Stromateis 1 part 23/42

But all things belong to the one God, and no one could by nature be a stranger to the world, since the substance is one, and God is one; rather, the elect one conducts himself as a stranger, knowing all things, both what may be possessed and what may not.

As for the three kinds of goods which the Peripatetics hold to exist, he makes use of them—including the body—just as one setting out on a long journey makes use of inns and lodgings along the way, taking care of and adorning the place where he lodges, yet leaving behind the dwelling and the possession, as well as its use, without attachment, following gladly the one who leads him out of life, turning back for no reason whatsoever, giving thanks for his sojourn, blessing God for his departure, and embracing the abode that is in heaven.

'For we know that if the earthly house of our tent be destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.'

'For indeed in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven; if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked.'

'For we walk by faith, not by sight,' as the apostle says.

'And we are rather well pleased to be absent from the body and to be present with God.'

Now 'rather' implies a comparison, and comparison applies to things falling under the same category by likeness—as 'the braver' is braver than the brave, and bravest of all in comparison with the cowardly.

Whence he added, 'Wherefore we labor earnestly, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing unto him'—that is, clearly, unto the one God, whose work and creation all things are, both the world and the things above the world.

I admire Epicharmus, who says plainly:

'He who is by nature pious in mind will suffer no evil in dying; his spirit remains above, in heaven.'

and the lyric poet singing:

'The souls of the impious flit beneath the sky, near the earth, in deadly pains, under the inescapable yoke of evils; but the souls of the pious dwell in the heavens above, singing hymns of praise to the great blessed one.'

The soul, then, is not sent down here from heaven to a worse condition, for God works all things toward the better; rather it is the soul that has chosen the best life which, through God and its own righteousness, exchanges earth for heaven.

Fittingly, then, Job, having attained knowledge, said, 'Now I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible for you.'

For who declares to me things which I did not know, great and marvelous things which I did not understand? But I ... despised myself, considering myself to be earth and ashes.

For he who is in ignorance is both prone to sin and is earth and ashes, but he who stands firm in knowledge, being assimilated to God as far as he is able, is already spiritual and therefore elect.

as the prophet Jeremiah will do concerning Jehoiakim and his brothers, saying:

'Earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord:'

'Write down ... this man as a man proclaimed an outcast.'

And another prophet, again, says:

'Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth' — calling understanding 'hearing,' and calling 'heaven' the soul of the Gnostic, which has taken up the contemplation of heaven and of divine things, and has thereby become an Israelite.

For, conversely, he has called the one who has chosen ignorance and hardness of heart 'earth,' and has named 'give ear' from the organs of hearing, the ears, thereby assigning fleshly things to those who cling to sensible things.

These are they concerning whom the prophet Micah speaks:

'Hear, O peoples, the word ... of the Lord, you who dwell in sorrows.'

And Abraham said, 'By no means, Lord, who judges the earth' — since he who has disbelieved the saving voice is already judged.

It is also written in the Books of Kingdoms, the Lord's judgment and pronouncement standing thus:

God hearkens to the righteous, but he does not save the impious, because they are unwilling to know God;

for the Almighty will not bring about anything absurd.

What, then, can the heresies still say against this voice, when Scripture proclaims the Almighty to be a good God, and one not responsible for evil and injustice — seeing that ignorance arises from not knowing, whereas God does nothing absurd? For, it says, this is our God, and there is none besides him who saves;

for neither is there unrighteousness with God, according to the Apostle.

And still more clearly does the prophet teach, through these words, the counsel of God and the gnostic advancement:

'And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve him alone?' This he requires of you, who have the power to choose salvation.

What, then, do the Pythagoreans mean by bidding men to pray aloud? It seems to me it is not because they thought the divine incapable of hearing those who speak quietly, but because they wished their prayers to be just — prayers such as one would not be ashamed to make with many people knowing of them.

But we shall discuss prayer in due course, as our discourse proceeds; meanwhile we ought to have works that cry aloud, as those who walk in the day.

'And behold, a man, and his works before his face.'

'For behold, God, and his works.'

The Gnostic must imitate God as far as lies within his power.

To me it seems that even the poets, in calling their elect ones 'god-like,' 'divine,' 'god-rivaling,' 'peers of Zeus in counsel,' possessed of 'minds resembling the gods,' and 'god-featured,' are, as it were, nibbling at the edges of the truth of 'according to the image and likeness.'

Euripides, for instance, says: 'Golden wings indeed are set about my back, and I fit on the lovely sandals of the Sirens, and I shall go, borne aloft into the vast ether, to consort with Zeus.'

But I would pray that the Spirit of Christ might wing me to my own Jerusalem.

For the Stoics too say that heaven, properly speaking, is a city, but that the things here on earth are no longer cities;

for they are so called, but are not so in reality;

for a city is a serious thing, and the populace a refined kind of body, a multitude of people governed by law, just as the Church is governed by the Word — an unbesieged, untyrannized city upon earth, the divine will done on earth as it is in heaven.

The poets also, in their writings, construct images of this city:

for the cities of the Hyperboreans and the Arimaspians, and the Elysian Fields, are commonwealths of the righteous;

and we know also Plato's city, laid up as a pattern in heaven.

So much, then, concerning the Gnostic, by way of a summary review; let us now proceed to what follows, and once more examine faith closely.

For there are those who distinguish, saying that our faith concerns the Son, while our knowledge concerns the Father.

But it has escaped their notice that one must truly believe the Son — both that he is the Son, and that he came, and how and why, and concerning his suffering — while it is necessary to know who the Son of God is.

Indeed, there is neither knowledge without faith nor faith without knowledge, nor indeed is there Father without Son;

for at the very moment he is Father, he is Father of a Son, and the Son is the true teacher concerning the Father.

And in order that one may believe the Son, one must know the Father, to whom the Son also points.

And again, in order that we may come to know the Father, we must believe the Son, because it is the Son of God who teaches;

for it is from faith unto knowledge, and through the Son unto the Father;

and knowledge of the Son and the Father, according to the truly gnostic rule, is an apprehension and comprehension of truth by means of truth.

We, then, are those who are faithful in what is disbelieved, and gnostic in what is unknown — that is, in that which is unknown and disbelieved by all, but is believed and known by a few, we are gnostic.

And we are gnostics not merely in word, transcribing deeds, but by contemplation itself.

'Blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who hear.'

Now faith is the ears of the soul, and it is this faith that the Lord hints at when he says, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear,' so that, having believed, he may understand what he says, in the manner he says it.

Indeed, even Homer, the most ancient of the poets, using the specific term 'hearing' in place of the general 'perceiving,' writes: 'And they themselves heard it best of all.'

For, in sum, the concord and harmony of the faith belonging to both come together at one and the same end, namely salvation.

Our unerring witness is the Apostle, who says:

'For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established;'

'that is, that we may be mutually encouraged among you, through the faith that is in one another, both yours and mine.'

'For the righteousness of God is revealed in it, from faith unto faith.'

It appears, then, that the Apostle is proclaiming a twofold faith — or rather, a single faith admitting of growth and perfection;

for the common faith lies beneath as a foundation (indeed, to those who desired to be healed and who moved with faith, the Lord would further add:

'Your faith has saved you'); while the exceptional faith, being built up upon it, is brought to completion in the believer, and there is perfected together with it that faith which arises from instruction and from fulfilling the commandments of the Word — such as the apostles possessed, of whom it is said that their faith was able to remove mountains and transplant trees.

Hence, perceiving the greatness of that power, they asked that faith be added to them — faith like a mustard seed, which bites profitably into the soul and grows exceedingly great within it, so that discourses concerning lofty matters might come to rest upon it.

For if, as Basilides supposes, someone knows God by nature — calling this exceptional understanding at once 'faith' and 'kingdom' and 'creation of beautiful things,' †worthy of the essence, subsisting near to that of the Maker† (interpreting it as 'essence,' not as 'authority,' and also as 'nature' and 'hypostasis') — the indeterminate beauty of a supreme creation, and not the rational assent of a self-determining soul — then that is what he calls 'faith.'

The commandments, then, both those of the Old and those of the New Testament, become superfluous, if someone is saved by nature, as Valentinus wishes, or if someone is by nature faithful and elect, as Basilides supposes.

For then nature would also have been able, even apart from the Savior's coming, to shine forth at some time.

But if they should say that the Lord's coming was necessary, then their doctrine of the properties of nature is undone for them, since election is saved by instruction and purification and the doing of good works, and not by nature.

Abraham, then, having believed through hearing the voice beneath the oak at Mamre, which promised, 'To you I give this land, and to your seed' — was he elect, or not? But if he was not, how did he believe at once, as it were by nature? And if he was elect, then their hypothesis is undone for them, since it is found that election existed — and indeed was being saved — even before the Lord's coming;

'for it was reckoned to him as righteousness.'

But should someone be so bold as to say, following Marcion, that the Demiurge saves the one who believes in him, and that election, and indeed salvation, existed even before the Lord's coming, and were already effecting his own salvation — then, by their own reckoning, the power of the Good God will be found inferior, coming late and only after the Demiurge whom they extol, undertaking to save, and doing so either by instruction or even by imitation of him.

But even if, being in such a case, the Good God saves according to them, he attempts salvation neither of his own people, nor with the consent of the one who made creation, but by force or by deceit.

And how, then, is he who is such, and moreover later, still good? But even if the place differs, and the abode of the Almighty falls short of the abode of the Good God, yet the will of the one who saves — the will that took the initiative — does not fall short of the Good.

The unbelieving, then, are shown by what we have already set forth to be foolish;

'for their paths are crooked, and they do not know peace,' says the prophet;

and the divinely inspired Paul exhorted us to avoid foolish and uneducated speculations,

'Do not toil in vain over things that profit nothing.'

For we know that the inquiry which proceeds together with faith, building upon the foundation of faith the magnificent knowledge of truth, is the best kind of inquiry;

and we know that neither are manifest things objects of inquiry (as, for instance, whether it is day, when it is day), nor things that are obscure and will never become manifest (as, for instance, whether the stars are even or odd in number), nor even things that are reversible (a thing is reversible when it is equally possible for those who argue the opposite case to state it just as well — as, for instance, whether the fetus in the womb is a living creature or not a living creature).

There is a fourth mode, whenever, from one of these two sides, an irrefutable and indissoluble argument is put forward.

If, then, the ground for inquiry is removed under every one of these modes, faith is established.

For we set before them that irrefutable argument, namely that it is God who speaks... and who sets forth in writing his testimony concerning each one of the matters I am investigating.

Who, then, is so godless as to disbelieve God, and to demand proofs from God as one would from men? Again, of questions, some require sense-perception — as when one asks whether fire is hot or snow white;

and some require admonition and rebuke, as Aristotle says, such as the question whether one ought to honor one's parents;

and there are some that even deserve chastisement, such as... demanding proofs that there is providence.

Providence, then, existing, to hold that all prophecy and the whole economy concerning the Savior did not come to pass according to providence is impious; and perhaps one need not even attempt to demonstrate such things, since the divine providence is manifest from the very sight of all things that are seen — works both skillful and wise... some coming to be by order, others being made manifest by order.

And he who has imparted to us being and life has imparted to us reason as well, wishing us to live at once rationally and well.

For the Word of the Father of the universe is not this uttered word, but is the most manifest wisdom and goodness of God, and again a power all-sovereign and truly divine, not incomprehensible even to those who do not confess it — an almighty will.

But since some are unbelieving and others contentious, not all attain the perfection of the good.

For it is not possible to obtain it without choice; yet neither does everything rest with our own judgment, such as... the outcome.

For we are saved by grace — yet not apart from good works; rather, being by nature disposed toward the good, we must also acquire a certain zeal for it.

We must also possess a sound and unrepenting resolve in the pursuit of the good, for which we especially need the divine grace, right instruction, and pure obedience... and the Father's own drawing of the soul to himself.

For, being bound to an earthly body, we apprehend sensible things through the body,... while intelligible things we lay hold of by the rational faculty itself.

But if anyone expects to grasp all things by sense, he has fallen far from the truth.

Thus the apostle writes spiritually concerning the knowledge of God:

but then face to face.

For to few is the vision of the truth given.

Thus Plato too says in the Epinomis:

'I say it is not possible for all men to become blessed and happy, save for a few;

as long as we live, this I lay down as certain:

but for him who has died there is a fair hope... of obtaining all things.'

The sayings in Moses intend the same as these.

'No one shall see my face and live.'

For it is plain that no one, during the time of this life, can ever apprehend God with clarity.

But the pure in heart shall see God, when they have arrived at... the final perfection.

For since the soul was too weak to apprehend the things that truly are, we had need of a divine teacher.

The Savior is sent down, teacher and provider of the possession of the good — the ineffable, holy token of the great providence.

'Where, then, is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?' he says.

'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent' — meaning, evidently, these self-styled wise men and disputers.

Thus Jeremiah speaks most excellently:

'Stand upon the ways, and ask for the everlasting paths, which is the good way, and walk in it,... and you shall find purification for your souls.'

'Ask,' he says, 'and inquire of those who know, without rivalry and without contention.'

Having learned, then, let us walk the straight way of truth without turning back,... until we light upon that which we long for.

Fittingly, then, the king of the Romans — Numa was his name — being a Pythagorean, was the first of all men... to found a temple to Faith and Peace.

'And Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.'

This man, pursuing the lofty philosophy of the things that occur in the air and the exalted study of the things that move in the heavens, was called Abram, which is translated... 'father exalted';

but afterward, having looked up to heaven — whether seeing the Son in the Spirit, as some explain it, or a glorious angel, or in some other way coming to know a God greater than creation and all the order within it — he receives the alpha: the knowledge of the one and only God; and he is called Abraham, having become, instead of a natural philosopher, a wise man... and a lover of God.

For it is interpreted 'father elect of a sound' [or 'of a multitude'];

for the uttered word resounds, and the father of this is the mind, and the mind of the earnest man is the one that is chosen out.

And it occurs to me to praise most highly the poet of Acragas, who extols faith somewhat in this way:

'O friends, I know that truth is present in the words I shall speak;

yet very grievous indeed is it wrought for men, and hard for the mind to welcome, the onset of faith.'

For this reason the apostle also exhorts that our faith should stand not in the wisdom of men who profess to persuade, but in the power of God — which alone, even without proofs, through faith unadorned,... is able to save.

'For of things that are held as opinion, the man most highly reputed knows — and guards — only that.'

'And indeed justice shall overtake the fabricators of falsehoods and the false witnesses,' says the Ephesian.

For he too, having learned it from barbarian philosophy, knows of the purification by fire of those who have lived wickedly, which the Stoics later called ekpyrosis.

in accordance with which they also lay down as dogma that the individually qualified person will rise again — this being precisely how they understand the resurrection.

But Plato says, in some such way as this, that the earth is purified at certain times by fire and by water:

'Many destructions of men have come to pass in many ways, and shall come to pass;

the greatest by fire and water, but others, lesser, by countless... other [causes].'

'But the truth is that it is a deviation of the bodies that move about the earth and through the heavens, and that, over long periods of time, there occurs a destruction of the things on earth by a great fire.'

Then, concerning the flood, he will add:

'But whenever, in turn, the gods purge the earth by inundating it with waters, those on the mountains are preserved — herdsmen and shepherds — while those in our cities are swept by the rivers down into the sea.'

...those who have not received the doctrines with gratitude...

To these we shall further add this: that those angels who had obtained the higher lot, having slipped down into pleasures, disclosed the secrets to women — whatever had come within their knowledge — while the other angels kept them hidden, or rather kept them in reserve until the coming of the Lord.

From that source flowed the teaching concerning providence, and the revelation of celestial matters.

But since prophecy had already been passed on to the poets of the Greeks, the systematic doctrine that came to the philosophers who laid hold of it by conjecture proved, in some respects, true, but in others erroneous, since they did not understand what lay concealed in the prophetic allegory — a point which we also propose to note briefly, as we run over the most pressing matters.

We say, then, that faith must proceed not idle and alone, but together with inquiry.

For I do not mean by this that one ought not to inquire at all;

for 'seek,' it says, 'and you shall find.'

'What is sought is captured, but what is neglected escapes,'... according to Sophocles.

Similar things Menander the comic poet also says:

'All things sought, the wisest say, require careful attention.'

Rather, we must stretch out the discerning power of the soul toward discovery, and clear away all that obstructs it, and cast off utterly rivalry, and envy, and strife itself, which most wretchedly destroys men.

For Timon of Phlius writes most excellently:

'There roams man-destroying Strife, shrieking her empty cry, sister and helpmate of man-slaying Contention;

she, blind, rolls about among all things, yet in the end fixes upon a mortal's head, and casts him into hope.'

Then, having descended a little further, he adds:

'For who brought these together to fight in deadly strife? The crowd that runs together with Echo.'

For he, angered at those who kept silent, stirred up a talking sickness among men, and many perished over the argument of false denial, and the Horned one, and again the Hidden one, and the Crocodile one, and still the Heap, and the Veiled one — concerning ambiguities and sophisms.

But indeed to inquire concerning God, if it tends not toward strife but toward discovery, is salutary.

For it is written in David: 'The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and they that seek him shall praise the Lord:'

'their heart shall live for ever and ever.'

For those who seek according to the true search, praising the Lord, shall be filled with the gift that comes from God, that is, with knowledge, and their soul shall live:

For the soul is allegorically termed 'heart' — that which has furnished ... life — since it is through the Son that the Father is made known.

Nor indeed ought we recklessly to lend our ears to all who speak and write alike, since cups too, when handled by many at their handles, become soiled and lose their handles, and besides, falling ..., they themselves are also broken.

In the same way also those who have defiled with much idle talk the pure hearing of the faith, at last becoming deaf to the truth, become useless and fall ... to the ground.

It is not, then, without reason that we bid little children, taking hold of their ears, to kiss their kinsfolk, thereby surely hinting that the perception of love comes to be through hearing; and God is love, known to those who love, as God is faithful, delivered ... to the faithful through instruction.

And we must make ourselves familiar with him ... through divine love, so that we may indeed behold like by like, hearkening to the word of truth guilelessly and purely, after the manner of ... children obedient to us.

And this was what he hinted at, whoever indeed he was who inscribed at the entrance of the temple at Epidaurus:

Pure must he be who enters within the fragrant temple:

and purity is to think holy thoughts.

'Except ye become as these little children,' he says, 'ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven:'

For here appears the temple of God, established firmly upon three foundations: faith, hope, and love.

Concerning faith, then, we have set forth sufficient testimonies from the writings current among the Greeks:

Positing that to live well is also to die well, he supposes that he possesses a certain hope of another life ... after death.

For indeed in the Phaedrus, saying that the soul, having come to be by itself alone, is alone able to partake of true wisdom and of a power greater than human power, when the love that comes from this world gives it wings toward heaven, he says that, arriving through philosophical love at the goal of hope, it takes ... the beginning of another, eternal life.

And in the Symposium he says that in all there is mingled a natural desire for the begetting of one's like, and that in ordinary men it is only a desire for human offspring, but in the virtuous man, for one like himself.

But it is impossible for the virtuous man to do this without possessing perfect virtues, according to which he will educate the young who come to him and, as he says in the ... Theaetetus, will beget and bring men to completion:

For some conceive according to the body, others according to the soul, since among the barbarian philosophers too, to catechize and to enlighten is called 'to regenerate'; and the noble apostle somewhere says, 'I have begotten you in Christ Jesus.'

And Empedocles, among his first principles, numbers Love also, meaning by it a certain uniting love: 'which do thou behold with the mind, and sit not agape with thine eyes.'

But Parmenides too, in his own poem, hinting at such things concerning Hope, says the following:

Yet behold with the mind things absent as firmly present:

for that which is will not be cut off from cleaving to that which is, whether it be scattered everywhere throughout the world-order or drawn together.

Since indeed he who hopes, like him who believes, sees with the mind things intelligible and things to come.

If, then, we say that a thing is just, and we say too that it is beautiful, and we speak also of a certain truth, yet we have never at any time seen any of such things with our eyes but only with the mind — and the Word of God says, 'I am the truth' — then the Word is to be contemplated by the mind.

'But whom,' he said, 'do you mean by the true philosophers?' 'Those,' said I, 'who are lovers of the vision of truth.'

And Plato, speaking in the Phaedrus concerning truth as an Idea, will make this clear.

And the Idea is a conception of God, ... which the barbarians have called the Word of God:

And the passage runs as follows:

For indeed one must dare to speak the truth, especially when speaking concerning truth itself:

For the colorless, shapeless, and intangible ... essence, truly existing, is visible only to the mind, the pilot of the soul.

And the Word, having come forth, is the cause of creation; then he also begets himself, when the Word ... becomes flesh, that he may also be seen.

The just man, then, will seek a discovery born of love, and hastening toward it, he attains happiness:

'For to him that knocketh,' it is said, 'it shall be opened:'

'Ask, and it shall be given you:'

For those who seize the kingdom by force, the violent, are said to force their way in, not by contentious words, but by the persistence of an upright life and unceasing prayers, wiping away the stains left by their former sins.

Wickedness, indeed, may be chosen even in troops, and with ease.

But to him who toils, God too lends a hand.

For the hard-won gifts of the Muses do not lie in the midst of the road, for the first comer to carry off.

The recognition, then, of one's own ignorance is the first lesson for one who walks according to reason.

Being ignorant, one sought; and having sought, one finds the teacher; and having found, one believed; and having believed, one hoped; and having loved, one is thereafter made like to the beloved, striving to become that which, having already reached it, he ... loved. Such a method Socrates points out to Alcibiades, who inquires as follows:

'Do you not suppose that I know about just things in any other way?' — 'Yes, that is, if you should find them out.'

'But do you not think that I could find them out?' — 'Indeed I do, if you should seek.'

'Then do you not think I would seek?' — 'I do, that is, if ... you should suppose that you do not know.'

In this way too the lamps of the prudent virgins, kindled by night amid the great darkness of ignorance — which darkness Scripture hinted at by 'night' —

prudent souls, pure as virgins, understanding that they themselves stand in worldly ignorance, kindle the light and awaken the mind, and illumine the darkness, and drive away ignorance, and seek the truth, and await the ... appearing of the Teacher.

'A philosophic multitude, then,' said I, 'is impossible to come into being.'

'Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few the true Bacchants,' according to Plato.

'for many are called, but few are chosen:'

'and knowledge,' says the apostle, 'is not in all.'

'And pray that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men:'

And the poetic philosophy of Cleanthes the Stoic likewise writes something similar, in this manner:

Look not to opinion, wishing to become wise at once, nor fear the ill-judged and shameless opinion of the many;

for the multitude possesses no judgment that is wise, nor just, nor good; but among few men would you find this.

And the comic poet says something more sententious, in brief:

It is shameful to judge what is noble by mere popular clamor.

For they have heard, I suppose, that noble Wisdom saying to us:

In the midst of the senseless, watch for the right moment; but in the midst of the thoughtful, ... abide continually.

Wise men will hide knowledge:

For the many demand proof as a pledge of the truth, not being satisfied with the bare salvation that comes through faith.

But it is very much the way of the wicked, when they hold sway, to disbelieve: