Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But those who are ready to toil for the noblest things will not stop seeking the truth until they have received demonstration of it from the Scriptures themselves. Now there are certain criteria common to all men, just like the senses; but the other criteria belong to those who have willed and trained themselves in the true things — those that operate through mind and reasoning, skilled at distinguishing true statements from false ones. And the greatest thing is to lay aside conceit as well, standing in the middle between exact knowledge and rash pretended wisdom, and to know that the one who hopes for the eternal rest also knows that its entrance is toilsome and "narrow." But let the one who has once been given the good news, and "seen the salvation," as it says, in whatever hour he recognizes it, not "turn back, like Lot's wife," nor back to the former life fixed on things perceived by sense, nor let him run back again to the heresies — for they quarrel among themselves in some fashion or other, not knowing the God who truly is. "For he who loves father or mother more than me" — that is, more than the true Father and Teacher of truth, who regenerates and re-creates and nurtures the soul that has been chosen — "is not worthy of me": he says that the one worthy is worthy of being both son of God and disciple of God, and friend, and kinsman. "No one fit for God's kingdom keeps his hand upon the plow while turning to glance backward."
But, so it seems, to most people it still appears to this day that Mary was a woman in childbed because of the birth of the child, though she was not in childbed (for indeed, some say that even after she had given birth and been delivered, she was found to be a virgin) —
such for us are the Scriptures of the Lord: they bring forth truth and yet remain virgins, while keeping hidden the deep secrets that truth holds. "She has given birth and has not given birth," says the Scripture, as though from herself, not having conceived by union. Wherefore the Scriptures have conceived for those with knowledge, but the heresies, not having learned fully, are dismissed as not having conceived. Though all men have the same faculty of judgment, some, following the reasoning that lays hold of them, form their beliefs accordingly, while others, having given themselves over to pleasures, force the Scripture to fit their desires. But the lover of truth needs, I think, vigor of soul; for those who take on the greatest matters must necessarily fail most greatly, unless they have received from truth herself the rule of truth and hold it fast. Such people, having fallen from the straight road, naturally go wrong in most particular matters too, because they do not have a criterion of true and false thoroughly trained to choose what is needed. For if they had possessed one, they would have been persuaded by the divine Scriptures.
Just as, then, if a man should become a beast, like those drugged by Circe, so too the one who has kicked away the ecclesiastical tradition and bounded off into the opinions of human heresies has thrown away what it means to belong to God as a faithful man devoted to the Lord. But the one who runs back from this deception, having listened closely to the Scriptures and entrusted his own life to the truth — such a one is made, as it were, out of a man into a god. For we have the beginning of the teaching: the Lord, through the prophets and through the gospel and through the blessed apostles, guiding knowledge "in many ways and in many parts" from beginning to end. But if anyone should suppose the beginning needs something else, it would no longer truly be kept as a beginning. So then, the one who is faithful of himself to the Lord's Scripture and voice is reasonably worthy of trust, as though it operated through the Lord for the benefit of men; indeed we use it as a criterion for the discovery of matters. But everything under judgment is still unbelieved until it is judged; so that not even the beginning is a thing needing judgment. Reasonably, then, having embraced by faith the beginning that admits no demonstration, and having received from the beginning itself, out of its abundance, demonstrations concerning the beginning, the Lord's own voice trains us toward full knowledge of what is true. For we would not simply heed men who offer unsupported claims, since others could just as readily claim the reverse. Yet since a stated opinion alone will not do — what is said needs backing — we do not await human testimony, but instead we settle the matter we are pursuing through the Lord's own voice, more reliable than any proof — or rather, which happens to be the only demonstration there is. According to this understanding, those who have merely tasted of the Scriptures are believers, while those who have advanced further are exact touchstones of the truth — the Gnostics — since even in the affairs of life the skilled craftsmen have something more than the amateurs, and beyond common notions they shape out the better result.
So then we too, demonstrating fully from the Scriptures themselves concerning the Scriptures themselves, are persuaded out of faith in a demonstrative manner — even though those who pursue the heresies dare to make use of the prophetic Scriptures, first not using all of them, and then not using them whole, nor as the body and texture of the prophecy dictates, but choosing out the ambiguously worded passages they twist them to their own opinions, plucking a few scattered phrases here and there, not looking to what is signified by them but making use of the bare wording alone. For in almost all the texts they bring forward you would find them clinging only to the words, while changing what is signified — neither knowing them as they are actually spoken nor using them as they are naturally meant, but instead employing the very excerpts they themselves import. But truth is not found by shifting what is signified (for by that method they would overturn all true teaching), but by carefully examining what is truly proper and fitting for the Lord and Almighty God, and by confirming each of the points demonstrated according to the Scriptures again from those very same kindred Scriptures. So they neither wish to turn to the truth, being ashamed to set aside the advantage of self-love, nor do they know how to dispose of their own opinions, doing violence to the Scriptures as they do; but having rushed ahead to put forth false doctrines before men, fighting almost all the Scriptures openly, and being ever refuted by us who argue against them, they still to this day hold out — refusing to admit some of the prophetic texts, and slandering us, as though we had become of another nature, as unable to understand what belongs to them — while sometimes, being refuted, they even deny their own doctrines, being ashamed to confess outright what they boast of teaching privately.
For thus one may observe, going through all the heresies in turn, the wretchedness of their doctrines. For whenever they are overturned by us, who show clearly that they contradict the Scriptures, one can spot either of two reactions among the leaders of that teaching: they scorn either the coherence of their own doctrine or, more precisely, the prophetic word on which their expectation actually rests — and in either case they prefer whatever strikes them as clearer than the message delivered through the prophets by the Lord, ratified by the gospel and, beyond that, by the apostles too. Seeing then that the danger for them concerns not one doctrine but the preservation of the heresies as a whole — not the discovery of truth (for when they meet with what is common and ready at hand among us, they despise it as cheap) — and being eager to go beyond the common faith, they have gone beyond the truth. For not having learned the mysteries of ecclesiastical knowledge, nor having room for the greatness of the truth, and having shirked from descending to the depth of the matters, they read the Scriptures superficially and dismissed them.
Puffed up, then, with pretended wisdom, they persist in quarreling, having made it plain that they are concerned rather with seeming than with philosophizing. From the start, laying down premises that are not necessary, and moved by human opinions, and then contriving as a necessary consequence a conclusion to match, they fight bitterly through their refutations against those who practice true philosophy, and they endure everything — everything, as they say, they stir up trouble — rather than change their view, even if they are about to be impious through disbelieving the Scriptures. It is out of love of honor for their sect and the much-talked-of precedence at their gatherings, on account of which they also embrace that precedence in reclining at the banquet of their falsely-named love-feast; whereas among us, knowledge of the truth is furnished to those not yet believers by those already believing, and faith becomes, so to speak, the very substance of demonstration. But it seems every heresy has, as its starting principle, ears that do not hear what is beneficial — open only to what pleases. For indeed any one of them might be healed, if only he were willing to be persuaded by truth alone. The cure of conceit is threefold, as of every passion: learning the cause, and how it might be removed, and third, the training of the soul and the habituation to being able to follow what has been rightly judged.
For just as a disturbed eye cannot see clearly, so too a soul muddied by doctrines contrary to nature is unable to discern accurately the light of truth, but even misses what lies at its feet. In muddy water, they say, even eels are caught, being blinded; and just as wicked children shut out their tutor, so these people shut the prophecies out of their own church, suspecting them because of the reproof and admonition they bring. Indeed they stitch together countless lies and fabrications, so that they may seem to have good reason for not admitting the Scriptures. In this way they are not pious, being displeased with the divine commandments — that is, with the Holy Spirit. And just as almonds are called empty not when there is nothing at all in them, but when what is inside is useless, so we say that the heretics are empty of the will of God and of the traditions of Christ, being truly bitter, like the wild almond, at the very outset of their doctrines — except for those points which, because of the sheer clarity of the truths, they were unable to set aside or hide.
Just as, then, in war a soldier must not abandon the post which the general has assigned him, so too we must not abandon the order which the Word has given — the Word we have taken as ruler of both knowledge and life. But most men have not even examined this — whether one ought to follow someone, and whom exactly, and how. For as the Word is, such must the life of the believer also be, so that he is capable "of following God," who has, from the start, been guiding everything "toward a straight goal." Now when someone transgresses the Word, and through it, God, if he grew weak because some sudden impression fell upon him unexpectedly, then the rational faculties for meeting such impressions must be made ready; but if he has been overcome through habit that had already taken hold of him and has become, as the Scripture says, "common," then the habit must be stopped altogether and the soul trained to argue against it; and if it seems that conflicting doctrines are dragging some people along, these must be removed, and one must go to the "peacemakers" among the doctrines, who charm away, by means of the divine Scriptures, the fears of the timid among the untrained, clarifying the truth through the coherence of the covenants. But, it seems, we incline rather toward the reputable, even when it happens to be the opposite of truth, than toward truth itself — for truth is austere and stern.
And indeed, there being three dispositions of the soul — ignorance, conceit, and knowledge — some, the nations, are in ignorance; others, the true Church, are in knowledge; and others, those who follow the heresies, are in conceit.
Nothing, at any rate, is clearer to see than that those who truly know assert with confidence about the things they know, just as those who merely suppose assert about the things they suppose — so far, at least, as concerns the mere act of asserting without demonstration. So they hold one another in contempt and ridicule each other, and the very same mental capacity ends up prized as the height of honor by some, while others judge it to be a kind of derangement. And yet we have come to understand that pleasure belongs to one category, proper to the nations; strife to another, proper to the heresies; joy to a third, belonging rightly to the Church; while gladness falls to whoever is genuinely a Gnostic, according to truth. Consider how devotion to Ischomachus produces a farmer, to Lampis a shipmaster, to Charidemus a general, to Simon a horseman, to Perdix a peddler, to Crobylus a cook, to Archelaus a dancer, to Homer a poet, to Pyrrho a debater, to Demosthenes an orator, to Chrysippus a logician, to Aristotle a natural philosopher, to Plato a philosopher — likewise the man who submits to the Lord and follows the prophecy delivered through him becomes complete, shaped after the Teacher's likeness, a god moving about in flesh. Those, then, who do not follow God wherever he leads fall away from this height; and he leads according to the "God-inspired Scriptures." Now though the things men do are countless in number, there are, roughly speaking, two sources of all sin: ignorance and weakness — and both lie in our own power, belonging to those who neither wish to learn nor, again, to master desire. Of these, through the one they judge wrongly, and through the other they lack the strength to follow what has been rightly judged; for neither could a man deceived in judgment act well, however capable he may be of doing what he has come to know, nor could a man capable of judging what is needed present himself blameless in his actions if he is weak in carrying them out.
Consequently, then, two kinds of instruction, corresponding to the two kinds of sin, are handed down as fitting to each: for the first, knowledge together with a plain proof drawn from what the Scriptures attest; for the second, reasoned discipline guided by faith and by fear — and the two together grow into love brought to its fullness. For the Gnostic's goal, I think, is twofold even here: in some matters it is scientific contemplation, in others it is practice.
May it be, then, that these heretics too, upon learning from these notes, be brought to their senses and turn to the Almighty God. But if, like "the deaf adders," they do not hear the song that is called new but is in fact most ancient, may they at least be disciplined by God, enduring the fatherly warnings that come before judgment, until, put to shame, they repent — rather than, through harsh disobedience, hurling themselves into the full and final judgment. For there also come certain partial disciplines, which men call chastisements, into which many of us who have fallen into transgression from the Lord's people, slipping, stumble; but just as children are disciplined by their tutor or their father, so we are chastised by providence. God does not take vengeance — for vengeance is the repayment of evil for evil — but he does chastise, for what is useful, both in common and individually, to those chastised.
These things, then, I have set forth, wishing to turn those eager to learn away from the ready tendency to fall into the heresies; and wishing also to put a stop to the widespread — whether ignorance, or foolishness, or bad disposition, or whatever one ought to call it — and striving to win over and guide toward truth all who are not entirely beyond cure, I have employed these arguments to that end.
For there are some who do not even endure to listen at all to those who exhort them toward the truth; indeed they attempt to babble nonsense, pouring forth blasphemous words against the truth, conceding to themselves that they have come to know the greatest of realities, though they have not learned, not sought, not labored, not found the sequence of reasoning. Such people one might pity or hate for so great a perversion. But if someone happens to be curable, able to bear it as one bears fire or iron, let him submit the ears of his soul to the frank speech of truth, which cuts away and burns out their false opinions. This will happen, provided they are not, in their eagerness for ease, thrust away from the truth, or, reaching after reputation, forced into innovation. For those act out of laziness who, though it is in their power to draw evidence supporting the God-inspired writings out of those very writings, instead pick out whatever presents itself and suits their own pleasures; and those desire reputation who willfully sophisticate, by means of other underhanded contrivances, the things handed down by the blessed apostles and teachers as akin to the God-inspired words, setting up human teachings in opposition to the divine tradition for the sake of establishing their own heresy. For who, truly, among men of such stature — I mean according to ecclesiastical knowledge — was there any room left, so to speak, for the doctrine of Marcion, or of Prodicus and those like them who did not walk the straight road? For they did not surpass in wisdom the men who came before them, so as to discover something further beyond what those earlier men truly stated; rather it would have been enough for them if they had been able to learn what had already been handed down.
The Gnostic, then, is for us the one alone who has grown old in the very scriptures themselves, preserving the apostolic and ecclesiastical correctness of doctrines, and who lives most rightly according to the gospel, uncovering, whenever he searches, the demonstrations supplied to him out of the Law and the Prophets by the Master himself. For a Gnostic's manner of living, I would say, amounts to nothing else than actions and speech shaped after what the Master handed down.
But "not all possess knowledge." "For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers," says the apostle, "that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all partook of spiritual food and spiritual drink," plainly establishing that not all who hear the word have grasped, in deed and in word, the greatness of knowledge. Wherefore he also added: "but with most of them God was not well pleased." Who, then, is this one whom he found pleasing? The very one who declared: "Why do you address me as Lord, yet fail to carry out my Father's wishes?" — meaning, the Savior's own teaching, which serves us as spiritual nourishment and as an unquenchable drink, the "living water" belonging to knowledge. Now, they claim, knowledge itself is charged with puffing a person up. To this we reply: it is likely only a counterfeit knowledge that gets charged with such inflation, supposing the term is taken to mean swelling with conceit; yet if, as seems far more probable, the apostle intends by his phrase a genuinely elevated and truthful frame of mind, then the objection just raised dissolves; so let us proceed, drawing on the scriptures, to establish our point.
"Wisdom," says Solomon, "inspired her own children with greatness of spirit." For surely the Lord did not produce vanity in the young through his teaching, but rather confidence resting upon the truth; and he makes them great-minded in the knowledge handed down through the scriptures, and disdainful of those who would drag them down into sin — which is what the word "inspired with greatness" signifies, wisdom having implanted magnificence in the children of her teaching through the very things by which she instructs. Accordingly the apostle says: "and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but their power," — that is, whether you grasp the scriptures with a truly elevated mind (that is, in genuine truth; since nothing surpasses truth itself in greatness). For here lies the power of the children puffed up by wisdom. As if to say: I shall know whether you are rightly great-minded over your knowledge. For "God is known," according to David, "in Judea," that is, among those Israelites who possess true knowledge; for Judah is interpreted as "confession." Fittingly, then, it has been said by the apostle: "You shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." For one must never, as those who pursue heresies do, commit adultery against the truth, nor indeed steal the rule of the church, indulging their own desires and love of reputation at the cost of deceiving their neighbors — whom it is fitting to teach, above all else, to love and to hold fast to the truth itself. It has indeed been said outright: "Declare among the nations his deeds," so that those who have already heard beforehand might not be judged, but turned back. But as many as "deal deceitfully with their tongues" have their penalties written down.
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