Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A foundation of truth has been laid down, you children, for us ourselves — an unbreakable base of knowledge for the great holy temple of God, a noble exhortation, through reasonable obedience a reaching after life everlasting, cast down in a spiritual place. For since there are three things concerning man — character, actions, and passions — the Exhorting Word (the Protreptic) has been allotted his character, being the leader unto godliness, the Word laid beneath like a ship's keel for the building up of faith; over which greatly rejoicing, and renouncing our old opinions, we grow young again unto salvation, singing in harmony with the psalm that chants, "How good is God to Israel, to those upright in heart"; while over all our actions presides the Word of Precept, and our passions the Word of Consolation heals — one and the same Word throughout — snatching man out of his familiar and worldly habit, and training him, as a pedagogue leads a child, toward the one salvation that is faith in God. So then the heavenly Guide, the Word, whenever he was calling unto salvation, was named the Exhorter (this same urging Word being called, by this part of his work, after the whole; for all godliness is exhortation, begetting in the reason that is akin to it a longing for the present life and the life to come); but now, being at once the Healer and the Adviser, following his own course, he counsels the man already turned toward the goal, promising healing for the passions within us. Let him, then, be called by us fittingly by one name, Paedagogue — the Instructor who leads onward, not one who follows a method, in that his end is to make the soul better, not to teach it, and to guide it into a life of self-control, not one of mere knowledge. And yet this same Word is also a Teacher, but not now; for the Teacher, in matters of doctrine, is one who makes plain and reveals, whereas the Paedagogue, being practical, first exhorted the soul to a disposition of good character, and now further urges it on to the doing of what is needful, enjoining the pure counsels and displaying to those who come after the images of those who formerly went astray. Both ways are most beneficial: the one, the hortatory kind, leading to obedience; the other, taken in the manner of an image, is itself twofold, resembling the former pairing in like fashion — the one part that we may imitate, choosing the good, the other that we may turn away, refusing its opposite.
The healing of the passions, then, follows from this, the Paedagogue strengthening our souls by the consolations found in these images, and, as with gentle medicines, tending with humane counsels those who are ailing, until they come to the complete knowledge of truth. Health and knowledge are not equal things; the one is gained by learning, the other by healing. No one who is still sick could first learn any part of the teachings before being made wholly well; for not every one of the precepts is spoken in the same way to those who are learning and to those who are ailing, but to some it is spoken with a view to knowledge, to others with a view to healing. Just as those whose bodies are sick need a physician, so those whose souls are weak need a Paedagogue, that he may heal our passions; and after this he will lead us on to the Teacher, making the soul clean and fit to receive knowledge, able to take in the revelation of the Word. Hastening then to bring us to perfection by the saving stages, the wholly loving Word makes use of a good and orderly arrangement suited to our instruction: first exhorting from above, then acting as Paedagogue, and finally, over and above all, teaching.
← All of Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation, Instructor & Miscellanies