Stromateis 1 part 2/42

Pursuing arts, they enjoy an excess in matters of sense: of hearing, the one commonly called a musician; of touch, the sculptor.

and of voice, the singer; of smell, the perfumer; of sight, the engraver of impressions on seals.

But those who spend their time about education are furnished with a joint perception, according to which poets grasp meters, sophists grasp diction, dialecticians grasp syllogisms, and philosophers grasp the contemplation proper to them.

For this joint perception is inventive and creative, persuading one plausibly to apply oneself; and practice directed toward knowledge further increases the application.

Fittingly, then, the apostle has called the wisdom of God 'manifold,' in many parts and in many ways—through art, through knowledge, through faith, through prophecy—showing its own power for our benefit; for 'all wisdom is from the Lord, and is with him forever,' as the wisdom of Jesus [son of Sirach] says.

'For if you call upon prudence and perception with a loud voice, and seek it as treasures of silver, and eagerly track it down, you will understand piety and find divine perception'—the prophet has said this in distinction from the perception according to philosophy, which he teaches [us] to search out in a magnificent and grand manner for our advancement toward piety.

He has therefore set over against it the perception that is in piety, hinting at knowledge, and saying the following:

'For God gives wisdom out of his own mouth, and knowledge together with prudence, and he stores up help for the righteous;'

for to those made righteous by philosophy, help is stored up, and also the perception that leads toward piety.

Before the coming of the Lord, then, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness; and now it becomes useful for piety, being a kind of preparatory training for those who reap faith through demonstration, since 'your foot will not stumble,' he says—referring the good things to Providence, whether they be Greek or ours.

For God is the cause of all good things; but of some as the primary cause, as of both the Old and the New Covenant, and of others as a consequent cause, as of philosophy.

But perhaps it was also given directly to the Greeks at that time, before the Lord called the Greeks as well.

for it too acted as a tutor to the Greek people, just as the Law tutored the Hebrews, leading them to Christ.

Philosophy, then, prepares beforehand, making straight the way for the one who is being brought to perfection by Christ.

At once Solomon says of wisdom: 'Fortify it with a rampart, and it will exalt you exceedingly;'

'and it will shield you with a crown of delight'—since you too, having strongly fortified it with a coping through philosophy and right lavishness, might keep it inaccessible to the sophists.

One, then, is the way of truth; but into it, as into an ever-flowing river, streams pour in from different sources, one from one place, another from another.

'Hear, my son, and receive my words,' he says, 'that many ways of life may be yours;'

'for I teach you the ways of wisdom, that the springs which well up out of the same earth may not fail you.'

He has not, then, merely enumerated several saving ways belonging to one particular righteous man; rather he goes on, indicating the many ways of many righteous men, somewhat as follows:

'But the ways of the righteous shine like the light.'

And the commandments and the preparatory studies might also be ways and starting-points of life.

'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks!'

And 'Jerusalem' is interpreted as 'vision of peace.'

It shows, then, prophetically, that those who have contemplated things in a peaceful manner have been tutored in many ways toward their calling.

What then? He wished, indeed, but was not able;

But how many times, or where? Twice: through the prophets and through his coming.

The word 'how many times' indicates the manifold character of wisdom, and according to each single mode of quality and quantity it certainly saves some, both in this present time and in ... the age to come, because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world.

'Pay no heed to a worthless woman, for honey drips from the lips of a harlot woman' — as for the claim that this signifies Greek learning, let him give ear to what follows:

'For a season it smooths your throat,' it says, ... but philosophy does not flatter.

Who then is hinted at as the one who has played the harlot? He goes on to say explicitly:

'For the feet of folly lead those who make use of her, together with death, down to Hades, and her tracks are not firmly set.'

'Make your way far from foolish pleasure, do not draw near the doors of her house, lest you surrender your life to others.'

'Then you will repent in your old age, when the flesh of your body has been worn away.'

'For this is the end of foolish pleasure.'

'Do not linger long with a strange woman' — he exhorts us to make use of worldly learning, but not to dwell and remain in it;

for the things given, fittingly, to each generation at their proper seasons serve as a preliminary training for the word of the Lord.

For already some, enticed by the charms of the handmaids, have neglected the mistress, philosophy, and have grown old — some of them in music, others in geometry, others in grammar, and the majority of them in rhetoric.

But as the encyclical studies contribute to philosophy, their mistress, so philosophy itself cooperates toward the acquisition of wisdom.

For philosophy is the pursuit of <wisdom>, while wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human, and of their causes.

Wisdom, then, is mistress over philosophy, just as philosophy is mistress over the preliminary training.

For if philosophy professes self-mastery of tongue and belly and the parts beneath the belly, and is desirable for its own sake, it will appear all the more venerable and sovereign if it be pursued for the sake of honoring and knowing God.

Scripture will furnish testimony to what has been said, through the following:

'Sarah was formerly barren, yet was Abraham's wife.'

Since Sarah was not bearing children, she gave her own maidservant, the Egyptian named Hagar, over to Abraham for the begetting of children.

Wisdom, then, who dwells together with the man of faith (and Abraham was reckoned faithful and righteous), was still barren and childless in that generation, not yet having borne any virtuous offspring to Abraham; she reasonably judged it fitting, therefore, that he, since he now had opportunity for advancement, should first be joined to worldly learning (Egypt being allegorically the world), and afterward, coming also to her, should according to divine providence beget Isaac.

Philo interprets Hagar as meaning 'sojourning' (for it is said here:

'Do not linger long with a strange woman'), and Sarah as 'my rule.'

It is possible, then, having first been trained, to come to the most sovereign wisdom, from which the race of Israel increases.

From these things it is shown that wisdom is a thing that can be taught.

which Abraham pursued, passing from the contemplation of the heavenly bodies to faith and righteousness according to God.

Isaac, on the other hand, indicates what is self-taught; wherefore he is also found to be a type of Christ.

This one was husband of one woman, Rebecca, whose name they translate as 'patience.'

Jacob, on the other hand, is said to have come together with several women, since he is interpreted as 'the ascetic' (for the practices of disciplines come through many and diverse doctrines); wherefore he is also renamed Israel, the one who truly sees clearly, as being both a man of much experience and an ascetic.

There might also be something else signified through the three patriarchs: that the sovereign seal of knowledge is composed of nature, learning, and practice.

You might also have another image of what has been said in Tamar, who sat at the crossroads and gave the impression of being a harlot, whom the learning-loving Judah (whose name is interpreted 'powerful') — he who left nothing unconsidered and unexamined — visited and turned aside to, all the while preserving his confession toward God.

For this reason also Abraham, when Sarah grew jealous of Hagar for outshining her — as one who had chosen only what was useful in worldly philosophy — said, 'Behold, your maidservant is in your hands; deal with her as seems good to you.'

showing thereby: 'I embrace worldly learning both as younger and as your handmaid, but your knowledge, as perfect, I honor and revere as mistress.'

'And Sarah afflicted her' is equivalent to 'she brought her to her senses and admonished her.'

Well indeed has it been said: 'My son, do not despise the discipline of God, nor grow faint when reproved by him;'

'for the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he scourges every son whom he receives.'

When examined, however, in other places, the aforesaid scriptures are found to disclose still other mysteries.

We say, then, henceforth in plain speech, that philosophy has as its pursuit the inquiry concerning truth and the nature of beings (and this is the truth of which the Lord himself said, 'I am the truth'), while the preliminary training, in turn, exercises the mind toward the rest that is in Christ, and rouses the understanding, producing a keen and inquiring intelligence through true philosophy.

which, having found — or rather, having received it from the Truth itself — the initiates possess.

And readiness to perceive what is needful is greatly aided through preliminary exercise.

And the objects of intelligence would be an exercise for the mind.

Threefold is their nature, being considered in quantities, magnitudes, and propositions.

For reasoning based on demonstrations instills exact conviction in the soul of the one who follows it, so that he does not suppose that what has been demonstrated could be otherwise; and it does not allow us, in turn, to fall prey to those who insinuate themselves among us through deceit.

In these studies, then, the soul is purified from things perceptible to the senses and is rekindled, so that it may at last be able to discern the truth.

For good upbringing, when preserved, produces good natures, and good natures, when they receive such training, grow to be still better than before, both in other respects and with regard to begetting, just as also among the other living creatures.

'Go to the ant, O sluggard, and become wiser than she, who lays up abundant and varied food at the harvest against the threat of winter; or go to the bee and learn how industrious she is;'

for she too, though feeding over the whole meadow, produces but a single honeycomb.

But if you pray in your inner chamber, as the Lord taught, worshiping in spirit, then the household management in question would no longer concern the house alone, but also the soul — what must be distributed to it, and how, and how much; what must be laid up and stored away within it as treasure, and when these things must be brought forth, and to whom.

For it is not by nature but by learning that men become good and noble, just as physicians and pilots do.

We all, indeed, see the vine and the horse alike; but it is the farmer who will know whether the vine is good or bad for bearing fruit, and it is the horseman who will readily discern whether the horse is spiritless or swift.

That some are better endowed by nature than others for virtue indicates certain aptitudes on the part of those so endowed, as compared with the rest, but it predicates no completeness whatsoever in virtue on the part of those better endowed by nature — since indeed even those poorly endowed by nature for virtue, having obtained fitting training, have for the most part attained to nobility and goodness, while conversely those well endowed by nature have, through neglect, become evil.

And by nature, in turn, God created us to be social and just.

Hence one must not say that justice appears solely on the basis of convention, but must understand that the good belonging to creation is rekindled by the commandment, the soul, once trained by learning, being willing to choose what is most excellent.

But just as we say it is possible to be faithful even without letters, so too we acknowledge that it is not possible to understand the things spoken of in the faith without having learned them.

For it is not simply faith, but faith joined with learning, that produces the accepting of what is rightly said and the rejecting of what is foreign.

And if ignorance is at once both a want of education and a want of learning ...

... it is teaching that instills the knowledge of things divine and human.

But just as it is possible to live rightly amid poverty of life, so too it is possible amid abundance; and we acknowledge that it is both easier and quicker to pursue virtue with the aid of preliminary training — virtue not being unattainable even apart from these — yet even so, it belongs to those who have been taught and who have had their faculties of perception trained along with it.

'For hatred,' says Solomon, 'stirs up strife, but instruction guards the ways of life' — so that one may not be deceived, may not be robbed by those who have trained their evil craft to the harm of their hearers.

'He is led astray,' he says; and it is necessary to pursue the refutative art for the sake of repelling the deceptive opinions of the sophists.

Well, then, does Anaxarchus the Eudaemonist also write in his treatise On Kingship:

'Much learning greatly benefits, but also greatly harms, the one who possesses it;'

'it benefits the one who is skillful, but it harms the one who readily utters every word, and before every crowd.'

'And one must know the measure of due season:'

'For as many as sing their speech <out of> season, even if what they sing be somehow wise, since they do not set their judgment within wisdom, incur the <charge> of folly.'

'... of the Muses, who make a man of much eloquence to be inspired and articulate;'

For by 'much-eloquent' he means one resourceful in speech, by 'articulate' one who is formidable, and by 'inspired' one who is experienced and philosophical and knowledgeable of the truth.

It appears, then, that the Greek preliminary training, together with philosophy itself, has come to men from God — not by primary intention, but in the manner in which the rains pour down upon the good earth, and upon the dung-heap, and upon the housetops.

Grass sprouts in like manner, and wheat; a fig tree also grows upon tombs, along with any of the more shameless kinds of trees; and the things that grow appear as a figure of the true things, in that they have enjoyed the same power of the rain, yet have not had the same grace as those that grew in the rich soil, but are in the end either withered or plucked up.

And indeed, here too the parable of the sower, which the Lord himself interpreted, proves useful.

For the husbandman of the earth among men is one, who from above sows the nourishing seeds from the foundation of the world, who in each age has rained down the Lord's word; but the seasons and ... the places that received it produced the differences.

Besides, the husbandman sows not wheat only (though even of this there are many varieties), but also the other seeds — barley and beans and peas and ... vetch, and garden plants, and flowering seeds;

And planting too belongs to the same husbandry — to labor over the nurseries themselves and over gardens and orchards, and in general over the nature and nurture of trees of every kind.

Likewise, not shepherding alone, but also cattle-rearing, horse-breeding, dog-breeding, and beekeeping are all arts; in short, herd-tending and animal-rearing differ from one another only in degree, yet all are beneficial to life.

By philosophy I mean not the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean and Aristotelian, but whatever has been well said in each of these schools, teaching righteousness together with pious knowledge — this entire eclectic whole I call philosophy.

But whatever they cut off from human reasonings and falsified, these I would never call divine.

Let us now consider this too: that if those who lack knowledge ever live rightly, † they do well;

for they have fallen in with well-doing, and some also hit the mark through understanding with respect to the account concerning truth; but Abraham ... was justified not by works, but by faith.

There is, then, no benefit to them after the end of life, even if they are beneficent now, unless they should have faith.

For this reason the Scriptures were translated into the Greek tongue, so that they might never be able to put forward the excuse of ignorance, being such as ... could also give ear to what is ours, if only they were willing.

In one way someone speaks about the truth; in another way the truth interprets itself.

Conjecture about the truth is one thing, the truth another; likeness is one thing, the very reality another; and the one is attained by learning and practice, the other by power and ... by faith.

For the teaching of piety is a gift, and faith is grace.

For by doing the will of God we come to know his will.

'Open,' says the Scripture, 'the gates of righteousness, that entering in through them ... I may give thanks to the Lord.'

But the roads leading to righteousness, since God saves in many ways (for he is good), are many and varied, and all lead to the sovereign road and gate.

But if you seek the royal and authentic entrance, you shall hear:

'This is the gate ... of the Lord; the righteous shall enter by it.'

Since, then, many gates stand open, this one in righteousness was in Christ, in which all are blessed who have entered and who direct their course in ... gnostic holiness.

For instance, Clement, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, sets forth verbatim the differences among those approved in the church, saying:

'Let one be faithful, let one be able to utter knowledge, let one be wise in the discernment of words, let one be vigorous in deeds.'

But the sophistic art, which the Greeks have zealously pursued, is an art of illusion, producing through words false opinions as if they were true;

for it furnishes rhetoric for the purpose of persuasion, and eristic for the purpose of contention.

These arts, then, if they do not come to be joined with philosophy, would surely be more harmful than helpful to anyone.

Indeed, Plato flatly called sophistry a base art, and Aristotle, following him, declares it to be a kind of thievery, inasmuch as it plausibly steals away the whole work of wisdom and professes a wisdom it has never practiced.

To put it briefly, just as the starting point of rhetoric is the plausible, its work the argument, and its end persuasion, so too the starting point of eristic is ... what seems to be so, its work the contest, and its end victory.

In the same way, the starting point of sophistry too is what appears to be so, and its work is twofold: one part, drawn from rhetoric, is the appearance of continuous discourse, the other, drawn from ... dialectic, is the appearance of questioning; and its end is astonishment.

Again, the dialectic so much talked of in the schools is shown to be an exercise of the philosopher concerning what is reputable, for the sake of the power of counter-argument;

but truth is nowhere to be found in these.

Fittingly, then, the noble apostle, disparaging these superfluous arts of words, says: 'If anyone does not consent to sound words, but is puffed up with a certain teaching, knowing nothing, but is sick with disputes and arguments about words, from which arise strife, envy, blasphemy, evil suspicions, wranglings of men corrupted in mind and deprived of the truth.'

You see how he has been stirred against them, calling their art of argumentation a sickness — that art on which those pride themselves to whom this loquacious base art is dear, whether they be Greeks or barbarian sophists.

Excellently, then, does the tragedian Euripides say in the Phoenician Women:

'But the unjust argument, being sick in itself, has need of clever remedies.'

For the saving word, being itself truth, is said to be sound; and what is sound always remains immortal; but separation from what is healthy and ... divine is godlessness and a death-dealing malady.

These are ravening wolves hidden beneath sheep's fleece, enslavers and smooth-tongued seducers of souls, who steal in secret but, once exposed, are found to be robbers, striving to capture, by both guile and force, us who are unadorned — those, so to speak, who are weaker.

'Often a man, though speaking justly, is caught out by lack of eloquence and fares worse than the eloquent one.'

'But now, with fluent mouths, men steal away the truest things, so that what ought to seem so no longer seems so' — thus says the tragedy.

Such are these contentious ones, whether they follow heresies or practice petty dialectical arts — these are the ones who pull down the warp-threads and weave nothing, as Scripture says, having pursued vain toil, which the apostle called the trickery of men, and craftiness fit for the scheming of error.

'For there are,' he says, 'many unruly, vain talkers, deceivers of the mind.'

It is not, then, ... said to all alike:

'You are the salt of the earth.'

For there are some, even among those who have heard the word, who resemble sea fish, which, though nourished in brine from birth, nevertheless still need salt for their preparation.

I, for my part, quite approve of the tragedy when it says:

'O child, false words might well be spoken beautifully, and by the beauty of their phrases might overcome the truth;'

'but this is not the most exact thing; rather it is nature and what is right;'

'And he who conquers by eloquence is indeed wise; yet I always consider deeds to be better than words.'

One must, therefore, never desire to please the many.

For what pleases them, we do not practice;

... it belongs to their disposition.

'Let us not become vainglorious,' says the apostle, 'provoking one another, envying one another.'

For this reason the truth-loving Plato, as if inspired by God, says: 'I am the sort of man who is persuaded by nothing else than the argument which, upon consideration, appears to me best.'

At any rate, he blames those who, without mind and knowledge, put their trust in opinions, holding that it is not fitting for men to abandon the right and sound reasoning and to trust instead in that which partakes of falsehood.

For to be deceived concerning the truth is evil, but to speak truly and to hold opinions about things as they really are is good.

Men are deprived of good things involuntarily; yet they are deprived nonetheless — either by being deceived, or bewitched, or coerced, and by believing rashly.

Indeed, he who has believed willingly is already thereby squandered;

but he who is persuaded to change his mind, and he who forgets, is robbed, because in the one case time, in the other case argument, steals it away unnoticed, taking it out of him;

Often, too, pain and grief, and again contentiousness and anger, compel a man to change his opinion; and besides all these, men are bewitched — either charmed by pleasure or terrified by fear;

but all these are involuntary changes, and none of them could ever cast out knowledge.

But some, thinking themselves naturally gifted, insist on touching neither philosophy nor dialectic, nor even on thoroughly learning the study of nature, but demand faith alone and bare, as if they expected, without taking any care of the vine at all, to gather the grapes straightaway from the beginning.

But the Lord is allegorically the vine, from whom, with care and with the husbandry-skill that accords with reason, the fruit must be harvested.

One must prune, dig, tie up, and do the rest; and there is need, I suppose, of the pruning-hook and the mattock and the other farming tools for the care of the vine, so that it may bring forth for us the edible fruit.

But just as in husbandry, so also in medicine, the man of profitable learning is the one who has laid hold of a more varied range of studies, so as to be better able to farm and to heal; so also here I call him a man of profitable learning who refers everything to the truth, so that, gathering what is useful even from geometry and music and grammar and philosophy itself, he may guard the faith unassailed.

But the athlete too is overlooked, † as has been said before, yet contributing ... to the composition of the whole.

For instance, we praise the pilot of much experience, who has seen the cities of many men, and the physician who has gained experience of many cases;

in this way some also fashion the notion of the empiric physician.

But he who refers each thing to the right conduct of life, bringing forward examples both from the Greeks and from the barbarians, is a man of much experience, a tracker of truth, and in truth a man of many devices; like the touchstone — the Lydian stone which is trusted to distinguish counterfeit gold from genuine — he too is able to separate the true from the false: our man of much knowledge, the Gnostic, who distinguishes sophistic from philosophy, cosmetics from gymnastic, cookery from medicine, rhetoric from dialectic, and, after the other schools, the sects that go by the name of barbarian philosophy as well, ... from the truth itself.

How is it not necessary for one who longs to obtain a share of the power of God, philosophizing about intelligible things, to make careful distinctions? And how is it not useful also to distinguish the ambiguous expressions and those uttered homonymously throughout the covenants? ... For it is by means of ambiguity that the Lord outwits the devil at the time of the temptation; and I, for my part, no longer see here how it is that he who, as some suppose, was the inventor of philosophy and of dialectic, is led astray, being himself deceived by that very method of ambiguity.

But if the prophets and apostles did not know the technical arts by which the exercises pertaining to philosophy are displayed, nevertheless the mind of the prophetic and teaching Spirit, being spoken in a hidden manner because the hearing that understands does not belong to all, demands the skilled arts for the clarity of its teaching.

For the prophets and the disciples of the Spirit knew that mind securely;

but not in such a way that those who have not learned can grasp it.

"But the commandments," he says, "write down twofold, in will and in knowledge, so as to answer words of truth to those who question you."

What then is the knowledge of how to answer? It is the same as that of how to question.

This would be dialectic.

But what? Is not speaking also a work, and does not action arise from reason? For if we should not act by reason, we would act irrationally.

And the rational work is accomplished according to God.

"And nothing," he says, "came into being without him"—that is, without the Word of God.

Or did not the Lord also do all things by reason? But beasts of burden, too, work when driven, being compelled by fear.

And do not those called "orthodox in opinion" also perform good works without knowing what they are doing? For this reason, then, the Savior, taking bread, first spoke and gave thanks.

Then, having broken the bread, he set it before them, so that we might eat it rationally, and, having come to know the Scriptures, might conduct our lives in obedience.

And just as those who use evil speech differ in nothing from those who commit evil deeds (for slander is a minister of the sword, and blasphemy inflicts grief, from which come the overturnings of life—these would be works of evil speech), so also those who use speech...

...who make use of good speech draw near to those who accomplish good works.

For indeed reason also restores the soul and exhorts it toward goodness and nobility.

Therefore, the one capable of doing good should not be reproached by the one able to speak well, nor should the one skilled in speaking well be reviled by the one apt at doing good.

But let each act according to that for which he is naturally suited.

What the deed shows, the other declares in speech, as it were preparing the way for good deeds and leading those who hear toward benevolence.

For there is also a saving word, just as there is a saving deed.

Righteousness, at any rate, does not exist apart from speech.

And just as the experience of good treatment is removed if we take away the doing of good, so too obedience and faith are abolished when neither the commandment nor the one who makes the commandment clear is admitted along with it.

But now, for one another's sake, we abound in both words and deeds; yet the art of contentious disputation and sophistry must be refused altogether, since the very speeches of the sophists not only bewitch and rob the many, but, being forced, sometimes carry off a Cadmean victory.

For that psalm is true above all else.

"The righteous will live to the end, for he will not see corruption"—when he sees the wise dying.

Who, then, are the "wise" of whom he speaks? Hear from the Wisdom of Jesus [the son of Sirach]:

"There is no wisdom that is the knowledge of wickedness."

This, then, is what he means—that wisdom which the arts of rhetoric and dialectic devised.

"You will therefore seek wisdom among the wicked, and you will not find it."

What sort of wisdom is this? "The mouth of the righteous," it will tell you, "drops wisdom."

But the art of sophistry is called "wisdom" only equivocally, sharing the name with truth.

For me, I think, it is reasonably set as my purpose to live according to reason and to understand what is signified, and never, out of zeal for eloquence, to be content merely with hinting obscurely at what is meant.