Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
All the doctrines aforementioned, then, are evidently handed down to the Greeks from Moses the Great. Through them he teaches that the sage owns everything there is; for it is said, "Since he showed pity toward me, I now possess everything." And that he was beloved of God he shows by saying, "God, who belongs to Abraham, who belongs to Isaac, who belongs to Jacob." For the one is found expressly called "friend," while the other is shown to have his name changed to "one who sees God"; and Isaac, allegorizing him as a consecrated victim, he chose as a type that was to be for us of the saving dispensation. Among the Greeks also is sung Minos, the nine-year king, the confidant of Zeus, they having heard how at some time God conversed with Moses, as one might speak with his own friend.
Moses, then, was wise, a king, a lawgiver; but our Savior surpasses every human nature: beautiful, so as to be loved alone by us who long for genuine beauty, since he himself was the genuine light; and he is shown proclaimed as king even by infants still unweaned and by faithless, unknowing Jews, and announced beforehand by the prophets themselves; and rich to such a degree that he despised every ounce of gold found above the soil and buried beneath it, together with all the splendor the adversary dangled before him. Why even mention how he alone, the high priest, alone versed in the service of God, is Melchizedek, king of peace, the one most fitted of all to guide the human race? And a lawgiver, inasmuch as he delivers his statutes through the prophets' own voices, commanding and teaching most clearly what ought to be done as well as what must not.
And who could be nobler than he whose father alone is God? Come, let us set alongside these same doctrines Plato too, as one who lays hold of them. He declares the sage to be rich, in the Phaedrus, saying, "O dear Pan, and all you other gods here, grant me to become beautiful within; and whatever external things I have, may they be friendly to what is within." "I should reckon the sage a wealthy man." And the Stranger from Athens, rebuking those who suppose that men holding great riches count as rich, puts it this way: "It is impossible for those to be both very rich and good whom the many reckon rich; for they call rich those who possess, among the few, possessions worth the most money, which even a worthless man might hold." "To the believer belongs the whole of the world's riches," says Solomon, "but the unbeliever gets not so much as a coin." We must therefore put far greater trust in the Scripture, which declares that a camel would sooner pass through a needle's opening than a rich man take up philosophy; and conversely it pronounces the poor blessed, as Plato understood when he said: "We must consider poverty not as making one's substance less, but as making one's insatiable desire greater. For it is never scantiness of money but insatiable greed that is the real poverty; and he who is free of this, being good, would also be rich." And in the Alcibiades he calls vice slavish and virtue befitting the free. "Cast off the burdensome yoke," says the Writing, "and take up the light one instead," just as the poets too speak of it as a slave's yoke. And "you were sold under your sins" agrees with what has been said before. "Everyone who commits sin is a slave. And the slave does not remain in the house forever. But if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed," and "the truth will set you free." Again, that beauty belongs to the sage, the Athenian speaks thus: if one were to maintain firmly that the just, even should their bodies happen to look unlovely, are according to their most righteous character altogether beautiful in this respect, hardly anyone speaking so would seem to speak amiss; and prophecy foretold that "his appearance was marred beyond that of any of mankind." And Plato, in the Statesman, named the sage a king, and the passage stands before us.
Now that these things have been shown, let us return again to the discourse concerning faith. Indeed with every proof Plato establishes that faith is needed everywhere, at the same time extolling peace as follows: "For a man faithful and sound amid seditions could not come to be without the whole of virtue; while there are very many mercenaries who are warlike and willing to die in war, of whom most turn out to be bold and unjust, insolent and senseless, apart from a very few. If then these things are rightly said, every lawgiver, if he is of even slight use, in laying down his laws will look chiefly to the greatest virtue. And this is faithfulness, of which we have need at every season, both in peace and in every war and in all the rest of life. For in embracing it, it seems to comprehend the others. And neither war nor faction ranks as the finest thing; rather, needing either is something to pray against, while mutual concord together with shared goodwill toward one another is the greatest of goods." From these things it appears that, according to Plato, the greatest prayer is to have peace, and the greatest mother of the virtues is faith.
Fittingly, then, Solomon says that "the believer speaks wisdom from his mouth," since Xenocrates too, in his work On Prudence, says that wisdom is the knowledge of the first causes and of intelligible substance, holding that prudence is twofold, the one practical, the other theoretical, and that the latter is human wisdom. Wherefore wisdom is prudence, but not every prudence is wisdom. And we have already established that grasping the world's originating principle rests on faith, not on proof. For it is indeed absurd that the zealots of Pythagoras of Samos, when declining demonstrations of the things sought, should hold the phrase "he himself said it" as a matter of trust and be content with this bare utterance alone for the confirmation of what they have heard, while those who are lovers of the contemplation of truth, attempting to disbelieve the trustworthy teacher, the only Savior, God, demand from him proofs of the things spoken. But he says, "let him who has ears to hear, hear." And who is this? Let Epicharmus say: "Mind sees and mind hears; all else is deaf and blind." Heraclitus, upbraiding certain men as faithless, says they "know not how to hear nor to speak," having doubtless profited from Solomon: "If you love to hear, you shall receive; and if you incline your ear, you shall be wise."
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