Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Let the Decalogue be set forth by us in passing, as an example for the sake of gnostic clarity. That the number ten is sacred there is no need now to say. But if the tablets that were inscribed came about as God's handiwork, they will be seen to exhibit a natural, generative operation; for the finger of God is understood as a divine power, by whose agency heaven and earth were brought into existence, and of both of these the tablets will be understood as symbols. For God's writing and the shaping of forms laid up in the tablet amount to the fashioning of the cosmos. Now the Decalogue, according to the heavenly image, comprises sun and moon, stars, clouds, light, spirit, water, air, darkness, fire. This is the natural decalogue of heaven. And the image of earth comprises human beings, cattle, creeping things, wild beasts, and among water creatures fish and sea-monsters, and likewise among winged creatures both the flesh-eating and those that use tame food, and likewise among plants the fruit-bearing and the fruitless. This is the natural decalogue of earth. And the ark that comprised these things would be the knowledge of things divine and human, that is, wisdom. Perhaps these two tablets would also be a prophecy of the two covenants.
They were, then, mystically renewed, when ignorance and sin alike were increasing. In a twofold way, it seems, the commandments are written for two spirits, the ruling one and the subordinate one, since flesh sets its desire in opposition to spirit, even as spirit opposes flesh in turn. There is also a certain decad concerning man himself: the five senses, and the faculty of speech, and the seminal faculty, and this indeed is the eighth, the spiritual element belonging to his formation, and ninth, the faculty that governs the soul; and tenth, the mark of distinction added on account of faith, that of the Holy Spirit. Further, besides these, the legislation appears to give commands regarding ten human parts: sight and hearing and smell, touch and taste, and their serving instruments, which are twofold, hands and feet; for this is the formation of man.
The soul is introduced in addition, and further added to it is the ruling faculty by which we reason, which is not begotten according to the deposit of seed, so that even without this the number ten is arrived at, the number through which the whole activity of man is accomplished. For by order, as soon as he comes into being, man takes the beginning of his life from the passible elements. We say, then, that the rational and ruling element is the cause of the constitution of the living being, but also of the ensouling of the irrational part and of its being a portion of it. Thus the vital power, in which is comprised the nutritive and the growth-producing and generally the motive faculty, has been allotted to the fleshly spirit, which moves swiftly and ranges throughout the body by means of the senses, being the first part to be acted upon bodily; but the ruling faculty possesses the power of choice, which is concerned with inquiry and learning and knowledge. But indeed the reference of all things is ordered toward one thing, the ruling faculty, and it is by this faculty that man is alive, and alive in a particular fashion.
Through the bodily spirit, then, man perceives, desires, feels pleasure, grows angry, is nourished, grows; and indeed it is through this that he proceeds to actions in accordance with thought and understanding, and whenever he masters his desires, the ruling faculty reigns as king. The command, therefore, 'you shall not desire,' means: you shall not be enslaved to the fleshly spirit, but shall rule over it, since the flesh desires against the spirit and rises up to disorder contrary to nature, while the spirit prevails against the flesh toward the conduct of man according to nature. Is it not, then, reasonably said that man came to be according to the image of God, not with respect to the form of his bodily constitution, but because as God creates all things by his Word, so the man who has become gnostic performs good actions by his own reason. Reasonably, then, it is said elsewhere that the two tablets signify the commandments given to the two spirits, those given to the formed man and to the ruling faculty, handed down before the law; and the movements of the senses are imprinted according to understanding, and are made manifest according to the activity proceeding from the body; for apprehension comes from both.
Again, further, as sense-perception is to the perceptible, so is thought to the intelligible. And actions too are twofold, some according to thought, others according to activity.
And the first commandment of the Decalogue establishes that there is only one God, the Almighty, who led the people out of Egypt through the wilderness into the ancestral land, so that they might apprehend his power, so far as they were able, through his divine works, and might turn away from the idolatry of created things, placing all their hope in the God who truly is. The second commandment indicated that one must not receive nor apply the great power of God — that is, his name (for this alone they were capable of learning, as indeed most people still are today) — that one must not apply the invocation of it to things created and vain, which the craftsmen among men have made, over which the One who Is is not ranked; for the One who Is is himself alone in ungenerated identity. The third commandment is the one indicating that the world came into being through God, and that the seventh day was granted to us as respite, because of the labor belonging to this present life; for God is untiring and impassible and lacking nothing, but we who bear flesh are in need of rest.
The seventh day, then, is proclaimed as rest, preparing through abstinence from evils the primal day, which is truly our rest, and which indeed is truly the first genesis of light, in which all things are contemplated together and all things are inherited. From this day the primal wisdom and knowledge shines upon us; for the light of truth is true light, without shadow, the spirit of the Lord divided without division among those sanctified through faith, holding the place of a lamp for the recognition of the things that are. Following it, then, throughout the whole of life we become free from passion, and this is to have rested. That is why Solomon also says that wisdom came to be for the Almighty before heaven and earth and all things that are, and that participation in it (I mean according to power, not according to essence) teaches one to be knowledgeable, with comprehension, of things divine and human. Having come to this point, these things too should be recalled in passing, since the discussion has touched upon the hebdomad and the ogdoad; for it seems that the ogdoad is properly the hebdomad, while the hebdomad, at least in outward appearance, is a hexad, and that the former is properly the sabbath, while the hebdomad is the working day; for the cosmogony is completed in six days, while the sun's course from one solstice to the next takes half a year — a span across which the foliage drops away in one season, and in another the shoots spring up and the seeds reach ripeness.
It is also said that the fetus reaches its exact completion by the sixth month — namely, across a hundred eighty-two and a half days — as Polybus the physician records in his work On Eight-Month Children, and Aristotle the philosopher in his work On Nature; and it is from this, I think, following the account of the coming-to-be of the cosmos according to the prophet, that the Pythagoreans consider the number six to be perfect, and call it the mid-point and marriage, since it occupies the middle position of the straight line running between two and ten; for it appears to be equidistant from both. And as marriage produces offspring from male and female, so six is produced from three, which is called an odd, that is, a male number, and two, which is considered even, that is, female; for twice three makes six. Such, moreover, are the broadest categories of motion by which all becoming is conveyed: upward, downward, rightward, leftward, forward, and back.
Reasonably, then, they reckon the number seven to be motherless and unproductive, in this way interpreting the sabbath and allegorizing the form of rest, in that state where none any longer take a spouse or are given as a spouse; for neither does seven arise from any number multiplied by another, nor, when it is multiplied by another, does it produce another number within the decad. The ogdoad they call a cube, reckoning together with the seven wandering spheres the fixed sphere as well, through which the great year comes about, being as it were a certain cycle of the requital of the things promised. It is for this reason that the Lord, having gone up the mountain as a fourth, becomes a sixth, and is illumined round about with spiritual light, laying bare, so far as it was possible for those chosen to see to behold, the power that comes from him, being proclaimed through the seventh voice to be the Son of God, so that some might rest, having been persuaded concerning him, while he, through generation, which the hexad indicated, might appear distinguished, being an ogdoad, God in flesh displaying his power, being numbered as man while concealing who he truly was; for by the order of numbers six too is reckoned along with the rest, but the sequence of the letters marks as distinguished the one not written.
Here, according to the numbers themselves, each unit is preserved in its order into the hebdomad and the ogdoad, but according to the number of the letters, zeta comes sixth, and eta comes seventh. But since the episemon (the obsolete digamma-sign) has somehow been smuggled into the alphabet, if we follow this reckoning, the hebdomad becomes sixth, and the ogdoad seventh; for which reason it is also said that man was made on the sixth day, he who became faithful to the episemon, so that he might straightway receive the rest belonging to the Lord's inheritance. Something of this sort the sixth hour of the saving dispensation also shows, in which man was made perfect. Indeed, of the eight the intervals become seven, and of the seven the intervals appear to be six. But that is another matter, when the hebdomad glorifies the ogdoad, and heaven proclaims to heaven the splendor of God. The perceptible types of these are, among us, the vowel letters. So it is that the Lord is himself named Alpha and Omega, start and finish, the one through whom everything was made, without whom nothing at all was made. God, then, has not ceased from working, as some suppose the rest of God to mean; since, being good, were he ever to stop doing good he would likewise stop being God — a thing not even permitted to be spoken.
It is, then, possible to have rested in this sense: to have ordained that the order of the things that came to be should be kept unbroken for all time, and that each of the created things should have ceased from the former disorder; for the acts of creation on the several days had received their order in the greatest sequence, as it were their honor from what was prior, all the things that came to be being destined to have order, though created together in a single act of thought, yet not being of equal honor; nor would the coming-to-be of each have been made clear by speech, had the creation been spoken of as accomplished all at once; for it was necessary to name something first as well. For this reason, then, the first things were foretold prophetically, from which the second things proceed, all things having come to be together from one substance by one power; for one, I think, is the will of God, in a single identity. And how could creation come to be in time, when time itself came to be together with the things that are?
Already, moreover, the whole cosmos of living things generated and of all things that grow revolves in cycles of seven.
Seven are the archangels of greatest power, the firstborn rulers of the angels, and seven also are the stars which those versed in the mathematical sciences say are the wandering stars accomplishing the governance of things around the earth, by whose sympathetic influence the Chaldeans suppose that everything concerning mortal life comes to pass, on account of which they also undertake to speak of things to come; and of the fixed stars, seven are the Pleiades, and seven-starred are the Bears, by which farming and seafaring are regulated, and the moon takes on its changes of shape over seven days. In the first week it becomes half; in the second, full; in the third, from its decline, half again; and in the fourth it disappears. But it also, as Seleucus the astronomer relates, changes shape seven times. For it becomes, from being without light, crescent-shaped, then half, then convex on both sides and full, and again on the wane convex on both sides, then half again likewise, and crescent-shaped.
'With the seven-toned lyre we shall sound forth new hymns,' writes a poet not without renown, teaching also that the ancient lyre had seven strings. Seven, too, are the instruments of the senses set upon our face: two of the eyes, two of the passages of hearing, two of the nostrils, and seventh that of the mouth. And that the changes of the ages of life occur by sevens the elegies of Solon show, somewhat as follows: 'A boy, while still a child and not yet come of age, casts his first set of teeth at seven years; and when God brings to completion another seven years, he shows the signs of coming manhood; and in the third seven, as his limbs still grow, his chin becomes downy, the bloom of his skin changing; and in the fourth seven, everyone is at his very best in strength, by which men bear the marks of excellence; and in the fifth it is fitting for a man to be mindful of marriage and to seek offspring for the future; and in the sixth a man's mind is fully trained in all things, and he no longer wishes likewise to do vain deeds; and in seven sevens a man is at his very best in mind and speech, and in eight, that is, fifty-six years; and in the ninth he is still capable, but his body and strength are more moderate for great excellence; and in the tenth, when God has brought to completion another seven years, he would not, being of ripe age, meet an untimely fate.'
Again, in illnesses, the seventh day and the fourteenth are critical, on which nature struggles against the causes of disease. And countless such things, sanctifying the number, are set forth by Hermippus of Berytus in his work On the Hebdomad. And clearly the blessed David hands down the mystic teaching about the hebdomad and the ogdoad to those who have understanding, singing somewhat as follows: 'Our years have been pondered as a spider's web. Taken by themselves, the days of our years number seventy, or, given strength, eighty... may it fall to us to reign.' In order, then, that we might be taught that the cosmos is generated, yet not suppose that God makes it in time, the prophecy added: 'This is the record of the generation, and of what belongs to them, at the time they came into being — on the day God fashioned heaven and earth.' For the phrase 'when they came to be' signifies an indefinite and timeless expression, but the phrase 'on the day that God made,' that is, on which and through which he made all things, apart from which not one thing came to be, indicates the activity through the Son, of whom David says: 'This is the day the Lord has fashioned; let us be glad and take joy in it,' that is, let us feast, according to the knowledge handed down through him, upon the divine banquet. For 'day' is said of the Word who illumines hidden things, and through whom each of the created things came into light and into being. And the Decalogue as a whole, through the letter iota, signifies the blessed name, presenting Jesus as being the Word.
The fifth discourse in order is about the honoring of father and mother. Now by father and lord he clearly means God. That is why he proclaims those who have come to know him as sons and gods. Lord and father, then, is the creator of all things; but the mother is not, as some hold, the substance out of which we came to be, nor, as others have handed down, the church, but rather divine knowledge and wisdom, as Solomon says, calling wisdom the mother of the righteous. And she is to be chosen for her own sake. And again, all that is beautiful and reverent is known from God through the Son.
Next in order follows the discourse on adultery. Adultery is when someone, abandoning the church's true knowledge and the correct understanding concerning God, turns to an unfitting false opinion, either deifying something that has come into being or fashioning an idol of something that does not exist, so as to overstep, or rather to fall away from, knowledge. False opinion is alien to the gnostic, just as true opinion is his own and his fitting consort.
For this reason the noble apostle calls idolatry one of the forms of fornication, in agreement with the prophet who says: it has committed adultery with wood and with stone; to the wood it said, You are my father; and to the stone, You gave birth to me.
Then follows the discourse on murder. Murder is a violent taking-away. So whoever wishes to take away the true account of God and of his eternity, in order to admit falsehood in its place, saying either that the universe is without providence, or that the world is uncreated, is the most destructive of all the things firmly held by true teaching.
After this comes the discourse on theft. Just as the one who steals another's goods, doing great wrong, deservedly falls into deserved evils, so too the one who appropriates divine works to himself through an art, whether sculpture or painting, and says that he himself is the maker of living creatures and plants, is a thief; and likewise those who merely imitate true philosophy are thieves as well. Even if someone is a farmer, even if a father of a child, he is only a servant of the sowing of seeds, while it is God who supplies the growth and completion of all things and brings what comes to be to its natural end.
But most people, along with the philosophers, attribute growths and changes primarily to the stars, thereby robbing, so far as lies in their power, the Father of all of his unwearied power. The elements and the stars — that is, the governing powers — have been appointed to carry out what is fitting for the ordering of the world, and they themselves are obedient and are led by those set over them, in whatever direction the word of the Lord guides, since the divine power is by nature accustomed to work all things in a hidden manner. Whoever, then, claims to have devised or made anything of what contributes to the work of creation shall render account for his impious presumption.
The tenth discourse is concerning all desires. Just as blame falls on the one who desires what is not fitting, so likewise one must not desire false things, nor to suppose that among created things the ensouled can act of themselves while the unensouled are altogether unable to save or to harm; and if someone says that the antidote cannot heal and that hemlock cannot destroy, he deceives himself by his own sophistry. For none of these things works without the one who makes use of the herb or the drug, just as neither does the axe work without the one who cuts, nor the saw without the one who saws. But just as these things do not act of themselves, yet possess certain natural qualities that, together with the craftsman's activity, contribute to their proper effect, so too by the universal providence of God, through things moved more immediately, the effective power is distributed by successive stages down to particular things.
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