Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Those who accuse fear run down the law, and if the law, then clearly also that same divine lawgiver stands accused as well. For those three elements necessarily attend the subject at hand: the one who administers, the administering itself, and the thing that gets administered. If, then, by hypothesis one were to remove the law, it would necessarily follow that each person led by desire, indulging pleasure, would neglect what is right, would think little of the divine, and would be impious and unjust at once, having leapt away from truth without fear. Yes, they say, fear is an irrational avoidance, a passion. What do you mean? And how could this definition of yours still hold, seeing that the commandment has been given to me through reason? The commandment forbids, hanging fear over us for the instruction of those who are capable of being admonished in this way. Fear, then, is not irrational, but rather rational; for how could it not be, when it exhorts, "You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness"? But if they play sophist with names, let the philosophers call the fear of the law by the name "caution."
...being a reasonable avoidance. Critolaus of Phaselis not inappropriately called such people word-fighters. So then the commandment appears already elegant and most beautiful to our accusers once it is understood by an interchange of name. Caution, then, is shown to be rational, being an avoidance of what harms, out of which repentance for former sins grows. For it is written, "dread of the Lord marks the start of wisdom, and all who put it into practice gain sound understanding." By "practice" he means the doing of wisdom, which is the fear of God making a way toward wisdom. And if the law breeds this dread, then grasping the law is itself where wisdom starts, and no one is wise apart from the law. Foolish, then, are those who reject the law, from which it follows that they must be reckoned godless. And correction, too, is where wisdom takes its start. "But the impious will despise wisdom and instruction," says Scripture.
Let us consider what sort of fearful things the law announces. If they are the things that lie between virtue and vice — poverty, and disease, and disrepute, and low birth, and all things of that kind — these too are held up and praised by the laws of the city-state, and this opinion is in harmony with those from the Peripatos who introduce three classes of goods and reckon the opposites of these to be evils. But for us, the law that has been given commands us to flee the things that are truly evil: adultery, licentiousness, pederasty, ignorance, injustice, sickness of soul, death — not the death that separates soul from body, but the death that separates soul from truth. For these are truly terrible and fearful evils, and so are the activities that spring from them. Yet the divine oracles do not say that nets are stretched out for birds unjustly, for they themselves, being partakers of bloodshed, store up evils for themselves. How, then, can the law still be said by certain sects to be not good, when they cry out, appealing to the apostle who says, "For through the law comes knowledge of sin"? To these we say: the law did not create sin, but showed it; for by commanding what must be done, it exposed what must not be done. And it belongs to a good thing both to teach out the saving course and to point out the destructive one, both to counsel the use of the one and to command the avoidance of the other.
Indeed the apostle, whom they do not understand, said that knowledge of sin was made manifest through the law, not that sin received its very existence through it. And how is the law that instructs not good — the tutor given to lead us to Christ, so that, being guided through fear in an educative manner, we might turn and be brought to perfection through Christ? "I do not desire," he says, "the death of the sinner so much as his repentance." And it is the commandment that produces repentance, being on the one hand preventive of what must not be done, and on the other hand promissory of benefits. By "death," I think, he means ignorance. And "whoever draws close to the Lord meets with many blows" — meaning that the one who draws near to knowledge plainly experiences dangers, fears, distresses, and afflictions on account of his longing for the truth. For "a disciplined child grows wise, and a discerning child escapes the burning heat," and "a discerning child will take hold of commandments." And the apostle Barnabas, having first said, "Grief awaits those clever in their own estimation and shrewd by their own judgment," added: "let us turn spiritual, a finished sanctuary offered to God. So far as lies within us, let us cultivate reverence for God and labor to hold fast his commands, so that we may take joy in his upright decrees." Hence it has been divinely said that reverence for God is where wisdom begins.
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