Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
We have abundant resources with which to strip for the contest against those who love to bring accusations; for we are not children and infants addressed with the childish and contemptible name of learners, as those puffed up over their gnosis have slandered us. For as soon as we were regenerated we received at once the perfection for whose sake we were hastening. For we were illuminated; and this is to come to know God. He then who has come to know the perfect is not imperfect. And do not seize upon me for confessing that I have known God. For it was in some such way that the Word saw fit to speak: "He who is free." At once, at any rate, when the Lord was being baptized, a voice sounded from the heavens, witness of the Beloved: "You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you." Let us then ask the wise: Christ, having been begotten today, is he already perfect, or, which is most absurd, deficient? If the latter, he needs to learn something further. But it is not fitting to suppose that he, being God, needed to learn anything further; for there could not be anyone greater than the Word, nor could anyone instruct the sole Instructor. Must they not, then, however reluctantly, admit that the Word, being perfect and begotten of the perfect Father, was in keeping with the prefigured plan made perfectly whole again? And if perfection was already his, for what reason did the perfect one undergo the washing? Such a step was required, so they claim, to accomplish what had been ordained for humankind. Excellently put. For I say: then, together with his being baptized by John, does he become perfect? Clearly so. Did he then learn nothing further from it? No indeed. Is he then perfected by the washing alone, and sanctified by the descent of the Spirit? So it is.
The very same thing happens also in our case, of whom the Lord has become the pattern: being baptized, we are illuminated; being illuminated, we are made sons; being made sons, we are perfected; being perfected, we are made immortal. "I said," he says, "you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High." Many names apply to this working: it is grace, it is illumination, it is perfection, and it is the bath — a bath because through it our transgressions are washed clean away; grace because through it the debts owed for wrongdoing are cancelled; illumination because through it that sacred saving radiance comes into view, meaning that through it we perceive the divine with clarity; and perfection we call it because nothing further remains to be added. For what is still lacking to one who has come to know God? For indeed it would be truly absurd for that which is not yet fulfilled to be called a gift of God; and being perfect, he will surely grant perfect gifts. And just as all things come to be for him at once when he commands, so it follows that for him merely to will to grant grace is for the grace to be fulfilled. For the future is anticipated by the power of the will in point of time. Moreover, deliverance from evils is the beginning of salvation. Only, then, those who have first grasped the boundaries of life are already perfect, and we who have been separated from death already live. Salvation, then, is to follow Christ. "For what has come to be in him is life." "Truly, truly I say to you," he says, "he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life." So simply trusting and being born anew constitutes completeness of living; since God possesses no feebleness whatsoever. Just as his intention becomes an act, and this act bears the name creation, in the same way his design brings about humanity's rescue, and this design is termed the assembly. He knows, then, those whom he has called; and those whom he has called, he has saved; he has called and saved at the same time. "For you yourselves," says the apostle, "are taught by God." It is therefore improper for us to regard whatever he instructs as incomplete; rather, his instruction is the everlasting rescue granted by the everlasting Rescuer, to whom be grace throughout the ages, amen. And he who is only regenerated, just as indeed his very name implies, having been illuminated, is at once freed from darkness and has immediately received the light. Just as those rousing themselves from slumber become at once alert inwardly — or better, as those attempting to remove a cataract from the eyes do not furnish themselves light from outside, having none to give — but by lowering what obstructed their sight leave the pupil unimpeded, so too the baptized, having through the divine Spirit wiped away like mist the sins that clouded their vision, gain a spiritual eye that is liberated, unobstructed, brimming with brightness, and it is solely through this that we perceive what is divine, as the Holy Spirit pours down upon us from above — a fusion, this, of everlasting brilliance, capable of beholding everlasting radiance; for what resembles is beloved by its like, and holiness is dear to the one from whom holiness proceeds, who is rightly termed light: "for you were once darkness, but now are light in the Lord." From this, I think, humankind was called by the ancients "lights." But not yet, they say, has he received the perfect gift. I too agree, except that he dwells within the light and darkness fails to overcome him; and light and darkness admit nothing whatsoever in between. But in the resurrection of believers the end is reserved; and this is nothing else to share in but to obtain the promise already agreed upon. For we do not claim that the two are settled simultaneously — namely, reaching the goal and looking ahead toward that goal's reaching; because eternity and time differ from one another, and neither are the initial impulse and the endpoint identical — no, they are not; but the one concerns itself with both, and with each in relation to the other. There is, so to speak, a starting-impulse, which is faith generated in time, and a goal, which is the attainment of the promise, confirmed for eternity. The Lord himself disclosed with the greatest clarity that salvation is granted equally, in these words: "My Father's wish is this — that everyone who looks upon the Son and puts trust in him may possess life without end, and I myself will raise that person on the final day." So far, then, as is possible in this world, which he hinted at as the last day, we believe that we become perfect while being kept for that time when it shall cease. For faith is the perfection of learning; for this reason he says, "He who believes in the Son has eternal life." If, then, we who have believed have life, what further remains beyond possessing life eternal? Nothing is lacking to faith, since it is of itself perfect and complete. But if something is lacking to it, it is not entirely whole, nor is it faith, limping as it does about some point; nor after our departure from here do other things await those who have believed — pledged here without distinction — but that which by believing they already anticipated as future, we receive after the resurrection as having come to be, so that that saying may be fulfilled: "Let it be done for you according to your faith." Wherever trust exists, the promise exists as well; and rest is what completes that promise. So that knowledge lies in illumination, and the goal of knowledge is rest, which is indeed understood as the final object of desire. Just as by experience inexperience is dissolved, and by resource resourcelessness, so of necessity by illumination darkness must vanish; and ignorance is the darkness in accordance with which we fall into sins, being dim-sighted about the truth. Illumination, then, is knowledge, which does away with ignorance and implants the power of clear vision. But also the casting off of the worse is the uncovering of the better. For what ignorance bound together wrongly, this is loosed rightly through recognition. And these bonds are released with all speed, by human faith but by divine grace, the offenses being forgiven by one healing remedy, rational baptism. We wash away, then, all our sins, and are no longer immediately evil as before. This is the one grace of illumination, that our character is no longer the same as it was before the washing. And that knowledge rises together with illumination, flashing about the mind, is clear from the fact that we, the untaught, immediately hear ourselves called disciples — that learning having occurred at some earlier point; for you could not name the time. For catechesis leads to faith, and faith, together with holy baptism, is trained by the Spirit. And that the one universal salvation of humanity is faith, and that the equality and fellowship of the just and loving God is the same toward all, the apostle most clearly explained, speaking somewhat as follows: "Before faith came, we were guarded under the law, shut up for the faith that was to be revealed; with the result that the law served as our guardian leading toward Christ, so we could be declared righteous through trust; yet now, trust having arrived, a guardian is no longer over us." Do you not perceive that this law, once bound up with dread, no longer holds sway over us — that instead the guardian is now the message of unforced choosing? Then indeed he added the utterance free from all partiality: "For through trust in God, in Christ Jesus, you are every one of you sons. As many as have been baptized into Christ have clothed themselves with Christ. Neither Jew nor Greek exists, neither bondsman nor freeman exists, neither male nor female exists; for in Christ Jesus you are all a single reality." Not, then, are some gnostics and others merely soulish within the Word itself, but all who have put off fleshly desires are equal and given over to spirit in the Lord's sight. And in another place he again writes: "For it was in a single Spirit that all of us were baptized into a single body, be we Jews or Greeks, bondsmen or freemen; and everyone was given one and the same drink."
It is not out of place, too, to make use of the very words of those men who say that the purification of the spirit is the remembrance of better things. They understand by purification the separation, from the recollection of better things, from worse ones; and repentance for the inferior necessarily follows upon being reminded of the better; indeed they themselves confess that the spirit itself, having repented, runs back up. In the same manner, then, we too, having repented of our sins, having renounced their deficiencies, being purified by baptism, run back up toward the eternal light, as children to their father. "Rejoicing in the spirit, Jesus," it says, "says: I acknowledge you, Father, God of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and have revealed them to infants." The Tutor and Teacher, calling us infants, calls those more suited for salvation than the wise of the world, who, thinking themselves wise, have been puffed up. And he cries out, rejoicing and exulting exceedingly, as it were lisping along with the infants: "Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing before you." For this reason the things hidden from the wise and understanding of this present age have been revealed to infants. Rightly, then, are the children of God infants, who, having put off the old man and stripped off the tunic of wickedness, and having put on the incorruption of Christ, that, having become new, a holy people, being regenerated we may keep the man undefiled, and be infants as a babe of God cleansed of fornication and wickedness. Most clearly, at any rate, the blessed Paul freed us from this inquiry in his first letter to the Corinthians, writing somewhat as follows: "Brothers, do not become children in your minds, but in wickedness be infants, and in mind become perfect." And the phrase "when I was an infant, I thought as an infant, I spoke as an infant" hints at the manner of life under the law, according to which, not yet being straightforward but still senseless, he pursued infantile things in thought and blasphemed the Word by speaking infantile things. For "infant" signifies two things. "Since I have become a man," he says again, Paul, "I have put away the things of the infant." It is not the size of one's age that is unfinished, nor indeed a fixed measure of time, nor does he hint at other secret teachings of more manly and complete instruction — the apostle who confesses to be doing away with infancy, banishing it beyond bounds — but he calls infants those under the law, who like children are terrified by fear, as by hobgoblins, and he has called men those persuaded by reason and self-governing — we who have believed and are being saved by voluntary choice, sensibly, not senselessly, being frightened by fear. The apostle himself will bear witness on this point, calling the Jews heirs under the former covenant, but us heirs according to promise. "I say," he says, "that for as long a time as the heir is an infant, he differs in nothing from a slave, though he is lord of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the date set by the father. So we also, when we were infants, were enslaved under the elements of the world; but when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons."
See how he confessed that those under fear and sin are infants, but calling those under faith sons, made them men, so to speak, in contradistinction to the infants under the law. "For you are no longer," he says, "a slave, but a son; and if indeed a son, then also an heir by God's doing." So what remains missing to a son once the inheritance is his? It is fitting, accordingly, to read the phrase "when I was an infant" thus: namely, during the time I lived as a Jew (since from his origin he was in fact a Hebrew), "I thought as an infant," since I followed the law; "but when I became a man," no longer the things of the infant, that is, the things of the law, but I think the things of the man, that is, the things of Christ, whom alone Scripture, as we have said before, calls Man, "I have put away the things of the infant." And infancy in Christ is perfection, as measured against the law.
Having come to this point, we must plead the cause of our infancy. And we must further explain what was said by the apostle: "I gave you milk to drink, as infants in Christ, not solid food; for you were not yet able — nor indeed are you even now able." For it does not seem to me that this saying should be understood in a Jewish manner. For I shall place beside it, too, this passage of Scripture: "I will lead you into a land that is good, streaming with milk and honey." A considerable puzzle then emerges concerning how these two passages relate, what their meaning together might be. For if the milk-fed infancy represents the outset of trust in Christ, and this is disparaged as childish and imperfect, how is it that the rest of the perfect and knowing one, after solid food, is again honored with infant milk? Is it not, then, that the word "as," being indicative of a comparison, shows something of this sort? And indeed the saying should be read somewhat in this way: "I gave you milk to drink in Christ" — and pausing a little, we should add "as infants" — so that, according to this division of the reading, we may accept such a meaning as this: I catechized you in Christ with simple, true, and self-grown food, that is, spiritual food; for such is the life-nourishing substance of milk, welling up from affectionate breasts; so that the whole is understood in this way: just as nurses nourish newborn infants on milk, so I too, in the same way, instill into you spiritual nourishment by the word, as by the milk of Christ.
Thus, then, perfect milk is the perfect food, and it leads to that end which never ceases. For this reason, in the rest that is promised, this same thing is announced as milk and honey. Fittingly the Lord once more holds out the promise of milk to the righteous, so that the Word might clearly be shown to be both, alpha and omega, beginning and end — the Word allegorized as milk. Something of this sort even Homer unwittingly divines when he calls righteous men "milk-drinkers." It is also possible to understand the scripture this way: "And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to fleshly ones, as to infants in Christ," so the fleshly ones may be taken as those newly catechized, still infants within Christ. Those who had, by the Holy Spirit, already come to believe he termed "spiritual," but the newly catechized and not yet purified he called "fleshly," whom he fittingly calls "still fleshly" since, on a level with the pagans, they still mind the things of the flesh. "For where there is among you jealousy and strife, are you not fleshly and walking according to man?" For this reason too he says, "I gave you milk to drink," meaning: I poured into you the knowledge that comes from catechesis and nourishes you up into life eternal. But indeed the very word "gave to drink" is a symbol of perfect participation. For the perfect are said to drink, but infants to suck at the breast. "My blood," says the Lord, "is true drink." Is it not, then, that Paul, in saying "I gave you milk to drink," hinted darkly at that perfect gladness which is in the Word, called milk — the knowledge of the truth? And what follows next, "not solid food, for you were not yet able," can hint darkly at the clear revelation, face to face, in the age to come, after the manner of solid food. "For now we see through a mirror," as that same apostle puts it, "but afterward, face meeting face." For this reason he added also this: "But not even now are you able, for you are still fleshly," minding, desiring, loving, envying, being angered, and being jealous of the things of the flesh — not because we are still in the flesh, as some have supposed; for it is together with the flesh, having a face resembling the angels', that we will behold the promised vision, face meeting face. But how, if that promise truly is that which comes after our departure from here, "which eye has not seen, nor has it come up into the heart of man," do some claim to know it — not by having conceived it in the spirit, but having received by instruction "what ear has never heard," or only that thing which was caught up into the third heaven? But even of that he was then bidden to keep silent. And if it is human wisdom that remains to be understood — the great boasting of knowledge — hear the law of scripture: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, nor let the strong man boast in his strength, but let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." But we are "taught of God" and boast in the name of Christ. How then should we not suppose that it is in this sense the apostle understands the milk of infants — we who are the sheep, if indeed those who lead the churches serve as shepherds modeled on that good shepherd himself? Is he not, in speaking of the milk of the flock, allegorizing while keeping the Lord's own line of thought? And indeed the saying is again to be fitted to this sense: "I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able" — not supposing solid food to be something distinct from the milk, but identical in substance; for likewise the Word itself is either relaxed and gentle like milk, or condensed and compacted like solid food. Nevertheless it is also possible, taking it this other way, to understand that the preaching, poured out very widely, may be conceived as the milk, while faith — condensed by catechesis into a foundation, and being more solid than mere hearing — is likened to solid food, taking on bodily form in the soul itself. Such nourishment the Lord, in another place, in the Gospel according to John, expressed differently through symbols, saying, "You shall eat my flesh and drink my blood," allegorizing the manifest, edible and drinkable reality of faith and of the promise. Through these the church, like a man composed of many members, is watered and grows, and is knit together and compacted out of both — the body being faith, the soul being hope — just as the Lord too is composed of flesh and blood. For hope is in truth the blood of faith, by which faith is held together as by a soul. But when hope breathes out, as it were like blood drained away, the vital force of faith is loosened and fails.
But if in fact some should wish to contend further, saying that the first lessons are what the milk signifies — as it were the first foods — while solid food signifies the spiritual apprehensions, leading themselves up into "knowledge," let them know that in calling solid food a solid nourishment yet meaning Jesus's own flesh and blood, they are swept off by their own boastful wisdom from the true simplicity. For blood is found to be the first-born thing in a human being, which indeed some have dared to call the very substance of the soul; and this blood, being turned by a natural process of concoction — the mother having conceived — blossoms forth through sympathetic affection and matures toward the child's freedom from fear; and blood is more fluid than flesh, being as it were a kind of liquid flesh, while milk is more pleasant than blood and finer in its parts. For whether it is the blood supplied to the embryo, sent in earlier through the mother's navel, or whether it is the monthly discharge itself, shut off from its own accustomed flow, that is bidden by natural diffusion to move, at the command of the all-nourishing and generative God, toward the breasts now swelling — and being altered by the action of warm breath/pneuma, a longed-for nourishment is prepared for the infant, it being blood undergoing transformation. For of all the members the breasts are most sympathetically bound to the womb. So then, whenever at childbirth the vessel is cut off through which the blood was carried to the embryo, a closing of the passage occurs, and the blood takes its impulse toward the breasts, and with much of this flow occurring they are distended, and the blood changes into milk, in a manner comparable to how blood is turned into pus within a wound; or else, from the veins lying near the breasts, opened up during the distensions of pregnancy, the blood is poured over into the natural cavities of the breasts, and mingled with this, the breath sent down from the neighboring arteries — while the underlying substance of the blood still remains intact — as it surges up it whitens, and by such a beating-up it is changed through a kind of frothing, having undergone something similar to what the sea undergoes, which indeed, driven on by the winds, the poets describe as "casting up the foam of the brine" — yet all the same it retains blood as its substance. In this same way rivers too, borne along with a rushing sound, being combed by the enveloping air that they take in, roar forth foam, and the moisture at our own mouths is whitened by the breath. What conclusion, then, is left but to agree that blood too is turned by the breath into the most luminous and whitest state? It undergoes the change in quality, not in substance. At any rate, you would find nothing else more nourishing, nor indeed sweeter, nor even whiter than milk. And the spiritual food resembles this in every way — sweet because of grace, nourishing as life itself, white as the day of Christ — and the blood of the Word has been made manifest as milk. In this way, then, at the time of childbirth milk is supplied by provision for the little one, and the breasts — upright until then, turned toward the man — now bend down toward the child, being taught by nature to furnish, easy to receive, the nourishment she has labored to prepare, for the rearing unto salvation. For the breasts are not full like springs, with ready-made milk flowing in, but rather, by transforming the nourishment within themselves, they produce milk and exhale it forth. And this appropriate and fitting nourishment is prepared for the newly formed and newly grown child by God, the nourisher and father of those begotten and begotten again, just as manna once flowed down from heaven for the ancient Hebrews, the heavenly food of angels. Indeed, even now, nurses have given the first-flowing drink of milk the very name of that food, "manna." But while women who are pregnant, once they have become mothers, well forth milk, the Lord Christ, offspring of the Virgin, did not call women's breasts blessed, nor did he judge them to be the true nourishers; rather, the loving and humane Father having rained down the Word, he himself has already become spiritual nourishment for those who are wise.
O mystical wonder: one is the Father of all things, and one likewise the Word of all things, and likewise the Holy Spirit is a single, identical presence everywhere, and there comes to be a single mother alone, a virgin — I am pleased to call her the church. This mother alone had no milk, because she alone did not become a woman; but she is virgin and mother together — pure like a virgin, tender like a mother — and gathering her own children to her side she nurses them on holy milk, the infant Word. For this reason she had no milk — because that milk was * * this child, good and her own, the body of Christ, being young nourishment for the Word, which the Lord himself brought forth in travail of the flesh, which the Lord himself swaddled with precious blood. O holy birth-pangs, O holy swaddling clothes! The Word is all things to the infant — both father and mother and tutor and nourisher. "Eat what is my flesh," he tells us, "and drink what is my blood." These familiar foods the Lord provides for us, and he offers flesh and pours out blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children. O the paradoxical mystery! He commands us to strip off the old and fleshly corruption, just as also the old nourishment, and to partake instead of another, new diet, that of Christ, taking him up, if possible, within ourselves, to lay him up in our hearts and to enshrine the Savior in our breast, so that we might do away with the passions of our flesh. But perhaps you do not wish to understand it this way, but more in a common sense. Hear it also in this way: the Holy Spirit allegorically signifies flesh to us, for indeed by it the flesh has been fashioned; and it darkly hints at the Word as blood to us, for indeed the Word, like rich blood, has been poured out over our life; and the blending of these two is the Lord himself, nourishment for infants, the Lord who is at once spirit and Word. This nourishment — namely Jesus the Lord, namely God's own Word — spirit turned flesh, sanctified heavenly flesh — is the milk that flows from the Father, the sole means by which we, as infants, are fed. The Word, then, the "beloved" and our nourisher, himself poured out his own blood for us, saving humanity; and through him, having believed in God, we flee for refuge to the "care-forgetting breast" of the Father, the Word, who alone, as it seems, supplies to us infants the milk of love, and truly blessed are only those who suck at this breast. For this reason Peter too says: "Having therefore put away all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and evil-speaking, as newborn babes long for the rational milk, that in it you may grow up into salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good." But if someone should also concede to them that solid food is something other than milk, then how will they not be impaled upon their own argument, not having understood the nature of the thing? For nourishment, when the surrounding air thickens in winter and gives no passage, being shut in and cooked and concocted by the enclosed inner heat, passes out into the veins turned into blood; and the veins, not obtaining any means of transpiration, become especially full and are stretched taut and throb; for this reason the breasts too become especially full of milk at that time. And it has been shown by us a little before that blood passes over into milk in pregnant women by a change of quality, not of substance, just as, indeed, fair hair changes to gray in the aged. In summer, on the other hand, the body being more loosely knit provides more easily dispersible nourishment, and the milk is at its least abundant, since neither is the blood; for not all the nourishment is retained. If, then, the processing of nourishment turns it into blood, and blood is turned into milk, blood becomes the preparation for milk, as seed is for man and the grape-stone for the vine. So by milk — the Lord's own nourishment — we are fed from the moment of our birth, and the moment we are reborn we are granted the hope of that rest, proclaiming as good news the heavenly Jerusalem, where scripture records that milk and honey are said to flow, betrothing us, through the material image, to the holy nourishment itself. For material foods pass away, as the apostle himself says, but the nourishment that comes through milk leads up into the heavens, having reared up citizens of heaven and fellow-dancers with the angels. And since the Word is a fountain of life welling up, and is called a river of oil, Paul fittingly, allegorizing and calling him milk, adds "I gave to drink"; for the Word is drunk, the nourishment of truth. Indeed, drink too is called a liquid nourishment. And it is possible for the same thing to be in a sense both solid food and drink, being conceived as one or the other in different respects, just as cheese is a curdling of milk, or milk that has curdled. For it is not my concern now to hunt after words, except that one and the same substance ministers both kinds of nourishment. But for infants still at the breast, milk alone suffices to be both drink and food. "I," says the Lord, "have food to eat which you do not know; my food is that I do the will of him who sent me." You see another food, allegorized in a manner similar to milk — the will of God. But he has also, by an extended use of the term, called the completion of his own suffering a "cup," because it was necessary only to drink it down and bring it to fulfillment. Thus for Christ the nourishment was the fulfillment of the Father's will, but for us Christ himself is the nourishment, for us who are infants, who draw the milk of the Word from the heavens; whence to seek is called to "seek the breast," because to infants who seek the Word the fatherly breasts of loving-kindness furnish the milk. And further, the Word declares that he is heaven's bread: "It was not Moses," he says, "who gave you bread out of heaven; rather my Father grants you the genuine bread out of heaven — for God's bread is the one who descends from heaven and gives life to the world. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world." Here the mystical meaning of the bread must be noted, in that he calls it flesh, and, as it were, risen up as though through fire, just as wheat rises up out of decay and sowing, and indeed is composed through fire into a loaf baked for the gladness of the church.
But this will be shown to us more clearly again in the treatise On the Resurrection. For as he declared, "And the bread I will give is my flesh," and flesh is watered by blood, and blood is allegorized as wine, we must understand that just as bread crushed into the mixing-bowl absorbs the wine but leaves behind the wateriness, so also the flesh of the Lord, the bread of the heavens, drinks up the blood, nourishing the heavenly part of men unto incorruption, but leaving behind for corruption only those carnal desires. Thus the Word is allegorized in many ways, as food and flesh and nourishment and bread and blood and milk, all of which the Lord provides for our enjoyment, we who have believed in him. Let no one, then, be surprised when we say that the blood of the Lord is allegorized as milk; for is not wine too allegorized? "He who washes," it says, "his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape" — he means that he will adorn the body of the Word with his own blood, just as, of course, he will nourish with his own spirit those who hunger for the Word. That the Word is the blood is attested by the blood of righteous Abel entreating God; for blood would never send forth a voice unless the blood were understood as the Word. For the righteous man of old prefigures the new righteous man, and the pleading blood of that former age surpasses in appeal the blood of the later one. And the blood, that is, the Word, speaks to God, since it signified the Word who was to suffer. But the flesh itself, and the blood within it, is watered and increased by the milk, as by a kind of reciprocal nourishment, like storks feeding their parents in return. And indeed the shaping of what has been conceived comes about when the seed is mingled with the pure residue left over from the monthly purification; for the power in this, curdling the nature of the blood, in the manner that rennet coagulates milk, produces the substance of the form; for the right blending is fruitful, but excess is dangerous, leading to childlessness. For indeed of the earth itself, seed that is flooded by excessive rain is swept away, and through drought it is dried up for lack of moisture, but a sticky humor holds the seed together and makes it grow. And some suppose that the seed of the animal is in substance the foam of blood, which, stirred up by the innate heat of the male during intercourse, is whipped into froth and deposited in the seminal veins; from this, indeed, Diogenes of Apollonia holds that the pleasures of love (aphrodisia) take their name.
It is clear, then, from all this, that blood is the substance of the human body. And indeed what is in the womb is at first a milk-like formation of fluid; then this formation, being converted into blood, becomes flesh, and being solidified within the womb through the natural, warm breath that shapes the embryo, it comes to life. But even after birth the child is nourished once more by this very blood; for milk, by nature, is nothing other than blood in flow, and milk is nourishment's wellspring, the mark by which a woman who has genuinely borne a child is proven a mother, and through which she gains besides an added tenderness of love. For this reason, then, in a hidden sense, the Holy Spirit speaks through the Apostle, taking up the Lord's own words: "Milk have I given you to drink." For since we have been reborn into Christ, the one who brought us to birth feeds us on his own milk, namely the Word; for whatever has produced offspring seems at once bound to supply nourishment to what it produced. And just as the regeneration, so correspondingly has the nourishment become spiritual for man. In every way, then, we are made kin to Christ in all things: into kinship by means of his blood, through which our ransom is won; into fellow-feeling through the upbringing that comes from the Word; and into incorruption through his guidance — for to have nourished among mortals often provides more affection than to have begotten children. The same thing, then, both blood and milk, is a symbol of the Lord's passion and teaching. It is granted, therefore, to each of us who are infants to boast in the Lord, declaring, "I claim to be of a noble father, and of his blood." And that milk comes about from blood by transformation is already clear, but it may also be learned from flocks and herds. For these animals, at that time of year men name spring, when the surrounding air turns moister, and when the grass and pastures grow rich with sap and dampness, their bodies become engorged with blood — evident in the swelling of their veins, their vessels distended; and out of that blood the milk pours forth in greater abundance. But in summer, on the contrary, the blood, being scorched and dried up by the heat, checks the transformation, and so less milk is drawn. Indeed, milk also has a very natural kinship with water, just as, of course, the spiritual bath has with spiritual nourishment; those, at any rate, who sip a little cold water along with the aforesaid milk are immediately benefited, for the fellowship with water does not allow the milk to turn sour — not through any antipathy, but through a sympathetic ripening. And the fellowship which the Word has with baptism, this same relation milk has with water. For of liquids it alone receives water and admits mixture with it for purification, just as baptism is taken for the remission of sins. And this also mixes naturally with honey, again for purification, together with sweet nourishment; for the Word, mingling with love for mankind, both heals the passions and cleanses away sins; and the line "sweeter than honey flowed his speech" seems to me to have been said about the Word, who is honey; and often too prophecy exalts something "above honey and the honeycomb." Indeed, milk is likewise blended with sweet wine, and this blend proves helpful, just as when suffering is tempered toward incorruption; for the wine curdles the milk and separates it, draining off whatever in it is impure. In the same way the spiritual fellowship of faith with the man subject to passion, draining away the carnal desires, gathers the man into eternity, immortalizing him among things divine. Many, moreover, put the fatty part of milk, which they call butter, to use for a lamp, making plain by a clear riddle the abundant oil of the Word, since he alone rightly both nourishes and increases and enlightens infants. For this reason too Scripture declares concerning the Lord, "He nourished them from the yield of the countryside; from the crag they drew honey, and oil out of flinty stone; curds of cattle and milk of the flock, together with the richness of lambs," and gave them the things that follow upon these; and also the one who prophesies the birth of the child says, "he shall eat butter and honey." But I am moved to wonder how some dare to call themselves perfect and gnostic, thinking beyond the Apostle, puffed up and snorting with pride, when Paul himself confesses concerning himself: "Not that I have already reached the goal, or am already brought to completion, but I press on, if indeed I may take hold of that for which I myself was taken hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not count myself to have laid hold of it; but one thing I do: forgetting the things behind, and reaching forward to the things before, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call in Christ Jesus." And he considers himself perfect in this, that he has been freed from his former life, and holds fast to the better; not as being perfect in knowledge, but as one who longs for the perfect; wherefore he adds also, "As many of us then as are perfect, let us be thus minded," clearly calling perfection this: to have been set apart from sins, and to have been regenerated into faith in him alone who is perfect, having forgotten the sins that lie behind.
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