alone is unbegotten.^ Himself without beginning. He is the perfect beginning of the universe, the maker of the beginning.^ Can there be more than one Unbegotten ? » Str., vi. 16145. 2 ib,^ vi. 16^4^ 3 lb., viii. 928. 4 Jb., ii. i674. ^ lb., V. 12 81 ; vi. 7 28. 6 lb., iv. 25 1«*. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 79 Can there be two first principles ? If matter were a first principle, it, too, would be unbegotten ; and the only differ- ence between it and God would be the difference between an unconscious and a conscious first principle. But, on the contrary, Clement maintains, in spite of the maintenance of the opposite by some philosophers, that matter was not to be regarded as among first principles, as this would imply that there was more than one first principle. And he interprets a passage in the * Timaeus ' as implying that the truly existent first principle was one. Even making allowance for the polemical element, if he did not accept the hypothesis of only one first principle, why should he thus have done violence to the interpretation of Plato ? ^ In speaking of the Marcionites, he says that they taught that evil was derived from matter, which was evil.* Matter, in the conception of Marcion, was thus a limit to the power of the God whom he called the Creator. Clement puts off the discussion of the question until he took up the question of the First Principles. This proposed section he never reached. But elsewhere he protests against the idea that the body as such, as being formed of matter, was evil by nature ; ^ and he nowhere indicates that he regarded matter as being independent of God, as from its evil nature it must have been, since God is in no way the cause of evil. It is true that he nowhere says, in opposition to Marcion, that matter was created by God, and therefore good in itself; but he denies that it had anything to do with evil. It in no way fettered the action of the Almighty ; it was absolutely under His control. This does not prove that in the opinion of Clement matter owed its origin to God ; but it is more in harmony with the view that matter was not eternal, and, as far as it goes, confirms the statements already adduced. One passage, in particular, creates a difficulty, and seems 1 Str., V. 14 8». 2 ib,^ III 3K » Ib.^ iv. 25 1«*. 80 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD to support the affirmation of Photius. In speaking of the " rest " of God, he says that does not mean that God ceased from doing, for that were to cease to be God. In the case of God, ** rest " means that He has ordained that the order of things which have Qome into being should be preserved inviolably, and that each of the things created should ** rest " from the ancient disorder.^ He says that all things came into being together from one essence by one Power. And then he asks. How could creation take place in time, seeing that time also came into being along with things that exist ? 2 On the face of it, this might seem to reduce the work of the Creator to the Platonic role of bringing order out of disorder, to that of organising, not of creating, the universe. But it is quite consistent with the narrative in Genesis, which speaks first of a creation of the universe, and then of its ordering. And the "rest" of God refers to the end of the ordering. Nor does the reference to time coming into existence along with existent things involve dualism. No one argues more powerfully against the eternity of matter than Augustine. And yet in the very chapter in which he affirms that those who say that the world was eternal were raving in their impiety, he says almost in the language of Clement, that assuredly the world was not made in time but simultaneously with time.^ So, by a timeless creation Clement did not mean that matter was eternal, but that creation, however he conceived it, was eternal. And his ground is that God must be conceived as having been eternally at work. From the context it is plain that it was not the question of the relation of matter ' ^ Cf. Plato, Tim. 30 A. : els rd^iu avrb ^lyayev e/c t^s ara^ias. ^ Str., vi. 16^^ : TTws 5' av iv XP^^V y^vono ktIctis, (rvyyivoiJLivov rois oZffi Kol Tovxp^f^o^i Cf. vi. 16^^^. ^ De Civit., xi. 4, 6: " Procul dubio non est mundus factus in tempore, sed cum tempore." THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 8 1 to God, nor of God's relation to matter, that was in his thought, but the nature of the Divine working ; and that he declares to be eternal. The essential thing is that matter, whether conceived as created in time or not, should not have come into existence independently of God ; and of his view on that point Clement leaves us in no doubt. Taking into account, then, his own positive statements, his con- ception of God and His relation to the world, the method of creation presented, his attitude towards the teaching of Plato and Marcion, I am of opinion that Clement did not hold a dualistic theory of the origin of the universe. The transcendence ascribed to God by Clement was in part due to his antagonism to pantheism. It is true that in his writings there are passages which, if they stood alone, might reasonably be held to imply a pantheistic conception of the universe. " The same Being is just and good, the true God, He who is Himself all things and the same in all things, because He is Himself God, the only God."^ But from the context it is plain that he simply meant to emphasise the fact that God was the one reality, that He was at once the origin and the goal of all things, and that nothing was unrelated to, nor independent of, Him. So the phrases in the formal definitions already quoted^ express the same thought, and at most are but another way of put- ting the scriptural conception of the divine omnipresence. Quite explicitly he says that it is not as a part of God that the Spirit is in each of us.^ That such is the force of the apparently pantheistic passage is proved by his repeated repudiation of the doctrine of the Stoics that the divine nature permeated all matter, even the vilest. ** How," he asks, ** can any one who has known God endure the saying that we are a part of God, and the same in essence with Him, when he has come to know his own life and the evils 1 Psed., i. 988. 2 See pp. 68, 69. ^ str., v. 1388. F 82 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD by which we are defiled? For, in that case — which it is not lawful to say, — God would sin in part, if the parts are parts of the whole ; and if they are not complementary, they could not be parts." ^ To pantheism, then, in this crude material form, Clement is opposed alike on meta- physical and ethical grounds. The same applies to his criticism of anthropomorphism. It is partly in antagonism to the gross anthropomorphism of Greek mythology that he strips God of all attributes that suggest His kinship by nature with man. " Most men entertain the same opinion of the blessed and incor- ruptible God as of themselves." ^ The Greeks represent their gods as human in passions as well as human in form. Each nation paints the shapes of its gods after its own likeness — " the Ethiopian, as Xenophanes says, black and snub-nosed; the Thracians, with red hair and blue eyes." ^ But if the divine nature were human in form, it would need like man food and covering and a house and all things belonging to these.* But God is not like any created thing in form, and does not hunger so as to desire food.^ The Greek satirists themselves represent the worshippers as supposing that they could cheat the gods whom they professed to worship, or make them connive at their guilt.^ To seek to localise in a shrine the Divine Being who cannot be circumscribed by place is an absurdity.^ It is superfluous to set up any statue of Him as an object of worship,^ still more, to offer to Him any material sacrifice. We honour God by prayer.^ The only recompense that we can offer is a thankful and submissive heart as a kind of house-rent for our dwelling here below.^^ Not only must all gross 1 Str., ii. i6 74. 2 lb., V. II «8. 3 lb., vii. 422. 4 lb., vii. 5". 5 lb., vii. 630, 6 lb., vii. s^\ ' lb., vii. 5 29. ^ ib., v. 11 '*. 9 lb., vii. 631. 10 prot., xi. "<». THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 83 anthropomorphism be set aside, but no passion or affec- tion of any kind must be ascribed to Him. ** God is passionless, and without anger, and without desire. He is not fearless in the sense that He does not turn aside from things terrible, nor temperate in the sense that He rules over desire ; for the nature of God could not fall into anything terrible ; nor does He shun timidity, just as He will not even desire that He may rule over desire." ^ To desire to rule over desire would imply the possibility of being conquered by it, and such possibility would be a moral imperfection in God. For a kindred reason the forgiveness of God must not be limited by any conception of human forgiveness.^ In his eagerness to avoid any appearance of anthropomorphism, Clement uses language which on the face of it ascribes to God an ethical transcendence parallel to the metaphysical tran- scendence. In formal antagonism to his own ideal of ethical assimilation to God, he energetically condemns the thesis of the Stoics, that the virtue of God and man is identical.^ But he nowhere denies that they were related; on the contrary, he says that the mercy of God alone fulfils the ideal of mercy.* To this conception of a passionless God it was objected that joy and mercy are ascribed in the Scriptures to God, and that they are passions of the soul.^ God, rejoins Clement, only rejoices in the sense in which Christ could say, " I was hungry," making the joy of men His own. But surely, we may ask, whence came the impulse to such identification, to such oneness ? The language of Clement is due to his desire to keep his idea of God free from any human element — in particular, from such passions as were an essential constituent of ^ Str., iv. 23^5^ : Oebs Sh airaO^s, ddvfids re Kal dvfiri6vfj.7iTos. 2 lb., iv. 24 153. 3 lb., vi. 14 1"; vii. 1488. 4 Ib.,ii. 16^1 6 lb ii. 16 72. 84 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD human nature, and to represent Him as '* alone in and unto Himself, not standing in need of any creatures which He hath, 4iiade." ^ But do we not read in Scripture of the hand and feet and mouth and eyes of God, of His going out and His coming in, of His anger and threatening?^ Such expressions, he answers, are to be interpreted allegorically, or to be regarded as a concession to human weakness. It was not possible for the Divine nature to be described as it is, but only in so far as it was possible for men fettered by sense to hear.^ In brief, God spake to men as they were able to hear it ; alike in form and substance His revelation of Himself was affected by the material em- bodiment ; the measure of His power to unveil Himself was determined by the capacity of man to receive. God is omniscient. He does not, like man, judge the soul from external movement nor from the result.* He hears not only the voice but the thought. He is "all ear, all eye," if we may use such an expression.^ He knows all things, — not merely the things which are but those which shall be, and how they shall be. He sees the soul naked within. As in an amphitheatre He sees the whole and each thing at a glance.^ The Pythagorean saying, " Pray with the voice," did not mean that God did not hear those who speak in silence ; but that our prayer should be such as no one would be ashamed to offer, though many were to hear it.^ The power of God, like light, instantly sees through the whole soul.^ God is omnipotent. He is the universal King and Almighty Father, the Creator of all things.^ There is nothing which God cannot do.^*^ That God is '* consum- ing fire" is to be interpreted of His power. As fire is 1 Westminster Confession, c. ii. 2. ^ gtr., v. ii^^, ^ lb., ii. 16 ^^^ * lb., vi. 12 101. 5 lb., vii. 7^7. « jb., vi. 17 ^s«. ' lb., iv. 26171. 8 lb., vii. 7 37. 9 lb., vii. 3 16. Paed., i. 3 \ THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 85 the most powerful of the elements, and gains mastery of all things, so also God is all-powerful. As fire is superior to the elements, so is the Almighty to the gods, and powers, and principalities. He is a power strong and irresistible, to which nothing is impossible.^ Clement exhibits with great emphasis the absolute goodness of God. This goodness is based by him on the nature of God Himself, on the nature of the Good, with which God is identified, and on the teaching of Scripture. God does good. He does all good, and that voluntarily and designedly. He did not begin at some period to be Lord and good, being always what He is. His goodness is an essential constituent of His nature. Hence He will never cease to do good.^ If he were to cease to do good, He would cease to be good.^ For what is the use of Good that does not operate ? * All benefits belonging to life in its highest sense proceed from the sovereign God. He does good in a manner peculiarly His own. He is occupied with unceasing acts of beneficence, and remains unalterably in the same condition of goodness.^ But this goodness is not to be conceived as akin to any physical attribute; it is no mechanical goodness, but the goodness of a loving personality. Goodness, no doubt, is as natural to God as warmth to fire — but with an important differ- ence. Unlike the fire. He is not involuntarily good.^ He does not do good by necessity, but of His free choice He benefits those who of themselves turn to Him.^ He is the adversary of no one, and the enemy of no one.^ His goodness is seen in His providential care, which is at once supreme and good, universal and individual.^ It is ever at work, and is like the care of a shepherd for 1 Ec. Pr., 26. 2 str., v. 14 1". » lb., vi. 16 1« * lb., vi. 12 104. 5 lb. « lb., vii. 7*2 7 lb. 8 lb., vii. 1269. 9 lb., i. 27i''3; i. II 82^ 86 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD his sheep or a king for his subjects.^ All things are arranged by the Lord of the universe, both generally and particularly, with a view to the safety of the universe.^ The goal of the ineffable Goodness is always as far as possible to bring the nature of existing things up to that which is better.^ He loves everything that exists ; in particular does He love man, the noblest of created objects.* The argument from the nature of the good is to the following effect. That which does service to another is better than that which does not do service. But nothing is better than the good; therefore, the good does service. God, therefore, as the Good, does all pos- sible service to man. Now, that which does service of set purpose is better than that which does not do service of set purpose. But nothing is better than God. There- fore, God does service of set purpose to man, — that is, He is concerned for him, has a care of him. He has proved it by giving to him as Tutor the Word, the fellow- worker of the love of God to man.^ That the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is good, is expressly declared by the Word. " He is kind to the unthankful and the evil." ** Be merciful, as your Father is merciful." "None is good but my Father in heaven." " My Father makes His sun to shine upon all." " My Father sends rain on the just and on the unjust."^ In view of his conception of the goodness of God, Clement held that no one could be con- demned for disobedience to the Gospel who had not had an opportunity of hearing the call of the Gospel ; that, if this were not so, the goodness of God was impugned ; and that the will of God, which was disciplinary and opera- tive, would save all, whether they lived before the advent or not, who turned to Him.*^ The world, then, is the i Str., vi. 17I", 158. 2ib. vii. 212. 3 lb., vi. 17 154. ^Txd.,i.S^. 5 lb., i. 8 «2, 63. 6 lb., i. 8 72. 7 Str., Vi. 6 ", 62. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 8/ best of all possible worlds. "There could not be any better government of man, nor one more in harmony with the nature of God, than that which has been ordained." ^ To the obstacles that stood in the way of the accept- ance of this conception of the absolute goodness of God, Clement was not blind. Two problems were thrust upon him. How explain the existence of evil in a world governed by absolute goodness associated with unlimited power, where nothing takes place without the will of the Lord of the universe ? ^ How explain the seeming in- difference of God to the practical working of evil as exhibited in the temptations to which Christians are exposed, and, above all, in the apparent triumph of un- righteousness in the persecution and death of the followers of Christ? To begin with, in its essential nature evil has no relation to God. It has no independent existence or reality apart from the activity of some doer of evil ; it has no objective basis in matter.^ " But, by not preventing it, does He not cause it?" No, argues Clement, that is a mistaken con- ception of the nature of causality. Causality is not a nega- tive but a positive concept — it implies activity. Accord- ingly, that which prevents is a cause, but that which does not prevent is not a cause. A cause is only a cause when conceived in relation to an effect. Where there is no effect there is no cause at work. That which does not prevent produces no effect, therefore it is not a cause. To these logical principles, laid down in the last book of the Stromateis,* he has given application in an earlier dis- cussion of the relation of God to evil. To those who kept declaring that that which does not prevent is a cause, — that, for example, he who did not quench a fire at the outset was responsible for the subsequent conflagration, and was 1 Str., vii. 28. 2 lb., iv. 1286. 8 lb., iv. 13^3^ »4. 4 lb., viii. 927, '^ 88 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD punished by the law accordingly, — Clement replies in accord- ance with the above principles that the notion of causality is in doing, energising, and acting ; that that which does not prevent is inoperative and stands in no logical relation to that which comes into being. As well say that the wound was not caused by the dart but by the shield which did not prevent its entrance. To prevent is a causal relation ; not to prevent is not a causal conception.^ "The responsibility^ lies with him who makes choice : God is not responsible." This saying of Plato,^ repeated more than once by Clement,^ had already been applied by Justin in elucidation of the same problem, and had virtually become a watchword in early Apologetics. In a like spirit Basilides had declared, *' I will affirm anything rather than affirm that Providence is evil." So far Clement would have agreed with him. But his solution that individual punishment must always be held to imply individual sin, and that men were punished here for sins which they had committed in a previous state of existence, is set aside by Clement as no solution. It only pushes the question of the relation of Providence to evil a stage backwards, and is entirely opposed to the fact that it is wholly within our power to say whether we shall confess by martyrdom or not ; and on such a hypothesis there is no place for faith in God or love to man, nor for moral praise or censure.^ The question was forced on Clement, not in a theoretical but in a practical form, partly in its bearing on the inner life of the individual Christian, partly in its bearing on the question of per- secution. When it is said in Scripture that ** God tried them," all that is meant is that, in order to test them and to put the tempter to shame. He permitted them to be tried. He permits temptation, because we must be saved 1 Str., i. 17 82, 83^ 2 Plato, Rep., x. 617 E. » Str., i. I 4 ; iv. 23 "0, &c. 4 lb., iv. 12 82.85. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 89 of ourselves, in order to put to confusion him who has tempted and failed, to confirm those within the Church, and to have regard to the conscience of those who admire our endurance.^ " If God cares for you," was the retort of the heathen persecutors, " why are you persecuted and slain ? " This was a problem that was not new in a sense, but was specially insistent, wh^n the Christian conception of an Almighty and All-holy God was promulgated and maintained. Hence its recurrence in Psalmist and Prophet.^ It was no problem to polytheism or pantheism or to a monotheism which was not rooted in Christian ground. To the Christian consciousness, is the virtual reply of Clement, there is nothing arbitrary in the persecution, so far as God is concerned. It is in accordance with the prediction of the Lord Himself, who by such prediction trained us to fortitude. To say that evil-doers justly undergo punish- ment is an involuntary tribute to Christians who are punished for the sake of righteousness. Moreover, it is no hardship for us to be set free by death and go to the Lord, always provided that our witness by martyrdom is grounded on love.^ As for the injustice of the judge, that in no way touches the Providence of God. There must be no interference with his freedom of action. He must not be reduced to a mere puppet, like a lifeless instru- ment, receiving impulses from an external cause.* In harmony with his views on causality, Clement solves this problem in the same way as the general question. Such persecution takes place without the prevention of God. For the fact of non-prevention, thus interpreted, saves both His providence and His goodness.^ We may not say that the activity of God produces afflictions, but we may fitly 1 Str., iv. 12 85. 2 ps, 76, &c.; Mai. iii. 3 Str.,iv. iiso. Mb., iv. 11^8, 79. ^ lb., iv. 12 8^ Tovro yap juSvov arip^ci Kal t})v -trpSvoiav Kal t^v ayadSTTira tov Oeov. 90 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD be persuaded that He does not prevent those who cause afflictions, and that He transforms the daring deeds of His enemies into good.^ In brief, the force of the reply of Clement may be put thus : Postulate freedom on the part of man, and the possibility of the misuse of freedom, and therefore the possibility of evil, at once emerges. Freedom to disobey is the necessary correlate of freedom to obey ; and the choice lies between a mechanical goodness without freedom and freedom with the possibility of disobedience. The latter alternative is alone worthy of God and man. By bestowing freedom on man, God voluntarily, so far as man is concerned, put a limit on His own omnipotence ; and He can only show that evil is not independent of Him nor indifferent to Him, by transforming it into good. With this essential goodness of God all the other attri- butes and actions of God are in harmony. The controversy raised by Marcion led Clement to touch specially on the relation of the Divine justice to the Divine goodness. Marcion had sought to explain the difference between the representation of God in the Old Testament and that in the New Testament by ascribing the origin of the Old Testament to a subordinate God whose essential nature was justice, and the New Testament to the Supreme God whose essential nature was goodness. He assumed, there- fore, that justice and goodness were irreconcilable attri- butes. "The economy of God," says Clement, *'is just."^ Punishment by God does not arise from anger. Its goal is justice. It is not expedient that justice should be ignored for our sake.^ The same Lord who in the Gospel speaks of His Father as alone good, addresses Him in prayer as the '*just Father."* He who is truly God is just and good. The justice of God in His censure of evil does not create the transgression, any more than the physician is the cause ^ Str., iv. 12 87. 2 ib^^ iv, 6 29. 8 pged., i. 8". ^ John xvii. 25. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD 91 of the fever which he points out ; it only acts like a mirror which reveals to an ugly man the fact and the measure of his ugliness. God is good for His own sake, and just also for our sakes, and that because He is good.^ The justice of God is good, and His goodness is just.^ The Incarnation, which is the measure of the love of God to man, is at the same time an exhibition of His justice.^ From the fact that Clement regards justice as indis- solubly related to goodness, it follows that he regards all punishment of men by God as disciplinary and remedial. God corrects men as a teacher or parent corrects his children. In His punishment of disobedience there is no element of vengeance, for vengeance is retaliation for evil, sent for the advantage of him who takes the revenge ; but He corrects for the public and private good of those who are corrected.* Nor is He eager to execute His threatenings. He is not like a serpent which bites its prey as soon as it fastens upon it.^ He chastens for three causes, all of which have a disciplinary end. He chastens for the sake of the man who is chastened, that he may rise superior to his former self; he chastens by way of example to others, that by such admonition they may be driven back from sin before sinning ; and in the case of the man who has suffered wrong. He chastens the wrong-doer that the wronged person may not become an object of contempt and a fit subject for being wronged.^ All punishment is medicine. If a physician who removes some disease is a benefactor, is he not more so who removes some injustice from the soul? If he who cuts or cauterises a diseased part of the body is called saviour and healer, why not the Physician of the souls of men ? Whether God em- 1 Psed., i. 988; Str., vii. 12^'. 2 gtr., vi. 14 1^^. 8 P«d., i. 8«2; i. 988. 4 Sir., vii. i6i<«. « Feed., i. 8 «8. 6 str., iv. 24!^*. 92 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD ploys mercy or reproof, His aim is the salvation of the reproved.^ In God the affection of anger, if it be right to call admonition by such a name, is inspired by love to man. He condescends to emotion for the sake of man.^ Herein is the legitimate function of fear and threatening. It is but the apphcation of spiritual medicine to the vary- ing temperament of His children. The true, the ideal, motive of Christian life is love; but there are some who will turn to Him from fear, while they would spurn His love.^ His conception of the absolute goodness of God seems to be inconsistent, however, with the manner in which he represents God's relation to man. In opposition to the teaching of the Gnostics, Clement lays down that " God has no natural relation to man,* as the founders of heresy will have it. . . . God, who is by nature rich in pity because of His goodness, takes care of us who are neither parts of Him nor by nature His children. What is more — this is the greatest index of the goodness of God, that though our relation to Him be such, and though we are by nature entirely estranged. He nevertheless cares for us. Animals have a natural affection for their offspring, and persons who are like-minded from intercourse become friends. But rich is the mercy of God to us who are not related to Him in anything — neither in our essence, I mean, nor in nature, nor in the specific part of our essence, but only in this that we are the work of His will ; and the man who by dis- cipline has won the knowledge of the truth He calls to the adoption of sons, which is the greatest advance of all."^ 1 Psed., i.,8^2. ^ lb., i. 8^^: dWa Kal to ifnraOes ttjs opyris, et St; opy^v r^y vovdeaiav avrov XP^ Ka\€7v, Str., iii. io<» ; Psed., iii. 12 "S 8 «. « Q. D., c. 37. « Pffld., i. 525. 1° Str., i. 18 »o. " lb., v. is**. « lb., ii. 17". ^3 lb., vii. 3I6. i4 ib., vii. i^. " lb., vii. 2'; Prov. viii. 30. ^^ Pad., i. 8«2. " Prot., i. ». THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST lOI was in the beginning and before the beginning.^ He is the image of God.^ He is the first principle of the universe, and fashioned all things that came into existence after Himself.^ He was the Creator of the world and man, is the leader of the universe, and the guide of all man- kind.* He is the face of God, the Word by whom God is manifested and made known.^ ** The best thing on earth is the most devout man ; and the best thing in heaven is the angel who is nearest in place to God, the partaker already in a purer way of the eternal and blessed life. But the nature of the Son who is nearest to Him, who alone is the Almighty One, is the most perfect, and most holy, and most sovereign, and most princely, and most kingly, and most beneficent. This is the highest supremacy which orders all things in accordance with the Father's will and holds the helm of the universe in the best possible way, perform- ing all things with unwearied and tireless power, beholding the secret thoughts of God through His operations. For from His own watch-tower the Son of God never departs, is never divided nor severed, changes not from place to place ; existing everywhere at all times, and being circum- scribed nowhere; * all mind, all eye,' all light of the Father, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, with power scrutinising the powers." ^ His pre-incarnate activity was universal in its range. The progressive education of humanity was His distinctive work. It was He who gave philosophy to the Greeks.^ It was He who acted as Tutor to the people of Israel, who appeared to Abraham and Jacob. It was He who by signs and wonders in Egypt and in the desert incited the people to salvation. It was He who spoke by Moses and all the prophets.^ So ^ Prot., i. 7 1. 3 lb., X. «8. 3 Str., v. 6 ''\ * Psed., iii. I2 ^^ ; i. 7 ^5 ; i, 7 w, 6 jb., i. 7 ". « Str., vii. 2^ 7 ib,^ Yii_ 2". 8 Psed., i. 756.68. 102 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST far, the teaching of Clement may claim to have scriptural authority for its content and form, or to be a legitimate deduction from it. But there are other elements that seem irreconcilable either with Scripture or with his own funda- mental positions. In some cases he speaks of the Word in terms that suggest an attribute of God rather than a distinct personality.^ There are passages in which ] the distinction of persons in the Godhead is so minimised that he can be charged with Sabellianism.^ There are passages in which the equality of the persons is so lost sight of that he seems to favour subordinationism.^ These apparent waverings and inconsistencies are minor offences compared with the " altogether impious and fabu- lous statements " that Photius found in the * Hypotyposes,' among which were the degradation of the Son of God to the rank of a thing created, and the hypothesis that it was not the Word of the Father but a subor- dinate Word that became incarnate.* The supposition, suggested by Photius himself and supported by some ex- positors of the teaching of Clement, that the writings of Clement had been interpolated in a heretical sense, may be set aside; and there can be little doubt that Photius found in the ' Hypotyposes ' statements which could be interpreted in harmony with this charge. He had no bias against Clement, and speaks of his errors more in sorrow than in anger. The question is, therefore, whether Photius was right in his interpretation; and in our ignorance of all the passages but one on which he based his charge, that question must be determined by the extent to which they find complete or partial confirmation in the extant writings. The presumption that he may have erred is strengthened by the fact that he certainly misunderstood the meaning of the one passage which he quotes in sup- 1 Str., vii. 2'. ^ Psed., i. 8^1. 3 Str., vii. 2^. * Cod. 109. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 103 port of his thesis. As to the first point. Zahn, who on this, as on the other criticisms made by Photius, supports his accuracy, calls attention to a few passages in the writings of Clement that may be adduced in support of the contention of Photius.^ Clement repeatedly identifies the Word with the Wisdom of God, and yet he refers to Wisdom as the first-created of God ; ^ while in one passage he attaches the epithet "First-created,"^ and in another ** First-begotten," to the Word.* But this seems to be rather a question of language than a question of doc- trine. At a later date a sharp distinction was drawn between " first - created " and " first - born " or ** first - begotten " ; ^ but no such distinction was drawn in the time of Clement, who with the Septuagint rendering of a passage in Proverbs before him could have had no mis- giving as to the use of these terms.^ " We find nothing in Clement," says Dorner, ** about the subordination or creation of the Son."'^ That is, perhaps, putting the matter too strongly. But it may be confidently said that the evidence adduced in support of the statement of Photius is far from cogent, and in no way counterbalances the evidence of the positive statements in the writings of Clement to the opposite effect. As to the second point. According to Photius, Clement taught that there were two ** Words," the less of whom appeared to men, or rather not even He. In proof he quotes the following : ** The Son is called the Word, being of the same name with the Word of the Father, but it is not ^ Supplementum Clementinum, pp. 141-147. ^ Str., v. 14 ^^ * Ex. Theod., c. 20. * Str., vi. 7^8. ^ See Suicer's Thesaurus on irpwrSKTia-ros. ^ Kvpios tKriciv fif apxV ^5wv avrov. Prov. viii. 22. Cf. Ex. Theod., 20. t6 7ctp irph €w(ropLK6i,'^ ^ ** There lies here a polemic," says Dorner, " against the opinion that He is simply the spoken, empty word, and not rather intelligence, real, creative power." ^ Another passage has to be examined in this connec- tion. " An image of God is His Word, the genuine Son of * nous,' the divine Word, the archetypal light of light; and an image of the Word is the true man, the * nous ' which is in man, who is therefore said to have been made in the 'image and likeness' of God."^ This means, according to Zahn, that Clement teaches that the Word who became incarnate was not the Son of God the Father but the Son of the " nous " of the Father, and, therefore, clearly to be distinguished from the Word (reason) of God Himself; that the Son-Word was only the Son of the higher Word. But it seems to me that Clement uses '* nous " not for the reason that was eternally im- manent in God, but for God Himself. In the Stromateis he quotes from Plato to the effect that he who contem- plates the ideas will live as a god among men, and he adds that "nous" is the place of ideas, and God is *'nous."* On the whole, therefore, it is much more natural to suppose that Photius misinterpreted, not a part, but the whole of the passage which he cited from the * Hypotyposes.' " The only safe canon of criticism is that which bids us inter- 1 Bethune-Baker, ' History of Early Christian Doctrine,' p. 129. 2 Vol. i. p. 289. 8 prot, X. 98. 4 Plato, Soph., 216 B ; Str., iv. 25 i^^. Cf. Str., iv. 25 162. I06 THE TERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST pret the less known in a sense in keeping with the more known." ^ So far in his teaching as to the Word we move in a Christian atmosphere. But there are passages which take us out of the sphere of Christian thought. When we read that the Platonic idea is a thought of God, and that the barbarians call this the Word of God, we see the perilous side of his eclecticism.^ When we read that the Son is the ** circle of all the powers rolled into one and formed into a unity," ^ we are reminded of Neo-Platonic ways of thinking. Most important of all is the relation to Philo. In estimating the relation of the doctrine of the Word in Clement to that of Philo, two points have specially to be kept in view. On the one hand, as there is no doubt as to the dependence of Clement on Philo in some weighty matters of doctrine and criticism, other than his doctrine of the Word, the presumption is in favour of his dependence here. On the other hand, there are many points of affinity between the New Testament and Philo ; and as Clement is saturated not only with the thoughts but with the words of the Scriptures, where Philo and the New Testament and Clement have common expressions, it is as probable that the New Testament was the primary source. " Image " (eUcov), "impress" (xapaKrrjp), "high-priest" (ap^te/oeu?), are found ^ Bethune-Baker, p. 134. The passage from Photius is examined by Ziegler, ' Die Logoschristologie des CI. Al.,' pp. 87-90. He puts the words dA.A' ovx ovros i(TTtv 6 aapl yevofjiivos before Xeyerai, and translates : " But it is not this" (that is, the "nous," who is in the hearts of men) *' that is the Incarnate Word, nor the Word of the Father, but a certain power of God, as it were an emanation of His reason, became 'nous' and pervaded the hearts of men." All, therefore, that Clement here meant to explain was the relation of the human reason to the primal reason of God — namely, to affirm that *' a certain power of God, an emanation of His reason, became 'nous' and pervaded the hearts of men." 2Str.,v.3i6. ^ lb., iv. 25^^. Cf. Aal. 'Geschichte der Logosidee in der christlichen Litter- atur,' pp. 393-429. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 107 in all as designations of the Word ; but from the context it would seem that it was the language of Scripture that floated before the mind of Clement.^ There are numerous expres- sions common to both which are not found in the New Testament, such as to opyavov rov Oeov, 6 7rpo)r6«. Cf. P^d., ii. 8 '3. 2 str., iv. 12 85; pggd., i. 2*. 3 Str., ii. 521. 4 lb., iv. 21 130. 5 pged., i. 6 25. ^ Cf. Gore, 'Dissertations on the Incarnation,' p. 114. ' Psed., ii. 8''. 8 pged., ii. 8^2. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST ill investigations, he fixes the date of the birth of the Lord as having taken place on i8th November 2 b.c.^ On account of the prophetic saying, adopted by Jesus, " He hath sent me to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," he concluded that the ministry of Jesus lasted only one year.^ On the ground of the rendering in the Septuagint,^ he inferred that the Lord was unseemly in appearance. " He had no form nor beauty, but His form was without honour, defective as compared with other men." But this only brought out by way of contrast the spiritual beauty. *' For who was better than the Lord ? But it was not the beauty of the flesh visible to the eye that He exhibited, but the beauty of both soul and body, the beneficence of the soul, the immortality of the body." * This choice of a mean form of body was not without a purpose. Its aim was that no one in his admiration of the material beauty should lose sight of the spiritual teaching.^ Was this body a real body or only an appearance ? Among the charges that Photius brings against Clement is the averment that the Word did not really assume flesh, but only seemed to do so ; ^ and in this charge he has been followed by others. Now, Clement himself refers to docetism as a heresy which, along with other heresies, must be rejected as out of harmony with the doctrine of the Church." In quoting, in order to condemn, the opinions of Cassianus, he refers to him as the founder of the docetic heresy, and attributes his false teaching to the slandering of generation.^ Could Clement, ^ Str., i. 21 ^^^, "One hundred and ninety-four years, one month, and thirteen days before the death of Commodus." See Herzog, R.E. ^ vol. xxi., p. 149. 2 Str., i. 21 1^; Isa. Ixi. 2; Luke iv. 19. 3 Isa. liii. 2. •* Psed. , iii. i ^. ^ Str., vi. 6^^^ Cf. ib., iii. ly'^^'-^. aeiS^s Se iX-nXvOev Kal &fjiop. * Vxd., iii. 12^^; I John ii. 2. 1^8 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST But he was not offered in sacrifice as the Lord ; only as the Lord bore the wood of the cross, so he bore the wood of the sacrifice.^ We have been brought into kinship with Christ through His blood by which we are ransomed.^ Christ willed to suffer that by His suffering we might live.^ Our life was hung upon the wood with a view to our faith.* He drank the cup for the cleansing of those who plotted against Him and of the unbelievers.^ When He might have been Lord, He willed to be a brother, and so good was He that He died for us.^ For the sake of each of us He laid down His life — a life that was equal in worth to the universe.'^ Still more plainly is it set forth in the appeal which he puts into the mouth of the Saviour. ** I begot thee again, when miserably begotten by the world with a view to death. I set thee free, I healed thee, I ransomed thee. I will pro- cure for thee life unceasing, eternal, a life above this world. I will show to thee the face of the good Father. ... I will lead thee into the rest and enjoyment of good things, un- speakable and untold. ... I am thy nurse, giving myself as bread, of which no man having tasted again has experience of death : I give thee daily to drink immortality. I am teacher of super-celestial instruction. For thee I fought against death, and paid in full thy penalty of death, which thou didst owe because of the former sins and thy faithless- ness towards God."^ "When about to be offered and giving Himself as a ransom. He leaves a new covenant : My love I give unto you." ^ No doubt, the most striking of these passages are in the form of a rhetorical appeal, but the appeal could have had no force unless based on admitted truths. On the other hand, he puts an interpretation on some passages of Scripture that seems to indicate an un- certain grasp of the sacrificial import of the work of Christ. 1 Paed., i. 5 2». ^ lb., i. 6^^ 3 str., iv. 7 ^3. * lb., V. 1 1 72. 5 ib,^ iv. 975^ 6 pged., i. 985. 'Q. P>., 37. «Ib.,23. » lb., 37. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 1 19 He interprets the saying, " The Lord delivered Him for our sins," as meaning that He was to be the amender and corrector of our sins.^ By the " lamb of God " he does not think of the "lamb that had been slain," or "that taketh away the sins of the world," but regards it as equivalent to the "child of God," the Son of the Father.^ By "the blood of Christ that cleanseth us " he understands the teaching of Christ, which is very powerful.^ " He laid down His life for us " means for the Apostles.^ Yet these pass- ages cannot be allowed to outweigh the general force of others, as well as the definite statements to the effect that Christ died for our sins. In consequence of his view of sin as that which was irrational and the fruit of ignorance, he did not give the doctrine of the atonement any prominent place in his teaching, nor did he find it necessary to formulate any theory of the atonement, nor to speculate on the meaning of ransom. He is not thinking so much of sin from the divine standpoint as of its effect on the nature of man. The work of Christ as mediator is not clearly related to His death. Clement himself had passed through no spiritual crisis ; enlightenment rather than the need of forgiveness, intellectual unrest rather than an accusing conscience, drove him to the Christian faith. Sin is defined as anything that is contrary to right reason. Disobedience in relation to reason is the generator of sin. To sin against reason is to be likened to the beasts.^ Sin is slavery. It is eternal death. It is the death of the soul — not the death which dissolves the union between soul and body, but that which dissolves the union between the soul and the truth.^ Hence to be instructed and disciplined by the Lord is to be set free from death.^ All sins are due 1 Psed., i. 8 67 ; Isa. liii. 6, LXX. 2 pged., i. 52*. ^ Adum. in i Joan i. 7 ; Stah., vol. iii. p. 211. * Adum. in Jud,, 16, vol. iii. p. 214. '^ Paed., i. 13 ^"^ ; Ps. xlix. 20. • Prot., xi. "5; str., iii. 9"; ii. 734. 7 pge^., i. 761. 120 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST to choice and inclination.^ The only sins which are not ** imputed " are those which are not the result of choice.^ Though the actions of men are infinite in number, the causes of all sin may be reduced to two — ignorance and weakness.^ One falls into a ditch, for example, either from ignorance of its existence, or from inability to leap across it/ No one chooses evil as evil, but, beguiled by the pleasures attaching to it, he supposes it to be good, and considers it a thing to be desired. But we are responsible for such misconceptions. For to be set free from ignorance and to refuse assent to deceptive phantasies rests with ourselves.^ This emphasis- ing of individual sin seems to leave no place for inherited sin, still less for inherited guilt. The introduction of sin into the world is in some sense associated with the fall of Adam, and this in turn with the victory of Christ over death ; but of the relation of that sin to us and our sins there are no clear indications. The first man sported in Paradise in freedom, for he was a child of God ; but when he fell under the power of pleasure — the serpent means pleasure — he was carried away by his desires and fettered to sins. The Lord Himself in the fetters of flesh enslaved the tyrant death. He stooped down and man rose up.^ Adam was not perfect in the sense that he could not trans- gress, but in the sense that he was adapted by nature to receive virtue,^ and that he lacked none of the distinctive characteristics of "the idea and the form" of a man.^ By his deliberate choice of evil he exchanged an immortal for a mortal life, but not for ever.^ Man by nature has a tendency towards giving assent to falsehood, though he possesses helps for faith in the truth.^^ But we only lie under the sin of Adam in respect of likeness of sin.^^ When Job said, 1 Str., i. 1784. 2 ib_^ ji^ 1566, 3 lb., vii. 16 1"!. 4 lb., ii. 1562. ^ lb., i. 17 H Cf. vii. 16 101. 6 prot., xi. i". ' str., vi. I2»«. 8 lb., iv. 23 150. 9 lb., ii. 19 »8. 10 Str., ii. 12 «. 11 Adum. in Jud., Stah., vol. iii. p. 208. "Sic etiam peccato Adae subjacemus secundum peccati similitudinem." Clement, like Origen and Ambrosiasler, seems THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 121 *' Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return hither," he did not mean naked of possessions — that were a small and common matter — but naked of wickedness and sin.^ If the entrance into life is to corres- pond to the return, the child must be conceived as naked of sin. When David said, " In sin did my mother conceive me," he referred to Eve the mother of the living ; and in any case, if he were conceived in sin, yet he himself was not in sin, nor was he himself sin.^ " By sin, death has passed to all men," — that is, by a natural necessity of the divine economy death follows on birth, and the dissolution of soul and body necessarily follows their union.^ But this necessary relationship involves no participation on our part in the sin of Adam. " There is no entailed necessity between his sin and ours." * No name is more frequently given to Jesus than that of the Saviour ; no word is employed so frequently to denote the goal and work of Christ as salvation. His soul glows with the fire of love to Christ as Saviour ; repeatedly in the course of his discussions he breaks forth in prayer to Him ; and whenever he mentions His name, he loves to shower upon it a series of descriptive epithets, as if striving to express the fulness of his devotion. But we must not read into the words "Saviour" or "salvation," as used by him, the ordinary connotation of the words.^ For his conception of sin determines in large measure the conception of salva- tion. If sin be slavery, salvation is freedom ; if sin be moral disorder or disease, salvation is moral health ; if sin be ignorance, salvation is knowledge ; if sin be death, salva- tion is life. A preliminary, but fundamental, element in to have omitted the ni in Rom. v. 14. See Souter, 'A Study of Ambrosiaster,' p. 198. 1 Str., iv. 25 160. 2 ib.^iii. 16 100. 3 Rom. V. 12 ; Str., iii. g^^. * Bigg, p. 81. ^ Cf. Ec. Pr., 16, where he speaks of the prophets and apostles as saviours of men. 122 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST salvation is the forgiveness of sins. " The Lord ministers all help, both as man and God ; as God, forgiving our sins ; as man, training us not to sin." ^ Forgiveness of sins pre- cedes the training. It is associated with Baptism, which is a washing by which our sins are thoroughly cleansed, and a grace by which the penalties of our sins are remitted.^ The Lord buys us with His precious blood, setting us free from our former harsh masters— that is, the sins because of which the *' spiritual forces of wickedness " lorded it over us.^ Of all good things salvation is the greatest.* To save men is the eternal purpose of God. For this reason the good God sent the good Shepherd. The Word unfolded the truth and showed to men the height of salvation.^ The salvation of men is His only work.^ As sin is disease, a moral disease due to ignorance, the work of the Saviour is pre-eminently that of a physician, and His medicine is tuition or discipline. Passions are diseases of the soul.^ The Word is the all-healing physician of human infirmities and the holy charmer of the sick soul.^ *' The Word has been called the Saviour, as He has found out for man those rational drugs which tend to quickness of perception and salvation — watching for the favourable opportunity, reprov- ing moral injury, laying bare the causes of passions, and cutting out the roots of irrational desires, pointing out from what we ought to abstain, bringing all the antidotes of salvation to the sick; for this is the greatest and most kingly work of God — the salvation of mankind."^ As a good physician uses all methods — fomentation, cautery, amputation — to heal the bodies of the sick, so the Saviour has a voice of many tones and varied methods in the salva- tion of men.^^ His aim is to create true health in the soul.^^ 1 Paed., i. 3'. 2 jb., le^. 3 Ec. Prop., 20. * Prot., xii. ^^. » lb., xi. ii«. 6 ib.^ X. 87. 7 lb., xi. "^ 8 pged., i. 2^ ^ Paed., i. 12 100. Cf. Q. D., 29; Psed., i. i \ 1" Prot., i. 8. 11 Peed., i. ii^s. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 123 As all are sick in respect of passions and evil desires, all need a Saviour. '* Sick, we truly stand in need of the Saviour ; having gone astray, we need one to guide us ; blind, we need one to lead us by His light ; thirsty, we need the fountain of life, of which those who partake shall no longer thirst ; dead, we need life ; sheep, we need a shepherd ; we who are children need a tutor ; nay, all mankind stands in need of Jesus, so that we may not as in- tractable men and sinners fall at the end into condemnation, but may be separated from the chaff and stored up in the garner of the Father."^ The Sun of righteousness has changed sunset into sunrise, He has crucified death so that life may be won.^ Sometimes this salvation is represented as one with knowledge of God, and only to be attained by such knowledge. Sometimes it is represented as the guerdon of faith. It is so precious that if it were for sale, the whole wealth of Pactolus would not buy it, yet it can be bought with faith and love.^ The fundamental conception of salvation in Clement is that of spiritual health. The manner in which Clement exhibits the unity and catholicity of the Church, and its authority in relation to heretical schools and teaching, has already been noticed.* Here is only to be noted the relation of the Church to those within her fold. The Church is of divine origin, and is closely identified with salvation. ** Only to believe and to be born again is perfection in life. For God is never weak. For as His volition is work, and this is called the world, so also His counsel is the salvation of men, and this has been called the Church."^ *'It is a holy temple, — not the place but the congregation; not built by mechanical art, nor adorned by the hand of angel, but formed by the will of God into a sanctuary."^ The Church on earth is an image of the Church in heaven.^ 1 Psed., i. 983. 2 prot^^ ^i. "*. 3 jb,^ j^. ^, ^. * See Lecture II., p. 60. s Paed. , i. 6 2'. 6 str. , vii. 5 ^. '' lb., iv. 8 ^. 124 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST The grades of bishops, presbyters, and deacons are an imita- tion of the angelic glory and of different degrees of felicity among the perfected.^ Of the whole Church Christ is the crown, the head.^ She is administered by the Word.^ She is the mother who nurses her children with holy milk.^ Her sacrifice is speech rising as incense from holy souls, while every thought is unveiled to God along with the sacrifice.^ The Church is the " holy mountain " on which our Tutor feeds His flock.^ In this pasturing, what place is to be assigned to the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist ? The many baptisms of Moses are embraced in the one Baptism. Baptism is represented as the first stage in a process that ends in immortality, and as that which gives impulse to the process. " Being baptised, we are en- lightened ; being enlightened, we are made sons ; being made sons, we are perfected ; being perfected, we are made immortal. The work is variously called a gift of grace, and enlightenment, and perfection, and washing. It is a wash- ing by which we thoroughly cleanse our sins ; grace by which the penalty of our sins is remitted ; enlightenment by which the holy light of salvation is beheld — that is, by which we have a keen vision of God; and perfection which wants nothing."^ It is the removing a film from the eye of the spirit, so that it may have a clear vision of God, the Holy Spirit flowing down to us from above. The perfection, it is true, is only a potential per- fection, for the goal is reserved for the resurrection of believers; but the attainment is one with the promise.^ The Gnostic phrase " filtration " may be applied to Baptism. As filtration, as described by them, is the separation from what is worse, derived from the reminiscence of what is better, and as he who remembers the better must repent of 1 Str., vi. 13 107. 2 P^d.,ii. 8'i; i.5^«. 3 Str., iv. 20"-^. 4 Peed., i. 6^2. Cf. iii. 12 9». 6 Str.,vii. 6 32. « P«d.,i. 9^. 7 lb., i. 6 25. 8 Ib.,i. 6 28,29. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 125 the worse, so we who have repented of our sins are ** filtered " by Baptism.^ The Baptism of the Word is the one all-healing medicine by which transgressions are taken away. The character is not the same as before our wash- ing.^ It is a washing unto the forgiveness of sins, and by it forgiveness for previous sins is obtained once for all.^ We are born again through water, which is a different kind of sowing from that in the creation.* As we came naked of sin from the womb, so from the womb — water — God hath begotten us naked of sin.^ As a spiritual bath, it has a natural relationship to spiritual nourishment.^ The water of baptism receives consecration.^ The Saviour was bap- tised, though He had no need Himself to be so, that He might sanctify the whole water for those who are being regenerated.^ Though Clement does not use the word Baptism any more than the word Eucharist in his " Ex- hortation to the Greeks," he uses language which shows that that ordinance and its purpose and result were before his mind. " Take the water of the Word ; wash yourselves, ye who have been defiled ; cleanse yourselves from custom by the drops of truth." ^ Heretical baptism was the pass- ing through " alien water " ; it was not native and genuine water. ^^ Sins committed before baptism are remitted; those wrought afterwards are cleansed by discipline. In one passage he speaks as if there were a gnostic baptism in contrast with common baptism. " Ye washed yourselves " — not simply as the rest, but with knowledge ye cast off the passions of the soul.^^ As illumination was not only an essential constituent of baptism but synonymous with it, this cannot mean that it was a different baptism, but is only an illustration of his tendency to exalt knowledge which marks 1 Psed., i. 6^2. 2 lb., i. 6 30. 3 gtr., ii. 13 5«. * lb., iii. 1288. » lb., iv. 25 160. Cf. Peed., ii. 12 "s. e ^xd., I 6°o, ^\ ' Ex. Theod., 82— probably from Theodotus, not Clement. 8 Ec. Pr., 7. 9 Prot., x. »». " Str., i. ig^i Prov. ix. 18, LXX. " Str., vii. i486 ; i Cor. vi. 11. 126 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST especially his later writings. Even when all allowance has been made for the rhetorical element in his phrases and imagery, it is plain that Clement associated the working of baptism with the forgiveness of sin, regarded it as the implanting of the germ of a new life, and ascribed to it a spiritual force as an essential stage in the progress towards salvation. It is equally plain that throughout he is thinking only of the baptism of those of riper years.^ The uncertain character of the teaching of Clement as to the Eucharist in itself and its place in the spiritual life is indicated by the contradictory conclusions that have been drawn from the same data. It has been argued that he taught the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Roman Catholic sense of the word ; ^ it has been maintained that his teaching is closely akin to that of Zwingli,^ or even might be expressed in the language of the apologist of Quakerism.* The obscurity arises in part from the fact that most of the allusions are quite incidental, in part from the cloudy rhetoric and symbolism that here in an unusual degree conceal rather than illustrate the thought. Clement refers to its institution by Christ. " The Saviour," he says, *' took the bread and first spoke and blessed. Then having broken the bread He set it forth, that we might eat it according to reason."^ He blessed the wine, saying, " Take, drink, this is My blood." The blood of the vine, the Word who was poured forth unto the remission of sins. He figuratively calls a holy stream of gladness.^ Clement desig- nates it the Eucharist. He applies the passage about the " secret bread and stolen water " to the heretics who cele- brate the Eucharist with water contrary to the rule of the 1 See Bigg, p. 8i. 2 Dollinger; Probst. * Liturgie der drei ersten christlichen Jahrhunderte,' p. 130 et seq. More recently, A. Struckmann, * Die Gegenwart Christi nach den schrift- lichen Quellen der vornizanischen Zeit,' 1905, pp. 115 et seq. 3 Hofling. See Bigg, p. 106, who agrees with Hofling. * Mayor, op. cit., p. 383. ^ str., i. io'*«. ^ Pted., ii. 2^. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 12/ Church, and speaks of the whole ordinance under the name of the "offering."^ By way of enforcing the mutual duties of scholar and teacher, he refers to some who in distributing the Eucharist permit each one of the people to take the portion himself.^ In condemning extravagance in eating and drink- ing, he makes allusion to the abuse of the agape. To give this name to luxurious suppers was to insult the fair and saving work of the Lord — the consecrated love-feast. Nor was the name to be given to ordinary social gatherings,^ still less to the immoral suppers of the followers of Carpocrates.* From the comment of Clement that those who indulged in delicate and costly feastings were mistaken in supposing that the promise of God was to be bought with such suppers, it would appear that in Alexandria the Eucharist was still associated with the agape. In support of the contention that Clement held the doctrine of the Real Presence, the following passages are adduced. ** The Word is all things to the child, both father and mother and tutor and nurse. 'Eat My flesh,' He says, * and drink My blood.' This appropriate nourishment the Lord provides, and holds out flesh and pours forth blood, and nothing is awanting to the growth of His children."^ But elsewhere he says that the knowledge of the divine essence is the eating and drinking of the divine Word.^ He bound, it is said, ** the colt to the vine."^ This means, says Clement, that He bound the simple and child-like people to the Word who is a vine. For the vine produces wine as the Word produces blood, and both produce drink to the saving health of men, the one, wine for the body, the other, blood for the spirit.^ The bread and wine set forth by Melchisedek was consecrated food — a type of the Eucharist.^ The good Samaritan is Christ who pours the wine, the blood of the wine of David, 1 Str., i. I99«; Prov. ix. 17. 2 ^^y., i. i 5. 3 p^gd., ii. i*. * Str., iii. 2 10. 5 Psed., i. 6*2. « Str., v. 1066. Cf. Psed., i. 6^^ ' Gen. xlix. 11. 8 pge^., i. 5 is, 9 Str., iv. 2$ ^^\ \ 128 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST upon our wounded souls.^ " The bread and the oil are con- secrated by the power of the name of God, being in appear- ance the same as when they were received, but transformed by the power into a spiritual power." ^ This might mean that the bread had been altered in substance, or simply that it had become the vehicle or medium of a spiritual power. But it cannot be pressed into the argument, for in all probability it belongs to Theodotus, not to Clement. In one passage the literal and the symbolic seem intermingled. ** The blood of the Lord is twofold. The one is fleshly, by which we have been redeemed from corruption ; the other is spiritual, by which we have been anointed. To drink the blood of Jesus is to share in the incorruption of the Lord. The Spirit is the force of the Word, as the blood is of the flesh. Analogously, therefore, the wine is mingled with water and the Spirit with man. The mixture furnishes a banquet for faith, the Spirit conducts to immortality. The mixture of both — of that which is drunk and the Word — is called Eucharist, a grace renowned and fair. Those who, according to faith, participate in it are sanctified in body and soul, the will of the Father mingling in mystical fashion the divine mixture — the man — with the Spirit and the Word."^ So further he speaks of heavenly food,* of divine and spiritual food,^ of the eating of Christ, of the nourishment — the Lord Jesus — sanctified human flesh.^ On the strength of these passages it has been argued that in the Eucharist the body and blood of Christ are received, the Lord Himself in His humanity and His Godhead, and that the effects of this participation are union with Christ, holiness in body and soul, the conquest of the passions and the immortality of the body.^ On the face of it, the contention has apparent 1 Q. D., 29. 2 Ex. Theod., 82. » Psed., ii. 2 !», '^. 4 Ib.,ii. I 4. 5 ib.^ ii. 1 9. 6 11,.^ i, 643. ' Struckmann, op. cit., pp. 1 15-139. Cf. Batiffol, ' L'Eucharistie,' " pp. 248-261. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 129 force ; and he who comes to the reading of Clement with faith in this doctrine may without undue violence read it in, and into, these and kindred passages. But other passages show that the language of metaphor is an unsafe basis for dogmatic superstructure. For elsewhere he speaks of love as heavenly nourishment, a rational banquet,^ of a righteous meal as a Eucharist,^ of hope as the blood of faith.^ *' It is an admirable thing," he says, "to look up to the truth and cling to the nourishment which is from above and divine, and to be filled with the insatiable vision of Him who truly exists, tasting of the pleasure which is sure and abiding and pure."* It has been argued that **if we read Clement as a whole, and reflect upon his strong antithesis of the letter, the flesh, to the spirit, and his language on the subject of priest and sacrifice," we shall conclude that he is nearer to Zwingli than to the doctrine of transubstantiation.^ But in an eclectic like Clement the argument from logical con- sistency cannot be pressed too far, and is only vaHd when there is an immediate relation between the principle and the conclusion. The language of Clement is based through- out on the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St John more than on the words at the institution of the ordinance : he nowhere quotes the words, " This is My body " ; but the symbolic language presupposes a truth and a certain conception of that truth. It is the case that Clement was far from narrow in his conception of the nature and sphere of sacramental grace ; but it is certain that his teaching went far beyond the mere symbolism usually associated with the name of Zwingli.^ He regarded the Eucharist as an ordin- ance instituted by Christ, whose method of administration 1 Psed., ii. 1 5. 2 lb., ii. 1 10. 8 lb., i. 638. * lb., ii. i». 5 Qi Bigg, p. 107. ^ See, however, on the teaching of Zwingli, Lambert, * The Sacraments of the New Testament,' p. 292, note 2. I 130 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST was determined by the Church, and which, when received in faith, was a veritable means of ** spiritual nourishment and growth in grace." With regard to the period when the full fruition of salvation takes place, its final scope and extent, as gener- ally with regard to all eschatological matters, the language of Clement is often obscure. This obscurity is due in part to the fact that not only the proposed section or treatise on the Resurrection ^ was not written or has been lost, but also the sections on the Soul,^ the Devil,^ the Angels,* have met with like destiny. The obscurity, further, is partly due to the fact that he deliberately in reverent silence omits discussion when it might naturally have been expected ; ^ and that, here as elsewhere, there are individual statements not in harmony with his general principles or their logical development. The soul, according to Clement, never sleeps, and the life of the blessed immediately after death is a self-consci- ous life. The promise as to seeing God face to face is fulfilled after our departure hence.^ The blessedness of a holy life here is followed by increase of blessedness here- after.^ To be set free by death is but an exchange of life ; s to the martyr the gate of death is the beginning of life.® Such an one goes with good courage to his friend the Lord, and is greeted by the Saviour as a " dear brother." ^^ He is received with the joyous acclamations of angels, and led by the Saviour to the bosom of the Father, to the life eternal.^^ Of the millennium he says nothing ; of the Parousia he says little. He alludes to it in an exposi- tion of the nineteenth Psalm, in an annotation on the First 1 Psed., i. 6«; ii. lo^o*. 2 str., iii. 3"; v. 1388. 3 jb., iv. ii8«. * lb., vi. 2 32. 6 lb., vii. 3 13. 6 pged., i. 6»7. ' Str., V. 1412?. 8 lb., iv. II 80. » lb., iv. 7« 10 lb., iv. 41*. " Q. D., 42. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 131 Epistle of St John, and in his address to the Newly- Baptised ; ^ but it has no prominence as a motive in the spiritual life. His intention to write on the Resurrection, whether carried out or not, may partly account for the meagreness of the teaching in his extant writings. Special difficulty arises in regard to Clement's views concerning the extent and final scope of the salvation wrought by Christ. One general principle is laid down — that no one shall be finally condemned without having had an opportunity of accepting or rejecting the message of salvation, as otherwise the condemnation would be un- just.^ ** It would have been an act of no ordinary arrogance that those who had departed before the advent of the Lord without having had the good news proclaimed to them, or having of themselves given ground of approval or condemnation in respect of their belief or unbelief, should participate either in salvation or punishment. For it were not right that they should be condemned without trial, and that only those after the advent should reap the fruit of the divine righteousness." ^ As to save is the work of the Lord, He preached to the spirits in ward. If He preached both to Jews and Gentiles, all who believe will be saved when they have made confession of their sins, since the punishments of God are saving and disciplinary. If He preached only to the Jews in Hades, then the Apostles in harmony with their mission must have preached to the Gentiles there. Apparently this offer of salvation is limited to those in Hades who before the advent had lived righteously ; and it does not of itself imply that even all such would accept the message or be finally saved, but only that all may be saved; but it is plain that the principle of equality of opportunity which 1 Ec. Pr., 56. Adum, in i Joan. ii. 28; Stah., vol. iii. p. 213; ib., p. 223. 2 Str., vi. 6 51. 3 lb., vi. 6^. 132 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST underlies it is one capable of indefinite expansion in the direction of universal salvation. With reference to the destiny of the unrighteous, three views have been ascribed to Clement — the hypothesis of annihilation, that of eternal punishment by fire, and that of universal salvation. In support of the first hypothesis two passages are adduced. The law, it is said, inflicts penalties for moderate transgressions, " but when it sees any one in such a condition as to seem incurable, and advancing to the lowest point of unrighteousness, then already in its care for others, in order that they may not be corrupted by him, as if cutting off a part of the whole body, so it puts to death such an one in the highest interests of health."^ But from the context this can only mean that the man dies lest his influence should corrupt others ; and of what takes place after death there is no indication. Again, '* It is the highest and most perfect good when one is able to lead back any one from evil-doing to well- doing ; and this is effected by the law. So that when any one is overcome by unrighteousness and greed, and falls into evil past all remedy, it would benefit him to be put to death." 2 This cannot mean that annihilation is better than eternal punishment for such an one, as there is no suggestion of such an alternative in the passage. But as he had already said that it was for the good of others that the incurable and unrighteous one should be put to death, so here he says that it is for the good of the man himself. As in the previous case, he says nothing as to what takes place after death ; but the implication is that **the flesh is destroyed that the spirit may be saved." ^ The hypothesis of annihilation may therefore be set aside. 1 Str.,i. 27 171. 2 ib,^ j, 27 1". ' I Cor. V. 5. Cf. Adum. in i P. ; Stah., iii. p. 206. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 133 The hypothesis of eternal punishment occupies a different position. That in a general way it will be well with the righteous after death, and not well with the unrighteous or unbeliev- ing, Clement often affirms. More definitely, in his ** Exhortation to the Greeks " does he repeatedly insist on the alternative between acceptance and judgment, the choice of life or of death, of eternal life or the ** fire which the Lord hath prepared for the devil and his angels." ^ He supports this view by the witness of Greek poets and thinkers as well as by the authority of Scripture. " If death were the end of all," as Plato said, " the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying." ^ Sophocles and Pindar alike emphasise the contrasted destiny.^ Socrates says that good souls depart hence with good hope, and that the wicked live with an evil hope. Heraclitus says that there awaits for men after death what they look not for or dream of.* And this, so far as the wicked are concerned, he explains elsewhere as meaning fire.^ These ideas, more- over, were extracted from the barbarian philosophy. The ** fierce men of fiery aspect " in Plato are the angels who lay hold of and chasten the righteous. For, it is said, *' He maketh His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire." What the barbarians call Gehenna, Plato calls Tartarus.^ By over -scrupulousness in discriminating be- tween the claims of the worthy and the unworthy, we may neglect some who are dear to God — the punishment for which is "eternal fiery punishment."^ Clement inter- prets the saying in Zechariah, " Is this not a brand plucked ^ Prot., ix. ^ ; x. ^^ ; xii. 123 ; viii. 83. 2 gtr., iv. 7 ^. 3 Prot., X. ^ ; Str., iv. 26^67. 4 str., iv. 22 1"*^. » Prot., ii. ^. 6 Str., V. 1390,91. Cf. Psed., i. 7«i. ' Q. D., 33. Cf. Q. D,, 13, 39. Cf. Matt. xxv. 41. 134 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST from the fire," as referring to Satan, and asks, "Why have they fled to the death-bringing brand with whom they will be burned, when it is in their power to live well and not according to custom ? For God bestows life, but evil custom after our departure from the world inflicts vain repentance together with punishment." ^ To the like effect is a fragment preserved in an Armenian version.^ So else- where he speaks of the " fire that cannot cease because of sin." ^ From these passages it would seem to follow that it is the teaching of Clement that eternal punishment by fire awaits the unrighteous, and that in the case of such repentance is profitless and vain.* The exact weight, how- ever, to be attached to these statements cannot be gauged without considering what he meant by " fire," as well as by examining other passages and principles with which these positions are in open or implicit antagonism. *' Fire " in the Scriptures is always interpreted by Clement figuratively, is represented not as outward and material but inward and spiritual, and its function as that of a force to cleanse and discipline, not to destroy.^ There is a fire which convicts and heals superstition.^ The cleansing of the blood of the sons and daughters of Israel "by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning" is likened to a spiritual bath which washes away the filth of the soul.^ Fire is conceived as a force, good and powerful, 1 Prot., x.»0; Zech. iii. 2. Cf. Prot., iA 2 stah., iii. p. 229, fr. 69. 2 Psed., iii. ii^^^ From the context, however, it may be that the thought is rather akin to that of 2 Peter ii. 14. * The passages in Potter, p. 1020, often quoted as decisive of the question, are not genuine. See Stah., vol. iii. p. Ixxi. The passage in Q. D., c. 39, denying the possibility of forgiveness for sins committed after baptism, is plainly corrupt, and in all probability, with Dindorf, Mayor, and Barnard, we should insert a negative, and read, " even this man is no^ altogether condemned by God." « Ec. Pr., 26 ; Str., v. 14 100. Cf. Ex. Theod., 81. « Prot., iv. « 7 pjed., iii. 9 ^ ; Isa. iv. 4. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 135 destructive of what is worse, preservative of what is better.^ ** We say that fire sanctifies not flesh but sinful souls, and by fire we mean not that which is all-devouring and common, but the discerning fire which penetrates the soul that walks through the fire." ^ As with the symbol so with the thing signified. Cocytus, Acheron, and the like, referred to by Plato, are places of punishment, but punishment with a view to discipline.^ ** The gnostic pities those who are chastened after death, and by punishments are involuntarily made to make confession of their sins." * '' Those who have reached a higher degree of insensibility are forced to repent by the necessary chastisements, by the goodness of the great Judge." ^ In some instances it is difficult to deter- mine whether Clement is speaking of punishments here or hereafter, but the above are quite explicit ; and in any case the aim of punishment is represented by him as the same in both. In view of the apparent conflict of opinions, the determining factor must be assigned to general principles. That, in the judgment of Clement, repentance after death was possible, there can be no doubt. The measure of that possibility is limited rather by the free-will of man than by the nature of God. Even for the devil repentance was possible, because of his possession of freedom.^ Such possession, it is plain, made equally possible the condition of final impenitence.'^ The justice of God, as we have seen, is inseparably related to His goodness. " As children are corrected by their teacher or their father, so are we corrected by Providence. God does not take vengeance, for vengeance is a retaliation for evil, but He corrects with a view to the good, both public and private, of those who 1 Ec. Pr., 26. 2 str., vii. 6H 3 jb., v. 1391. * lb., vii. 12 "^^ ' lb., vii. 2^^. ^ lb., i. 17^^; but cf. vol. iii. p. 214, "^ Cf. Adum. in Jud., vol. iii. p. 207. 136 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST are corrected." ^ Christ handed over those who judged him unjustly to God that they might receive punishment and be disciplined.^ The possibility of repentance elsewhere than here is distinctly affirmed, and that on the ground that there is no place where the beneficent activity of God is inoperative.^ Moreover, the Lord is the power of God, and His power can never lose its strength.^ The principle of equality of opportunity, as alone consistent with divine righteousness, tends in the same direction, especially when accompanied, as it is in Clement, with the hypothesis that disembodied spirits possess clearer vision of the things of God.^ If that be so, and no further opportunity were to be given to those who had heard here the call of Jesus, not to have heard the call of the Gospel in this life at all would have been a preferential position, which Clement in his missionary zeal could not have admitted for a moment. Further, the possibility of repentance after death is alone consistent with the conception of punishment as discipline. For, if divine punishment be disciplinary, and only dis- ciplinary, it must continue as long as, and only so long as, the educative process has been ineffective. But is it pos- sible that Clement ascribed to God a method of discipline that finally failed in its aim, or ascribed to the great Physician a virtual acknowledgment of His impotence ? Is this discipline, in the life to be, limited to the unright- eous ? Or does it extend to those who die in a state of spiritual imperfection ? Or is it universal ? No such dis- cipline can attach to the martyr, because after death he goes straight to the highest bliss. From the circumstance that the gnostic pities those who undergo punishment, the pre- sumption is that he himself is exempt from such discipline. ^ Str., vii. 16^°'. 2 Adum. in i Pet., vol. iii. p. 205. 3 Str., iv. 6". 4 lb., vi. 6*7. ^ i^., vi. 6«. THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 137 But for those who are neither gnostics nor martyrs there would seem to be discipline, especially for sins committed after baptism. This is associated with the idea of grada- tions of status in heaven. The ** mansions " vary according to the lives of men, according to the desert of believers.^ The three elect mansions are indicated by the thirty, the sixty, and the hundred-fold, in the Gospel. The perfect inheritance belongs to the perfect man.^ *' The man of faith (the simple believer) is distressed yet further, either because he has not yet attained, or not fully attained, what he sees that others have shared. And, moreover, he is ashamed be- cause of the transgressions which he had committed, which in truth are the greatest punishments to the man of faith. And though the punishments cease, as a matter of fact, at the completion of the full penalty and the purification of each, those who have been deemed worthy of the * other fold' have the greatest abiding sorrow, the sorrow of not being along with those who have been glorified because of righteousness." ^ The punishment, then, from one point of view, is the consciousness of failure to reach an ideal ; from another, it is the exaction of a penalty. Whether such souls always remain in a relatively lower sphere is not distinctly stated ; but for them, as for others, the law is continuous progress. The pre-eminence given to the doctrine of the Word is the most distinctive feature in the theology of Clement. He found in it the key to a right conception of God, of nature, of history, and of man. As against every form of polytheism, the unity of God is postulated not less by philosophical thought than by the religious spirit. But the unity which might be admitted by the speculative reason, the conception of a solitary being in inaccessible isolation, 1 Str., iv. 6^. 2 ib,^ vi. 14 "4, 8 lb., vi. 14^09. 138 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST could not satisfy the hunger of the heart which cries out for a Father in heaven. Nor could the conception of the Fatherhood of God find complete realisation in the thought of His relation to the world or man, or even the highest order of created spirits ; for neither the world, nor man, nor angels, had existed from the beginning : there was a time when they were not. But did God only become a Father when the creation sprang into being at His word ? Was the Fatherhood of God only an accident, or, irrespective of creation, was it an inalienable characteristic of His ? To the Alexandrian thinker the last seemed the true thought. Fatherhood implied sonship ; the Son must, therefore, have been eternally begotten, and thus stood in an altogether different relation to the Father from the universe or man which were formed by Him, not begotten of Him. As a revelation of the Father, the Incarnation of the Son was not regarded by Clement as an isolated act, but only as the highest and final act in a series of manifestations of the Word. The universe owed its existence to the Word, and thus bears upon it the impress of rationality. It is the result and the embodiment of a divine thought, and is, therefore, not dead, but informed with life ; and it is our duty to search and discover the divine thoughts that are there operative. But there is another sphere for the work- ing of the Word of God. Thought is that in man which is most akin to the essence of God ; and the Word wrought in the minds of men. The progressive education of human- ity by the Word, altogether apart from its applications, was surely a magnificent conception. In a way of which they themselves were unconscious, the thinkers of Greece had been illuminated by the Word ; and, if the light had been obscured by the medium through which it shone or came only in fitful gleams, it was none the less light from Him ; THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST 139 and the partial truth created the longing for the future manifestation. In a more direct way and prior to this, the Word had intervened in the history of mankind. To the people of the Jews, alone among the nations of antiquity, He had given a direct revelation of Himself; and the record of that revelation had been preserved for the guidance of men. But something more than this was needed. The possibility of communication between God and man was an evidence of God's relation to man and of man's kinship with Him. But a theophany was only a transitory manifestation, and left the relation between God and man as external as before ; the word in man was still alienated from the Word who was with God ; the theophany must be consummated by an Incarnation; and so, the **Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us." When men began to search into the divine content of these words, new problems were created. Two things the Church sought to maintain and reconcile — the absolute deity of Christ and His complete humanity : it sought to show that He was not a dual per- sonality, half human, half divine, but one divinely-human personality, in which the divine and human aspects were alike to be acknowledged, neither aspect being exaggerated nor minimised. The humanity of Christ had been assailed in Alexandria; and, as has been noted, Clement was not altogether uninfluenced by the speculations in his environ- ment. But he held so firmly by the humanity of Christ that he regarded the Incarnation as the basis and archetype of that which was in a measure possible for all His followers. In the fact and in the doctrine of the Incarnation he saw the ^bridging of the gulf, hitherto impassable, between man and God. He saw in it the consecration of nature and its redemption from the charge of being the cause of evil and antagonistic to God, as well as from the Epicurean charge 140 THE PERSON AND WORK OF CHRIST that it was outside the abiding love and care of the Almighty. He saw in it the consecration of the history of humanity as an ever-operative sphere for the activity of the Word. He saw in it the consecration of every son of man by presenting to him the possibility of becoming a son of God. Clement might have said with Browning ^ — " I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it." 1 Cf. Chase, Lectures on Ecclesiastical History (Norwich Cathedral), 1896, p. 296. HI LECTURE V. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT. With regard to the sources of the moral ideas in the teaching of Clement, as well as of the psychology that underlies them, there has been much discussion and con- troversy. According to Merk, he is an adherent of the Stoics ; ^ according to Reinkens, of Aristotle ; ^ Ritter re- gards him as fundamentally a Platonist ; ^ Dahne as a Neo- Platonist.* The truth is, if we accept his own statement, that he refused to be considered a narrow partisan of any school; that we find in his writings terms and definitions drawn indifferently from Plato or Aristotle; that in his conception of virtue, and even of its detailed applications, he has learned much from the Stoics. This need excite no surprise. Stoicism in its highest reach had much in common with Christianity, and even before his conversion it must have been attractive to an earnest spirit such as his ; and it is probable, as we have noted, that Pantsenus, in whose teaching he found intellectual rest, was an adherent of that system. But in delineating the Christian ideal he professed to exhibit the gnostic according to the rule of ^ Clemens Alexandrinus in seiner Abhangigkeit von der griechischen Phil- osophic. 1879. ^ De Clemente Presbytero Alexandrine, 1851, pp. 300-309. ^ Geschichte der christlichen Philosophic, p. 447 st seq. ^ Dc ri/ci(r€i, 1831, pp. I-18, 69-112. 142 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT the Church;^ his ultimate authority is Scripture; and he would have accepted no maxim from any quarter as authoritative of w^hich he did not regard Scripture as the source, or which could not in his opinion be reasonably deduced from it. "The Platonic and Stoic features are mingled with an inner confidence in the power of the spirit of Christianity." 2 Of man, his nature and destiny generally, Clement pre- sents a high conception. Man is a plant of heavenly origin.^ It is his natural prerogative, as man, to have fellowship with God.* By nature he is a lofty and majestic being, seeking after the good, as befits the creation of Him who alone is good.^ All men are the work of one God, invested with one likeness upon one nature.^ As the image of God is His Word, so the true man, the mind in the man, is the image of the Word.^ To be ** after the image and likeness " does not apply to the body but to the mind and the reasoning faculty on which the Lord puts the seal of likeness.^ Man is superior to the animals in this, that by the inbreathing of God he shares in a purer essence than they, and that in him alone an idea of God has been instilled at his creation.^ As to the origin of the soul, the doctrine of traducianism is definitely set aside.^^ Like the centaur, man is compounded of a rational and an irrational element — soul and body. The soul is superior to the body. But the soul is not good by nature, nor the body evil by nature. These two are diverse, but not opposite.^^ Christ healed the soul as well as the body. If the flesh had been the enemy of the soul. He would not have restored it to ^ Str. , vii. 7 *^. rhv T(f ovri Kara rhi/ iKK\Tt6va yvo}(TTiK6p, 2 Gass, * Geschichte der christlichen Ethik,' vol. i. p. 78. 3 Prot., ii.25. 4 lb., x.ioo. 5 p^d., iii. 737. 6 Str., vii. 14 w 7 Prot., X.98. 8 Str., ii. 19 102. » lb., V. 1368; vii. 28. Cf. v. 14 H 10 lb., vi. 16^35. 11 jb,^ iv, 39. iv, 26164. ^ THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 143 health and fortified it in its hostility to the soul.^ The soul never sleeps.^ It is immortal and indestructible. Being formed of finer material, it suffered no injury in the flood from water, which is of grosser material.^ Without the spirit the body is nothing but dust and ashes.* The soul is the final cause of the body.^ The body is the instrument, the seat, and the possession of the soul.^ The whole body, and not the upper part merely, was formed by GodJ Man by his constitution has been formed erect for the vision of heaven, and the mechanism of the senses tends to know- ledge. All the parts are well ordered with a view to good, not pleasure. The body is the dwelling-place of the soul, and shares in the sanctification wrought by the Holy Spirit.^ The harmony of the body contributes to the goodly disposition of the mind.^ Yet, because of the passions inevitably associated with the body, it is a fetter to the soul.^° Natural death is the dissolution of the chains that bind the soul to the body, and this severance is the life-long " study " of the philosopher.^^ The little piece of flesh tends to obscure the vision of the soul.^^ Clement quotes with approval the saying of Plato,^^ that the soul of the philosopher dishonours the body and seeks to be alone by itself,^* and without disapproval the saying that the body is the grave of the soul.^^ A fleshly element involves a dead element.^^ The hypothesis of transmigration of the soul and of purification by transmigration is to be rejected. The soul has not been sent into the world as into a prison- house.^^ It is plain that we have here two different, if not contradictory, conceptions of the relation of the body to the 1 Str.jiii. 17 ^<^. "^ Psed.,ii. 9^2. 3 Str., V. H''; vi. 6 52. * Ib.,iii. 6<«. 5 lb., iii. 17 ^«>. « lb., vi. 18163. 7 lb., iii. 4 w. 8 lb., iv. 26i«». « Ib.,iv. 4I8. 10 lb., vii. • r"". " Ib.,iv. 3» 12 lb., vi. 6^. » Ph^do, 65C. 1* Str., iii. 3 18. " lb., iii. 31^; Plato, Krat., 400 B.C. i« lb., iii. ,4^^ 17 lb., iii. 3 13. 144 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT soul, — a conception which admits the possibility of the transfiguration of the body and all its activities, and a conception which involves the crushing of the body as the seat of the passions and an obstacle to the development of the highest life. According as the one conception or other predominates, the ethical ideal varies, the ascetic element gains or loses in prominence. The former conception is chiefly emphasised in his refutation of the heretics who vilified the body and creation generally ; the latter con- ception comes out incidentally, but may none the less indicate a dominating principle in his ethical ideals.^ Clement puts great emphasis on human freedom. In a fragment of the lost treatise on Providence he defines willing as the natural, voluntary movement of the self- determined mind, or the mind moved of its own choice with reference to anything. Freedom of will is the mind moved according to nature, or it is an intellectual, independent movement of the soul.^ Like the words or phrase which are employed by him to denote the conception,^ this definition emphasises the self-determination of the will and its ground in the natural or divine constitution of man. The will takes precedence of all : the rational powers are ministers of the will.* That is in our power of which and its opposites we are equally masters; as, for example, we can philosophise or not philosophise, we can believe or disbelieve.^ This is a gift of God, who has bestowed upon us free and sovereign power to live as we will, and has left the soul unfettered in respect of rejection or refusal.^ 1 For a full discussion of the nature of the soul, and of the psychology gener- ally, see the treatise of Ziegler, ' Die Psychologic des T. Fl. Clemens Alex- andrinus,' 1894, especially pp. i-i6, 53-66. 2 Stah., vol. iii. p. 220. ' t6 i rjfiiv, Th avTf^oijffiop, irpoaipirtK^ Svyafiis, rb avBalptTou r^s AyOpwirlvris i^vxvs, atpeffis kuI . ^ lb., vii. 7 46 ; iv. 22''®. ' See the parallels quoted by Stahlin. " Str., ii. 21, 22 1^.136. 11 lb., ii. 21 134. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 149 by direct approval and by specific appropriation of the words, he accepts the Platonic conception of the end as assimilation to^God.^ This assimilation may also be described as ** assim- ilation to right reason," but in this connection associated with our restoration through the Son to perfect adoption.^ The end, he says, is precisely described by the Apostle in the words, *' But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life."^ It is the ideal set forth in the exhortation to "be perfect as the Father in heaven."* This likeness is closely related to, if not dependent on, and one with, the knowledge of Him. The greatest thing assuredly is the knowledge of God.^ To know God is to share in immor- tality.® The most perfect good is gnosis, for it is chosen for its own sake.^ The one end of good and of life is to become a lover of God.^ But this likeness has its limitations. We are called upon by the Scripture to strive to know God as far as possible.^ It is impossible and impracticable for any one to become perfect as God is perfect, for that were to imply that the virtue of man and God is the same. All that is demanded is that, living according to the obedience of the Gospel, we should be irreproachably perfect.^^ More- over, by assimilation to God is meant assimilation to God the Saviour, and that only as far as possible for human nature.^^ For to this, too, there is a limit. " It is sufficient if we be as the Master, not in respect of essence, for it is impossible that that which is by adoption should be equal in point of subsistence to that which is by nature." ^^ Such being the end, the question arises. Was this end a universal 1 Str., ii. 22l3«. 2 l|,_^ii. 22l»*, 2 lb.; Rom. vi. 22, rh Se riXos. 4 Str., vii. 1488. 6 lb., vii. 7 «. ^ lb., iv. 6^. ' lb., vi. 12 S8. 8 lb., V. 14 9«. ^ lb., ii. 10 «. 10 lb., vii. 1488. n lb., ii. 9*5; vi. 12 ^o*. ^2 jb., ij. 1777, 150 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT end, or one to be pursued by, and restricted to, a limited spiritual aristocracy ? Was it open to, and incumbent on, the man of faith — the simple believer — or the prerogative and ideal only of the man of gnosis ? The relation of faith to gnosis — v^ith the twofold ideal of Christian life based thereon — is one of the most distinctive features in the ethical teaching of Clement. The fluctuating character of his conception of faith or its application may be illustrated by the varying interpretations w^hich he puts on the same passage of Scripture. He quotes four times the saying in Isaiah, *' Unless ye believe, ye shall not under- stand," ^ and on each occasion he puts a different interpre- tation on the word ** believe." In one case he takes it in the sense of belief in contrast with unbelief, and asks, con- firming his view by a saying of Heraclitus, How could a soul admit the transcendent contemplation of the things of God, while belief in regard to the instruction created an inner conflict ? ^ In another passage he interprets it as meaning that a belief in Christ, who was prophesied through the law, was essential to the understanding of the Old Covenant which He Himself interpreted at His coming.^ Elsewhere he characterises faith as a reasonable standard of judgment which gives a firm basis for the recognition of the divine words and begets full persuasion.^ In another passage he finds in it a confirmation of the definition — likewise confirmed by a saying of Heraclitus — that faith is a preconception of the mind, and adds that as precon- ception is essential to understanding, no one can understand without faith.^ Faith is opposed on the one hand to unbelief, which is the mere negative supposition of opposition to behef, and on the other to hardness of belief, which is a habit that 1 Isa. vii. 9. 2 str., ii. 2 ». 3 jb., iv. 21 ^^. * Ib.,i. 18. 6 lb.,ii. 4". THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 15 1 is slow to admit faith.^ Unbelief dies when faith is shed over us.^ To believe the truth brings life, as to disbelieve it brings death.^ The change from unbelief to belief is a divine change.* Faith is not a vain and barbarous thing, as the Greeks calumniate it, but it is a voluntary preconception, the assent of piety, "the assurance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen." It has also been defined as the assent of the intellect to an unseen object, as certainly the demon- stration of a thing unknown is a manifest assent. It is the beginning of action, for it is the foundation of the intelligent choice which is based on the demonstration given by faith^ and choice is the beginning of action.^ It is the rational assent of the self-determining soul.^ It is thus an activity of the reason as well as of the religious spirit. From the former point of view it is essential to the learning of any- thing ; for if faith be a preconception of the intellect, one will never learn without faith, since one cannot learn with- out preconception.^ As an assent, it is the basis of opinion and judgment and of all that makes possible our intercourse with our fellow-men.^ It is in every relation of life univer- sally necessary.^ The past and the future fall within its scope.i^ It is no barren assent, for it is the doer of good things and the foundation of doing justice.^^ So more distinctly is it with faith on its religious side as the assent of piety. It is a certain inward good, and without seeking after God it both confirms His existence and glorifies Him as existent.^^ It is no mere human acquirement, but some- thing divine.^^ It is a power of God, being the force of the truth.^* It is a force unto salvation and a power unto eternal 1 Str., ii. 6 28. 2 Ec. Pr., 12. ^ str., iv. 38. 4 jb., ii. 6^\ « lb., ii. 28.9. 6 lb., V. I '. ' lb., ii. 4". » lb., ii. 12 « » lb., ii. 523. 10 lb., ii. 12 w 11 lb., V. 1386. 12 lb., vii. 10 '^ " Ib.,ii. 630. 14 str.,ii. II « 152 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT life.^ The teaching of philosophy is a gift, but faith is a grace.2 The Holy Spirit is breathed into those who have believed.^ By bare faith, without demonstration, the power of God is able to save.* He who believes the Scriptures as the voice of God has a demonstration that cannot be gain- said.^ Faith is the irrefragable criterion.^ It is essential to salvation,^ but works must follow if salvation is to be secured.^ It justified even those who were before the law, and made them partakers of the divine promise.^ Yet to those who were righteous according to law, faith was want- ing ; wherefore the Lord said, "Thy faith hath saved thee." ^^ Faith is twofold, the faith of science and the faith of opinion.^^ When the Apostle speaks of the ** righteousness of God as revealed from faith to faith," ^^ he seems to pro- claim a twofold faith, or rather one faith which admits of growth and perfecting ; for the common faith lies beneath as a foundation. The special faith, which is built upon it, is perfected along with the believer, and brought to com- pletion along with that which results from instruction and fulfilling the commandments of the Lord. Such was the faith of the apostles which could remove mountains.^^ Per- fection of faith is to be distinguished from the common faith.^* Faith is akin to trust, but trust is more than faith. For when one knows that the Son of God is Teacher, he trusts that His teaching is true. And as instruction, according to Empedocles, will make the mind grow, so he that trusts in the Lord will make faith grow.^^ Faith, then, in the conception of Clement, is at once an intellectual act and a spiritual act or attitude, a divine force, yet voluntary, no mere theological or even religious principle, but one of 1 Str., ii. 12 ». 2 lb., i. 7 38. » lb., V. 13 83. 4 lb., V. I 9. 5 lb., ii. 2 9. 6 lb., ii. 4 12. 7 lb., i. 7 38, 8 Jb., vi. I4 ^^. » lb., ii. 4^^. ^° lb., vi. 6«. '-^ lb., ii. ii^^ 12 Ro^i. i. 17. " Str., V. 1 2. 14 lb., iv. 16^00. 15 lb,, V. 1385. Cf. ib., ii. 628. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 153 universal sweep and significance, one in its origin but varied in its development, sometimes related to teaching rather than to a person, unless so far as a person is behind the words and commands assent and gives authority to that which is believed, — the faith of the Epistle to the Hebrews rather than the justifying faith of St Paul. As the conception of faith is fluctuating, so also is the conception of knowledge. Of knowledge in general — apart from any Christian or religious application — Clement says that the word is used in a twofold sense. The first, the knowledge commonly so called, is that which appears universally in all men, in which not only the rational powers but also the irrational powers participate, whose nature it is to apprehend through the senses. To such he refuses the name of knowledge. Knowledge, properly so called, derives its impress from judgment and reason, and thus only the rational powers form cognitions, which are applied to things intellectual by the bare activity of the soul.^ From this point of view, know- ledge is the peculiar property of the rational soul. It is the beginning and author of all rational action. For action is based on impulse, and impulse is based on knowledge.^ In a narrower sense knowledge is used of the esoteric tradition given by the Lord to the Apostles, and transmitted by them to the few in an unwritten form.^ This is supported by Scripture, in particular by the authority of St Paul. He says, " We know that we all have knowledge," that is, common knowledge in common things, and the knowledge that there is one God. For he was writing to believers. " But the knowledge is not in all" — that is, the knowledge which was transmitted among the few.* Prophecy was full of this knowledge. 1 Str., Vi. I 3. 2 lYi., vi. 8 68, 69, 3 lb., vi. 7 w 61. * lb., iv. IS^'; I Cor. viii. i, 7. Cf. Stah., vol. iii. p. 227, fr. 60. 154 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT Related to this, but not to be identified with it, is a third form of knowledge — that of gnosis in Clement's sense of the word. It may be defined as " a kind of perfection of man as man, being completed by the science of divine things, in respect of character and life and speech, harmonious and consistent with itself and the divine word." All knowledge is wisdom ; but all wisdom is not knowledge.^ Knowledge is wisdom, — that is, it is a sure and firm science and apprehension of the things that are, and will be, and have been.^ This wisdom is to be con- trasted with the wisdom which furnishes experience of the things relating to life. It is eternal, while the other is useful in time; it is one and the same, while the other assumes many and diverse forms; it is without any movement of passion, while the other is accompanied with passionate desire.^ The pre-eminence of knowledge is indicated by the prophet when he says, " Goodness and instruction and knowledge teach me," thus present- ing in progressive order the guiding principle of perfection.* Its goal is contemplation, the immediate vision of God.^ But it is not a barren contemplation. For the vision of God purity is necessary, and by knowledge the purifica- tion of the ruling principle of the soul is effected.^ A tree is known by its fruit, not by its blossom, so knowledge is not characterised by word and blossoms but by fruit and way of life. For it is not a mere word but a certain divine science, and the light which, springing up in the soul, makes all things luminous in their origin, and pre- pares man to know himself and teaches him how to attain to God.^ Knowledge is perfected by word and deed.^ Works follow knowledge as the shadow the body.^ It 1 Str., vii. 10 55. 2 ib^ yi_ 761, 3 lb., vi. 7". 4 lb., vii. 736; Ps. 1 19 66, LXX. 5 Str., ii. io« 6 lb., iv. 6»9. ' lb., iii. s**' ^ lb., iv. 17"". « lb., vii. 1382. Cf. Ec. Pr.,28. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 155 teaches us to discern the things that contribute to the permanence of virtue. As the greatest of all things is the knowledge of God, in this way virtue is so preserved that its loss is impossible.^ These are the more general characteristics of knowledge, its source, its goal, its fruit : to know more fully what it is, we must look at it more narrowly as contrasted with, and as related to, faith, and as embodied in the gnostic. Two false views of the relation of faith to knowledge must be set aside. The Valentinians, says Clement, assign faith to us the simple and knowledge to themselves. They hold that knowledge springs up in those who are saved by nature in accordance with the superiority of a germ of excellence, and that it is as widely separated from faith as the spiritual from the psychical. But, rejoins Clement, if that were so, if faith were not a voluntary assent but an advantage of nature, moral responsibility would be plainly destroyed.^ Another error, dealing not with the origin or nature of faith but with its object, has also to be rejected. Clement refers to some who held that faith was concerned with the Son but knowledge with the Father. He replies that Fatherhood implied Sonship, and that the two cannot in this way be separated. To believe in the Son we must know the Father, and to know the Father we must believe in the Son ; for it is through the Son that the Father comes from faith to knowledge. The knowledge of the Son and Father is the comprehension of the Truth by the Truth.^ . The general principle is that faith and knowledge are indissolubly related. " Neither is knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge."* By a certain divine sequence and reciprocity faith is an attribute of know- iStr.,vii. 7« 2 ib.,ii. 3I0, ". 3 lb., V. 1 1. 4 lb. 156 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT ledge and knowledge is an attribute of faith.^ Between them there is a natural relationship and adaptation. " As to the man who has hands it is natural to grasp, and to him who has healthy eyes to see the light, so to him who has received faith it is the natural prerogative to par- ticipate in knowledge." ^ Faith is as essential to the gnostic as respiration is to life. As without the four elements it is not possible to live, so without faith it is not possible to follow after knowledge.^ In one sense, faith is more authoritative than science and its criterion ; ^ in another sense, to know is more than to believe.^ In one sense, faith is independent of knowledge, and has to do with a sphere where science cannot act. For faith deals with first principles, and first principles, being incapable of demonstration, can only be apprehended by faith, which leads up from that which cannot be demonstrated to that which is universal and simple.^ In another sense, know- ledge rests upon faith, enriching and extending its scope, and on the ground of things which are already believed, creates faith in things which are not yet believed, the faith so created being, as it were, the essence of demonstration.'^ Faith is the foundation of knowledge,^ and by knowledge is faith made perfect.^ ** Knowledge is a kind of perfec- tion of man as man. To have no doubt in reference to God, but to have faith in Him, is the foundation of know- ledge; and Christ is both the foundation and the super- structure, through Whom also are the beginnings and the ends." ^^ In contradistinction to gnostic perfection, the Apostle sometimes calls the common faith the foundation, sometimes "milk" as opposed to gnostic food.^^ "Faith, 1 Str., ii. 4". Cf. vi. 8 68 ; vi. q'". 2 jb^^ ^i. 17 i^a. 3 ib., ii. e^\ * lb., ii. 4 15. 5 lb., vi. 14 109. 6 lb., ii. 413^ 34. 7 lb., vii. i6»8. 8 lb., V. 16; vii. 320; ii. iiBi. » lb., vi. iS^" 10 lb., vii. 10^5. " lb., V. 426. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 157 then, so to speak, is a summary knowledge of the essen- tials, but knowledge is a demonstration sure and firm of the things received through the faith, being built on the faith by means of the teaching of the Lord, carrying us on to that which is irrefragable and scientifically apprehended."^ In such passages faith seems to be used for the contents rather than for the act of faith. Faith, then, is perfect in the sense that a foundation is perfect ; it is imperfect in the sense that a foundation is imperfect without a super- structure. The superstructure is knowledge, which, how- ever, is not to be conceived as standing in any merely external relation to faith, but as to something with which it is in vital union, as a natural development of it, and a scientific demonstration of its sphere and object.^ This is the ruling conception of the relation of faith to knowledge, though at times, in antagonism to the heretical depreciation of faith, he represents faith as perfect and complete in itself.^ It is to be noted, moreover, that in depicting the ideal Christian under the designation of the gnostic, he emphasises the points in which knowledge is superior to faith, ignoring the common aspects, much more the points of equality. The relation of the leading virtues to one another is not uniformly set forth. " The consideration that he is ignorant is the first lesson given to the man who is walking accord- ing to the Word. An ignorant man has sought, and having sought he finds, the Teacher ; and having found he believed ; and having believed he hopes; and having loved he is thenceforward assimilated to Him who has been loved, eager to be that which he first loved."* Thus the order- is, 1 Str., vii. 10 57. 2 How strongly Clement felt the necessity of faith being supplemented by knowledge is seen by the addition of the words "ac speculatione " to "fide" in his Adum. in i P. i. 5 (Stah., vol. iii. p. 203). » Cf. P^d., i. 6 29. 4Str., V. 3^7. 153 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT ignorance, faith, hope, love. And love is perfected by knowledge.^ So elsewhere he says that knowledge has for its foundation the holy triad — faith, hope, and love.^ In a later book of the Stromateis he reverses this relation of love and knowledge. "To him that hath shall be added, to faith knowledge, and to knowledge love, and to love the inheritance." ^ The first saving change is from heathenism to faith, a second from faith to knowledge, and this finding its end in love, makes that which knows the friend of that which is known.* The perfection of a man of faith is love.^ Thus in every case faith precedes knowledge and love ; but sometimes knowledge is repre- sented as the crown of love, sometimes love as the crown of knowledge. The last is the dominant thought. Know- ledge can be taught ; it stands between faith and love, which are not taught.^ The man of faith and the man of knowledge differ widely in their attitude towards divine truth generally, and, in particular, in their apprehension of the Scriptures. The man of faith only tastes the Scriptures ; the gnostic is their true interpreter. The man of faith is as the layman to the skilled craftsman in the matters of daily life.^ Without letters it is possible to be a man of faith, but not to compre- hend the things spoken of in the faith.^ The gnostic is the scholar of the Spirit. To him the law is not merely a stepping-stone, but he comprehends it as delivered by the Lord.^ This knowledge is intrusted as a deposit to those who show themselves worthy of the teaching.^^ The differ- ence in content and scope is indicated by the Apostle in the Epistle to the Colossians.^^ The mysteries which were 1 Str., ii. 9« 2 ib,^ iv. 764. 3 jb., vii. 10 5\ * lb., vii. 10 ^''. ^ Ad. in I Joan. 4^^, vol. iii. p. 214. « Str., vii. 455. 7 lb., vii. 16^5, ^ jb., i. 6^^ 9 lb., iv. 21 "0. 10 lb., vii. 10 55. 11 Col. i. »-" ; i. '^■^, THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 159 hidden until the time of the apostles, and were delivered by them as they received them from the Lord, and '' now mani- fested to the saints," are one thing ; and a different thing is *' the riches of the glory of the mystery in the Gentiles," — that is, the faith and the hope in Christ, elsewhere called the foundation.^ This insight of the gnostic is conditioned by righteousness ; for as one increases in righteousness, the nearer to him is the Spirit who is the source of illumina- tion.2 Such an one apprehends what seems to be incom- prehensible to others; for he has believed that nothing is incomprehensible to the Son of God, and therefore, nothing that is untaught, — for He who suffered from love to us would have kept back nothing with a view to our instruction in knowledge.^ The Word designed the truth to be a living force, and not to be a pretext for intellectual indolence.* The difference between the man of faith and the gnostic in regard to the truth of Scripture is thus the difference between the pupil, who has learned and is satisfied with the rudiments, and the advanced scholar ; between him who merely grazes the surface and him who searches into the deep things of God ; between him who is startled as by a sudden light breaking in upon him in the twilight and him whose eye has been trained for the sure vision and apprehension of the truth ;^ between him who has but entered on the path that leads to life and him who has been initiated into the mysteries of the esoteric tradition. The difference is one not of nature but of training ; it is not a difference of kind but of degree or status in the spiritual life; there is no impassable barrier between the stages ; any man may ** seek and find," and from being a man of faith may become a man of knowledge. While on the purely intellectual side the distinction 1 Str., V. 10 ^''•'i. 2 lb., iv. 17 10'. » lb., vi. 870. 4 Ib.,i. 10 «i. 6 cf, Ec. Pr., 35, 32. l60 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT between the man of faith and the gnostic is not absolute but one of natural gradation, yet when we pass into the sphere of ethical ideals the transition is not so easily bridged. No doubt, here too they have much in common. All the principles and their applications in questions of practical morals, which are enforced in the Paedagogus, are incum- bent on both. The gnostic not less than the man of faith must carry out his life in conformity with the precepts of the Word, must direct all his affairs in accordance with reason, must be on his guard not only against every form of vice but every form of extravagance, must fulfil in every detail the principle of doing nothing contrary to nature, dare not, like the heretical gnostic, claim on the ground of special illumination to be indifferent to or superior to the conditions of ordinary morality, — must, in a word, be faithful to all the prescriptions necessary for securing moral health. On the other hand, when it is a question of ethical motives and ideals, there seems a clear antagonism of principles. The gnostic recognises sin in itself. He condemns not any particular sin but all sin absolutely. His is not the repentance common to all believers, which is the result of past transgressions, but that of him who, knowing the nature of sin, aims at the goal of entire abstinence from sin, the ideal result of which is not-sinning.^ His repent- ance has no relation to fear ; it is the shame of the soul in itself arising from conscience.^ But this does not imply a merely negative goal for the gnostic, but the contrary. While the virtue of the man*of faith, his absolute perfection, is purely negative, lying in the mere abstinence from evil, that of the gnostic is positive, 1 Str., vi. 12 97. 2 lb., iv. 6^1 Cf. Ec. Pr., 15. ** He that hath believed has obtained forgive- ness of sins from the Lord, but he that is in the condition of knowledge, as one who sins no longer, obtains from himself the forgiveness of the rest." THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT l6l having as its goal the unchangeable habit of well-doing after the will of God.^ The man of faith is limited in the range of his moral activities ; he may successfully accomphsh one or two things, but not all things nor with the highest science.^ The righteousness of the man of faith is not true righteousness, for it lacks the notes of progress and perfection that mark the righteousness of the gnostic.^ Only the action of the gnostic can claim to be moral in the strict sense of the word. " Every action of the gnostic is right action, but that of the simple believer might be called intermediate, as not yet perfected in accordance with reason ; but every act of the heathen, on the other hand, is sinful. For not simply to do well, but to perform actions with a certain goal in view and to act in accordance with reason, is exhibited in the Scriptures as morally fitting." ^ This is in harmony with the action of God Himself. He created all things by the Word (Reason), and the man who becomes a gnostic performs good actions by the reasoning faculty.^ The higher ethical stage is marked , in a very specific manner by the purity of motive, which gives to every action a distinctive character. While the man of faith is influ- enced by fear of punishment or hope of recompense, the gnostic is spontaneously good, acts only under the influence of love, and for the sake of the good itself, and not for the sake of its results.^ His self-control is not like that of the dog which refrains because it fears the uplifted hand.'' The motive of his abstinence is not fear, but love.^ As little does it rest on love of honour or riches or bodily health.^ His courage is not the irrational courage of the child, the wild 1 Str., vi. 7 60. Cf. Ec. Pr., 12. 2 Str., vii. 148*. 3 lb., vi. 12 102. 4 lb., vi. 14"!. « lb., vi. 16136. « lb., iv. 22 136, 143^ 141 ; vi. 12 ^\ ' lb., iv. 22 "«. 8 Ec. Pr., 19. Cf. Adum. in i Joan. 2 ^ vol. iii. p. 212. » lb., vii. 11 ^. L l62 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT beast, or the juggler, but the courage which is in accordance with reason, and is inspired by the love which is the fruit of knowledge.^ All thought even of recompense after death must be eliminated from the service of the gnostic.^ He practises piety, drawn by the love of Him who is the Be- loved. ** So that, not even supposing that he were to receive permission from God to do what is forbidden without being punished for it, nor even if he were to receive a promise that he would receive as reward the good things of the blessed on these terms, nor if he were persuaded that what he did would escape the knowledge of God — which is impos- sible — would he ever wish to act contrary to right reason, having once for all made choice of that which is truly good and to be chosen for its own sake, and on this ground beloved." ^ Nay, even the pursuit of knowledge itself must be freed not merely from base alloy or any consideration of practical need, but even from the desire of salvation. ** For I would dare to affirm that he who pursues knowledge for the sake of the divine science itself will not choose know- ledge from a wish to be saved. If, therefore, one were, ex hypothesis to offer to the gnostic which of the two he would wish to choose, knowledge of God or eternal sal- vation, and if these two, which are absolutely identical, were separable, he would without any hesitation what- soever choose the knowledge of God, having formed the judgment that the distinctive quality of faith, which through love has mounted to knowledge, is to be chosen for its own sake."* Truly the utterance of a **bold and joyous thinker." ^ Of all the characteristic features in the portrait of the wise man of the Stoics which Clement has transferred to his representation of the Christian ideal, the most distinc- 1 Str., vii. io»9. Mb., iv. 22i«; vii. I2«». ' lb. , iv. 22 i^, i*«. ^ lb., iv. 22 1*^. ^ Harnack, * History of Dogma,' vol. ii. p. 328. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 163 tive, even if the most alien to the spirit of Christianity, is that of ** apathy " — passionlessness. It would be easy to point out differences between the Stoic wise man and the gnostic in respect of the conceptions of freedom, wealth, beauty, kingship ; but that has little bearing on the question of Clement's indebtedness in the matter of apathy. He not only has borrowed the word and the conception, but the theory of relation of other virtues to this fundamental virtue. By apathy or the passionless state he distinctly states that he does not mean mastery over the passions, but their extirpation.^ Self-control is necessary, as man is by nature subject to passion.^ It is the mark of the man who restrains the impulses that are contrary to right reason, or who restrains himself that he has no impulse contrary to right reason.^ But even this absolute self-restraint is but a stage in the direction of that complete emancipation from passion which apathy implies.* The gnostic is subject to the passions, such as hunger, thirst, and the like, that exist for the continuance of the body,^ but otherwise every element of passion must be cut out from the soul.^ He who has not willed to root out the passions of the soul kills himself.^ As God is passionless, it were unseemly that the friend of God should be engrossed with the restraint of passion.^ As his Teacher is passion- less, so by fellowship with the Beloved must the scholar become.^ This condition was attained by the righteous men of old, who, while yet in the body, enjoyed passionless- ness and imperturbability.^^ When the Lord says in the Psalm, " Ye are gods, . . . and sons of the Highest, all of you," he refers to the gnostics who have mastered the passions, who reject as far as possible everything that is ^ Str., vi. 9'^ 2 lb., ii. 18 81. 8 lb,, ii. 18 80. * lb., vi. 13 105. iv^ 22 "7, 139, 6 lb., vi. 971. « Ec. Pr., 31. ' Str., vii., 12 72. 8 lb., vi. 9'«. lb., vi. 972 10 ib., iv. 7 w l64 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT human.^ Though the word "apathy" is not appHed to the apostles, it is implied that they possessed it after the resurrection of Christ, as they are represented as not being subject even to such movements of feeling as seem good, but as abiding always in one unchangeable habit of discip- line.2 And this unity of the moral life is one with the condition of apathy, and is to be contrasted with the varying condition that arises from the passionate attach- ment to things material.^ Apart from these allusions, nowhere is the virtue of apathy supported by any reference to the teaching of the Scriptures. In the chapter* in which the apathy of the gnostic is exhibited in most detail, there are allusions to the " tent," and to " putting to death the desires," which suggest passages in the Epistles of St Paul,^ but there is no direct appeal to any passage of Scrip- ture. It has only scriptural basis so far as his distinction of the carnal spirit from the ruling faculty may be held to be based on the teaching of St Paul as to the enmity between the flesh and the spirit with which he formally connects it.^ This complete conquest of the passions logically involved sinlessness ; but though, indeed, he says that the gnostic is bound to be sinless,^ he expressly dis- claims elsewhere the possibility of sinless perfection on the part of any man.^ This illustrates the danger, in the case of a writer like Clement, of putting a dogmatic construction on an incidental phrase or phrases. Clement's conception of apathy, however, though it represents the same attitude to the sensuous nature of man, differs from the Stoic conception in respect of the love which was no less an essential attribute of the gnostic, and in respect of the goal 1 Str., ii. 2oi2». 2 lb., vi, 9". » lb., iv. 23 "2, 22139. * lb., vi. 9. ^2 Cor. V. i ; Col. iii. 5. « Str., vi. i6i»4-i38 ; Gal. v. 17. ^ Str., iv. 9 '5. Cf. vii. 3 i-» ; Col. iii. 5. 8 Str., iv. 21 130, ii. 12 70 . pjed., iii. 12 ^K THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 165 of assimilation to God with the immediate vision of Him as its necessary concomitant. Of one object to this union of love with the passionless state Clement takes notice. " If close union with that which is good is accompanied by longing, how can he abide passionless who has a longing for that which is good ? " Clement rejoins that love is free from longing or desire, because it is already in possession. ** Such objectors do not know the divinity of love. For love is not a longing on the part of him who loves, but a loving union which restores the gnostic to the * unity of the faith,' as he is independent of time and place. But he who by the agency of love is already among the things in which he shall be, has anticipated hope through knowledge, and does not long for anything, as he has as far as possible the very thing for which he longed." ^ The relation of apathy to knowledge and likeness to God is frequently noted. " Pure, therefore, in respect of bodily desires and of holy thoughts he wishes them to be who arrive at the full know- ledge of God, in order that the ruling principle of the soul may have nothing spurious to stand in the way of its power. When he who shares in gnostic fashion in this holy quality devotes himself to contemplation, holding pure converse with God, he comes more immediately into the condition of passionless identity, so as no longer to have science and possess knowledge, but to be science and knowledge."^ ** When a man has transcended passion and desire, and loves the creation for the sake of the God and Creator of all, he will live gnostically. He has acquired the effortless habit of self-control, in accordance with the assimilation to the Saviour. He has formed into a unity knowledge, faith, love ; he is one henceforward in judgment and truly spiritual ; he is absolutely incapable of admitting the 1 Str., vi. 973. 2 ib.,iv. e**. l66 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT thoughts that arise from passion and desire, being per- fected * after the image ' of the Lord by the Artificer Him- self, a perfect man, worthy to be called * brother ' by the Lord, being at once friend and son."^ The vision of God is the supreme felicity of the gnostic. In some passages it is hard to say whether Clement is re- ferring to the present earnest or the future realisation ; but the complete realisation is yet to be. He seeks to explain in ordinary language what St Paul meant by '* seeing God face to face," what Jesus meant by the vision which He promised to " the pure in heart," and when He spoke of the ** many mansions in His Father's house." It is indifferently described as the soul's rest in God and as God's rest in the soul. "Knowledge," it is said, ** easily transplants a man to that which is akin to the soul and divine and holy, and by a light of its own carries him through the mystic stages of progress until it restores him to the crowning place of rest, having brought him who is pure in heart to behold God face to face with science and apprehension." ^ **The gnostic souls come to places even better than those that preceded, no longer greeting the divine vision in mirrors or by means of mirrors, feasting with loving souls on the vision that is never sated. This is the * apprehensive pre- sentation ' of the pure in heart." ^ It is characteristic of Clement that just as he employs the Stoic term '* apathy" to express the goal of the gnostic on the ethical side, so he uses the " apprehensive presentation " of the Stoics to express the highest end of the gnostic on the intellectual and spiritual side. By this term is meant, according to Professor Edward Caird, "a presentation or idea which grasps or enables the mind to grasp the object as it really is."* This well expresses the thought of Clement. His 1 Str., iii. 10 69. 2 ib„ vii. 9". » lb., vii. 3 i'. Cf. vii. 3 10. * ' Evolution of Religion in the Greek Philosophers,' vol. ii. p. 132. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 167 conception of eternal life is " an end that knows no end," ^ a goal that never reaches completion, a con- tinuous advance, a vision of God ever growing in fulness and clearness, a fellowship with God ever growing in nearness and intensity. Can any conception be more ennobling and inspiring? At every stage in that life the soul's thirst after God will be satisfied ; but, as God is infinite, and man though endowed with immortality is finite, eternal life must mean eternal progress, new revelations of God awakening ever-renewed activities, new insight into the unfathomable depths of the love of God in Christ, new glimpses of the beauty of Absolute Holiness. To what extent is this ideal of the Christian life attain- able here and now, or is it only to be attained in the future ? Some of the features in the portrait of the gnostic are not his prerogative or exclusive goal. That his every thought may be a prayer, his every deed a sacrifice, his soul a temple, that the unseen and the future may be as real as, nay more real than, the things that lie at his feet, that by fixing his thought on spiritual things he may become detached from material things, is the aspiration of every Christian spirit.^ But there are other elements in the delineation of which this cannot be said. The science of the gnostic becomes indefectible, being as much an essential attribute of him as weight in a stone.^ By his knowledge he has all things potentially, though not numerically.* By knowledge itself he becomes a partaker of the divine will.^ He has already become, as it were, out of the flesh and above the world.^ Such an one has already attained the condition of being equal to the angels.^ He is destined 1 Str., ii. 22 15^; vii. 10 «. 2 cf. ib., vi. 12 102 ; vii. I2'^8. {y. 23 1*^ 3 lb., vii. 7 4« ; iv. 22 139. 4 Ib.^ yii. ^ ^7. 5 Jb. , vii. 12 ^8. « lb., vii. i486. Mb., vi. i3W«, vii. 12 78. Cf. Ec. Pr., 37. I68 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT to be a god, and even now is being likened unto God.^ He is divine and holy, God-bearing and God-borne.^ He is a god moving about in the flesh.^ Perfection takes place when any one hangs on the Lord by means of faith and love and knowledge, and ascends with Him to the place where the God and Guardian of our faith and love is.* He cleaves the heavens through his science, and passing through the spiritual essences and every prin- cipality and power, he lays hold of the highest thrones, hastening to that alone which alone he knows.^ On the face of it, it would seem that this angelic being, this God in human form, utterly unfettered by the flesh, this knowledge incarnate, can, in the intensity of his gaze and concentration on the unapproachable heights, have little interest in men or in human affairs. But the duty of teaching and moulding others is an essential mark of the gnostic faculty.^ " These three things our philosopher holds fast : first, contemplation ; in the second place, the fulfilment of the Commandments ; thirdly, the making of good men. These in their union perfect the gnostic. If any of these be wanting, the contents of the knowledge are defective." ^ He who is likened to the Saviour is given to saving.^ In imitation of the divine purpose, he does good to all who are willing to the best of his power.^ In respect of the beneficence of his teaching, he may be called a living image of the Lord.^^ Thanksgiving and prayer for the conversion of his neighbours are the work of the gnostic.^^ In such service of humanity is true devout- ness. The best harvest of the piety of the gnostic is that of the men who have believed through his instrumentality ^ Str., vii. 1 3. 2 lb., vii. 1382. 3 ib., vii. 16 ^oi. * lb., vii. 9«. 6 lb., vii. 1382. Cf. vi. 13 lo^. 6 jt,^^ ^ii. i *. ' lb., ii. 10 «. 8 lb., vi. 9''. 9 lb., vii. 3i«. 10 lb., vi;. 9 52. n lb., vii. 7«. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 109 and have been brought into the way of salvation.^ In such an atmosphere mysticism in the narrower sense of the word cannot live. "The mystic ideal," it has been said, **is not a life of ethical energy among mankind; it is the eye turned wholly inwards, the life spent in con- templation and devout communion."^ _To..this type of mystic Clement did not belong. There is a mystic ele- ment in his ideal, as in every attempt to express in words the intercourse of the spirit of man with God, and he uses language which any mystic could appropriate; but nothing could be further from his mode of thought than any form of selfish ecstasy or the loss of self - conscious- ness in communion with God. If he "stands on earth on tiptoe," ^ to use his own metaphor, he never loses contact with earth and with the needs of men. If, like Moses, he ascends the mountain to hold unbroken fellow- ship with God, he comes down transfigured indeed with the radiance of that fellowship, but with the Command- ments in his hand. In the presence of this love for others mysticism loses its self-centred note, and apathy, save in the limited sense of self- conquest with a view to the higher service of others, becomes impossible. The moral ideal of Clement was an endeavour to har- monise elements that were discordant and antagonistic : formally, the victory lay with Stoicism ; in reality, with Christianity. To questions of social ethics Clement attached great importance. Of these the most urgent in Alexandria were the question of marriage and the relation of the Gospel to men of wealth. Clement's conception of marriage was determined in part by his view of the relation of man to woman 1 Str., vii. I 3. 2 Prof. Pringle-Pattison, "Mysticism" (Ency. Brit.) 3 Psed.,i. si«. 170 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT generally, in part by his Hellenic birth and training, in part by the necessity of refuting the teaching of heretics, but by all these elements as modified and permeated by the teaching of Scripture, especially of Christ and the Apostles. Man and woman have one God and one Tutor. They have a common life, a common grace, a common salva- tion, a common virtue and way of life.^ Woman has the same nature as man, and should possess the same virtue. Virtue is not a matter of sex. Woman is to cultivate temperance and righteousness as well as man. Woman differs from man in the distinctive constitution of the body and the functions relating thereto; but in respect of the soul they are the same.^ Women, therefore, are to philosophise in like manner as men, but men, unless they have become effeminate, should carry off the highest honours.^ The Church is full of women who, like phil- osophers, have all their life made a " study " of death.* As it is a noble thing for a man to die for virtue and for freedom, so it is for a woman. For this is not an attribute peculiar to the nature of the male, but to the nature of the good.^ Marriage is an equal yoke.^ The difference of sex may show that marriage is natural; but the attitude of the Christian towards marriage must be influenced by consideration of the fact that the dis- tinction of sex is earthly and temporal, and not spiritual and eternal.^ In accordance with the Greek way of thinking, Clement teaches that the primary end of marriage is the pro- creation of children as a duty that we owe to the State. 1 Psed., i. 410. 2 str., iv. 8«9, ««. 8 lb., iv. 8«a. Cf. Plato, Rep., 455 C. * Str., iv. 8 ^. 6 lb., iv. 8«'. « P3ed.,i. 4^^ 7 Pged., i. 4^°; Str., iii. 12^7; vi. 12 ^(w. THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT I/I We must by all means marry for our Fatherland, for the succession of children, and for the perfection of the world, as far as it lies with us. He quotes with approval the action of legislators like the Spartans and the view of philosophers with respect to the unmarried.^ From a like point of view he commends marriage because of the intense sympathy of a wife in sickness and old age. The duty of marriage, however, is to be fulfilled in accord- ance with a fitting time and person and age, and with discrimination. The man and the woman should be in every respect alike, and the woman be fond of the man who loves her, not by force or necessity.^ In Alexandria there were two types of heretics who from different points of view had promulgated tenets equally subversive of Christian morals. There were those who in the name of liberty and knowledge taught the moral indifference of actions, and claimed that the more they abused the lower nature the more they honoured the higher, and that the ordinary laws of morality were not binding on those who reached the dignity of being *'sons of the highest God" and "lords of the Sabbath," as they described themselves.* Of such Clement says that they acted not like kings but whipped curs.* A much more dangerous class were those who, partly from dog- matic motives, partly in the name of a professedly loftier moral ideal, maintained an unconditional asceticism and said that marriage was a sin, no better than fornication, that it derived its origin from the devil, and that we should not introduce into the world other unhappy beings and furnish food for death.^ Those who say so, rejoins Clement, under the guise of self-control are ignorant and godless.^ To say that marriage is sin is to say that 1 Str., ii. 23 "9-142. 2 lb., ii. 23 137. 3 lb., iii. 430. 4 lb. 5 lb., iii. 12 84 ; iii. 6 « ; iii. 6 «. 6 lb., iii. 6 « «o. 172 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT God, who instituted marriage, commanded what is sin. Fornication and marriage are as far apart from one another as the devil is from God.^ Generation is holy. By means of it the world subsists and the whole economy of creation and salvation.^ To calumniate generation is to calumniate the Lord and the virgin who brought Him forth.^ In vainglorious fashion such false teachers claim that they imitate the Lord, who never married. They forget that He had His own bride, the Church ; that He was not a common man and needed no helpmeet according to the flesh ; that He had no need to beget children to succeed Him, seeing that He was and remained for ever the only Son of God.* Those who declare that marriage was permitted by the Law but not by the New Covenant are in direct contra- diction to the authoritative teaching of Paul, who ap- proves of the marriage of bishop, presbyter, and deacon.^ If marriage were an obstacle to salvation, neither the just men before the advent who married, nor those after the advent who do so, will be saved, though they be apostles.^ Monogamy is the true and only ideal of marriage. The reasons for the temporary permission of polygamy have passed away. A second marriage is per- mitted by Clement on grounds similar to those con- ceded by St Paul ; but he does not regard it as fulfilling the ideal of the perfect way of life according to the Gospel.^ The conjugal relationship is to be divorced as far as possible from all sensuous desire. It is to be fulfilled in the spirit of one who is co-operating with God.* It is to be carried out by those and after the standard of those who are children not of desire but of 1 Str., iii. 12 8^ 2 lb., iii. i7io». s lb., iii. 17 102. 4 lb., iii. 6^9. 5 lb., iii. 12 ^O; iii. 18 ^o^. « lb., iii. I2»<'. ' lb., iii. 12 82 . iji^ 2 4. 8 psed., ii. 10 8». THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 173 will.^ We are to bear witness to the Lord in all our life by piety in the soul, by purity in the body.^ The wife is to be in all things a helpmeet to her husband. In all domestic trials she is to remember that God is her helper in her great task, her true comrade and Saviour both for the present and the future. She is to make Him her leader in every action, regard temperance and right- eousness as her work, and make the love of God her goal.^ Like the pattern wife in the Book of Proverbs, she should clothe both herself and her husband with finery of her own workmanship, by which all are made glad — the children for their mother, the husband for his wife, she for them, and all for God.* The happy marriage is not to be judged by wealth or beauty, but by virtue.^ The married life was not to be put on a lower level than the life of celibacy. No doubt, generally speaking, it was a good thing *'for the sake of the kingdom of heaven to cut oneself off" from all desire;^ but on the other hand all desires were pure and holy in the sphere of the Lord.^ "We pronounce chastity blessed in the case of those to whom God has given the gift, and we admire the stately dignity that belongs to a single marriage." ^ Each condition of life has its own distinctive ministries for the Lord.^ The gnostic does not prefer children or marriage or parents to the love of God and righteousness in life; but he may marry.^^ In this he has the apostles for patterns. True, he eats and drinks and marries — not as if such things were the primary end of life, but regarding them as necessaries. The single life is not the best sphere for exhibiting true manhood. Such an one lacks the cares 1 Str., iii. 7 ^s. Cf. Pged., ii. 10 »2. 2 str., ii. 23 1^^ 3 lb., iv. 20 l'^^, 127, 4 pg^.(3,^ III II 67. 5 Str., iv. 2oi2«. 6 lb., iii. 7 59. 7 lb., iii. 17 103. 8 Jb., iii. I 4. 9 lb., iii. I2'9. 10 lb., vi. 12 100 ; vii. 12^. 174 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT and temptations which family life brings. He has not to master them, and at the same time to retain a firm hold of the love of God. So far as progress towards his own individual salvation is concerned, the celibate may have the advantage; but in respect of the conduct of life he is inferior to the married man, as the latter preserves a faint image of the true Providence.^ In accordance with his interpretation of the teaching of Jesus, Clement regards the marriage tie as indissoluble save by death.^ It is plain that the teaching of Clement agrees in all essential points with the teaching of St Paul, but it is modified and necessarily expanded by antagonism to the heretical tendencies of his age. The perennial question of the relations of wealth and poverty occupies considerable space in the teaching of Clement. His consideration of the general question was called forth by the extravagance and luxury in Alexandria ; a special problem was forced upon him by the presence of some men of wealth in the Church. Like all moralists, Clement points out that material wealth is not the highest form of riches. The truly rich man is he who possesses what is worth most.^ Righteousness is true riches, and the Word is more precious than all treasure, being the gift of God.* True wealth is to abound in virtuous actions.^ Like the wise man of the Stoics, the Christian alone is rich. He who has the Almighty God, the Word, is in need of nothing.^ The good man can never be in want so long as he keeps his confession secure towards God. He can ask and receive from the Father of the universe what he needs.^ In respect of things necessary no one is ever poor, and no man is ever disregarded by God.^ He who has attained to the condition of being in need of nothing 1 Str., vii. 12 70. 2 11,,^ ii 23146, 3 pged., iii. 635. * lb., iii. 63«. 5 Str., vi. I2»9. 6 P«d., iii. 7 89. ' lb., iii. 7 «>. ^ ib., u. i 14 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 175 has no envy of riches.^ He is pre-eminently rich who desires nothing because by reason of his knowledge of the good he possesses every good thing in superabundance.^ The best wealth is poverty of desire,^ and true poverty is not narrowness of means but increase of desire. Mate- rial wealth when not under proper control is an acropolis of wickedness.* It may be compared to a serpent which, unless grasped firmly and kep4 at a distance, will twist round the hand and bite, and which must be taken captive by the charm of the Word, if he who owns it is to be untouched by passion.^ The moral danger may be avoided by the consideration that while all things have been made for the most part for the use of man, it is not good to use all things nor to use them always,^ that such use must be sanctioned by reason ^ and must not exceed the limit of what is necessary,^ and that they must be possessed and used without passionate and overmastering desire.^ In carrying out these principles we must keep before us our own spiritual goal and our duty to others. Because we are journeying towards truth, we must be as unencumbered as possible.^^ Worldly possessions are not ** our own," because we do not abide in them for ever, but are handed down in succession to others.^^ Pro- perly used, wealth may be no barrier to, but a means of, spiritual progress. He that would ascend to the heavens ** by violence " must carry the fair staff of beneficence. This is in accordance with the declaration of Scripture that *'his own riches is the ransom of a man's soul " ^^ — that is, if he be rich, he will be saved by distributing it.^^ It was 1 Psed., iii. 7^. Cf. Stah., vol. iii. p. 223, fr. 46. 2 gt^., vii. 3I8. 3 Psed., ii. 339. 4 lb., ii. 338. 5 lb., iii. 6«. 6 lb., ii. I ". 7 str., vii. 11 62. 8 ib., vi. 12 1«>. » lb., iv. 6 31 J iv. 13 M Cf. Ec. Pr., 47. ^0 Psed., iii. 7 ^. " Str., iv. 13 M 12 prov. xiii. 8. " Peed., iii. 7 ». 176 THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT in the power of God to make no one poor, but to do this would have extinguished beneficence to others and sym- pathy.^ Self-sufficiency apportions something from itself to our neighbours.^ This imparting to others must not be done in a vulgar or braggart fashion,^ nor must it be indiscriminate but in accordance v^^ith justice and desert ; for so to distribute is a form of the highest justice.* In his enforcement of the duty of liberaHty, and in denun- ciation of the extravagant fads of the rich, Clement uses language which suggests a Christian socialism. He refers to what he calls the astounding apology of women absolutely agape for jewels — '* What God hath provided why may we not use ? It is in my possession, why may I not enjoy it ? For whom have these things been made, if not for us ? " To use such language, says Clement, is to betray absolute ignorance of the will of God. Things which are necessary, such as water and air, He has supplied openly to all ; things which are not necessary, like gold and pearls. He has con- cealed in the earth and water. To say and act so is to be out of harmony with the Scripture which calls upon us to "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." Moreover, though it is true that "all things are in our power," it is also true that "all things are not expedient." Such selfish use is opposed to the divine constitution of human society. God Himself introduced the principle of "communion" into the race of men, when He first im- parted of what was His own, and provided His own Word common to all men, having made all things for all. All things, therefore, are common, and it is not for the rich to claim a larger share. The saying, " What I have, and what I have in superfluity, why should I not daintily enjoy," is alike unworthy of man in himself and as a social being. 1 Stah., vol. iii. p. 224, fr. 47. 2 pggd., ii. i '. 3 lb., iii. 63*. 4 Str., vii. I2«». THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT 177 Much more is it in accordance with love to say, " I have, why should I not impart to those who are in need ? " For that is the true luxury, the expenditure which is " treasured up." God has given to us the liberty of use, but only so far as necessary, and He has willed that the use should be common. It is monstrous that one should be in luxury, while many are in penury.^ These principles touching the duties attaching to wealth in general are applied by Clement to the more pressing question of the attitude of the Gospel to men of wealth in the Church. As treated by him, it was not primarily an ethical or economical question, but one with a practical bearing, to be settled on exegetical and dogmatic grounds. He devoted to it a special homily under the title, " Who is the rich Man that is being saved," ^ an exposition of a passage in the Gospel of St Mark.* The following is an outline of the leading points : — Those who basely flatter the rich are at once guilty of impiety and treacherous to the true wellbeing of the rich themselves, by inflaming their malady instead of seeking to heal it and helping them to the attainment of salvation.* The saying of the Saviour about the rich man and the eye of the needle has caused some only to cling the more closely to this life as if they had no hope of true life, while others have failed to use their wealth with a view to its attain- ment.^ Accordingly, he who loves the truth has a twofold duty to the rich, first to expound the Word so as to drive away their groundless despair, and then to show how the man may secure the hope and the prize of the victor in the conflict.^ The sayings of the Saviour are not to be under- stood in a carnal sense, but we must seek to penetrate into their inmost meaning.^ It was natural for Him who was 1 Psed., ii. 12"', 120. 2 Tt's . INTERPRETATION, AND EXTENT 193 death which dissolves the union between soul and body, but that which dissolves the union between the soul and truth.^ The fear, whose fruit is abstinence from evil, cannot but be good.^ That cannot be an irrational affec- tion which is the result of a commandment given by the Logos.-^ If the Law were given to be "a tutor unto Christ," can it be anything but good ? * Some heretics ap- pealed to the saying of St Paul, " By the Law is the know- ledge of sin," arguing that that was a condemnation of the Law. But this only showed their misunderstanding of the Apostle, who did not say that sin derived its existence from the Law, but only that the Law manifested it.^ In proof of the humanitarian character of the Law, in close depend- ence on Philo, he adduces many details. He points to the laws against usury, to the payment of daily wages, to the provision for the poor, which was based on the principle that the love of men to the Creator must manifest itself in love to our fellow-men, to the law enforcing humanity toward beasts, which by the inculcation of kindness toward creatures which were not of the same genus emphasised a fortiori the duty of kindness towards those of the same genus; and to the generous features in the regulations affecting those of a different nationality.^ On all grounds, therefore, the Law and the Gospel are to be regarded as the energy of the one Lord, and the same God is demonstrated to be good from the beginning to the end.^ As the Scriptures form the short road to salvation,^ we might have expected that Clement would have taught that the road was easily traversed and accessible to all; but, on the contrary, in harmony with the spirit of his time, at « ^ Str., ii. 724. 2 lb., ii. 839. cf. Ec. Pr., 20. » Str., ii. 7 '^. 4 lb., ii. 735. 5 lb., ii. 734. 6 lb., ii. I678.W 7 lb., i. 27 17*. 8 Prot., viii. 77. N 194 SCRIPTURE : ITS NATURE, least in Alexandria, he maintains that the most distinctive characteristic of Scripture was its symbolic and parabolic character. This symbolic feature was in harmony with the deepest wisdom in all rehgions and all philosophies. It was a characteristic of the Egyptians, who did not intrust their mysteries indiscriminately.^ It was a characteristic of the Greeks, who made extensive employment of the art of concealment.^ It was a characteristic of the Pytha- goreans.* Not only did representatives of the most intellectual class adopt this method, but such of the barbarians who had devoted themselves in any measure to philosophy had prosecuted the symbolic method.* In brief, all who had theologised (thought on the deep things of God) had veiled the first principles of things, and transmitted the truth in enigmas, and symbols, and allegories, and metaphors.^ That being so, it was not jnnatural that the barbarian philosophy should prophesy in occult fashion and by means of symbols.^ And this may be proved from the language of Scripture itself. That the holy word was hidden is shown by David. ** He made darkness His hiding-place. His pavilion round about Him darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies. At the brightness before Him, thick clouds passed, hail- stones and coals of fire." That is, words are sent down from God which to the gnostic are transparent and re- splendent as hail, but dark to the multitude, like extin- guished coals which, unless lighted up and kindled anew, will not produce fire or light.^ In like manner, the Spirit says by Isaiah, *' I will give to thee treasures, dark, secret." ^ The Lord and His disciples used parables in accordance with the express statements of Scripture itself.^ Nay, the 1 Str., V. 420 ; V. 7« 2 lb., V. 8^5. ^ jb., y. S^". * lb., V. 8**. « lb., V. 4^. « lb., V. 8". T lb., vi. is"«. 8 lb., V. 4» » lb., vi. 15^'^ -, v. 425. INTERPRETATION, AND EXTENT 195 Saviour Himself put the seal on these things when He said, "To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven " ; and by the Parable of the Leaven He showed the like conception of concealment.^ To the like effect said the noble Apostle, " We speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery." ^ On what grounds is this symbolic feature of the Scriptures to be explained or de- fended ? The method of symbolic interpretation contrib- utes to a right theology, and to the display of intelligence and the practice of brevity and the exhibition of wisdom.^ These are mainly intellectual gains. But there are other and higher grounds. One main reason is that we may cultivate the spirit of investigation and always keep vigil with a view to the discovery of the saving word.* The Scriptures desire the true theology to be the property of those who often approach them and have made proof of them in respect of faith. Like fruits shining faintly through water, or like figures which are invested with new features when seen through a veil, the truth gains in grandeur when it is veiled.^ Clement seems to regard it as a defect if a passage of Scripture could only be interpreted in one way, and approves of truth in symbol because of the great diversities of possible interpretation. The Scriptures are not to be conceived as characterised by a bald uniformity.^ Because truth does not appertain to all, it is veiled in many modes ; the light only arises on those who are initiated unto knowledge, who seek the truth for the sake of love.^ To seek out the logical coherence of the divine teaching calls for the keenest exercise of the faculty of reasoning.^ 1 Str., V. 1280. 2 lb., V. 425 (I Cor. ii. 7). » lb., v. 8*^. * Ib.,vi. 15 126. 6 lb., V. 95«. ' lb., i. 28 1*^ : oi yhp 8)j /lia Mijkovos ^ irSca npos voriaiv ypatp-fj. ' lb., Vi. 15 129. 8 Ib.,i. 28 "9. 196 SCRIPTURE : ITS NATURE, In conjunction with this symbolic conception of Scrip- ture, Clement held the theory of verbal inspiration. In controverting the views of Tatian, he emphasises the fact that in Genesis the reading is not simply ^€09, but that by the addition of the article 6 the Almighty is indicated.^ So, too, of a passage in the New Testament, *'The Law was given through {8id) Moses, not by (viro) Moses, but by the Word, and through Moses, His servant." Wherefore also, it became temporary. But eternal ''grace and truth were through Jesus Christ." Mark the expressions of Scripture. Of the Law it is only said, " it was given " ; but truth, being the grace of the Father, is the eternal work of the Word, and it is no longer said *' to be given," but "to have come into being" through Jesus Christ, without Whom nothing came into being.^ The exact grammatical sense would, therefore, seem to be the foundation on which the symbolic structure is to be reared. The interpretation of Scripture, however, was subject to certain general principles which to some ex- tent defined the lines on which allegorical exegesis had to proceed. Restrictions were based on the nature of God from whom the Scriptures came, on the contents of the Scriptures as a whole, on the tradition that was the property of the Church, and the ecclesiastical norm of teaching. Scripture being of divine origin, it must be interpreted in a manner perfectly fitting and appropriate to the Lord and the Almighty God.^ It is obvious that this principle if primarily a principle of restriction, as it appears from the context, was capable of being developed into a principle of expansion of the allegorical method, and even of justifying its use. For, in the absence of any idea of historical development, it logically led to the elimination or the explaining away of much in the earlier books of the Old Testament. Scripture being a whole 1 P3ed.,m. 12 81. 2 lb., i. 7«<». » Str., vii. 16^^. INTERPRETATION, AND EXTENT 197 and a unit, the analogy of Scriptural usage had to be maintained in order to preserve unbroken harmony in all its parts.^ The tradition derived from Christ Himself was a further restrictive factor. He who gave the Law was also the exegete of the Law, He who interpreted the bosom of the Father .^ The Saviour taught the apostles, and from them has been transmitted to us the unwritten interpretation of the written Scriptures.^ The teaching of the Church limited the range of the operation of the allegorical method by compelling the exegete to keep in view the theological doctrines to which its applica- tion should conform. This was emphasised by Clement specially in his refutation of heretical opinions. He ac- cuses the heretics of interpreting Scripture in accordance with their cosmical conceptions, of doing violence to the plain meaning of Scripture by severing passages from the context, by attributing to God what was quoted by the prophet as the murmuring of the people,* and by giving an allegorical exposition of what was literal and a literal exposition of what was allegorical.^ He passes much acute criticism on their method of procedure ; but in the advocacy of his own position he has recourse to much perverse interpretation of a similar kind ; and in his belief in the symbolic theory he propounds explanations that are purely fantastic, as, in spite of the limitations which I have noted, they could not fail to be. In his eagerness, for example, to prove that the highest wisdom was not given to all, he explains Colossians i. 28, which was directed against such limitation, in a manner contrary to its natural meaning. By ** admonishing every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom," the divine Apostle did not mean ** every man absolutely " — for in that case no one would have been unbelieving — nor did he mean ^ Str., vii. i69«. 2 lb., i. 26169. 3 15,^ yi. 7«; iv. 21 1*'. 4 lb., iii. 438. 6 lb., iii. ii'«; iii. iz'^. igS scripture: its nature, every believer perfect in Christ, but "all the man," "the whole man," as if purified in body and soul.^ But exegesis like this is exceptional ; and in his discussion of heretical tenets, for example, he adheres for the most part to the literal sense. In illustration of his thesis of the difference between the external meaning of Scrip- ture and the inner meaning which is the prerogative of " men," he adduces a legend to the effect that on the death of Moses one Moses only was seen by Caleb, while two were visible to Joshua. In like manner some look only to the body of the Scriptures, the expres- sions and names, corresponding to the body of Moses ; while others look to the thoughts and what is signified by the names, seeking earnestly for the Moses who is with the angels. In the case of the latter, too, insight is gradual; we cannot all at once look the splendours of the truth in the face.^ So far as the Old Testament is concerned, most of his illustrations of the allegorical method of getting at the hidden meaning are taken from Philo and Barnabas, and may be justified in some cases by the usage of the writers of the New Testament them- selves.^ The same may be said of the allusions to Isaac as a type of Christ, and the exposition of some incidents which may be treated as parabolical. But when every- thing is allegorised, the historical becomes a secondary matter, facts are treated as parables, poetry is made to masquerade as science and philosophy. The most grotesque illustrations of his method are those in which he has followed closely the interpretation of Philo or some other of his predecessors. Setting these aside, I give some illustrations which are not so borrowed. The meaning of the Law is to be taken in three ways — as exhibiting a sign, as ratifying a precept for a right way of iStr.,v. io«. Mb., vi. 15 132. » Cf. Gal. iv. 24; Heb. vii. 1-3. INTERPRETATION, AND EXTENT 199 living, and as predicting like a prophecy. To make such distinctions is the prerogative of men. In Str. vi. 16, he gives what he calls a specimen of gnostic exposition of the decalogue. As the tables were written by the finger of God, that is the power of God and His work, they are found to exhibit the physical creation, to contain symbols of heaven and earth. In accordance with this is the physical decalogue of heaven and earth.^ The Two Tables may be a prophecy of the two covenants. They were therefore renewed in mystic fashion, when ignorance together with sin abounded. The commandments are written in two- fold wise for the twofold spirits — the ruling spirit and that which is subject.^ So actions are twofold — those of thought and those of activity.^ As there are ten commandments, so there is a '*ten " in man.* The first commandment teaches that there is only one Almighty God, who conveyed the people through the wilderness to their fatherland that they might apprehend His power, as far as they were able, through the divine workings, and that they should be done with the idolatry of things created, and fix their entire hope in the true God.^ The second word indicated that we should not take and give a name to the majestic power of God — (for that is His name, for this alone they were able to learn, as even yet the multitude), — nor transfer His title to things created and vain, which have been made by human craftsmen, in which " He that is " is not ranked. For in uncreated identity " He that is " is by Himself alone.® The third word ^ declares that the world has been made by God, 1 Str., vi. 16^33, 2 lb., vi. 16 134. s lb., vi. 16"'. * lb., vi. 16^34^ rd re alaOrjT'i^pia irevre Kol rh (puvriTiKbu Kal rb ffTTfpfxariKbv Kal Tovro Sr\ oydoov rh Kara t^v irXdciv Trviv[JLaTiK6v, evaroy 5e t6 riyeixoviKhv Trjs