Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
That the Greeks also are attested to teach certain true doctrines, one may consider from this point as well. Paul is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles as saying to the men of the Areopagus: "Athenians, I take note that in every way you are unusually reverent toward the divine. For while going about and examining closely the things you revere, I came upon a shrine bearing this inscription: To a god unknown. That, then, which you honor while not knowing it, I now announce to you plainly. The God who fashioned the cosmos and all it contains, He, since He is master of sky and earth, makes no home in shrines built by human hands, nor does He receive service from human hands as if lacking something, seeing that it is He who supplies to every creature breath, life, and all else besides. From a single ancestor He brought forth the whole human race to settle across the entire surface of the earth, fixing beforehand the seasons allotted them and the limits of where they would dwell, so that they would search for the divine, and perhaps grope toward Him and come upon Him, though truly He stands at no distance from any single one of us; for it is in Him that we exist, are set in motion, and possess our very being, just as certain poets among your own people have declared: For we too belong to His lineage." From this it is clear that, even while employing poetic examples from the Phenomena of Aratus, he approves what has been well said among the Greeks, and by means of the "unknown god" hints that the Greeks, through a kind of circumlocution, honored the creator God, though they needed to receive and learn Him truly through the Son, unto full knowledge.
"For this reason therefore I sent you to the nations," He says, "to open their eyes, so that they might turn away from the dark into the light, and away from the dominion of Satan toward God, so that they might obtain release from their sins and a share among the ones made holy through trust in me." These, then, the eyes of the blind that are opened, are the knowledge of the Father through the Son, the apprehension of the Greek circumlocution; and the turning from the power of Satan is the change away from sin, through which slavery had come about. Yet we do not simply accept all philosophy without qualification, but that philosophy of which Socrates speaks in Plato: "For indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many are the wand-bearers, but few are the bacchants" — hinting that many are the called, but few the chosen. He adds, indeed, plainly: "These are, in my opinion, none other than those who have philosophized rightly. Of these, so far as I was able, I have left nothing undone in my life, but have striven in every way to become one of them. Whether I strove rightly, and whether we have accomplished anything, we shall know clearly when we arrive there, God willing, a little later."
Does it not seem to you that he makes clear, on the ground of faith, from the Hebrew scriptures, the hope of the righteous after death? And in the Demodocus, if indeed the treatise is Plato's, he says that this is not what it is to philosophize — to live poring over the arts, nor to be widely learned — but something else, since I for my part used to think even this a reproach. For he knew, I suppose, that a wealth of learning does not, by Heraclitus's own reckoning, instill genuine insight. And in Republic Book Five: "Shall we then classify all these, and others like them, as skilled reckoners of particular subjects and craftsmen of minor arts?" "Not at all," I said, "rather as men resembling philosophers." "Then whom do you mean by the genuine ones?" he asked. "Those devoted to gazing upon truth," I answered. "For philosophy has no place in geometry, built as it is on unproven premises and assumptions, nor in music, which rests on guesswork, nor in astronomy, which is stuffed with physical, flowing, and probable arguments, but in the very knowledge of the good itself and of truth, those other studies being ways, as it were, toward the good." So that not even Plato himself grants that the encyclical education accomplishes the good, but that it cooperates toward rousing and jointly training the soul for things intelligible.
Whether then they say that the Greeks uttered some fragment of the true philosophy by chance, the chance itself is of divine providence (for no one will deify mere automatism, given its favor toward us); or whether by coincidence, the coincidence is not without providence; or again, whether one should say that the Greeks had a natural conception — we know that the maker of nature is one, on which ground we have also called righteousness natural; or whether, finally, they had a common mind — let us consider who is the father of this and of the righteousness that goes with the distribution of mind. For if one speaks of a preliminary utterance and charges them with a simultaneous utterance, one is speaking of forms of prophecy. Yes indeed, others wish it said that certain things were spoken by the philosophers according to an impression of truth. The divinely inspired apostle writes concerning us: "For we now see as through a mirror," knowing ourselves by reflection upon Him, and from the divine element within us contemplating together, as far as possible, the creative cause; "for you have seen," he says, "your brother, you have seen your God." I take it that it is the Savior who is called God to us at present; but once the flesh has been set aside, it will be face to face, then already in a defining and comprehending manner, when the heart has become pure. And by impression and by partial manifestation those among the Greeks who philosophized with precision see God indirectly; for such are the true images that arise from weakness, just as an image is seen in water, and as we see things through transparent and translucent bodies.
Well then Solomon says: "He who sows righteousness produces faith." And there are those who, sowing their own, make more. And again: "Attend to the green things in the field, and you shall shear the grass, and gather in the ripe hay, that you may have sheep for clothing." You see how one must also take thought for outward covering and protection. "And you shall come to know surely the souls of your flock." For when the gentiles, lacking the law, nonetheless perform what the law requires as a matter of instinct, such people, though without the law, stand as their own law, their uncircumcised state observing the law's statutes, according to the apostle, existing both prior to the law and prior to its arrival. And drawing, as it were, a comparison between those coming from philosophy and those termed heretics, the word states quite plainly: "A neighbor close by is worth more than a kinsman far away; but the one who props himself on falsehoods herds the breezes and chases feathered flyers." I do not think the saying here refers to philosophy. And yet in many respects philosophy attempts and argues by probabilities, but the word here strikes at the heresies. He adds, indeed: "For he has abandoned the ways of his own vineyard, and has wandered from the paths of his own farming." These are the ways that abandon the church that is from the beginning. At once the one who falls into a heresy travels through a waterless wilderness, having abandoned the God who truly is, deserted of God, seeking waterless water, going through the uninhabitable and thirsty land, gathering barrenness with his hands.
"And to those lacking understanding I make my appeal," says Wisdom, speaking, clearly, of those concerned with the heresies, "gladly taste of hidden bread and of stolen water sweet" — bread and water not in reference to certain others, but to those among the heresies who use bread and water in the offering, not according to the rule of the church, scripture plainly designating this. For there are those who even give thanks over plain water alone. "But leap away, do not linger in her place" — by "place" meaning the assembly, not calling it "church," a name reserved for the true one. Then it adds: "For thus you will cross over strange water" — meaning that heretical baptism is reckoned not one's own and genuine water. "And you will pass over a strange river" — the one that carries off and drags down into the sea, into which the one turned aside from the steadfastness that is according to truth is delivered, swept along again into the heathen and disorderly waves of life.
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