CHAPTER IX

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

Viderint qui Stoicum et Platonicum et dialecticum Christianismum

protulerunt.--TERTULLIAN, _de praescr. haeret._ 7.

No one can allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want of

metaphysics being applied to it.--MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Literature and

Dogma_, p. 121.

Though Celsus had much to say upon the vulgar and servile character of

the members of the Christian community, he took the trouble to write a

book to refute Christianity; and this book, as we have seen, was

written from a more or less philosophical point of view. He professed

himself doubtful as to whether his opponents would understand his

arguments; but that he wrote at all, and that he wrote as he did, is

evidence that the new faith was making its way upward through society,

and was gaining a hold upon the classes of wealth and education.

[Sidenote: The rise of the Church]

It is not hard to understand this. Though conditions of industry were

not what they are to-day, it is likely that conversion was followed by

the economic results with which we are familiar. The teaching of the

church condemned the vices that war against thrift; and the new life

that filled the convert had its inevitable effect in quickening insight

and energy. The community insisted on every man having a trade and

working at it. With no such end in view, the church must have numbered

among its adherents more and more people of wealth and influence in

spite of all defections, just as to-day Protestantism in France has

power and responsibility out of all proportions to mere numbers. The

Emperor Hadrian, is said to have made the observation that in Egypt,

whether men worshipped Christ or Serapis, they all worshipped money.[1]

The remark had probably as much truth as such sayings generally have,

but we may probably infer that many Christians were punctual in {263}

their observance of the duty laid on them to be "not slothful in

business."

The first four or five generations of Christians could not, on the

whole, boast much culture--so far as their records permit us to judge.

"Not many wise," said Paul, and their fewness has left an impress on

the history of the church. A tendency to flightiness in speculation on

the one hand, and a stolid refusal to speculate at all on the other,

are the marks of second century Christianity. The early attempts made

to come to terms with "human wisdom" were not happy, either at the

centre or on the circumference of the body. The adjustment of the

Gospel story to Old Testament prophecy was not a real triumph of the

human mind, nor were the efforts at scientific theology any better.

Docetism, with its phantom Christ, and Gnosticism with its antithesis

of the just God and the good God, were not likely to satisfy mankind.

Simple people felt that these things struck at their life, and they

rejected them, and began to suspect the intellect. The century saw the

growth of ecclesiastical system, episcopal order and apostolic

tradition. Men began to speak of the "old church," the "original

church" and the "catholic church," and to cleave to its "rule of faith"

and "tradition of sound words." By 200 A.D. the church was no longer a

new thing in the world; it had its own "ancient history" without going

back to Judaism and the old covenant; it had its legends; and it could

now speak like the Greeks of "the old faith of our fathers."

As it rose in the world, the church came into contact with new

problems. As long as men were without culture, they were not troubled

by the necessity of reconciling culture with faith, but the time had

come when it must be done in earnest. Wealth was bringing leisure, and

refinement, and new intellectual outlooks and interests. Could the

church do with them? was the urgent question. Was it possible for a

man to be at once a Greek gentleman of wealth and culture and a simple

Christian like the humble grandfathers of his fellow-believers--or like

his own slaves, the fuller and the cobbler of his household? We shall

understand the problem better if we can make some acquaintance with the

daily life and environment of these converts of the better classes.

In the second and third books of his _Pedagogue_ Clement of {264}

Alexandria deals with the daily round and deportment of Christians, for

whom extravagance and luxury might be a real temptation. A few points,

gathered here and there from the two books, will suffice. He

recommends simplicity of diet with health and strength as its

objects--the viands, which the Gospels suggest, fish and the honeycomb,

being admirable for these purposes.[2] Wine provokes the passions--"I

therefore admire those who have chosen the austere life and are fond of

water, the medicine of temperance." "Boys and girls should as a

general rule abstain from the [other] drug"--wine.[3] Good manners at

table--no noisy gulping, no hiccupping, no spilling, no soiling of the

couch, no slobbering of hand or chin--"how do you think the Lord drank,

when he became man for us?"[4] Vessels of silver and gold, furniture

of rare woods inlaid with ivory, rugs of purple and rich colours, are

hardly necessary for the Christian--"the Lord ate from a cheap bowl and

made his disciples lie on the ground, on the grass, and he washed their

feet with a towel about him--the lowly-minded God and Lord of the

universe. He did not bring a silver foot-bath from heaven to carry

about with him. He asked the Samaritan woman to give him to drink in a

vessel of clay as she drew it up from the well,--not seeking the royal

gold, but teaching us to quench thirst easily." "In general as to

food, dress, furniture and all that pertains to the house, I say at

once, it should all be according to the institutions of the Christian

man, fitting appropriately person, age, pursuits and time."[5]

[Sidenote: Christian manners]

Clement passes from the table to a general discussion of manners and

habits. Man is a "laughing animal," but he should not laugh all the

time. Humour is recommended rather than wit (_charientisteon ou

gelotopoieteon_, 45, 4). "The orderly relaxation of the face which

preserves its harmony" is a smile (46, 3)--giggling and excessive

laughter are perversions. Care should be taken in conversation to

avoid low talk, and the scoff that leads the way to insolence, and the

argument for barren victory--"man is a creature of peace," as the

greeting "Peace with you" shows us. Some talkers are like old

shoes--only the tongue left for mischief. {265} There are many tricks

unfit for a Christian gentleman--spitting, coughing, scratching and

other things; and he would do well to avoid whistling and snapping his

fingers to call the servants. Fidgetting is the mark of mental levity

(_symbolon kouphotetos_).[6]

In the care of one's person, oil may be used; it is a sign of the

luxury of the times that scents and unguents are so universally applied

to such various purposes. The heathen crowned their heads with flowers

and made it a reproach that Christians gave up the practice. But, as

Tertullian said, they smelt with their noses; and Clement urges that on

the head flowers are lost to sight and smell, and chill the brain. A

flower-garden in spring, with the dew upon all its colours, and all the

natural scents of the open air, is another thing. The Christian too

will remember--Tertullian also has this thought--that it was another

crown that the Lord wore[7]--_ex spinis opinor, et tribulis_. The real

objection was that the custom was associated with idol-worship.

Silk and purple and pearls are next dealt with--and earrings, "an

outrage on nature"--if you pierce the ear, why not the nose too?[8]

All peculiarity of dress should be avoided, and so should cosmetics--or

else you may remind people of the Egyptian temple, outside all

splendour, inside a priest singing a hymn to a cat or a crocodile.[9]

"Temperance in drink and symmetry in food are wonderful cosmetics and

quite natural."[10] Let a woman work with her hands, and health will

come and bring her beauty. She should go veiled to church, like AEneas'

wife leaving Troy.[11] Men may play at ball, take country walks, and

try gardening and drawing water and splitting billets.[12]

Finger-rings are allowed for them--gold rings, to be used as seals for

security against the slaves. {266} "Let our seals be a dove, or a

fish, or a ship running before the wind, or a lyre, or a ship's

anchor"--not an idol's face, or a sword or a cup or something

worse.[13] Men should wear their hair short (unless it is curly), grow

their beards and keep their moustaches trimmed with the scissors.[14]

Our slaves we should treat as ourselves, for they are men as we; "God"

(as a verse, perhaps from Menander, puts it) "is the same for all, free

or slave, if you think of it."[15]

All these admonitions imply an audience with some degree of wealth.

The Christian artisan of Celsus had no temptation to use a silver

foot-bath or to plaster himself with cosmetics. It may also be

remarked that the man who gives the advice shows himself well

acquainted with the ways of good society--and perhaps of society not so

well gifted with taste. With all this refinement went education. The

children of Christian parents were being educated, and new converts

were being made among the cultured classes, and the adjustment of the

new faith and the old culture was imperative. The men to make it were

found in a succession of scholars, learned in all the wisdom of Greece,

enthusiastic for philosophy and yet loyal to the Gospel tradition.

The first of these, whose name we know, was Pantaenus; but beyond his

name there is little to be known of him. Eusebius says that he began

as a Stoic philosopher and ended as a Christian missionary to

India.[16] His pupil, Clement, is of far greater importance in the

history of Christian thought.

[Sidenote: His classical training]

Of Clement again there is little to be learnt beyond what can be

gathered from his own writings. He alludes himself to the death of the

Emperor Commodus as being "194 years, 1 month and 13 days" after the

birth of Christ (it was in 192 A.D.); and Eusebius quotes a passage

from a contemporary letter which shows that Clement was alive in 211

A.D., and another written in or about 215, which implies that he was

dead.[17] We have also an indication from Eusebius that his activity

as a teacher in Alexandria lasted from 180 {267} to 202 or 203.[18] We

may then assume that Clement was born about the middle of the century.

Epiphanius says that Clement was either an Alexandrine or an Athenian.

A phrase to be quoted below suggests that he was not an Alexandrine,

and it has been held possible that he came from Athens.[19] It also

seems that he was born a pagan.[20] Perhaps he says this himself when

he writes: "rejoicing exceedingly and renouncing our old opinions we

grow young again for salvation, singing with the prophecy that chants

'How good is God to Israel.'"[21]

It is obvious that he had the usual training of a Greek of his social

position. If his code of manners is lifted above other such codes by

the constant suggestion of the gentle spirit of Jesus, it yet bears the

mark of his race and of his period. It is Greek and aristocratic, and

it would in the main command the approval of Plutarch. He must have

been taught Rhetoric like every one else,--his style shows this as much

as his protests that he does not aim at eloquence (_euglottia_), that

he has not studied and does not practise "Greek style"

(_helleixein_).[22] He has the diffuse learning of his day--wide,

second-hand and uncritical; and, like other contemporary writers, he

was a devotee of the note-book. No age of Greek literature has left us

so many works of the kind he wrote--the sheer congeries with no attempt

at structure, no "beginning, middle and end,"--easy, accumulative books

of fine miscellaneous feeding, with titles that playfully confess to

their character. Like other authors of this class, Clement preserves

for us many and many a fragment of more interest and value than any

original piece of literature could have been. He clearly loved the

poetry of Greece, and it comes spontaneously and irresistibly to his

mind as he writes, and the sayings of Jesus are reinforced by those of

Menander or Epicharmus. The old words charm him, and {268} he cannot

reject them. His _Stromateis_ are "not like ornamental paradises laid

out in rows to please the eye, but rather resemble some shady and

thickly-wooded hill, where you may find cypress and plane, bay and ivy,

and apple trees along with olives and figs"[23]--trees with literary

connotations. Such works imply some want of the creative instinct, of

originality, and they are an index to the thinking of the age,

impressed with its great ancestry. It is to be remarked that the

writers of our period care little for the literature of the past two or

three centuries; they quote their own teachers and the great

philosophers and poets of ancient Greece.[24] Few of them have any new

thoughts at all, and those who have are under the necessity of clothing

them in the hallowed phrases of their predecessors. This was the

training in which Clement shared. Later on, he emancipated himself,

and spoke contemptuously of the school--"a river of words and a trickle

of mind";[25] but an education is not easily shaken off. He might

quarrel with his teachers and their lessons, but he still believed in

them. It may be noted that in his quotations of Greek literature his

attention is mainly given to the thought which he finds in the

words--or attaches to them--that he does not seem to conceive of a work

of art as a whole, nor does he concern himself with the author. He

used the words as a quotation, and it is not unlikely that many of the

passages he borrowed he knew only as quotations.

In philosophy his training must have been much the same, but here he

had a more living interest. Philosophy touched him more nearly, for it

bore upon the two great problems of the human soul--conduct and God.

Like Seneca and Plutarch he was not interested in Philosophy apart from

these issues--epistemology, psychology, physics and so forth were not

practical matters. The philosophers he judged by their theology. With

religious men of his day he leant to the Stoics and "truth-loving

Plato"--especially Plato, whom he {269} seems to have read for

himself--but he avows that Philosophy for him means not the system of

any school or thinker, but the sum of the unquestionable dogmata of all

the schools, "all that in every school has been well said, to teach

righteousness with pious knowledge--this eclectic whole I call

Philosophy."[26] To this Philosophy all other studies contribute--they

are "the handmaidens, and she the mistress"[27]--and she herself owns

the sway of Theology.

[Sidenote: Clement and the mysteries]

At some time of his life Clement acquired a close acquaintance with

pagan mythology and its cults. It may be that he was initiated into

mysteries; in his _Protrepticus_ he gives an account of many of them,

which is of great value to the modern student. It is probable enough

that an earnest man in search of God would explore the obvious avenues

to the knowledge he sought--avenues much travelled and loudly vaunted

in his day. Having explored them, it is again not unlikely that a

spirit so pure and gentle should be repelled by rituals and legends

full of obscenity and cruelty. It is of course possible that much of

his knowledge came from books, perhaps after his conversion, for one

great part of Christian polemic was the simple exposure of the secret

rites of paganism. Yet it remains that his language is permanently

charged with technical terms proper to the mysteries, and that he loves

to put Christian knowledge and experience in the old language--"Oh!

mysteries truly holy! Oh! stainless light! The daduchs lead me on to

be the epopt of the heavens and of God; I am initiated and become holy;

the Lord is the hierophant and seals the mystes for himself, himself

the photagogue."[28] It is again a little surprising to hear of "the

Saviour "being" our mystagogue as in the tragedy--

He sees, we see, he gives the holy things (_orgia_);

and if thou wilt inquire

{270}

These holy things--what form have they for thee?

thou wilt hear in reply

Save Bacchus' own initiate, none may know."[29]

It is inconceivable that a Hebrew, or anyone but a Greek, could have

written such a passage with its double series of allusions to Greek

mysteries and to Euripides' _Bacchae_. Clement is the only man who

writes in this way, with an allusiveness beyond Plutarch's, and a fancy

as comprehensive as his charity and his experience of literature and

religion.

He had the Greek's curious interest in foreign religions, and he speaks

of Chaldaeans and Magians, of Indian hermits and Brahmans--"and among

the Indians are those that follow the precepts of Buddha (_Boutta_),

whom for his exceeding holiness they have honoured as a god"--of the

holy women of the Germans and the Druids of the Gauls.[30] Probably in

each of these cases his knowledge was soon exhausted, but it shows the

direction of his thoughts. Egypt of course furnished a richer field of

inquiry to him as to Plutarch. He has passages on Egyptian

symbolism,[31] and on their ceremonial,[32] which contain interesting

detail. It was admitted by the Greeks--even by Celsus--that barbarians

excelled in the discovery of religious dogma, though they could not

equal the Greeks in the philosophic use of it. Thus Pausanias says the

Chaldaeans and Indian Magians first spoke of the soul's immortality,

which many Greeks have accepted, "not least Plato son of Ariston."[33]

In the course of his intellectual wanderings, very possibly before he

became a Christian, Clement investigated Jewish thought so far as it

was accessible to him in Greek, for Greeks did not learn barbarian

languages. Eusebius remarks upon his allusions to a number of Jewish

historians.[34] His debt to {271} Philo is very great, for it was not

only his allegoric method in general and some elaborate allegories that

he borrowed, but the central conception in his presentment of

Christianity comes originally from the Jewish thinker, though Clement

was not the first Christian to use the term Logos.

Clement does not tell us that he was born of pagan parents, nor does he

speak definitely of his conversion. It is an inference, and we are

left to conjecture the steps by which it came, but without the help of

evidence. One allusion to his Christian teachers is dropped when he

justifies his writing the _Stromateis_--"memoranda treasured up for my

old age, an antidote against forgetfulness, a mere semblance and

shadow-picture of those bright and living discourses, those men happy

and truly remarkable, whom I was counted worthy to hear." And then the

reading is uncertain, but, according to Dr Stahlin's text he says: "Of

these, one was in Greece--the Ionian; the next (pl.) in Magna Graecia

(one of whom was from Coele Syria and the other from Egypt); others in

the East; and in this region one was an Assyrian, and the other in

Palestine a Hebrew by descent. The last of all (in power he was the

first) I met and found my rest in him, when I had caught him hidden

away in Egypt. He, the true Sicilian bee, culling the flowers of the

prophetic and apostolic meadow, begot pure knowledge in the souls of

those who heard him. These men preserved the true tradition of the

blessed teaching direct from Peter and James, John and Paul, the holy

apostles, son receiving it from father ('and few be sons their fathers'

peers'), and reached down by God's blessing even to us, in us to

deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds."[35] It is supposed that

the Assyrian was Tatian, while the Sicilian bee hidden away in Egypt

was almost certainly Pantaenus.

Clement's education had been wide and superficial, his reading

sympathetic but not deep, his philosophy vague and eclectic, and now

from paganism with its strange and indefinite aggregation of religions

based on cult and legend, he passed to a faith that rested on a

tradition jealously maintained and a rule beginning to be venerable.

He met men with a definite language in which they expressed a common

experience--who had moreover seen a good many efforts made to mend the

{272} language and all of them ending in "shipwreck concerning the

faith"; who therefore held to the "form of sound words" as the one

foundation for the Christian life.

It says a great deal for Clement's character--one might boldly say at

once that it is an index to his personal experience--that he could

sympathize with these men in the warm and generous way he did. Now and

again he is guilty of directing a little irony against the

louder-voiced defenders of "faith only, bare faith"[36] and "straight

opinion"--"the _orthodoxasts_, as they are called."[37] (The curious

word shows that the terms "orthodox" and "orthodoxy" were not yet quite

developed.) But he stands firmly by the simplest Christians and their

experience. If he pleads for a wider view of things--for what he calls

"knowledge," it is, he maintains, the development of the common faith

of all Christians. It is quite different from the wisdom that is

implanted by teaching; it comes by grace. "The foundation of knowledge

is to have no doubts about God, but to believe; Christ is

both--foundation and superstructure alike; by him is the beginning and

the end.... These, I mean faith and love, are not matters of

teaching."[38] As Jesus became perfect by baptism and was hallowed by

the descent of the spirit, "so it befals us also, whose pattern is the

Lord. Baptized, we are enlightened; enlightened, we are made sons;

made sons we are perfected; made perfect we become immortal [all these

verbs and participles are in the present]. 'I,' he saith, 'said ye are

gods and sons of the Most High, all of you.' This work has many names;

it is called gift [or grace, _charisma_], enlightenment, perfection,

baptism.... What is wanting for him who knows God? It would be

strange indeed if that were called a gift of God which was incomplete;

the Perfect will give what is perfect, one supposes.... Thus they that

have once grasped the borders of life are already perfect; we live

already, who are separated from death. Salvation is following

Christ.... So to believe--only to believe--and to be born again is

perfection in life."[39] He praises the poet of {273} Agrigentum for

hymning faith, which his verses declare to be hard; 'and that is why

the Apostle exhorts 'that your faith may not be in the wisdom of

men'--who offer to persuade--'but in the power of God'--which alone and

without proofs can by bare faith save."[40]

[Sidenote: "The real polymetis"]

It was this strong sympathy with the simplest view of the Christian

faith that made the life-work of Clement possible. He was to go far

outside the ordinary thoughts of the Christian community round about

him--inevitably he had to do this under the compulsion of his wide

experience of books and thinkers--but the centre of all his larger

experience he found where his unlettered friends, "believing without

letters," found their centre, and he checked his theories, original and

borrowed--or he aimed at checking them--by life. "As in gardening and

in medicine he is the man of real learning (_chrestomathes_), who has

had experience of the more varied lessons...; so, I say, here too, of

him who brings everything to bear on the truth.... We praise the pilot

of wide range, who 'has seen the cities of many men'... so he who turns

everything to the right life, fetching illustrations from things Greek

and things barbarian alike, he is the much-experienced (_polypeiros_)

tracker of truth, the real _polymetis_; like the touchstone--the Lydian

stone believed to distinguish between the bastard and the true-born

gold, he is able to separate,--our _polyidris_ and man of knowledge

(_gnostikos_) as he is,--sophistic from philosophy, the cosmetic art

from the true gymnastic, cookery from medicine, rhetoric from

dialectic, magic and other heresies in the barbarian philosophy from

the actual truth."[41] This, in spirit and letter, is a very

characteristic utterance. Beginning with the Lord as "the vine"--from

which some expect to gather clusters of grapes in the twinkling of an

eye--he ranges into medicine and sea-faring, from Odysseus "of many

wiles, who saw the cities of many men and learnt their mind," to

Plato's _Gorgias_, and brings all to bear on the Christian life. What

his simple friends made of such a passage--if they were able to read at

all, or had it read to them--it is not easy to guess, but contact must

have shown them in the man a genuine and tender Christian as

Christocentric as themselves, if in speech he {274} was oddly

suited,--a gay epitome of Greek literature in every sentence.

This, then, is the man, a Greek of wide culture and open heart, who has

dipped into everything that can charm the fancy and make the heart

beat,--curious in literature, cult, and philosophy, and now submitted

to the tradition of the church and the authority of Hebrew prophet and

Christian apostle, but not as one bowing to a strange and difficult

necessity. Rather, with the humblest of God's children--those "tender,

simple and guileless" children on whom God lavishes all the little

names which he has for his only Son, the "lamb" and the "child"[42]--he

finds in Christ "thanksgiving, blessing, triumph and joy," while Christ

himself bends from above, like Sarah, to smile upon their

"laughter."[43] Such was the range of Clement's experience, and now,

under the influence of the great change that conversion brought, he had

to re-think everything and to gather it up in a new unity. Thus in one

man were summed up all the elements of import in the general situation

of the church of his day. He was representative alike in his

susceptibility to the ancient literature and philosophy and his love of

Scripture--"truth-loving Isaiah" and "St Paul"--in his loyalty to the

faith, and, not less, in his determination to reach some higher ground

from which the battle of the church could be fought with wider outlook,

more intelligent grasp of the factors in play, and more hope of winning

men for God.

[Sidenote: Faith and philosophy]

Clement did not come before his time. Philosophy had begun to realize

the significance of the church. The repression of the "harmful

superstition" was no longer an affair of police; it was the common

concern of good citizens. The model Emperor himself, the philosopher

upon the throne, had openly departed from the easy policy laid down by

Trajan and continued by his successors. He had witnessed, or had

received reports of, executions. Writing in his diary of death, he

says: "What a soul is that which is ready, if the moment has come for

its separation from the body, whether it is to be extinguished, or

dissolved, or to continue a whole. This readiness--see that it come

from your own judgment, not in mere obstinacy, as with the Christians,

but reflectively and {275} with dignity, in a way to persuade another,

with nothing of the actor in it."[44] This sentence betrays something

of the limitations of a good man--a beautiful spirit indeed, but not a

little over-praised by his admirers in modern days. Celsus at once

taunts his Christian opponents with their prospects of painful death

and demonstrates the absurdity of their tenets from the point of view

of philosophy. The Apologists say, too, that the philosophers lent

themselves (as did also the daemons) to inciting the mob to massacre.

But after all the dialectical weapons of Philosophy were the more

dangerous, for they shook the faith of the Christian which death did

not shake.

Again, the candid and inquiring temper of some notable converts and

friends had led them to question the tradition of the church and to

examine their Christian experience with a freedom from prejudice, at

least in the evangelic direction, which had resulted in conclusions

fatal, it seemed, to the Christian movement. Their philosophy had

carried them outside the thoughts of Jesus--they had abandoned the idea

of the Abba Father, of the divine love, of the naturalness and

instinctiveness of Christian life. Incarnation and redemption they

rejected, at least in the sense which made the conceptions of value to

men. Jesus they remodelled into one and another figure more amenable

to their theories--a mere man, a demi-god, a phantom, into anything but

the historic personality that was and could remain the centre and

inspiration of Christian life. Of all this mischief philosophy, men

said, was the cause.[45]

"I know quite well," writes Clement, "what is said over and over again

by some ignorantly nervous people who insist that we should confine

ourselves to the inevitable minimum, to what contains the faith, and

pass over what is outside and superfluous, as it wears us out to no

purpose and occupies us with what contributes nothing to our end.

Others say philosophy comes of evil and was introduced into life for

the ruin of {276} men by an evil inventor."[46] They were afraid of

philosophy, as children might fear a ghost, in case it should take them

away[47]--but this, as Clement saw, was no way to meet the danger. The

Christian must not philosophize, they said--Tertullian said it too; but

how could they know they must not philosophize unless they

philosophized?[48] Whether philosophy is profitable or not, "you

cannot condemn the Greeks on the basis of mere statements about their

opinions, without going into it with them till point by point you

discover what they mean and understand them. It is the refutation

based upon experience that is reliable."[49]

[Sidenote: His defence of philosophy]

So Clement has first of all to fight the battle of education inside the

church, to convince his friends that culture counts, that philosophy is

inevitable and of use at once for the refutation of opponents and for

the achievement of the full significance of faith. Then he has to show

how philosophy at its best was the foe of superstition and the champion

of God's unity and goodness--a preparation for the Gospel. Lastly he

has to restate the Christian position in the language of philosophy and

to prove that the Gospel is reaffirming all that was best in the

philosophic schools and bringing it to a higher point, indeed to the

highest; that the Gospel is the final philosophy of the universe, the

solution of all the problems of existence, the revelation of the

ultimate mind of God.

Clement boldly asserts the unity of all knowledge. Everything

contributes, everything is concentric. "Just as every family goes back

to God the Creator, so does the teaching of all good things go back to

the Lord, the teaching that makes men just, that takes them by the hand

and brings them that way."[50] And again:--"When many men launch a

ship, pulling together, you could not say there are many causes, but

one consisting of many--for each of them is not by himself the cause of

its being launched but only in conjunction with others; so philosophy,

which is a search for truth, contributes to the perception

(_katalepsis_) of truth, though it is not the {277} cause of

perception, except in conjunction and co-operation with other things.

Yet perhaps even a joint-cause we might call a cause. Happiness is

one, and the virtues more than one which are its causes. The causes of

warmth may be the sun, the fire, the bath and the clothing. So, truth

is one and many things co-operate in the search for it, but the

discovery is by the Son.... Truth is one, but in Geometry we have

geometrical truth, in Music musical; so in Philosophy--right

Philosophy--we should have Greek truth. But alone the sovereign Truth

is unassailable, which we are taught by the Son of God."[51]

Elsewhere, when challenged to say what use there is in knowing the

causes that explain the sun's motion,[52] geometry and dialectics, when

Greek philosophy is merely man's understanding, he falls back upon the

mind's instinctive desire for such things, its free will (_ten

proairesin tou nou_), and quickly marshals a series of texts from the

Book of _Wisdom_ on the divine source of wisdom and God's love of it,

concluding with an allegory drawn from the five barley loaves and the

two fishes on which the multitude were fed, the former typifying the

Hebrew Law ("for barley is sooner ripe for harvest than wheat") and the

fishes Greek philosophy "born and moving amid Gentile billows." ("If

you are curious, take one of the fishes as signifying ordinary

education and the other the philosophy that succeeds it....

A choir of voiceless fish came sweeping on,

the Tragic muse says somewhere"[53]). His appeal to the mind is a much

stronger defence than any such accumulation of texts, but for the

people he had in view the texts were probably more convincing.

The impulse to Philosophy is an inevitable one, native to the human

mind, and he shows that it is to the Divine Reason working in all

things, to Providence, that we must attribute it. {278} "Everything,

so far as its nature permits, came into being, and does so still,

advancing to what is better than itself. So that it is not out of the

way that Philosophy too should have been given in Divine Providence, as

a preliminary training towards the perfection that comes by Christ....

'Your hairs are numbered' and your simplest movements; can Philosophy

be left out of the account? [An allegory follows from Samson's hair.]

Providence, it says, from above, from what is of first importance, as

from the head, reaches down to all men, as 'the myrrh,' it says, 'that

descends upon Aaron's beard and to the fringe of his garment'--viz.:

the Great High Priest, 'by whom all things came into being, and without

him nothing came'--not, that is, on to the beauty of the body;

Philosophy is outside the people [possibly Israel is meant] just as

raiment is. The philosophers then, who are trained by the perceptive

spirit for their own perception,--when they investigate not a part of

Philosophy, but Philosophy absolutely, they testify in a truth-loving

way and without pride to truth by their beautiful sayings even with

those who think otherwise, and they advance to understanding

(_synesin_), in accordance with the divine dispensation, that

unspeakable goodness which universally brings the nature of all that

exists onward toward the better so far as may be."[54]

Thought (_phronesis_) takes many forms, and it is diffused through all

the universe and all human affairs, and in each sphere it has a

separate name--Thought, Knowledge, Wisdom or Faith. In the things of

sense it is called Right Opinion; in matters of handicraft, Art; in the

logical discussion of the things of the mind, it is Dialectic. "Those

who say that Philosophy is not from God, come very near saying that God

cannot know each several thing in particular and that He is not the

cause of all good things, if each of them is a particular thing.

Nothing that is could have been at all without God's will; and, if with

His will, then Philosophy is from God, since He willed it to be what it

is for the sake of those who would not otherwise abstain from evil."

"He seeth all things and he heareth all[55]

{279}

and beholds the soul naked within, and he has through all eternity the

thought (_epinoia_) of each several thing in particular," seeing all

things, as men in a theatre look around and take all in at a glance.

"There are many things in life that find their beginning in human

reason, though the spark that kindles them is from God.[56] Thus

health through medicine, good condition through training, wealth

through commerce, come into being and are amongst us, at once by Divine

Providence and human co-operation. And from God comes understanding

too. And the free will (_proairesis_) of good men most of all obeys

God's will.... The thoughts (_epinoiai_) of virtuous men come by

divine inspiration (_epipnoia_), the soul being disposed so and the

divine will conveyed (_diadidonenou_) to human souls, the divine

ministers taking part in such services; for over all nations and cities

are assigned angelic governances--perhaps even over individuals."[57]

Philosophy makes men virtuous, so it cannot be the product of

evil--that is, it is the work of God. As it was given to the best

among the Greeks, we can divine who was the Giver.[58]

This is a favourite thought with Clement, and, as he does with all

ideas that please him, he repeats it over and over again, in all sorts

of connexions and in all variety of phrase. When a man is avowedly

making "patchwork" books (_Stromateis_), there is really no occasion on

which we can call it irrelevant for him to repeat himself, and this is

a thought worth repeating. "Before the advent of the Lord, Philosophy

was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, and it is still

profitable for piety, a sort of primary instruction for those who reap

faith by revelation.... God is the cause of all good things, of some

directly, as of the Old and New Testament, of others indirectly as of

Philosophy. And perhaps even directly it was given in those times to

the Greeks, before the Lord called the Greeks also; for Philosophy too

was a _paidagogos_ for the Greek world, as the Law was for the Hebrews,

to bring them to Christ."[59] {280} "Generally speaking, we should not

be wrong in saying that all that is necessary and profitable to life

comes to us from God--and that Philosophy was more especially given to

the Greeks, as a sort of covenant (_diatheke_) of their own, a step

(_hypobathra_) toward the Philosophy according to Christ,--if Greek

philosophers will not close their ears to the truths, through contempt

of the barbarian speech."[60] "God is the bestower (_choregos_) of

both covenants, who also gave Philosophy to the Greeks, whereby among

the Greeks the Almighty is glorified."[61] "In those times Philosophy

by itself 'justified' the Greeks--though not to the point of perfect

righteousness."[62] "As in due season the Preaching now comes, so in

due season the law and the prophets were given to the barbarians and

Philosophy to the Greeks, to train their ears for the Preaching."[63]

[Sidenote: The origin of philosophy]

Philosophy however fell short of the Law. Those, who were righteous by

the Law, still lacked Faith; while the others, whose righteousness was

by Philosophy, not only lacked Faith but failed to break with

idolatry.[64] (This was in many quarters the capital charge against

contemporary philosophy.) It was for this reason that the Saviour

preached the Gospel in Hades, just as after him, according to Hermas,

"the apostles and teachers, when they fell asleep in the power and

faith of the Son of God, preached to those who had fallen asleep before

them."[65] It is curious that Clement not only cites Philosophy as a

gift of God to the Gentiles before Faith came, that God's judgments

might be just, but he also says, on the authority of the Law (quoting

inaccurately and perhaps from memory), that God gave them the sun, the

moon and stars to worship, which God made for the Gentiles that they

might not become utterly atheistic and so utterly perish. "It was a

road given to them, that in worshipping the stars they might look up to

God."[66] That they fell into idolatry was however only too patent a

fact.

{281}

The exact means, by which the Greeks received the truths contained in

their philosophy, is not certain. A favourite explanation with

Christian writers, and one to which Clement gives a good deal of

thought, is that Greek thinkers borrowed at large from the Old

Testament, for Moses lived some six hundred years before the

deification of Dionysos, the Sibyl long before Orpheus.[67] Clement's

illustrations are not very convincing. "The idea of bringing

Providence as far down as the moon came to Aristotle from this _Psalm_:

'Lord, in heaven is thy mercy and thy truth as far as (_heos_) the

clouds.'" Epicurus took his conception of Chance from "Vanity of

vanities, all is vanity;" while the Sabbath is found in several lines

of Homer--unfortunately spurious. An attempt to convict Euripides of

plagiarism from Plato's _Republic_ shows the worth of these

suggestions, and the whole scheme wakes doubts as to the value of

Clement's judgment.[68]

Another theory was angelic mediation. God might have communicated with

the Greeks by inferior angels;[69] or those angels who fell into

pleasure might have told their human wives what they knew of divine

secrets, "and so the doctrine of Providence got about."[70] Or else by

happy guess or accident the Greeks found parts of the truth for

themselves--or in virtue of some naturally implanted notion (_ennoia_)

or common mind, and then "we know who is the author of nature."[71]

Whatever the explanation, in any case the hand of God was to be traced

in it--Providence foreknew all, and so designed that the wickedness of

fallen angels and men should promote righteousness and truth.[72] So

much for those who quote the text "All that ever came before me were

thieves and robbers,"[73] or who say that the devil is the author of

{282} Philosophy[74] (though we may admit Epicureanism to have been

sown by the sower of tares).[75] We might look far for a more vivid

illustration of the contrast between sound instinct and absurd theory.

[Sidenote: The _Protrepticus_]

Thus he vindicates the right of the Christian to claim Philosophy as

the manifestation of the Divine Logos, and as a fore-runner of the

Gospel, and in his _Protrepticus_ he shows how the Christian thus

re-inforced can deal with paganism. If the _Stromateis_ weary even the

sympathetic reader with their want of plan, their diffuseness and

repetition, and their interminable and fanciful digressions--faults

inherent in all works of the kind--the _Protrepticus_ makes a different

impression. It is written by the same hand and shows the same

tendencies, but they are under better control. Allegories, analogies

and allusions still hinder the development of his thought--like

Atalanta he can never let a golden apple run past him. He is not

properly a philosopher in spite of all his love of Philosophy, and he

thinks in colours, like a poet. Yet he is not essentially a man of

letters or a poet; he is too indolent; his style is not inevitable or

compulsive. It is too true a confession when he says that he does not

aim at beauty of language. His sentence will begin well, and then grow

intricate and involved--in breaks an allusion, not always very

relevant, and brings with it a quotation that has captured his fancy

and paralyses his grammar--several perhaps--some accommodation is made,

and the sentence straggles on, and will end somehow--with a pile of

long words, for which others have been patiently waiting since before

the quotation, in pendent genitives, accusatives and so forth. But in

the _Protrepticus_--in the better parts of it--something has happened

to his style, for (to speak after his own manner)

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

He is no longer arguing; he surrenders to a tide of emotion, and is

borne along singing, and as he sings, he seems to gather up all the

music of the ancient world; we catch notes that come from Greek and

Hebrew song, and the whole is woven together {283} into a hymn to "the

Saviour," "my Singer," "our new Orpheus," that for sheer beauty, for

gladness and purity of feeling is unmatched in early Christian

literature. One comes back to it after years and the old charm is

there still. That it can survive in a few translated fragments is

hardly to be expected.

He begins with the famous singers of Greek myth--Amphion, Arion, and

Eunomus with the grass-hopper... You will believe empty myths, he

says, but "Truth's bright face seems to you to be false and falls under

eyes of unbelief." But Cithaeron and Helicon are old. "Let us bring

Truth and shining Wisdom from heaven above to the holy mount of God and

the holy choir of the prophets. Let her, beaming with light that

spreads afar, illumine all about her them that lie in darkness, and

save men from error." "My Eunomus sings not Terpander's strain, nor

Capion's, not the Phrygian, the Lydian or the Dorian, but the eternal

strain of the new harmony, the strain that bears the name of God, the

new song, the song of the Levite, with

A drug infused antidote to the pains

Of grief and anger, a most potent charm

For ills of every name,[76]

a sweet and true cure of sorrow." Orpheus sang to enslave men to

idols, to foolish rites, to shadows. "Not such is my singer; he has

come, soon to end cruel slavery to tyrannic daemons; he transfers us to

the gentle and kindly yoke of piety, and calls to heaven them that were

fallen to earth."[77]

It was this new song that first made the whole cosmos a harmony, and it

is still the stay and harmony of all things. It was this Logos of God

who framed "the little cosmos, man," setting soul and body together by

the holy spirit, and who sings to God upon this organ of many

tones--man. The Logos himself is an organ for God, of all the

harmonies, tuneful and holy.[78] What does this organ, this new song,

tell us?

The Logos, that was before the Day-Star was, has appeared among men as

a teacher,--he by whom all things were made. {284} As Demiurge he gave

life; as teacher he taught to live well; that, as God, he may lavish

upon us life forever. Many voices and many means has the Saviour

employed for the saving of men. Lest you should disbelieve these, the

Logos of God has himself become man that you might learn from man how

man may become God.[79]

He casts a glance over Greek myths and mysteries--cymbals, tambourines,

emblems, legends and uncleanness, the work of men who knew not the God

who truly is, men "without hope and without God in the world." "There

was from of old a certain natural fellowship of men with heaven, hidden

in the darkness of their ignorance, but now on a sudden it has leapt

through the darkness and shines resplendent--even as that said by one

of old,

See'st thou that boundless aether there on high

That laps earth round within its dewy arms?

and again,

O stay of earth, that hast thy seat on earth,

Whoe'er thou art, beyond man's guess to see;

and all the rest that the children of the poets sing."[80] But wrong

conceptions have turned "the heavenly plant, man," from the heavenly

life and laid him low on earth, persuading him to cleave to things

fashioned of earth. So he returns to the discussion of pagan

worships--"but by now your myths too seem to me to have grown old"--and

he speaks of the daemon-theory by which the pagans themselves explained

their religion. The daemons are inhuman and haters of men; they enjoy

the slaying of men--no wonder that with such a beginning superstition

is the source of cruelty and folly. But "no! I must never entrust the

hopes of the soul to things without souls."[81] "The only refuge, it

seems, for him who would come to the gates of "Salvation is the Divine

Wisdom."[82]

{285}

He now reviews the opinions of the philosophers about God. The Stoics

(to omit the rest) "saying that the divine goes through all matter,

even the most dishonourable, shame Philosophy."[83] "Epicurus alone I

will gladly forget."[84] "Where then are we to track out God, Plato?

'The Father and maker of this whole it is hard to find, and, when one

has found him, to declare him to all is impossible.' In his name why?

'For it is unspeakable.' Well said! Plato! thou hast touched the

truth!"[85] "I know thy teachers," still addressing Plato, "Geometry

thou dost learn from Egyptians, Astronomy from Babylonians, the charms

that give health from Thracians; much have the Assyrians taught thee;

but thy laws--such of them as are true--and thy thought of God, to

these thou hast been helped by the Hebrews."[86] After the

philosophers the poets are called upon to give evidence--Euripides in

particular.[87] Finally he turns to the prophets and their message of

salvation--"I could quote you ten thousand passages, of which 'not one

tittle shall pass' without being fulfilled; for the mouth of the Lord,

the holy spirit, spoke them."[88]

God speaks to men as to his children--"gentle as a father," as Homer

says. He offers freedom, and you run away to slavery; he gives

salvation, and you slip away into death. Yet he does not cease to

plead--"Wake, and Christ the Lord shall lighten upon you, the sun of

resurrection."[89] "What would you have covenanted to give, oh! men!

if eternal salvation had been for sale? Not though one should measure

out all Pactolus, the mythic river of gold, will he pay a price equal

to salvation."[90] Yet "you can buy this precious salvation with your

own treasure, with love and faith of life ... that is a price God is

glad to accept."[91] Men grow to the world, like seaweed to the rocks

by the sea, and despise immortality "like the old Ithacan, yearning not

for Truth and the fatherland {286} in heaven, and the light that truly

is, but for the smoke."[92] It is piety that "makes us like God"--a

reference to Plato's familiar phrase. God's function (_ergon_) is

man's salvation. "The word is not hidden from any. Light is common

and shines upon all men; there is no Cimmerian in the reckoning. Let

us hasten to salvation, to re-birth. Into one love to be gathered,

many in number, according to the unity of the essence of the Monad, let

us hasten. As we are blessed, let us pursue unity, seeking the good

Monad. And this union of many, from a medley of voices and

distraction, receives a divine harmony and becomes one symphony,

following one coryphaeus (_choreutes_) and teacher, the Word, resting

upon the Truth itself, and saying 'Abba Father.'"[93] Here indeed

Philosophy and the Gospel join hands, when the Monad and Abba Father

are shown to be one and the same.[94]

It is easy to see which of the thoughts represented by these names

means most to Clement. "Our tender loving Father, the Father indeed,

ceases not to urge, to admonish, to teach, to love; for neither does he

cease to save"--"only, oh! child! thirst for thy Father, and God will

be shown to thee without a price."[95] "Man's proper nature is to be

at home with God;" as then we set each animal to its natural task, the

ox to plough and the horse to hunt, so "man, too, who is born for the

sight of heaven, a heavenly plant most truly, we call to the knowledge

of God.... Plough, we say, if you are a ploughman, but know God as you

plough; sail, if you love sea-faring, but calling on the heavenly

pilot"[96] "A noble hymn to God is an immortal man, being built up in

righteousness, in whom are engraved the oracles of truth"[97]; and very

soon he quotes "Turn the other cheek" as a "reasonable law to be

written in the heart."[98] {287} "God's problem is always to save the

flock of men. It was for that the good God sent the good Shepherd.

The Logos has made truth simple and shown to men the height of

salvation."[99] "Christ wishes your salvation; with one word he gives

you life. And who is he? Hear in brief: the Word of truth, the Word

of immortality, that gives man re-birth, bears him up to truth, the

goad of salvation, who drives away destruction, who chases forth death,

who built in men a temple that he might make God to dwell among

men."[100]

The last chapter is a beautiful picture of the Christian life, full of

wonderful language from Homer, the _Bacchae_ of Euripides, and the

Mysteries, and in the centre of it--its very heart--"Come unto me, all

ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

In the passages here quoted from the _Protrepticus_ some of Clement's

main ideas in the realm of Christian thought are clearly to be seen;

and we have now to give them further and more detailed examination. We

have to see what he makes of the central things in the new religion--of

God, and the Saviour, and of man, and how he interprets the Gospel of

Jesus in the language of Greek philosophy. It is to be noted that,

whatever happened in the course of his work--and very few books are,

when written, quite what the writer expected on beginning--Clement

looked upon his task as interpretation. The Scriptures are his

authorities--"he who has believed the divine Scriptures, with firm

judgment, receives in the voice of God who gave the Scriptures a proof

that cannot be spoken against."[101] Amid the prayers and hymns of the

ideal Christian comes daily reading of the sacred books.[102] Clement

has no formal definition of inspiration, but he loved the sacred text,

and he made it the standard by which to judge all propositions. It is

perhaps impossible to over-estimate the importance of this loyalty in

an age, when Christian speculation was justly under suspicion on

account {288} of the free re-modelling of the New Testament text that

went with it. Clement would neither alter, nor excise, but he found

all the freedom he wanted in the accepted methods of exegesis.

Allegory and the absence of any vestige of historical criticism--and,

not least, the inability induced by the training of the day to conceive

of a work of art, or even a piece of humbler literature, as a

whole--his very defects as a student secured his freedom as a

philosopher. He can quote Scripture for his purpose; the phrase will

support him where the context will not; and sometimes a defective

memory will help him to the words he wants, as we have seen in the case

of the worship of sun, moon and stars. To the modern mind such a use

of Scripture is unwarrantable and seems to imply essential indifference

to its real value, but in Clement and his contemporaries it is not

inconsistent with--indeed, it is indicative of--a high sense of the

value of Scripture as the _ipsissima verba_ of God. And after all a

mis-quotation may be as true as the most authentic text, and may help a

man as effectually to insight into the thoughts of God.

[Sidenote: The Logos]

We have seen that Clement quarrelled with the Stoics for involving God

in matter--"even the most dishonourable." The World-soul was, in fact,

repugnant to men who were impressed with the thought of Sin, and who

associated Sin with matter. This feeling and a desire to keep the idea

of God disentangled from every limitation led to men falling back (as

we saw in the case of Plutarch) on the Platonic conception of God's

transcendence. Neo-Platonism has its "golden chain" of existence

descending from Real Being--God--through a vast series of beings who

_are_ in a less and less degree as they are further down the scale. It

is not hard to sympathize with the thoughts and feelings which drew men

in this direction. The best thinkers and the most religious natures in

the Mediterranean world (outside the circle of Jesus, and some Stoics)

found the transcendence of God inevitably attractive, and then their

hearts sought means to bridge the gulf their thoughts had made. For

now he was out of all knowledge, and away beyond even revelation; for

revelation involved relation and limitation, and God must be absolute.

{289}

We have seen how Plutarch found in the existence of daemons a

possibility of intercourse between gods and men, while above the daemons

the gods, he implies, are in communication with the remote Supreme.

But for some thinkers this solution was revolting. Philo, with the

great record before him of the religious experience of his race, was

not prepared to give up the thought "O God, thou art my God."[103]

Linking the Hebrew phrase "the word of the Lord" with the Stoic Logos

Spermaticos and Plato's Idea, he found in the resulting conception a

divine, rational and spiritual principle immanent in man and in the

universe, and he also found a divine personality, or quasi-personality,

to come between the Absolute and the world. He pictures the Logos as

the Son of God, the First-born, the oldest of angels, the "idea of

ideas," and again as the image of God, and the ideal in whose likeness

man was made. As the ambassador of God, and High Priest, the Logos is

able to mediate directly between man and God, and bridges the gulf that

separates us from the Absolute.[104] More than anything else, this

great conception of Philo's prepared the way for fusion of Greek

thought and Christianity. Clement is conspicuously a student and a

follower of Philo--nor was he the first among Christian writers to feel

his influence.

Clement, as already said, professed himself an eclectic in philosophy,

and of such we need not expect the closest reasoning. Our plan will be

to gather passages illustrative of his thoughts--we might almost say of

his moods--and set side by side what he says from time to time of God.

On such a subject it is perhaps impossible to hope for logic or

consistency except at the cost of real aspects of the matter in hand.

Something will be gained if we can realize the thoughts which most

moved the man, even though their reconciliation is questionably

possible. This doubt however does not seem to have occurred to

himself, for he connects the dogmata of the philosophers and the

teaching of the New Testament as if it were the most natural thing in

the world.

{290}

To begin with the account of God which Clement gives in philosophical

language. "The Lord calls himself 'one' (_hen_)--'that they all may be

one ... as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be

perfected into one.' Now God is 'one' (_hen_) and away beyond the

'one' (_henos_) and above the Monad itself."[105] Again, after quoting

Solon and Empedocles and "John the Apostle" ("no man hath seen God at

any time"), Clement enlarges on the difficulty of speaking of

God:--"How can that be expressed, which is neither genus, nor

differentia, nor species, neither indivisible, nor sum, nor accident,

nor susceptive of accident? Nor could one properly call him a whole

(_holon_); for whole (_to holon_) implies dimension, and he is Father

of the Whole (_ton holon_). Nor could, one speak of his parts, for the

one is indivisible and therefore limitless, not so conceived because

there is no passing beyond it, but as being without dimension or limit,

and therefore without form or name. And if we ever name him, calling

him, though not properly, one, or the good, or mind, or absolute being,

or father, or God, or demiurge, or lord, we do not so speak as putting

forward his name; but, for want of his name, we use beautiful names,

that the mind may not wander at large, but may rest on these. None of

these names, taken singly, informs us of God; but, collectively and

taken all together, they point to his almighty power. For predicates

are spoken either of properties or of relation, and none of these can

we assume about God. Nor is he the subject of the knowledge which

amounts to demonstration; for this depends on premisses (_protera_) and

things better known (_gnorimotepa_);[106] but nothing is anterior to

the unbegotten. It remains then by divine grace and by the Logos alone

that is from him to perceive the unknowable."[107] Again, "God has no

natural relation (_physiken schesin_) to us, as the founders of

heresies hold (not though he make us of what is not, or fashion us from

matter, for _that_ is not at all, and _this_ is in every point

different from God)--unless you venture to say that we are part of him

and of one essence (_homoousious_) with God; and I do not understand

how anyone who {291} knows God will endure to hear that said, when he

casts his eye upon our life and the evils with which we are mixed up.

For in this way (and it is a thing not fit to speak of) God would be

sinning in his parts, that is, if the parts are parts of the whole and

complete the whole--if they do not complete it, they would not be

parts. However, God, by nature (_physei_) being rich in pity

(_eleos_), of his goodness he cares for us who are not his members nor

by nature his children (_mete morion onton autou mete physei teknon_).

Indeed this is the chief proof of God's goodness, that though this is

our position with regard to him, by nature utterly 'alienated' from

him, he nevertheless cares for us. For the instinct of kindness to

offspring is natural (_physike_) in animals, and so is friendship with

the like-minded based on old acquaintance, but God's pity is rich

towards us who in no respect have anything to do with him, I mean, in

our being (_ousia_) or nature or the peculiar property of our being

(_dynamei te oikeia tes ousias hemon_), but merely by our being the

work of His will."[108] "The God of the Whole (_ton helon_), who is

above every voice and every thought and every conception, could never

be set forth in writing, for his property is to be unspeakable."[109]

It follows that the language of the Bible is not to be taken literally

when it attributes feelings to God. Clement has cited texts which

speak of "joy" and "pity" in connexion with God, and he has to meet the

objection that these are moods of the soul and passions (_tropas

psyches kai pathe_). We mistake, when we interpret Scripture in

accordance with our own experience of the flesh and of passions,

"taking the will of the passionless God (_tou apathous theou_) on a

line with our own perturbations (_kinemasi_). When we suppose that the

fact in the case of the Almighty is as we are able to hear, we err in

an atheistic way. For the divine was not to be declared as it _is_;

but as we, fettered by flesh, were able to understand, even so the

prophets spoke to us, the Lord accommodating himself to the weakness of

men with a mind to save them {292} (_soterios_)." Thus the language of

our emotions, though not properly to be employed, is used to help our

weakness.[110] For God is, in fact, "without emotion, without wrath,

without desire" (_apathes_, _athumos_, _anepithumetos_).[111] Clement

repeatedly recurs with pleasure to this conception of "Apathy"; it is

the mark of God, of Christ, of the Apostles, and of the ideal

Christian, with whom it becomes a fixed habit (_hexis_).[112]

God is not like a man (_anthropoeides_), nor does he need senses to

hear with, nor does he depend on the sensitiveness of the air (_to

eupathes tou heros_) for his apprehensions, "but the instantaneous

perception of the angels and the power of conscience touching the

soul--these recognize all things, with the quickness of thought, by

means of some indescribable faculty apart from sensible hearing. Even

if one should say that it was impossible for the voice, rolling in this

lower air, to reach to God, still the thoughts of the saints (_agion_)

cleave, not the air alone, but the whole universe as well. And the

divine power instantly penetrates the whole soul like light. Again do

not our resolves also find their way to God, uttering a voice of their

own? And are not some things also wafted heavenward by the conscience?

... God is all ear and all eye, if we may make use of these

expressions."[113] Thus it would seem that God is not so far from

every one of us as we might have supposed from the passages previously

quoted, and the contrast between the two views of God grows wider when

we recall Clement's words in the _Protrepticus_ about the Heavenly

Father. While a Greek, the pupil of the philosophers, could never use

the language of a Jew about "God our Father" with the same freedom from

mental reservation, Clement undoubtedly speaks of God at times in the

same spirit that we feel in the utterances of Jesus. He goes beyond

what contemporary philosophers would have counted suitable or

desirable, as we can see in the complaints which Celsus makes of

Christian language about God, though Celsus, of course, is colder than

the religious {293} of his day. But the main difference between

Christians and philosophers was not as to God the Father, but as to

Christ.

When Clement, in his work of restatement, came to discuss Christ, he

found Philo's Logos ready to his hand and he was not slow to use it.

It is characteristic that, just as he unquestioningly accepted the

current philosophic account of God and saw no great difficulty in

equating a God best described in negations with the Abba Father of

Jesus, so he adopted, not less light-heartedly, the conflate conception

of the Logos. Whether its Platonic and Stoic elements would hold

together; whether either of them was really germane to the Hebrew part;

whether in any case any of the three sets of constituents corresponded

with anything actually to be reached by observation or experience; or

whether, waiving that point, the combination was equal to its task of

helping man to conceive of God at once as immanent and transcendent,

Clement hardly inquired. So far he followed Philo. Then came in a new

factor which might well have surprised Plato, Zeno and Philo alike.

Following once more, but this time another leader, Clement equates the

Philonian Logos with the historic Jesus of Nazareth.

So stated, the work of Clement may well look absurd. But after all he

is not the only man who has identified the leading of instinct with

philosophic proof. In succession he touched the central thoughts of

his various leaders, and he found them answer to cravings within him.

He wanted a God beyond the contagion of earth, Supreme and Absolute;

and Plato told him of such a God. Yet the world needed some divine

element; it must not be outside the range and thought of God; and here

the conception of divine Reason, linking man and nature with God

Himself, appealed to his longing. Lastly the impossibility of thinking

Jesus and his work to be accidental, of conceiving of them as anything

but vitally bound up with the spiritual essence of all things, with God

and with God's ultimate mind for man and eternity, was the natural

outcome of entering into the thoughts of Jesus, of realizing his

personality and even of observing his effect upon {294} mankind.[114]

When one remembers how in every age men have passed through one form

and another of experience, and have then compacted philosophies to

account for those experiences, have thought their constructions final,

and have recommended their theories as of more value than the facts on

which, after reflection, slight or profound, but perhaps never

adequate, they have based them, it will not seem strange that Clement

did the same.

Ah yet, when all is thought and said,

The heart still overrules the head;

Still what we hope we must believe,

And what is given us receive.

The old task is still to do. The old cravings are still within us;

still the imperishable impulse lives to seek some solution of the great

question of the relations of God and the soul and the universe, which

may give us more abiding satisfaction than Clement's can now have, and

which will yet recognize those old cravings, will recognize and meet

them, not some but all of them.

"Most perfect, and most holy of all," says Clement, "most sovereign,

most lordly, most royal and most beneficent, is the nature of the Son,

which approaches most closely to the One Almighty Being. The Son is

the highest Pre-eminence, which sets in order all things according to

the Father's will, and steers the universe aright, performing all

things with unwearying energy, beholding the Father's secret thoughts

through his working. For the Son of God never moves from his

watch-tower, being never divided, never dissevered, never passing from

place to place, but existing everywhere at all times and free from all

limitations. He is all reason, all eye, all light from the Father,

seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, with power

searching the powers. To him is subjected the whole army of angels and

of gods--to him, the Word of the Father, who has received the holy

administration by reason of Him who subjected it to him; through whom

also all men belong to him, but some by way of knowledge, while others

have not yet attained to this; some as friends, some as faithful

servants, others as servants merely."[115]

{295}

[Sidenote: The Logos]

The Logos is the source of Providence, the author, as already seen, of

all human thought and activity, of the beauty of the human body

too,[116] Saviour and Lord at once of all men--man being "his peculiar

work," for into him alone of animals was a conception of God instilled

at his creation. "Being the power of the Father, he easily prevails

over whomsoever he will, not leaving even the smallest atom of his

government uncared for."[117] "He it is in truth that devises the

bridle for the horse, the yoke for the bull, the noose for the wild

beast, the rod for the fish, the snare for the bird; he governs the

city and ploughs the land, rules and serves, and all things he maketh;

Therein he set the earth, the heaven, the sea,

And all the stars wherewith the heaven is crowned.

O the divine creations! O the divine commands! This water, let it

roll within itself; this fire, let it check its rage; this air, let it

spread to aether; and let earth be fixed and borne, when I will it. Man

I yet wish to make; for his material I have the elements; I dwell with

him my hands fashion. If thou know me, the fire shall be thy

slave."[118]

"All[119] gaze on the supreme Administrator of the universe, as he

pilots all in safety according to the Father's will, rank being

subordinated to rank under different leaders till in the end the Great

High Priest is reached. For on one original principle, which works in

accordance with the Father's will, depend the first and second and

third gradations; and then at the extreme end of the visible world

there is the blessed ordinance of angels; and so, even down to

ourselves, ranks below ranks are appointed, all saving and being saved

by the initiation and through the instrumentality of One. As then the

remotest particle of iron is drawn by the breath (_pneumati_) of the

stone of Heraklea [the magnet] extending through a long series of iron

rings, so also through the attraction of the holy spirit (_pneumati_)

the virtuous are adapted to the highest {296} mansion; and the others

in their order even to the last mansion; but they that are wicked from

weakness, having fallen into an evil habit owing to unrighteous greed,

neither keep hold themselves nor are held by another, but collapse and

fall to the ground, being entangled in their own passions."[120] This

last clause raises questions as to evil and freewill. Clement believed

in freewill; for one thing, it was necessary if God was to be acquitted

of the authorship of evil. "God made all things to be helpful for

virtue, in so far as might be without hindering the freedom of man's

choice, and showed them to be so, in order that he who is indeed the

One Alone Almighty might, even to those who can only see darkly, be in

some way revealed as a good God, a Saviour from age to age through the

instrumentality of his Son, and in all ways absolutely guiltless of

evil."[121]

Clement also brings in the Platonic Idea to help to express Christ.

"The idea is a thought of God (_ennoema_), which the barbarians have

called God's Logos."[122] "All the activity of the Lord is referred to

the Almighty, the Son being, so to speak, a certain activity

(_energeia_) of the Father,"[123] and a little lower he adds that the

Son is "the power (_dynamis_) of the Father."[124] As such he may well

be "above the whole universe, or rather beyond the region of

thought."[125] And yet, as we have seen, he leans to the view that the

Logos is a person--the Great High Priest. In criticizing him, it is

well to remember how divergent are the conceptions which he wishes to

keep, and to keep in some kind of unity.

Once again, in many of Clement's utterances upon the Logos there is

little that Philo, or perhaps even a pagan philosopher, could not have

approved; but through it all there is a new note which is Clement's own

and which comes from another series of thoughts. For it is a

distinctive mark of Clement's work that the reader rises from it

impressed with the idea of "the Saviour." The _Protrepticus_ is full

of the thought of that divine love of men, warm and active, which {297}

Jesus associated with "your heavenly Father," but which Clement, under

the stress of his philosophy must connect with the Logos--"cleansing,

saving and kindly; most manifest God indeed, made equal with the ruler

of the universe."[126] He is our "only refuge" (_mone kataphyge_), the

"sun of resurrection," the "sun of the soul."[127] And yet one group

of ideas, familiar in this connection, receives little notice from

Clement. The Logos is indeed the Great High Priest, but the symbolism

of priest and sacrifice and sin-bearer is left rather remarkably

unemphasized. He is "the all-availing healer of mankind,"[128] but his

function is more to educate, to quicken, and to give knowledge than to

expiate.

The great and characteristic feature of the Logos is that "he took the

mask (_prosopeion_) of a man and moulded it for himself in flesh and

played a part in the drama of mankind's salvation; for he was a true

player (_gnesios agonistes_), a fellow-player with the creature; and

most quickly was he spread abroad among all men, more quickly than the

sun, when he rose from the Father's will, and proved whence he was and

who he was by what he taught and showed, he, the bringer of the

covenant, the reconciler, the Logos our Saviour, the fountain of life

and peace, shed over the whole face of the earth, by whom (so to say)

all things have become an ocean of blessings."[129] Though essentially

and eternally free from passion (_apathes_) "for our sake he took upon

him our flesh with its capacity for suffering" (_ten patheten

sarka_)[130] and "descended to sensation (_aisthesis_)."[131] "It is

clear that none can in his lifetime clearly apprehend God; but 'the

pure in heart shall see God' when they come to the final perfection.

Since, then, the soul was too weak for the perception of what _is_

(_ton onton_), we needed a divine teacher. The Saviour is sent down to

teach us how to acquire good, and to give it to us (_choregos_)--the

secret and holy knowledge of the great Providence,"[132]--"to show God

to foolish men, to end corruption, {298} to conquer death, to reconcile

disobedient children to their Father.... The Lord pities, educates,

encourages, exhorts, saves and guards, and as the prize of learning he

promises us out of his abundance the kingdom of heaven--this alone

giving him joy in us, that we are saved."[133] All this was foreknown

before the foundation of the world; the Logos was and is the divine

beginning or principle of all things, "but because he has now taken the

long-hallowed name, the name worthy of his power, the Christ, that is

why I call it the new song."[134] And indeed he is right, for "the

Epiphany, now shining among us, of the Word that was in the beginning

and before it"[135] is new in philosophy; and it is a new thing also

that the doctrine of a Logos should be "essentially musical." The

Incarnation of the divine Teacher is the central fact for Clement.

The identification of this incarnate Logos with Jesus of Nazareth was

part of Clement's inheritance, and as usual he accepted the form which

the tradition of the Church had assumed. But Clement's theology

altered the significance of Jesus. For the Abba Father whom Jesus

loved, he substituted the great Unknowable, and then he had to bring in

a figure unfamiliar to the thought of Jesus--the Logos, whom he clothed

with many of the attributes of the Father of Jesus, and then identified

with Jesus himself. Not unnaturally in this combination the historic

is outweighed by the theoretic element, and indeed receives very little

attention. The thought of Incarnation is to Clement much more

important than the Personality.

[Sidenote: The virgin-birth]

Jesus is "God and pedagogue," "good shepherd," and "mystic Angel (or

messenger)," "the pearl," "the great High Priest," and so forth.[136]

In a few passages (some of them already quoted) Clement speaks of the

earthly life of Jesus--of the crown of thorns, the common ware, and the

absence of a silver foot-bath. But he takes care to make it clear that

Jesus was "not an ordinary man," and that was why he did not marry and

have children--this in opposition to certain {299} vain persons who

held up the Lord's example as a reason for rejecting marriage, which

"they call simple prostitution and a practice introduced by the

devil."[137] So far was Jesus from being "an ordinary man" that

Clement takes pains to dissociate him from ordinary human experience.

To the miraculous birth he refers incidentally but in a way that leaves

no mistake possible. "Most people even now believe, as it seems, that

Mary ceased to be a virgin through the birth of her child, though this

was not really the case--for some say she was found by the midwife to

be a virgin after her delivery."[138] This expansion of the

traditional story is to be noted as an early illustration of the

influence of dogma. The episode appears in an elaborate form in the

apocryphal Gospels.[139] But Clement goes further. "In the case of

the Saviour, to suppose that his body required, _qua_ body, the

necessary attentions for its continuance, would be laughable (_gelos_).

For he ate--not on account of his body, which was held together by holy

power, but that it might not occur to those who consorted with him to

think otherwise of him--as indeed later on some really supposed him to

have been manifested merely in appearance [_i.e._ the Docetists who

counted his body a phantom]. He himself was entirely without passion

(_apathes_) and into him entered no emotional movement (_kinema

pathetikon_), neither pleasure nor pain."[140] A fragment (in a Latin

translation) of a commentary of Clement's upon the first _Epistle of

John_, contains a curious statement: "It is said in the traditions that

John touched the surface of the body of Jesus, and drove his hand deep

into it, and the firmness of the flesh was no obstacle but gave way to

the hand of the disciple."[141] At the same time we read: "It was not

idly that the Lord chose to employ a body of mean form, in order that

no one, while praising his comeliness {300} and beauty, should depart

from what he said, and in cleaving to what is left behind should be

severed from the higher things of thought (_ton noeton_)."[142]

It is consistent with the general scheme of Clement's thought that the

cross has but a small part in his theology. "It was not by the will of

his Father that the Lord suffered, nor are the persecuted so treated in

accordance with his choice"--it is rather in both cases that "such

things occur, God not preventing them; this alone saves at once the

providence and goodness of God."[143] Yet "the blood of the Lord is

twofold; there is the fleshly, whereby we have been redeemed from

corruption, and the spiritual, by which we have been anointed."[144]

The cross is the landmark between us and our past.[145] On the whole

Clement has not much to say about sin, though of course he does not

ignore it. It is "eternal death";[146] it is "irrational";[147] it is

not to be attributed "to the operation (energy) of daemons," as that

would be to acquit the sinner, still it makes a man "like the daemons"

(_daimonikos_).[148] God's punishments he holds to be curative in

purpose.[149] He says nothing to imply the eternity of

punishment,[150] and as we have seen he speaks definitely of the Gospel

being preached to the dead.

[Sidenote: The vision of the true gnostic]

The Christian religion, according to Clement, begins in faith and goes

on to knowledge. The heavier emphasis with him always falls on

knowledge, though he maintains in a fine chapter that faith is its

foundation.[151] "The Greeks," he says, "consider faith an empty and

barbarous thing,"[152] but he is far from such a view. Faith must be

well-founded--"if faith is such as to be destroyed by plausible talk,

let it be destroyed."[153] But the word left upon the reader's mind is

knowledge. A passage like the following is unmistakable. "Supposing

one were to offer the Gnostic his choice, whether he would prefer {301}

the knowledge of God or eternal salvation, one or the other (though of

course they are above all things an identity); without the slightest

hesitation he would choose the knowledge of God for its own sake."[154]

The ideal Christian is habitually spoken of in this way, as the "man of

knowledge"--the true "Gnostic," as opposed to the heretics who

illegitimately claim the title. A very great deal of Clement's writing

is devoted to building up this Gnostic, to outlining his ideal

character. He is essentially man as God conceived him, entering into

the divine life, and, by the grace of the Logos, even becoming God.

This thought of man becoming God Clement repeats very often, and it is

a mark of how far Christianity has travelled from Palestine. It begins

with the Platonic ideal of being made like to God, and the means is the

knowledge of God or the sight of God given by the Logos. "'Nought say

I of the rest,'[155] glorifying God. Only I say that those Gnostic

souls are so carried away by the magnificence of the vision (_theopia_)

that they cannot confine themselves within the lines of the

constitution by which each holy degree is assigned and in accordance

with which the blessed abodes of the gods have been marked out and

allotted; but being counted as 'holy among the holy,' and translated

absolutely and entirely to another sphere, they keep on always moving

to better and yet better regions, until they no longer greet the divine

vision in mirrors or by means of mirrors, but with loving souls feast

for ever on the uncloying never-ending sight, radiant in its

transparent clearness, while throughout the endless ages they taste a

never-wearying delight, and thus continue, all alike honoured with an

identity of pre-eminence. This is the apprehensive vision of the pure

in heart. This, then, is the work (_energeia_) of the perfected

Gnostic--to hold communion with God through the Great High Christ being

made like the Lord as far as may be. Yes, and in this process of

becoming like God the Gnostic creates and fashions himself anew, and

adorns those that hear him."[156] In an interesting chapter Clement

discusses abstraction from material things as a necessary {302}

condition for attaining the knowledge of God; we must "cast ourselves

into the greatness of Christ and thence go forward."[157] "If a man

know himself, he shall know God, and knowing God shall be made like to

him.... The man with whom the Logos dwells ... is made like to God ...

and that man _becomes_ God, for God wishes it."[158] "By being deified

into Apathy (_apatheian_) a man becomes Monadic without stain."[159] As

Homer makes men poets, Crobylus cooks, and Plato philosophers; "so he

who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him, is fully

perfected after the likeness of his Teacher, and thus becomes a god

while still moving about in the flesh."[160] "Dwelling with the Lord,

talking with him and sharing his hearth, he will abide according to the

spirit, pure in flesh, pure in heart, sanctified in word. 'The world

to him,' it says, 'is crucified and he to the world.' He carries the

cross of the Saviour and follows the Lord 'in his footsteps as of a

god,' and is become holy of the holy."[161]

We seem to touch the world of daily life, when after all the beatific

visions we see the cross again. Clement has abundance of suggestion

for Christian society in Alexandria, and it is surprising how simple,

natural and wise is his attitude to the daily round and common task.

Men and women alike may "philosophize," for their "virtue" (in

Aristotle's phrase) is the same--so may the slave, the ignorant and the

child.[162] The Christian life is not to eradicate the natural but to

control it.[163] Marriage is a state of God's appointing--Clement is no

Jerome. Nature made us to marry and "the childless man falls short of

the perfection of Nature."[164] Men must marry for their country's

sake and for the completeness of the universe.[165] True manhood is

not proved by celibacy--the married man may "fall short of the other as

regards his personal salvation, but he has {303} the advantage in the

conduct of life inasmuch as he really preserves a faint (_oligen_)

image of the true Providence."[166] The heathen, it is true, may

expose their own children and keep parrots, but the begetting and

upbringing of children is a part of the married Christian life.[167]

"Who are the two or three gathering in the name of Christ, among whom

the Lord is in the midst? Does he not mean man, wife and child by the

_three_, seeing woman is made to match man by God."[168]

The real fact about the Christian life is simply this, that the New

Song turns wild beasts into men of God.[169] "Sail past the siren's

song, it works death," says Clement, "if only thou wilt, thou hast

overcome destruction; lashed to the wood thou shalt be loosed from

ruin; the Word of God will steer thee and the holy spirit will moor

thee to the havens of heaven."[170] To the early Christian "the wood"

always meant the cross of Jesus. The new life is "doing good for

love's sake,"[171] and "he who shows pity ought not to know that he is

doing it.... When he does good by instinctive habit (_en hexei_) then

he will be imitating the nature of good."[172] God breathed into man

and there has always been something charming in a man since then

(_philtron_).[173] So "the new people" are always happy, always in the

full bloom of thought, always at spring-time.[174] The Church is the

one thing in the world that always rejoices.[175]

Clement's theology is composite rather than organic--a structure of

materials old and new, hardly fit for the open air, the wind and the

rain. But his faith is another thing--it rests upon the living

personality of the Saviour, the love of God and the significance of the

individual soul, and it has the stamp of such faith in all the

ages--joy and peace in believing. It has lasted because it lived. If

Christianity had depended on the {304} Logos, it would have followed

the Logos to the limbo whither went AEon and Aporrhoia and Spermaticos

Logos. But that the Logos has not perished is due to the one fact that

with the Cross it has been borne through the ages on the shoulders of

Jesus.