Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
For such is the gnostic, that the only experiences befalling him are those tied to the body's need for upkeep — craving food, craving drink, and similar wants. But that the Savior's body should demand the services necessary for its own upkeep, in the way a body does, would be laughable; for he ate not for the body's sake, since it was sustained by a holy power, but so that his companions should not drift into a mistaken notion about him, just as, in fact, some later imagined he had appeared only in seeming. He himself was, in the fullest sense, free of passion, untouched by any passionate stirring, whether of pleasure or of pain. But the apostles, having under the Lord's instruction mastered anger, fear, and desire in a more gnostic manner, would not even accept the things counted as goods among passionate stirrings — boldness, say, or zeal, joy, or good cheer — remaining unmoved by any fixed state of mind at all, unaltered in every way, but abiding always immovable in a settled practice, at least once the Lord had risen. For even granting that the goods just named might arise reasonably enough, they are still inadmissible where the perfect man is concerned, one who has no need to be bold (for he does not find himself among terrors, considering nothing in life terrible, nor can anything, even apart from this, separate him from love toward God), nor has need of cheerfulness (for he does not fall into grief, being persuaded that all things happen well), nor indeed does he grow angry (for there is nothing that will stir him to anger, since he loves God always and is wholly turned toward him alone, and on this account hates none of God's creatures); but neither does he feel zeal — for he lacks nothing needed to be made like the beautiful and the good; nor therefore does he love anyone with that common kind of friendship, but he loves the Creator through his creatures.
Therefore he falls into neither desire nor any craving, nor is he in want, so far as his soul is concerned, of anything else, being already joined through love to the Beloved, to whom he has been made akin by his very choice, and drawing nearer to him ever more closely through the disposition acquired by practice, blessed through the abundance of good things, so that for the sake of these very things he is driven to be made like his Teacher unto passionlessness. For the Word of God is intellectual, and it is by this that the imprinting of mind is seen in man alone, whereby the good man is godlike and god-resembling in soul, even as God in turn is man-shaped; for the mind is the form of each thing, by which we are characterized. This is precisely why wronging a fellow human being counts as an impious, unholy act. It is nonsense, then, to say that the gnostic and perfect man ought to keep his anger and boldness intact, on the ground that stripped of these he could not rise up against circumstances nor endure terrors,
or that, if we were to take cheerfulness away from him, he would surely be overwhelmed by things that cause grief and would therefore be worst off, even in regard to living itself. And if he had no share of desire, as some have supposed, they say he would not conceive a longing for things like the beautiful and good. If, then, all affinity toward beautiful things comes about together with craving, how, they ask, does the man who craves beautiful things remain passionless? But these people, it seems, do not know the divine nature of love. For love is no longer a craving on the part of the one who loves, but an affectionate affinity that has restored the gnostic to the unity of faith, needing neither time nor place. The one who is already, through love, present among the things he will be, having laid hold beforehand of hope through knowledge, no longer craves anything, possessing, so far as possible, the very object of craving. Reasonably, then, he remains in that one unchanging disposition, loving in a gnostic way, and so he will not feel zeal to be made like beautiful things, since through love he already possesses beauty itself. What further need has he of boldness and desire, having already received through love the affinity to the passionless God and having inscribed himself, through love, among his friends?
We must therefore separate the gnostic and perfect man from every passion of the soul; for knowledge produces sustained practice, sustained practice produces a disposition or state, and such a settled condition produces passionlessness, not moderation of passion; for the complete excision of desire yields passionlessness as its fruit. But the gnostic does not even partake of those much-talked-of goods, that is, of the passionate goods that lie alongside the passions — I mean, for instance, mirth (which lies alongside pleasure), dejection (for this is yoked to grief), and caution (for this shrinks back through fear), nor indeed anger (for this is ranged alongside wrath) —
even if some say that these are no longer evils, but are now goods. For it is impossible that the man who has once been made perfect through love, and who is eternally and insatiably feasted on the unfillable joy of contemplation, should still find pleasure in petty, crawling things. For what sensible reason remains for him to turn back toward worldly goods, once he has grasped the unapproachable light — even if not yet in place and time, still already within that gnostic love, from which inheritance and full restoration follow, the Rewarder confirming through deeds what the gnostic, having gnostically chosen it through love, has already reached forward to and taken hold of in advance? Is it not so, then, that journeying toward the Lord out of love for him, though his earthly tent remains visible here below, he does not remove himself from life (since that option is denied him), but rather he has drawn his soul back and away from all the passions (since this much is permitted to him), and he lives, having put the desires to death, and no longer makes full use of the body, but permits himself to use it only for necessary things, so that he may not furnish an occasion for its dissolution?
How, then, could this man have any further need of courage, since he does not find himself among terrors — not being present to them at all, but already wholly with the Beloved? And what call has he for self-mastery, who lacks nothing that self-mastery would restrain? For possessing desires strong enough to require reining in belongs not to the man already purified, but to one still gripped by passion, and courage likewise is taken up on account of fear and cowardice. For surely it no longer suits the friend of God, whom God marked out before the world's founding for the highest sonship, to sink into pleasures or terrors and be caught up in wrestling down the passions. For I would venture to say: just as it lies foreordained by what deeds he will act and what he will obtain, so also he himself, having foreordained, possesses already, through what he has come to know, the one whom he has loved, not having the future hard to discern, as the many live guessing at it, but having received through gnostic faith what remains hidden to others.
And for him, through love, the future is already present; for he has believed, both through prophecy and through the presence of the Lord, in the God who does not lie, and what he has believed he holds and possesses as promise (and truth is the one who made the promise), and he has firmly and with certain knowledge already received the fulfillment of the promise through the trustworthiness of the one who promised. And the one who knows that the settled condition in which he stands is a firm apprehension of what is to come, meets the future beforehand through love. Accordingly, he who is persuaded that he will obtain the truly good things will not even pray to obtain the things of this world, but only to hold fast always to the faith that lays hold and sets aright. And besides this he will pray that as many as possible should become, as far as may be, like himself, to the glory of God, which is perfected according to full knowledge; for he who is made like the Savior is in some sense a savior, so far as it is right for the image to be received into human nature, unfailingly setting right whatever pertains to the commandments. And to the man to whom it belongs to worship the divine through true righteousness, both in deeds and in knowledge,
of this man the Lord does not wait for the voice in prayer, saying: Ask, and I will do it; think it, and I will grant it.
For in general it is impossible for the unchangeable to take hold and stability within that which is changeable, since it is in continual change, and because of this the ruling faculty becomes unstable, and the settled power is not preserved. For that which is always being altered by things that slip in and befall it from outside — how could it ever come to be in a fixed disposition and state, and, in sum, in the possession of knowledge? And yet even the philosophers suppose the virtues to be dispositions, states, and forms of knowledge. But since knowledge is not innate in men but is acquired, and the learning of it requires attention at the beginning for its nurture and growth, and then, from unceasing practice, comes to a settled state — so, having been brought to perfection in that mystical disposition, it remains unshaken through love. For it is not merely that he has grasped the first cause together with the cause begotten from it, holding these firmly and possessing reasonings about them that are stable, unshakable, unmoved; he likewise holds, concerning goods and evils, concerning everything that comes into being, and, in short, concerning what the Lord spoke of, precise truth learned from the truth itself, running from the world's beginning clear to its end — not preferring, if something should appear plausible or in accordance with some compelling Greek argument, that above the truth itself, but holding what has been said by the Lord as clear and evident. And even if these things remain still hidden to others, he has already received knowledge concerning all things. And the oracles that are among us pronounce concerning things that are, as they are; concerning things that will be, as they will be; and concerning things that have happened, as they happened.
And in matters of knowledge, being alone truly a man of knowledge, he will excel above all and will hold in honor the doctrine concerning the Good, ever attending to the objects of thought, transcribing his own management of human affairs from those archetypes above, just as sailors steer their ship by the star, being prepared to be ready for every fitting action, accustomed to look down upon all things troublesome and terrible whenever he must endure them, doing nothing rash nor discordant, either with himself or ever with the common good, being forward-looking and unbending before pleasures, whether those of waking life or those that come through dreams; for, being schooled to a simple diet and to self-sufficiency in a temperate way, he is trim in bearing along with dignity, needing few necessities to sustain life, pursuing nothing superfluous, and not even these things as of primary importance, but admitting them, out of the fellowship belonging to life, as necessary to the flesh's sojourn here, only so far as necessity requires; for knowledge takes precedence for him.
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