Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
We are enjoined to revere and honor the Word, being persuaded that he himself is Savior and Leader, and through him the Father, not on select days, as some others do, but continually throughout our whole life and in every way. Indeed, "the chosen race" declares, "seven times in a day I have offered you praise," being made righteous in keeping with the commandment. Hence the Gnostic has no fixed place, nor any special temple, nor indeed any set festivals or appointed days, but through his whole life, in every place, whether he happens to be alone by himself or wherever he has some of those who have likewise believed, honors God, that is, acknowledges gratitude for knowledge and for his manner of life. And if the presence of some good man, through the reverence and shame it inspires, always shapes for the better the one who meets him, how much more would he who is always accompanied by God through knowledge and life and unceasing thanksgiving not reasonably be better than himself at every turn, in all his deeds and words and disposition? Such is he who is persuaded that God is present everywhere, and does not suppose him shut up in certain fixed places, so as to imagine himself apart from him at some point and thereby run wild by night and by day. Making, therefore, our whole life a festival, persuaded that God is present on every side in every way, we farm while praising, we sail while singing hymns; in the rest of our conduct we comport ourselves according to rule. But the Gnostic, closer than any other, is made kin to God, combining seriousness with gladness at once in every circumstance: serious on account of his orientation toward what is divine, glad on account of tallying up the human blessings God has bestowed on us.
The prophet shows the excellence of knowledge plainly here.
"Teach me goodness and discipline and knowledge," increasing by ascending stages the ruling faculty toward perfection. This, then, is truly the royal man; this is the holy priest of God. This is what is still preserved even now among the most learned of the barbarians, who advance the priestly race to kingship. This man, then, nowhere gives himself over to the mob-rule that lords it over the theaters. What is said and done and seen for the sake of dissolute pleasure he admits not even in a dream — neither these pleasures of the spectacle, nor the varied enjoyments derived from other indulgences, such as the extravagance of incense that bewitches the sense of smell, or the elaborate confections of foods and the enjoyments from various wines that entice the taste, nor the flower-laden and fragrant garlands that soften the soul through sensation. But referring the reverent enjoyment of all things always to God, he offers first-fruits of his food and his drink and his anointing to the Giver of all, acknowledging gratitude both for the gift and for the use of it, through the word given to him. He rarely attends banquets and drinking-parties, unless the friendly and harmonious spirit of the gathering should invite him to come. For he is persuaded that God knows and hears everything, not only the voice, but also the thought, since even our hearing, though effected through bodily passages, does not have its perception through bodily power, but through a certain perception of the soul and through the discerning understanding of sounds that signify something.
God is not, therefore, of human form for this reason, that he might hear, nor does he need senses, as it pleased the Stoics to think, especially hearing and sight, on the ground that he could never otherwise perceive; but both the responsiveness of the air and the most acute joint-perception of the angels, and the faculty of conscience that touches the soul, know all things by a certain ineffable power, together with the thought itself, without need of sensible hearing. And even if one should say that the voice does not reach as far as God, rolling below through the atmosphere, still the reflections of the sanctified pierce through not merely the air but the entire cosmos. The divine power, like light, is beforehand in seeing through the whole soul. What then? Do not our purposes, too, reach beforehand to God, sending forth their own voice? Are they not conveyed also by conscience? What voice at all would he wait for, who according to his design has known the elect one, and what is to be, as already existing, even before its coming into being? Or does not the light of that power shine altogether into the depth of every soul, "searching the inward chambers," as Scripture says, of "the lamp" of that power? For God is wholly hearing and wholly eye, if one may use such terms of him.
In general, then, no notion that is unbecoming concerning God preserves any true piety toward God, whether in hymns or in words, nor indeed in writings or doctrines, but rather turns aside into base and unseemly conceptions and suspicions. Hence the good report of the many differs in nothing from ill report, because of their ignorance of the truth. Now of those beings who have cravings and desires, and, to speak generally, impulses, of these also are prayers. Wherefore no one desires drink as such, but rather the drinking of the drink; nor indeed an inheritance, but the inheriting of it; and likewise not knowledge, but the coming to know; nor indeed right conduct of life, but the living rightly. Of these things, then, are the prayers whose objects are also requests, and of these the requests are of things that are also desires. And to pray and to strive after something come about correspondingly, in order to have the goods and the benefits that lie close to their acquisition. The Gnostic, then, always makes his prayer and request for the things that are truly good, those concerning the soul, and he prays, working together at the same time himself, to come to a settled state of goodness, so that he may no longer have the goods as though they were, so to speak, lessons lying beside him, but may himself be good.
Wherefore it is fitting above all for those to pray who know the divine as they ought and possess the virtue befitting it — those who know what things are truly good, and what one ought to ask for, and when, and how, in each case. But it is the height of ignorance to ask of those who are not gods as though they were gods, or to ask for things that are not beneficial, requesting for oneself evils under the appearance of goods. Hence, reasonably, since there is one good God, we pray, both we and the angels, that some good things be given by him alone, and that others remain with us; but not in the same manner. Asking that a favor persist is not identical with being keen to obtain it to begin with. And the turning away of evils is also a kind of prayer; yet one must never make use of such a prayer for the harm of other men, unless the Gnostic, contriving thereby the conversion to righteousness, should manage his request for those who have "become past feeling." Prayer, then, is, to speak somewhat boldly, converse with God; and even if we speak in a whisper, without even opening our lips, in silence, we cry out within; for God unceasingly hears the whole inward converse.
In this way we also stretch our head upward and raise our hands to heaven and rise onto our toes at the closing words of the petition, chasing after the spirit's ardor toward the intelligible reality, and attempting, along with the word spoken, to lift the body clear of the earth, giving the soul, so to speak, "wings" through its yearning for the better things, we press onward toward "the holy places," holding the fetter of the flesh in contempt. For we know full well that the Gnostic, just as the Jews did in departing from Egypt, makes his escape from the whole world willingly, showing clearly, more than by anything else, that he would be as near as possible to God. And though some allot set hours to petition — say the third, the sixth, and the ninth — the Gnostic instead prays across the whole span of his existence, laboring through petition to be joined with God, and having left behind, to sum it up, everything that is not useful to him once he has come there, as one who has already, from this present life, received the perfection of what is done through love. But also the divisions of the hours into three parts, honored with equal prayers, are known to those who recognize the blessed triad of holy dwellings.
Having come to this point, I was reminded concerning the doctrines introduced by certain heterodox persons — those, I mean, of the sect of Prodicus — to the effect that one ought not to pray at all. In order, then, that they may not be puffed up over this godless wisdom of theirs as though it were some novel heresy, let them learn that it was anticipated by the so-called Cyrenaic philosophers. Nevertheless the unholy "knowledge" of these falsely-named people will meet its refutation in due season, so that, since it is now stealing in upon our discussion, its onslaught — which is no small one — may not cut short the argument in hand; while we for our part show only that he who is truly holy and pious toward God is he who is, in reality, according to the rule of the Church, the Gnostic, to whom alone the granting of his request comes to pass according to the will of God, both when he has asked and even when he has merely conceived the thought. For just as God is capable of accomplishing everything he intends, likewise the Gnostic "obtains" "everything he requests." For in general God knows both those who are worthy of good things and those who are not; hence he gives to each what is fitting. Wherefore often he would not grant to the unworthy who ask, but he would grant, clearly, to those who are worthy. Yet the asking is not superfluous, even if the good things are given apart from any claim of worthiness. Indeed, both thanksgiving and the request made on behalf of one's neighbors for their conversion are a work of the Gnostic. In this manner the Lord too used to pray, giving thanks for having brought his ministry to completion, and praying that as many as possible should come to full knowledge, in order that, among those being saved through salvation according to full knowledge, God might be glorified, and the only good one and only Savior, through the Son, might be known from age to age. And indeed faith itself, that one shall receive, is a kind of prayer already laid up in a Gnostic manner.
But if prayer is a kind of occasion for converse with God, no occasion whatever for approach to God ought to be passed by. Indeed, the sanctity belonging to the Gnostic, woven together with the blessed forethought of God, exhibits, by way of freely-given acknowledgment, the complete generosity that is God's own. For the Gnostic's sanctity is, in a manner of speaking, providence turned back upon itself, a mutual goodwill shown by the friend of God. God is not gracious under compulsion, the way fire warms of necessity — rather his bestowal of good things happens by free choice, even anticipating the request itself — nor, indeed, is the man being rescued rescued against his own wishes; for he is no soulless thing, but will instead pursue rescue of his own accord and by deliberate decision. Wherefore man also received the commandments as one impelled from within himself toward whichever he might wish, of things to be chosen and things to be avoided. God, therefore, does not do good by necessity, but does well by deliberate choice to those who turn toward him from themselves. For the providence coming to us from God is not, so to speak, a servile thing, as though advancing from worse to better; rather it is out of mercy for our weakness that the immediate dispensations of providence are worked out — just as also the care of shepherds toward their flocks, and that of a king toward his subjects, and just as we ourselves are obediently disposed toward our leaders, having those set in order to manage us according to the rank in which they have been entrusted by God. Servants, then, and ministers of the divine are those who render the most free and most royal service — the service that comes through godly disposition and knowledge.
Every place, then, is truly holy in which we receive the perception of God, and so is every time. And whenever one who is well-disposed and at the same time thankful makes his request through prayer, he in some sense himself cooperates toward the receiving, gladly obtaining, through his very prayer, the thing longed for. For when the Giver of good things receives what is favorably brought forward by us, all good things follow together, all at once, upon that very reception. Indeed, through prayer the manner of a man is put to the test, to see how he stands in regard to what is fitting. And if voice and speech have been given to us for the sake of thought, how should God not listen to the very soul and mind itself, seeing that already soul hears soul and mind hears mind? Hence God does not wait upon many-tongued languages, as human interpreters do, but recognizes at once, without exception, the thoughts of all; and what our voice signifies to us, that our thought speaks to God, which he knew, even before creation, would come to be a thought. It is possible, then, to send forth one's prayer without even a voice, straining only inwardly the whole spiritual faculty toward the intelligible voice, in undistracted turning toward God.
Since the break of dawn pictures the day one is born, and from that moment brightness grows, having "shone forth out of darkness" at the very start, in the same way for those wandering about in ignorance a day of truth's knowledge has dawned, matching the sun's pattern; that is why prayers face toward daybreak in the east. This is also the reason the oldest sanctuaries were oriented toward the west, so that people standing before the statues, looking at them, would be trained to turn themselves eastward. "Let my prayer be directed as incense before you, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice," say the psalms.
For wicked men, then, prayer is most harmful, not only toward others but also toward themselves. Indeed, even if they should ask for and obtain what they call good fortunes, it harms them once obtained, since they are ignorant of their proper use. For some pray to acquire what they do not have, and ask for things that seem good, not things that are truly good. But the Gnostic asks for the continuance of what he already possesses, and for fitness for the things he is destined to pass beyond, and for [an unbroken permanence] of the things he will not lose. But he prays for the things that are truly good, those concerning the soul, both to have them and to have them remain. In this way he does not even long for any of the things that are absent, being content with what is present; for he is not lacking in the goods that are properly his own, being already sufficient to himself through divine grace and knowledge. Rather, having become self-sufficient and in need of nothing else, and having come to know the almighty will, both possessing and praying at the same time, having drawn near to the all-powerful power, and having striven to be spiritual, he has been united to the Spirit through boundless love. This is the great-souled man, he who has acquired, according to knowledge, the most honorable of all things, the best of all things — quick of perception in the application of contemplation, and possessing in his soul the abiding power of the things contemplated, that is, the piercing sharpness belonging to knowledge. This capacity he labors with every effort to gain, having gained mastery over "the things that war against the mind," and continually attending upon contemplation, while also training himself, through ascetic practice, in the restraint of pleasures and the right accomplishment of duties. Besides these, having gained much experience both in learning and in life, he has boldness of speech — not the power of a loose and idly-babbling tongue, but a power that employs plain speech, keeping back none of the things that can be said at the fitting time, on those matters where it is most needful — a boldness that hides nothing either out of favor or out of fear.
It is with good reason, then, that the one who has grasped the truths about God, taught by Truth herself in her mystic choir, makes use of the reasoning that exhorts to the greatness of virtue, exhibiting worthily both virtue herself and what proceeds from her, and appropriating himself, with divinely-inspired uplifting of prayer, to intelligible and spiritual things in the most gnostic manner possible. Hence he is always gentle and mild, easy of access, easy to meet, patient of wrong, considerate, conscientious, and austere — this austerity of ours being directed not only toward incorruption but also toward being untempted (for in no way does he present his soul as yielding or capturable to pleasure or pain). He is a judge, whenever reason calls him to be one, having become unbending and granting nothing whatever to the passions, walking unshakably along the path where the just, by its nature, must go, thoroughly persuaded that all things are most excellently administered and that advance toward the better always proceeds for souls that have chosen virtue, until they arrive at the Good itself, having come, so to speak, "to the forecourts" of the Father, near to the great High Priest.
This is our faithful gnostic, the one persuaded that the affairs of the world are administered in the best way. Accordingly he is well pleased with everything that happens to him.
Reasonably, then, he seeks nothing among the things suited to necessary use in life, for he is convinced that God, since He knows every single thing, furnishes the good with what is fitting even before they ask. For just as, I think, the craftsman receives his portion in a craftsman's manner, and the plain person receives his in a plain manner, so too each portion is rendered to the gnostic in a gnostic manner. And the convert newly come from paganism asks for faith, whereas the one moving onward toward knowledge will ask for "love brought to its completeness." The one who is already at the summit, the gnostic, prays that contemplation may increase and remain, just as the common person prays for continual health. Nor, indeed, will he ask ever to fall from virtue, but rather works together chiefly toward remaining unfallen. For he knows that even some of the angels, through negligence, slipped down again to earth, not having yet, out of their disposition toward duality, wholly pressed themselves out into that single state. But for the one exercised in advance, along the way, in all things according to time and place, toward the summit of knowledge and that elevated height belonging to the complete man, who has chosen to live unchangeably and practices this because of the uniform steadfastness of his judgment on every side — but as for those in whom some weighty corner still remains inclining downward, that which is raised up through faith is dragged back down. To the one, then, who through gnostic practice has made virtue unable to be cast away, his condition is confirmed by nature; and just as weight belongs to the stone, so to this man knowledge unable to be cast away is established, not involuntarily but voluntarily, by a rational, gnostic, and provident power.
Since that which is not cast away becomes unable to be cast away through carefulness exercised through good reasoning, carefulness will hold fast against sinning, and good reasoning will hold fast toward the permanence of virtue. Knowledge, it seems, supplies this good reasoning, teaching one to discern the things able to help toward the continuance of virtue. Greatest, therefore, is the knowledge of God; wherefore by this too the permanence of virtue is preserved. And the one who has come to know God is holy and pious. The gnostic alone, then, has been shown by us to be truly pious. He rejoices in the goods that are present, and he delights in the things promised, as though they were already present. For it has not escaped him, even while they are still absent, what sort of things they are, since he has already come to know them beforehand. Persuaded, then, by knowledge, that each of the things to come already is, he possesses this. For the state of lacking and needing is measured against what is due. If, then, he has acquired wisdom, and wisdom is divine, the one who partakes of that which lacks nothing would himself lack nothing. For the sharing of wisdom does not occur through the mover and the moved affecting one another in their activity and their partaking, nor by something being taken away or becoming deficient; rather, the activity is shown, precisely through this very sharing, to be undiminished. Thus, then, our gnostic has all good things according to power, though not yet according to number, since otherwise he would be unchangeable with respect to the advances and dispensations still owed him by God.
In this God also cooperates with him, honoring him with a more attentive oversight.
For have not all things come to be for the sake of good men, and for their use and benefit, or rather their salvation? God, then, would not take away from these men the things that come through virtue, for whose sake the things that exist came to be. For it is clear that he would honor their good nature and their holy choice, he who indeed breathes strength for the rest of salvation even into those who have set themselves to live well — to some merely exhorting, but to those who have become worthy through their own efforts, cooperating as well; for every good is, for the gnostic, something added afterward, if indeed his end is to know and to do each thing knowledgeably. And just as the physician provides health to those who cooperate toward health, so also God provides eternal salvation to those who cooperate toward knowledge and right conduct — along with the doing, since the things the commandments prescribe are within our power, and the promise is fulfilled. And it seems to me that this too is well said among the Greeks: a certain athlete of no mean repute among the ancients, having for a long time trained his body well toward manly strength, went up to Olympia, and looking toward the statue of Pisaean Zeus, said, "O Zeus, if all things have been duly prepared by me for the contest, grant and render the victory justly to me."
So too for the gnostic: having discharged, blamelessly and with an untroubled conscience, everything that falls to his own share, in learning, in joint practice, in well-doing, and in pleasing God, everything else contributes together toward his most perfect salvation. These things, then, are required of us — the things in our own power, and, among the things pertaining to us, whether present or absent, the choosing, the longing, the acquiring, the using, and the persevering.
Wherefore it is necessary that the one who consorts with God keep his soul unstained and utterly undefiled, best of all if he has thoroughly wrought himself into perfect goodness; but if not, then at least advancing toward knowledge and reaching after it, and altogether torn away from the works of wickedness. But it is also fitting that he offer all his prayers reasonably, both together with and among reasonable people; for it is a dangerous thing to be enrolled together with the sins of others. Concerning these matters, then, the gnostic joins his prayer with those whose belief is of the more ordinary sort, in whatever concerns it is proper to cooperate on. And his whole life is a holy festival. Indeed, his sacrifices are prayers and praises, and the readings of the scriptures before the meal, while psalms and hymns accompany the meal and precede sleep; and again prayers by night. Through these he unites himself with the "divine choir," set, by continual remembrance, into unceasing contemplation. What then? Does he not also know that other sacrifice, the giving to those in need both of teachings and of money? Very much so. But in prayer spoken aloud he does not use many words, having learned from the Lord even what one ought to ask for. In every place, then, he will pray, yet not openly or conspicuously before the many; rather, whether walking, or in conversation, or in silence, or in reading, or in works done according to reason, in every way he prays; and even if he only forms the thought within the very "inner chamber" of his soul and "calls upon the Father with unspoken groanings," the Father is near and present even while he is still speaking. And since every action has three ends, he does all things for the sake of the good and the expedient, but leaves the doing of things for the sake of pleasure to those who pursue the common life.
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