Stromateis 1 part 17/42

But the Lord admittedly came to those who had gone astray — astray, however, not from above into this coming-into-being here (for generation is a created thing, and is the creation of the Almighty, who could never bring a soul down from what is better into what is worse) — rather, the Savior came to us, to those who had gone astray in their thoughts: thoughts which had been corrupted through disobedience to the commandments, because we loved pleasure, perhaps because we anticipated the time, as the first-formed man did, and reached out before the hour for the grace of marriage, and so went astray — since 'everyone who looks upon a woman so as to desire her has already committed adultery with her,' not having waited for the appointed time of God's will.

It was, then, the same Lord who even then judged the desire that anticipated marriage.

When, therefore, the apostle says, 'Put on the new man, who is created according to God,' he speaks to us who have been formed by the will of the Almighty, just as we have indeed been formed; and by 'old' <and 'new'> he does not refer to natural birth and regeneration, but to a way of life — the one lived in disobedience, the other in obedience.

Cassianus takes the 'garments of skin' to mean the bodies — a point on which we shall later show both him and those who hold like doctrines to be mistaken, when, following what needed to be said beforehand, we take up the exegesis concerning the generation of man.

'Those who are ruled by earthly things both beget and are begotten; but our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we await a Savior.' We too know that these things have been well spoken, since we ought to live as citizens who are strangers and sojourners: those who marry, as though not marrying; those who possess, as though not possessing; those who beget children, as begetting mortal beings; as those who will one day leave their possessions behind; as those who could live even without a wife, should it be necessary — using creation without inordinate attachment, but with all thanksgiving, and with a noble mind.

And again, when he says, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman' —

— explaining this further, he again says:

'lest Satan tempt you.'

For he does not say this on account of incontinence to those who use marriage with self-control for the purpose of child-bearing alone, but to those who desire to go beyond child-bearing, lest the adversary, having breathed heavily upon them, should stir their appetite into a tempest ... toward alien pleasures.

And perhaps, since out of envy he opposes those who live righteously and contends against them with rivalry, wishing to bring them under his own dominion, he wants to furnish them with occasions to fall through burdensome, excessive continence.

'It is better to marry than to burn,' so that the husband may render to the wife her due, and the wife to the husband, and that they may not deprive one another of the help given, through the divine <dispensation>, for the purpose of procreation.

'Whoever does not hate,' they say, 'father or mother ... or wife or children, cannot be my disciple.'

He does not thereby command us to hate our own kin;

for it says, 'Honor your father and your mother, that it may be well with you'; rather, he says, do not be led away by irrational impulses, nor bind yourself to the customs of civic society —

for a household is composed of kin, and cities are composed of households, just as Paul also said that those occupied with marriage seek to please the world.

Let him who has married not put away his wife, and let him who has not married, not marry; but let him who has professed, by resolve, a commitment to continence not to marry, remain unmarried.

To both, then, the same Lord gives fitting promises through the prophet Isaiah, speaking somewhat as follows:

'Let not the eunuch say, I am a dry tree.'

'Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs:'

'If you keep my sabbaths, and do all that I command, I will give you a place better than sons and daughters;'

for eunuchism alone does not justify, nor indeed does the eunuch's sabbath-keeping, if he does not keep the commandments.

And to those who have married he adds and says:

'My elect shall not labor in vain, nor shall they beget children for a curse, for it is a seed blessed by the Lord.'

For to the one who has begotten children according to reason, and reared and trained them in the Lord — just as also to the one who has begotten through true catechetical teaching — there is laid up some reward, just as also for the elect seed.

But others take the begetting of children to be a curse, and do not understand that the Scripture speaks this against those very ones themselves.

For those who are truly the elect of the Lord neither hold doctrines nor beget children unto a curse, as the heresies do.

A eunuch, then, is not spoken of as one who has been forcibly deprived of his members, nor indeed as one who is unmarried, but as one who is barren of truth.

This man was formerly a dry tree; but having obeyed the Word, and kept the sabbaths through abstention from sins, and done the commandments, he will be more honored than those who are instructed by word alone, without an upright manner of life.

'Little children,' says the Teacher, 'yet a little while I am with you.'

For this reason Paul too, writing to the Galatians, says:

'My little children, for whom I am again in travail, until Christ be formed in you.'

And again, writing to the Corinthians, he says, 'For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, yet not many fathers':

'for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.'

For this reason 'a eunuch shall not enter the church of God' — that is, one who is barren and fruitless both in conduct and in word; but 'blessed are those who have made themselves eunuchs' from all sin, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven — these are they who fast from the world.

'Cursed be the day on which I was born, and let it not be desired,' says Jeremiah — not saying that birth itself is simply cursed, but expressing his grief over the sins of the people and their disobedience:

'For why was I born, to see toil and hardship, and my days have been spent in shame?' Indeed, all who proclaim the truth were persecuted and endangered on account of the disobedience of their hearers.

'For why did my mother's womb not become my tomb, that I might not see the toil of Jacob and the labor of the race of Israel?' says the prophet Ezra.

'No one is clean of defilement,' says Job, 'not even if his life were but a single day.'

— an infant? Or how has that which has done nothing at all fallen under Adam's curse?

It remains for them, it would seem, to say consistently that birth is evil — not the birth of the body alone, but also that of the soul, on whose account the body exists as well.

And when David says, 'In sins was I conceived, and in iniquities did my mother crave for me,' he speaks prophetically, calling Eve his 'mother'; yet Eve became the mother of the living, and even if she was conceived in sin, he himself was not in sin, nor is he himself sin.

And if indeed everyone who turns from sin to faith turns to life from the sinful habit as from a mother, one of the twelve prophets will bear me witness, who says, 'If I give my firstborn for my impiety, the fruit of my womb...'

He does not thereby accuse the One who said, 'Increase and multiply,' but calls those first impulses arising from birth, in which we do not yet know God, impulses of impiety.

But if someone, on this account, calls birth evil, let him also, on that other account, call it good — inasmuch as through it we come to know the truth:

'Awake to soberness as is right, and sin not;'

'for some have ignorance of God' — clearly meaning those who sin.

Since our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against spiritual powers, and since the world-rulers of this darkness are able to try us severely, for this reason there are the Scripture's concessions.

For this reason Paul too says, 'I buffet my own body and bring it into subjection,' because 'everyone who competes exercises self-control in all things' (that is, exercises self-control with a view to all things, not abstaining from everything, but using with self-control the things he has judged right); 'they, indeed, that they may receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible one' — conquering in the contest, and not being crowned without a struggle.

Some indeed already prefer the widow to the virgin with regard to continence, since she has come, with a noble mind, to disdain the pleasure she has already experienced.

But if birth is an evil, then let the blasphemers say that the Lord, who partook of birth, was in evil, and that the Virgin who bore him was in evil.

Alas for such evils! They blaspheme the will of God and the mystery of creation, slandering birth.

For these reasons Docetism belongs to Cassianus; for these reasons also to Marcion; and indeed also to Valentinus, the doctrine of the 'psychic body' — because they say:

'Man became like the beasts' when he came to sexual union;

but when someone, inflamed with lust, truly wishes to mount another's bed, then indeed such a man becomes a beast.

They became stallions maddened for the female, each one neighing after his neighbor's wife.

And even if the serpent, having taken the practice of intercourse from irrational animals, persuaded Eve to agree by chance to union with Adam—on the supposition that the first-formed had not made use of this nature, as some maintain—creation is again blasphemed, as having made men weaker by nature than irrational animals, whom the first-formed of God followed.

But if nature led them, as it does even irrational creatures, toward the begetting of children, yet they were moved more quickly than was fitting, being still young by nature and led astray by deceit—then just is the judgment of God upon those who did not wait for his will, but holy is procreation, on account of which the world was constituted, on account of which the essences exist, on account of which the natures exist, on account of which angels exist, on account of which powers exist, on account of which souls exist, on account of which the commandments exist, on account of which the law exists, on account of which... the gospel exists, on account of which the knowledge of God exists.

And all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of grass;

and the grass withers, and the flower falls,

but the word of the Lord ... abides, which has anointed the soul and united it to the Spirit.

But how, apart from the body, could the dispensation of the Church among us have reached its fulfillment? Seeing that he himself, the head of the Church, came indeed in flesh, yet formless and without shape, teaching us to look toward the formless and incorporeal nature of the divine cause.

'For a tree of life,' says the prophet, 'arises in good desire,' teaching that the desires that are in the living Lord are comely and pure.

But already they wish the union of a man with a woman in marriage—called 'knowledge'—to be sin,

...of good and evil, teaching through the significance of the word 'he knew' the transgression of the commandment.

But if this is so, then the knowledge of the truth is also eating of the tree of life.

It is possible, then, for chaste marriage also to partake of that tree.

It has been said before by us that it is possible to use marriage both well and ill, and this is the tree of knowledge—provided we do not transgress the law of marriage.

What then? Did not the Savior heal the body of its afflictions, just as he did the soul? And he would not have fortified an enemy against the soul by restoring it to health, if the flesh were indeed hostile to the soul.

'Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,' nor does corruption inherit incorruption; for sin, being corruption, cannot have fellowship with incorruption, which is righteousness.

'Are you so foolish?' he says. 'Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?' ... The righteousness, then, and the harmony pertaining to salvation, being dignified and secure, some have overstrained, as we have shown, blasphemously understanding continence with utter godlessness—though it were possible to choose celibacy according to the sound rule, with piety, giving thanks for the grace bestowed, yet without hating creation or despising those who have married.

For the world is created, and celibacy too is created; let both give thanks in the state to which they have been appointed, if they know ... also that for which they have been appointed.

But those who, throwing off restraint, ran into excess, having truly become stallions maddened for the female and neighing after the wives of their neighbors, both pouring themselves out uncontrollably and persuading their neighbors to love pleasure—wretchedly hearing those Scriptures: 'Cast in your lot among us; let us all get one common purse, and let us have one bag.'

Because of such men, the same prophet, giving us counsel, says:

'Do not walk in the way with them; turn away your foot from their paths.'

'For nets are not spread for birds without reason.'

For they who partake of bloodshed treasure up evils for themselves—that is, laying claim to impurity and teaching their neighbors the same things: warriors, smiters with their tails, according to the prophet, which the Greeks call 'kerkoi.'

Now those whom the prophecy darkly signifies would be men prone to lust, incontinent, warriors with their tails, children of darkness and wrath, blood-stained murderers, self-slayers, and murderers of their neighbors.

'Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump,' the apostle cries out to us.

And again, being distressed at certain such persons, he enjoins us not to associate with anyone called a brother if he is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—with such a one not even to eat.

'For I,' he says, 'through the law died to the law, that I might live to God.'

'And I no longer live' as I once lived according to my desires, 'but Christ lives in me,' through obedience to the commandments, purely and blessedly.

So that then I lived in the flesh, according to the flesh; but that which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith ... in the Son of God.

'Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter a city of the Samaritans,' the Lord says, turning us away from the opposite way of life, since 'the destruction of lawless men is evil.'

'And these are the ways of all who commit lawless deeds.'

'Woe to that man,' says the Lord,

'it would have been good for him if he had not been born, rather than cause one of my elect to stumble.'

'It would have been better for him to have a millstone hung about him and be cast into the sea, than to pervert one of my elect.'

For the name of God ... is blasphemed because of them.

Wherefore nobly does the apostle say: 'I wrote to you in the letter not to associate with fornicators' — down to — 'but the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.'

And to show that he does not mean marriage by fornication, he adds:

'Let the husband render to the wife her due, and likewise also the wife to the husband'—she who, after that creation, is a helper in household management and in faith in Christ; and speaking still more plainly, he says:

'To those who are married I command—not I, but the Lord—that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not leave his wife.'

'But to the rest I say, I, not the Lord:'

'If any brother has an unbelieving wife...' down to '...but now they are holy.'

What then do those who run down the law say to this—those who hold that marriage is conceded only under the law, and not also under the new covenant? What have they to say to these ordinances, they who abhor procreation and begetting? Since he also ordains that the bishop who rules well over his own household should preside over the Church, and it is the union with one wife that constitutes a household befitting the Lord.

'To the pure, all things are pure,' he says, 'but to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but both their mind and their conscience are defiled.'

But concerning pleasure that is against the rule, 'do not be deceived,' he says:

'Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor the covetous, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God.'

And such were some of you, but we were washed—we who were once in these things. But others, plunging their disciples into this very licentiousness, baptize them out of chastity into fornication, decreeing that one should indulge pleasures and passions, teaching that the intemperate come from the temperate, and resting their hope on the shamelessness of their bodily members—thus preparing their disciples to be disowned rather than enrolled in the kingdom of God, having, under the name of a falsely called 'knowledge,' chosen for themselves the journey into the outer darkness.

'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.'

'The things which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—these ... do.'

'and the God of peace will be with you.'

And Peter in his letter says similar things:

'... so that your faith and hope might be in God, having purified your souls in obedience to the truth, as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts of your ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves also in all manner of conduct, because it is written:'

'You shall be holy, for I am holy.' ... But indeed, the necessary controversy against the pretenders of falsely called knowledge has led us on beyond what was fitting, and has extended our discourse to great length.

Wherefore let this be the conclusion of the third of our Miscellanies of gnostic notes according to the true philosophy.

CLEMENT'S STROMATEIS, BOOK FOUR. It would, I think, be fitting next to treat of martyrdom, and of who the perfect man is—topics within which, as the sequence of what is to be said requires, related matters will be included—and to show that one must philosophize in like manner whether slave or free, whether one happens to be man or woman by birth.

And having filled out in due order what follows concerning faith and concerning seeking, we shall next set forth the symbolic form, so that, having summarily concluded our ethical discourse as in a rapid survey, we may present in summary fashion the benefit that has been transmitted to the Greeks from barbarian philosophy.

After this outline, an exposition addressed both to the Greeks and to the Jews, according to a summary of the Scriptures, will be handed down, together with all those matters which, in the Miscellanies preceding this one, at the outset of our preface, we had proposed to complete in a single treatise, but which—of necessity constrained by the sheer abundance of the material—it did not turn out possible for us to include.

We must give a historical account of the Greeks and of the other barbarians as well, of as many as whose opinions have come down to us, and we must apply ourselves to the most important of the doctrines devised by the philosophers.

Following upon these, it would then be fitting, after a rapid survey of theology, to treat of what has been handed down concerning prophecy, so that, having shown that the Scriptures we have believed are authoritative, possessing the authority of the Almighty, we may be able to proceed through them in due sequence, and thereby show against all the heresies that there is one God and Lord Almighty, proclaimed through the law and the prophets, and genuinely also through the blessed gospel.

Many refutations against those of heterodox opinion await us, as we attempt in writing to resolve the arguments they bring forward, and to persuade them even against their will, by refuting them out of the very Scriptures themselves.

When, then, our whole design has been completed, in those notes by which—should the Spirit so will—we serve the pressing need (for great is the necessity of what must first be said concerning the truth), then indeed we shall proceed to the truly gnostic natural philosophy, having been initiated into the lesser mysteries before the greater, so that nothing may stand in the way of the truly divine revelation, once those things which needed to be first narrated and first handed down have been previously purified and previously outlined.

The natural philosophy, then, of the gnostic tradition according to the rule of truth—or rather, the higher contemplation—is grounded upon the discourse concerning the origin of the world, ... and from there ascends to the theological form.

Whence it is fitting that we make the beginning of our exposition from the creation as it was prophesied, setting forth in part also the views of those of heterodox opinion, and endeavoring, so far as we are able, to refute them.

But this shall be written, if God so wills and inspires in whatever manner he grants; for now we must proceed to the matter at hand and complete our discourse on ethics.

Let our notes be, as we have often said, on account of those who read them recklessly and without skill, variously strewn about, as indeed the very name itself suggests—passing continuously from one subject to another, indicating one thing according to the surface sequence of the words, but pointing to something else altogether.

'For those who seek gold,' says Heraclitus, 'dig up much earth and find little; but those who truly mine the kindred substance of gold will find much in little.'

For Scripture will find that one man to understand it.

The Miscellanies of these notes, then, do lend aid, for the purpose of recollection and for the purpose of the manifestation of the truth, to one who is capable of seeking with reason.

But we too must labor further upon these things and discover other matters besides, since even for those setting out on a road they do not know, it suffices merely to point out the way that leads there; after that, one must already walk it and find out the rest for oneself—just as they say the Pythia, when a certain slave once asked what he might do to please his master, answered simply: 'You will find out, if you seek.'

It is indeed truly difficult, it seems, to discover a hidden good, since before virtue the gods have set toil, and the path to her is long and steep, and rough at first.

But when one has reached the summit, then it becomes easy, though it was difficult before.

For truly narrow and constricted is the way of the Lord, and the kingdom of God belongs to those who press forward with violence; wherefore he says, 'Seek, and you shall find,' holding fast to the truly royal road and not straying from it.

It is fitting, then, that much fruitfulness lies hidden in the small seed of the doctrines contained in this treatise, just as, Scripture says, in ‘every herb of the field.’

For this reason the Miscellanies (Stromateis) of these memoranda properly bear their title, gathered artlessly like that ancient offering of first-fruits, concerning which Sophocles writes:

For there was a fleece of wool, and there was a libation from the vines, and the grape-cluster well stored up; and there was an all-fruit offering mixed with barley-groats, and the fat of oil, and that most intricate wax-wrought instrument of the tawny bee.

Thus our Miscellanies, like the farmer in Timocles the comic poet, yield figs, oil, dried figs, honey…as if from a land bearing every kind of fruit.

On account of which fruitfulness he adds:

‘The eiresione bears figs and rich loaves, and honey in a cup, and oil to anoint oneself.’

One must therefore often, as with winnowing baskets, shake out and toss up the mixed multitude of seeds, and pick out the wheat.

But the many have a disposition like the condition of winter storms, unstable and unreasoning.

Unbelief has done many good things, and belief evil ones.

And Epicharmus says, ‘Remember to distrust’:

‘these are the sinews of the mind.’

Thus disbelieving the truth brings death, just as believing it brings life; and conversely, believing the falsehood, and disbelieving the truth, drags one down to destruction.

The same argument applies to self-control and lack of self-control.

For to restrain oneself from doing good is the work of vice, while to abstain from wrongdoing is the beginning of salvation.

For this reason it seems to me that the Sabbath, through abstinence from evils, hints at self-control; and indeed, in what does man differ from beasts? And again, the angels of God are wiser than this man:

‘You made him a little lower than the angels,’ it says:

For they do not understand this scripture as referring to the Lord (although he too bore flesh), but to the perfect and gnostic man, who is made lower than the angels in time and in his garment of flesh.

I call wisdom, then, nothing other than knowledge, since it does not differ from life.

For mere living is common to mortal nature, that is, to man, in comparison with that which has been deemed worthy of immortality; but the other differs in its habit of contemplation and self-control.

For this reason it seems to me that Pythagoras too says that God alone is wise (since the apostle also writes in his epistle to the Romans:

‘made known unto all nations for obedience to the faith…to the only wise God through Jesus Christ,’ while he himself, on account of his friendship toward God, calls himself a philosopher, a lover of wisdom.

For God, it says, conversed with Moses as a friend with a friend.

Truth, then, is clear to God.

Thus he begets truth, while the gnostic loves truth.

‘Go to the ant, O sluggard,’ he says, ‘and become a disciple of the bee,’ Solomon says:

For if each thing has one work proper to its own nature—likewise the ox, the horse, and the dog—what should we say is the proper work of man? He seems, I think, like a Centaur, that Thessalian fabrication, composed of the rational and the irrational, of soul and body; but the body works the earth and hastens toward the earth, while the soul is stretched out toward God—the soul which, being trained by true philosophy to hasten toward its kindred above, turns away from the desires of the body, and besides these, from toil and fear.

And yet we have shown that both endurance and fear belong to what is good.

For if it is through the law that comes the knowledge of sin, as those who run down the law say, and ‘sin was in the world until the law,’ but ‘apart from the law sin is dead’—we sing back to them in answer.

For when you remove the cause of fear, namely sin, you have removed fear, and much more still, punishment, whenever that which is naturally inclined to desire is absent.

For law is not laid down for the righteous, Scripture says.

Heraclitus therefore rightly says that they would not have known the name of justice, if these things did not exist; and Socrates says that law would not have come into being for the sake of good men.

But the accusers did not even understand this—that, as the apostle says, he who loves his neighbor works no evil.

‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal,’ and if there is any other commandment, it is all summed up in this one saying alone, namely:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Accordingly it says somewhere: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

If, then, he who loves his neighbor works no evil, and every commandment is summed up in this—loving one’s neighbor—then the commandments that hang fear over us produce love, not hatred.

Fear, then, of which the law is generative, is not a mere passion.

So that the law is holy, and indeed spiritual, according to the apostle.

It is necessary then, it seems, having carefully examined both the nature of the body and the substance of the soul, to grasp the end of each, and not to regard death as an evil.

What fruit then did you have at that time, from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

But now, having been freed from sin, and having become slaves to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is likely, then, to have been shown that death is the soul’s fellowship with the body while given to sin, but life is separation from sin.

Many are the stakes and trenches of desire underfoot, and the pits of anger and wrath, which the one who is going to behold the knowledge of God no longer ‘through a mirror’ must leap across, and must escape every undermining device of plots.

‘For wide-seeing Zeus takes away half of a man’s excellence, whenever the day of slavery comes upon him.’

But Scripture knows as slaves those who are under sin and sold to sins, those who are lovers of pleasure and lovers of the body—and it knows as beasts rather than men those who have been made like cattle, horses mad after females, neighing after their neighbors’ wives.

The wanton man is an insolent ass, the covetous man a savage wolf, and the deceiver a serpent.

The separation of the soul from the body, then, which the philosopher practices throughout his whole life, produces in him a gnostic readiness to bear easily the death that is natural, since it is merely the dissolution of the bonds that join the soul to the body.

‘For to me the world has been crucified, and I to the world,’ he says; ‘and I now live, though still in the flesh,’ as one who conducts himself as a citizen of heaven.