論得救的富人 第 1 章 第 1/3 段

THE DISCOURSE OF CLEMENT: WHO IS THE RICH MAN THAT IS BEING SAVED. Those who lavish words of praise upon the rich as a kind of gift would, in my judgment at least, rightly be deemed not only flatterers and slavish—since for great reward they make a pretense of bestowing favors that are no favors at all—

but also impious and treacherous:

impious, because, neglecting to praise and glorify the only perfect and good God—from whom are all things, and through whom are all things, and unto whom are all things—they attach [that honor to men];

[bestowing] the prize upon men [who are entangled] in a life [given over to vanity],

the chief matter that lies open to the judgment of God.

And they are treacherous because, although abundance of itself is sufficient to puff up the souls of its possessors, to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which one may attain salvation, these men further bewilder the minds of the rich by exalting them with the pleasures of immoderate praises, and by making them despise utterly all things except the wealth on account of which they are admired—pouring, as the saying goes, fire upon fire, heaping pride upon pride, and adding weight to wealth, a burden heavier still for a nature already heavy, when rather one ought to take away and cut it off as a perilous and deadly disease.

For to him who is exalted and magnified there is fixed, as its counterpart, the change and fall into lowliness, as the divine word teaches.

To me, then, it seems far more humane, rather than fawning [upon the rich for an evil end],

[to give true aid to] those who are wealthy,

[rather than] to join with them unto their hurt,

[and so to procure] salvation for them

in every possible way: on the one hand, by entreating it from God, who readily and gladly bestows such gifts upon His own children; and on the other, by healing their souls through the word, by the grace of the Savior, enlightening them and leading them onward to the possession of the truth—of which he who attains, and is made resplendent by good works, alone [receives] the prize of eternal life.

And prayer needs a soul that is strong and persevering, measured out to last unto the very last day of life; and the manner of life needs a good and steadfast disposition that reaches out to all the commandments of the Savior.

Now it is likely that the cause why salvation seems harder for the wealthy than for men without money is not a single one;

for some, hearing at once and offhandedly the Lord's saying, that more easily shall a camel pass through a needle's eye than a rich man into the kingdom of heaven, despair of themselves as though they were not to attain life, and giving themselves wholly to the world and clinging to this present life as if it were the only one left to them, they depart all the more from the way that leads thither, no longer troubling to inquire either whom it is that the Master and Teacher addresses as 'the rich,' or how that which is impossible with men becomes possible.

Others understood this rightly and fittingly, but, making light of the works that bear upon salvation, did not make the requisite preparation for attaining the things hoped for.

I speak of both these classes concerning the rich who have perceived both the power of the Savior and the glorious salvation; but for those uninitiated in the truth I care little.

It behooves, then, those who love truth and love the brethren [neither to flatter the rich rudely nor to slight them carelessly, but to be of help],

[teaching them that] the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven has not been wholly cut off from them, if they will but obey the commandments;

then, when they have learned that the fear they dread is groundless, and that the Savior gladly receives them when they are willing, then also to point out and to lead them as in a mystery, by what kinds of works and dispositions they may lay hold of the hope—since it is neither beyond their power, nor, on the other hand, attained at random.

But just as it is with athletes—to compare small and perishable things with great and incorruptible ones—so let him also who is rich after the manner of this world reckon concerning himself.

For of those athletes, the one who despaired of being able to win and to obtain crowns did not enroll for the contest at all; while the other, who admitted this hope into his mind but did not submit to the suitable labors and exercises and diet, remained uncrowned and failed of his hopes.

So too let not a man who is clad in this earthly covering at the outset proclaim himself excluded from the Savior's contests—seeing he is a believer and discerns the greatness of God's love for mankind—nor again, remaining untrained and unexercised, hope to partake of the crowns of incorruption without toil and without sweat;

but let him bring and submit himself, with the word as his trainer and Christ as the umpire of the contest;

and let his appointed food and drink be the New Covenant of the Lord, and his exercises the commandments; his comeliness and adornment the noble dispositions—love, faith,

hope, knowledge of the truth, [gentleness], meekness, compassion, gravity—so that, when the last trumpet shall give the signal of the race and of his departure hence, as from the stadium of life, he may stand before the Judge of the contest victorious, with a good conscience, acknowledged worthy of the heavenly fatherland, into which he returns with crowns and the proclamations of angels.

May the Savior, then, grant to us, who from this point begin our discourse, to contribute to the brethren what is true and fitting and saving—first, with a view to hope itself, and second, to the approach toward that hope.

And what He bestows on those who ask, and teaches those who entreat Him, and dissolves ignorance and shakes off despair, is this: He brings forward again the same sayings concerning the rich, sayings that become their own interpreters and sure expositors.

For there is nothing like hearing again from them the very words which, in the Gospels, until now disturbed us as we listened uncritically and amiss out of childish simplicity.

As He was going forth into the way, one came and knelt before Him, saying,

'Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?' And Jesus says,

'Why callest thou Me good? No one is good save one, that is, God.

Do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor thy father and thy mother.' And he answering says to Him,

'All these I have kept from my youth.' And Jesus, looking upon him, loved him, and said,

'If thou wilt be perfect, sell whatsoever thou hast and distribute to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.' But he, gloomy at the saying, went away grieved;

for he had great possessions and lands.

And Jesus, looking round about, says to His disciples,

'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!' And the disciples were astonished at His words.

But Jesus again answering says to them,

'Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!

More easily shall a camel enter through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the kingdom of God.' And they were exceedingly amazed, and said,

'Who then can be saved?' And He, looking upon them, said,

'What is impossible with men is possible with God.' Peter began to say to Him,

'Behold, we have left all and followed Thee.' And Jesus answering says,

'He shall receive a hundredfold

now in this time—lands and riches and houses and brethren, with persecutions—to what end? But in the age to come there is life everlasting.

And therein the first shall be last, and the last first.' These things are written in the Gospel according to Mark;

and in all the others likewise that are acknowledged, here and there perhaps a few of the words are varied, yet they all display the same agreement of meaning.

But we must know clearly that the Savior teaches His own people nothing in a merely human way, but all things by a divine and mystic wisdom; and so we must listen to His sayings not in a fleshly manner, but search out and thoroughly learn the meaning hidden within them, with worthy inquiry and understanding.

For even those things which seem to have been plainly stated by the Lord Himself to the disciples are found, even now, to require no less—nay, even now, still greater—attention than the things uttered in riddles,

because of the surpassing excellence of the wisdom in them.

And whereas even those things which He is thought to have explained to those within—to the very children of the kingdom called by Him—still need yet greater consideration, how much more do those that seemed to be uttered plainly, and were on that account not even questioned by the hearers, yet which bear upon the whole consummation of salvation, and are veiled in a wondrous and supercelestial depth of meaning—how much more do these require to be received not superficially with the ears, but by letting the mind down into the very spirit of the Savior and into the secret of His purpose.

For our Lord and Savior was gladly asked a question most befitting to Him: Life, concerning life; the Savior, concerning salvation; the Teacher, concerning the chief of the doctrines taught—

the Truth, concerning true immortality; the Word, concerning the Father's Word; the Perfect, concerning the perfect rest; the Incorruptible, concerning sure incorruption.

He was asked concerning the very things for the sake of which He also descended,

the things which He trains us in, which He teaches, which He bestows, in order that He might show the purport of the Gospel—that it is the gift of eternal life.

And as God He foreknows both what He is about to be asked and what any man is about to answer Him.

For who more than the Prophet of prophets and the Lord of every prophetic spirit? And being called 'good,' taking from that very first word the cue, He thence also begins His teaching, turning the disciple toward God, who is good and first and the only steward of eternal life—which the Son gives to us, having received it from Him.

Therefore the greatest and chief of the lessons that pertain to life must, from the very beginning, be laid up at once in the soul: to know the eternal God, the giver of things eternal, the first and supreme and one and good God,

whom it is possible to possess through knowledge and apprehension;

for this is the unchanging and immovable beginning and foundation of life—the knowledge of God, who truly is, and who bestows the things that are, that is, the things eternal, from whom both being and the abiding therein come to all others to receive.

For ignorance of Him is death, but the full knowledge of Him, and intimacy with Him, and the love toward Him and likeness to Him—this alone is life.

Him, then, He bids the man who would live the true life first to recognize—Him whom no one knows save the Son and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him—and then to learn the greatness of the Savior next after Him, and the newness of the grace; for, as the apostle says, the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

And the things given through a faithful servant are not equal to those bestowed by the true Son.

...running through his manhood up to that point [of life]; yet in vain does he who has performed all the lawful commandments from his youth ask immortality of another, kneeling.

For he has not only fulfilled the law, but did so immediately, beginning from his earliest age;

since indeed what is great or surpassingly splendid about an old age barren of the wrongs which youthful lusts beget, or boiling anger, or love of money? But if anyone, amid youthful exuberance and the heat of his age, has displayed a ripe wisdom older than his years, this one is a wondrous and distinguished combatant, and gray-headed in judgment.

Yet nonetheless such a man as this is precisely persuaded that, while as regards righteousness he lacks nothing, he yet stands wholly in need of life;

wherefore he asks it from Him alone who is able to give it;

and toward the law he brings confident boldness, but the Son of God he beseeches as a suppliant.

He is transferred from faith to faith;

as one perilously tossed about in the law and anchored in danger, he shifts his moorings over to the Savior.

Jesus, then, does not reprove him as one who had not fulfilled all that the law requires, but rather loves him and warmly embraces him for his ready obedience in the things he had learned; yet He declares him to be imperfect as regards eternal life, inasmuch as he had not fulfilled the things that are perfect, and was a worker of the law, but idle in respect of true life.

Those things, then, are indeed good (who denies it? for the commandment is holy), serving as a kind of schoolmaster, with fear and as a preparatory training, for one advancing toward the supreme legislation and grace of Jesus; but Christ is the fulfillment of the law unto righteousness for everyone who believes—not making men slaves as a slave would, but making them sons and brethren and joint-heirs, even those who accomplish the will of the Father.

'If thou wilt become perfect.' Not yet, then, was he perfect.

For nothing is more perfect than that which is perfect.

And divinely, by the words 'if you will,' He revealed the free will of the soul that was conversing with Him.

For the choice lay with the man, as one who is free, but the gift lay with God, as Lord.

And He gives to those who are willing, to those who are intensely earnest, and to those who ask, so that thus their salvation may become their own.

For God does not compel—since force is hateful to God—but He provides for those who seek, He grants to those who ask, and He opens to those who knock.

If, then, you will—if you truly will and are not deceiving yourself—acquire what you lack.

One thing you lack, the one thing, that which is Mine, the good, that which is already above the Law, which the Law does not give, which the Law does not

contain, which is the proper portion of those who live.

Indeed, the one who had fulfilled all the requirements of the Law from his youth, and had boasted arrogantly, was unable to add this one thing to the whole—the Saviour's special gift—so that he might receive the eternal life which he longed for;

but he went away displeased, vexed at the commandment of life, for which he had been entreating.

For he did not truly desire life, as he claimed, but only clothed himself in the appearance of a good intention; and while he was able to busy himself about many things, he was incapable, unwilling, and too weak to accomplish the one thing, the work of life.

Something similar is what the Saviour said also to Martha, who was busy about many things and was being distracted and troubled with serving, while she was blaming her sister because she had left off ministering and was sitting at His feet, devoting herself to the leisure of a disciple;

but Mary chose the good portion, and it shall not be taken away from her. Thus also He bade this man too leave off his busyness and cleave to and sit beside the one thing, with the grace of Him who adds eternal life.

It is not riches that He bids us cast away, but the opinions concerning riches from the soul—the over-fondness toward them, the excessive desire, the morbid craze and disease about them, the anxieties, the thorns of life which choke the seed of life.

For it is neither great nor enviable to be utterly destitute of riches except for the sake of life—otherwise those who have nothing at all, but are bereft and beg for their daily bread, the poor cast out along the roads, ignorant of God and of God's righteousness, would, by this alone, by being in extreme want and helplessness as to a livelihood and lacking the barest necessities, be the most blessed and most beloved of God and the only ones possessing eternal life. Nor is it anything new to renounce wealth and bestow it on the poor or on one's country, which many did before the coming of the Saviour—some for the sake of leisure for studies and dead learning, others for empty fame and vainglory, men such as Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Crates.

What, then, does He enjoin as new and proper to God and alone life-giving, which did not save those former men? But if the new creation, the Son of God, indicates and teaches something special, He is not enjoining the outward act which others have done, but something else greater and more divine and more perfect, signified through this: namely, to strip the soul itself and the disposition of the passions that lurk within, and to cut out by the roots and cast away the things alien to the mind.

For this is the lesson proper to the believer, and the teaching worthy of the Saviour.

For indeed those former men, despising external things, did let go and squander their possessions, but the passions of their souls, I think, they even intensified;

for they fell into haughtiness and arrogance and vainglory and contempt of other men, as though they had accomplished something beyond man.

How then could the Saviour have counselled those who are to live forever to do things that would harm and ruin them with regard to the life He promises? For there is also this consideration:

A man may, after unloading his possessions, nonetheless still have the desire and longing for riches ingrained and living within him, and though he has cast away the use of them, while being now in want and at the same time longing for what he has squandered, he may be doubly grieved—both by the absence of his means of service and by the presence of regret.

For it is impossible and impracticable that one who is in need of the necessities of life should not have his mind crushed and be distracted from higher things, as he tries by any means and from any source to procure these.

And how much more useful is the opposite course—that a man, possessing sufficient means, should neither suffer hardship over his own property nor fail to assist those whom he ought! For what fellowship would be left among men if no one had anything? And how would this doctrine not be found plainly opposed to and at war with many other fair doctrines of the Lord? 'Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,'

that, when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.' 'Acquire treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes, nor thieves break through.' How could one feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty and clothe the naked and gather in the homeless—the very things He threatens with fire and outer darkness against those who do not do them—if each of us were himself first destitute of all these? But indeed, He Himself is the guest of Zacchaeus and Levi and Matthew, the rich men and tax collectors, and He does not command them to give up their money, but, imposing its just use and removing the unjust, He proclaims:

'Today salvation has come to this house.' Thus He commends the use of them, so that with this addition He even enjoins fellowship—to give drink to the thirsty, bread to the hungry, to take in the homeless, to clothe the naked.

—for if these things could not be done, He would be exhorting both to give and not to give, to feed and not to feed, to take in and to shut out, to share and not to share, which would be the most irrational thing of all.

Riches, then, which also benefit our neighbours, are not to be cast away;

for they are possessions, since they can be possessed, and goods, since they are useful, and have been prepared by God for the use of men; they lie ready and are placed before us like a kind of material and instruments for good use by those who know how.

An instrument, if you use it skilfully, is a thing of skill; but if you lack the skill, it suffers the effects of your unmusicalness, though itself blameless.

Such an instrument also is wealth.

You are able to use it justly:

it ministers unto righteousness;

again, it is found to be a minister of unrighteousness;

for it is by nature fitted to serve, not to rule.

One must not, therefore, blame that which of itself has neither the good nor the evil, being blameless, but rather that which has the power both to use these things well and ill, according to its choice—this it is that is, for this very reason, responsible.

And this is the mind of man, having within itself a free faculty of judgment and the self-determination in the handling of the things given to it;

so that let a man do away not so much with his possessions as with the passions of his soul, which do not allow the better use of his goods, in order that, having become noble and good, he may also be able to use these possessions well.

To renounce all one's possessions, then, and to sell all that one has, must be understood in this way, as spoken with reference to the passions of the soul.

I, at any rate, would say even this:

Since some things are within the soul and others outside it, and if the soul uses them well these too seem good, but if badly, evil—does He who bids us alienate our possessions reject those things which, when removed, still leave the passions remaining, or rather those things which, when removed, even the possessions become useful? He, then, who has cast away worldly substance can still be rich in passions even though the material is not present;

for the disposition exerts its own activity, and chokes and presses the reason and inflames it with its inbred lusts.

It has been of no advantage to him, then, to be poor in money while being rich in passions.

For he has not cast away the things that should be cast away, but the things indifferent, and he has cut himself off from the serviceable things, while he has kindled the inborn material of vice by the absence of external things.

One must renounce, therefore, those possessions that are harmful, not those that, if one knows the right use, are even able to be of benefit.

Those things administered with prudence and temperance and piety bring benefit, while the harmful are to be cast off;

Thus, then, the Lord both introduces the use of external things, bidding us put away not the necessaries of life, but the things that make ill use of these;

and these were the sicknesses and passions of the soul.

The wealth of these, when present, is deadly to all, but when destroyed, is saving;

and one who has presented his soul pure of this—that is, poor and naked—may then at last hear the Saviour saying:

'Come, follow Me.' For He Himself now becomes the way to the pure in heart, but into an impure soul the grace of God does not enter;

and impure is the soul that is rich in lusts and in travail with many earthly loves.

He who holds his possessions and gold and silver and houses as gifts of God, and from them ministers to the God who gives them for the salvation of men… he is the one who is called blessed by the Lord and named poor in spirit, a fit heir of the kingdom of heaven—not the rich man who cannot live.

But he who bears wealth in his soul, and instead of God's Spirit carries gold or land in his heart, and is forever making his possessions boundless, ever looking to gain more, bowed down and fettered by the snares of the world, being earth and destined to depart into earth—whence is such a man able to desire and care for the kingdom of heaven, a man bearing not a heart but a field or a mine, who must of necessity be found among the things he has chosen? 'For where the mind of man is, there also is his treasure.' Now the Lord knows of treasures of two kinds: the one good, for 'the good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth that which is good,' and the other evil, for 'the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth that which is evil; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.' As, therefore, treasure is not one with Him, even as with us—the one that gives a sudden great gain when found, but also a second, profitless and unenviable and hard to acquire and injurious—so also there is one wealth of good things and another of evils, since indeed we know that wealth and treasure are not by nature severed from one another.

And the one kind of wealth would be possessable and to be embraced, but the other unpossessable and to be cast away;

and in the same manner, the poverty that is to be deemed blessed is the spiritual poverty.

Therefore Matthew also added:

'Blessed are the poor.' How? 'In spirit.' And again:

'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after the righteousness of God.' Therefore wretched are the opposite kind of poor, who have no portion in God, and still less in human possessions, and have not tasted the righteousness of God.

So that we must understand 'the rich' in a learned sense—those who will enter with difficulty into the kingdom—not crudely, nor rustically, nor carnally;

for salvation does not depend on external things,

neither whether they be many or few, small or great, glorious or inglorious, esteemed or unesteemed; but on the virtue of the soul—on faith and hope and love and brotherly affection and knowledge and meekness and humility and truth—of which the prize is salvation.

For neither will anyone live on account of the beauty of his body, nor on the contrary perish;

but he who uses the body given to him purely and according to God shall live,

while he who corrupts the temple of God shall be corrupted.

A man may be ugly and yet wanton, and may be temperate in spite of his beauty;

neither does strength and size of body give life, nor does any defect of the limbs destroy it, but it is the soul using these things that supplies the cause for either result.

'Endure, then,' He says, 'being struck on the face,' which one who is even strong and in good health can obey, and again one who is weak may transgress through incontinence of mind.

Thus too one who is destitute and without livelihood might sometimes be found drunk with lusts, while one rich in money might be sober and poor in pleasures—self-controlled, intelligent, pure, and disciplined.

If, then, the soul is chiefly and primarily that which is to live, and virtue springing up about it saves while vice puts it to death, it is now already clearly plain that this soul is saved when it is poor of those things by which a man is corrupted through wealth, and is put to death when it is rich in those things which wealth wears away;

and let us no longer seek the cause of our end anywhere else than in the state and disposition of the soul as regards both obedience to God and purity, and as regards transgression of the commandments and the accumulation of vice.

Truly and rightly rich, then, is he who is rich in virtues and able to use every fortune in a holy and faithful manner;

but the spurious rich man is he who is rich according to the flesh and has transferred his life into outward possession—that which passes away and perishes and at one time belongs to one and at another to another, and in the end belongs to no one anywhere.

Again in like manner there is also a genuine poor man and another spurious and falsely-named poor man.

The one is poor in spirit—that which is his own—the other poor as regards the world—that which is alien.

To him, then, who is not poor as regards the world and rich as regards the passions, the man who is not poor in spirit and rich toward God says: 'Depart from the alien possessions that are in your soul, that, having become pure in heart, you may see God'—which, in another form of words, is to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And how could you withdraw from them? By selling them.

What then? Should you receive money in exchange for your possessions, making an exchange of wealth for wealth, by turning your visible substance into cash? By no means.

Rather, in place of what formerly resided in the soul which you long to save, you are to introduce another wealth, one that deifies and supplies eternal life: the dispositions according to the commandment of God; and in return for these there will remain for you a reward

and honour: perpetual salvation and eternal incorruption.

Thus you sell your possessions well—those many and superfluous things which shut heaven against you—exchanging them for the things that have power to save.

Let the carnal poor, who are in need of such things, have them; but you, having received spiritual wealth in their stead, would already possess treasure in the heavens. But the man rich in money and observant of the law, not understanding these things rightly—nor how the same person can be both poor and rich, and both have money and not have it, and both use the world and not use it—went away gloomy and downcast, abandoning the rank of life which he was able only to desire but not to attain, having himself made what was difficult into something impossible for himself.

For it was difficult that the soul should not be carried about and dazzled by the splendours that accompany conspicuous wealth and by its gaudy enchantments; yet it was not impossible even in such circumstances to lay hold of salvation, if one would transfer himself from sensible wealth to that which is spiritual and taught by God, and would learn to use indifferent things rightly and properly, and so as to press on toward eternal life.

Now the disciples too, when they first heard this, were exceedingly afraid and astounded.