雜記（八卷） 第 1 章 第 8/42 段

And the apostle has made clear the beneficence of the law through the passage addressed to the Jews, writing somewhat as follows:

But if you are named a Jew, and rest upon the law, and boast in God, and know his will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are persuaded that you yourself are a guide of the blind, a light of those in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the embodiment of knowledge and of truth in the law—

for it is acknowledged that the law is able to do these things, even though those who do not conduct their lives according to the law boast, in their manner of living, as though they were within the law.

Blessed is the man who has found wisdom, and the mortal who has seen understanding; and out of her mouth—that is, wisdom's—righteousness proceeds, and she bears law and mercy upon her tongue.

For both the law and the gospel are the working of one Lord, who is the power and wisdom of God; and the fear which the law has begotten is itself merciful unto salvation.

Let not mercy and faithfulness and truth forsake you; bind them about your neck.

Likewise, in agreement with Paul, prophecy too reproaches the people for not understanding the law:

Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

But we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully;

but those who wish to be teachers of the law, says the apostle, understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make confident assertions; but the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith.

The philosophy according to Moses, then, is divided into four parts: into the historical, and that properly called the legislative—which would belong to the treatise on ethics—and, thirdly, into the sacerdotal, which already belongs to the contemplation of nature;

and, fourth and above all, the theological kind, the epoptic vision, which Plato says truly belongs to the great mysteries, while Aristotle calls this branch 'the things after the physical.'

And dialectic, according to Plato, as he says in the Statesman, is a certain science that discovers the manifestation of things that are; and this is to be acquired by the temperate man not for the sake of saying and doing something with a view to men, as those who now occupy themselves with sophistical dialectics do, but in order to be able to say what is pleasing to God, and to do what is pleasing to him, with all one's power.

[Dialectic is] the mightiest of all substances, and it dares even beyond, unto the God of the universe, professing not an experience of mortal things, but a knowledge of things divine and heavenly, which is attended also by a proper use concerning human affairs, both in words and in deeds.

Reasonably, then, Scripture too, wishing us to become dialecticians of this sort, exhorts us thus:

Become approved money-changers, rejecting the base coin but holding fast to the good;

for this is truly dialectic—a prudence that divides among intelligible things, showing each of the beings, unmixed and pure, in its underlying subject; or a power that divides among the kinds of things, descending as far as the most particular, presenting each of the beings pure, just as it is, so that it may appear.

Wherefore this alone leads by the hand unto true wisdom, which is a divine power, knowing the things that are as they are, possessing perfection, released from every passion—not without the Savior, who by the divine Word has brought down the misty ignorance poured over the perceptive faculty of the soul from evil conduct, and has restored what is best, that we might well know both God and man.

This is he who has truly shown how we must know ourselves; this is he who reveals the Father of the universe to whomever he wills, and so far as human nature is able to comprehend and understand;

for no one has known the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and he to whomever the Son shall reveal him.

Reasonably, then, the apostle says that he came to know the mystery by revelation, as I wrote before briefly, by which, as you read, you are able to perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ.

He said 'by which you are able,' since he knew that some had received only milk, and not yet solid food also; accordingly he did not simply say 'milk'—

And the intent of the law, too, must be understood by us in four ways: either as exhibiting a sign, or as ratifying a commandment unto right conduct of life, or as pronouncing an oracle, that is, as prophecy—

and I know well that it belongs to wise men to distinguish and speak of such things.

For indeed all of Scripture is not, for purposes of understanding, 'one Mykonos,' as those who speak in proverbs put it.

Rather, one must approach it as dialectically as possible, for the sake of those who hunt out the sequence of the divine teaching.

Whence the Egyptian priest in Plato speaks most excellently:

'O Solon, Solon,' he said, 'you Greeks are always children, having in your souls not one ancient opinion derived from old tradition; and among the Greeks there is no old man at all.'

By 'old men,' I think, he means those who know the more ancient things, that is, our own teachings; just as, conversely, he calls 'young' those who recount as ancient and primeval the more recent things practiced by the Greeks, things that happened but yesterday and the day before.

He then added 'a teaching hoary with age,' since we use metaphor in a somewhat barbarian manner, unformed and not clearly articulated.

At any rate, those who are fair-minded approach without artifice the whole fabric of the interpretation.

Concerning the Greeks he says that their conceit, [that of children], differs but little from myths;

for one ought not give heed to childish myths, nor indeed to the myths that arose among children;

he has called these very myths 'children,' inasmuch as those among the Greeks who fancy themselves wise see but a little way—thereby hinting at the teaching hoary with age, the most ancient wisdom among the barbarians,

truth—a word to which he opposed 'the myth that is a child,' thereby exposing the mythical character of the moderns' undertaking as possessing, like children, nothing venerable, and showing that both their myths and their discourses are alike childish.

Divinely, then, the power that speaks to Hermas by revelation says that the visions and the revelations are given on account of the double-minded, those who reason in their hearts whether these things are so or not.

Likewise also, out of an abundant store of much learning, they strengthen and confirm and lay firm foundations for demonstrative arguments, for as long as their minds, being still young, are tossed about in the air.

A lamp, then, is the good commandment, according to Scripture, and the law is the light of the way;

for discipline reproves the ways of life.

'Law is king of all, mortal and immortal,' says Pindar.

But I, through these words, understand him to mean the One who established the law, and I take the saying of Hesiod also to have been spoken of the God of all, even though the poet has said it by conjecture rather than with sure comprehension.

'For this law has the son of Cronos ordained for men: that fish and beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice among them;'

'but to men He gave justice, which is by far the best thing.'

Whether, then, he speaks of the law that comes with birth, or of that given afterward, still both the law of nature and the law of instruction are from God and are one—just as Plato too, in the Statesman, says the lawgiver is one, and in the Laws says the one who will bring the musicians into concord is one, teaching through these that reason is one and God is one.

Moses, moreover, evidently calls the Lord Himself 'Covenant,' saying, 'Behold, I—my covenant is with you;'

since he had also spoken of the covenant beforehand, he exhorts us not to seek it in writing;

for the covenant is that which God, the cause of all things, establishes ('God' being named from 'positing'/'establishing')—He Himself who made the ordered arrangement according to its order.

And in the Preaching of Peter you would find the Lord addressed as both Law and Word.

But let this, our first Stromateus of gnostic notes according to the true philosophy, here be brought to its close.

OF CLEMENT, STROMATEIS, BOOK TWO. It would next be fitting to explain—since Scripture has called the Greeks thieves of barbarian philosophy—how this shall be shown by a few proofs.

For we will show not only that they wrote transcribing in imitation the marvels recorded among us, but we will also convict them—since our Scriptures are more ancient, as we have demonstrated—of tampering with and falsifying the most authoritative of our doctrines, in the matters concerning faith and wisdom, knowledge and understanding, hope and love, repentance and self-control, and indeed also the fear of God (that veritable swarm of the virtues of truth);

and whatever annotation the subject under discussion may require will be included; and it will be shown how this most hidden character of barbarian philosophy—this symbolic and enigmatic form—was emulated by those among the ancients who philosophized in earnest, a form most useful, or rather most necessary, for the knowledge of truth.

After this, I think it fitting to make a defense concerning the matters for which the Greeks run us down, employing only a few Scriptures, so that perhaps the Jew too, upon gently hearkening, might be able to turn from that in which he believed to Him in whom he did not believe.

There will fittingly follow a loving refutation of the more distinguished philosophers, concerning both their manner of life and their invention of new doctrines—not that we are defending ourselves against our accusers (far from it, we who have learned to bless those who curse us, even though they hurl empty and blasphemous words against us), but for the sake of their own conversion, in the hope that these all-wise men might be put to shame, being brought to their senses through a barbarian rebuke, so as at last, even if late, to be able to discern what sort of teachings those really are for which they set out on their voyages overseas.

For as to the things of which they are indeed thieves, this too must be demonstrated once their self-love has been stripped away; and as to the things which they boastfully claim to have discovered by their own inquiry, of these there must be a refutation.

As a consequence, we must also run briefly over the so-called encyclical education, showing in what respects it is useful, and likewise over astrology, mathematics, and magical sorcery.

For indeed the Greeks as a whole boast of these as the greatest of sciences.

'But he who reproves with frankness makes peace.'

We have already said many times that we have neither practiced nor cultivated speaking artful Greek;

for this is indeed sufficient to lead the multitude away from the truth, whereas true philosophy will profit those who understand it not in their tongue but in their mind.

He who cares for the truth does not compose his speech out of studied design and deliberate contrivance, but attempts only to name, as best he can, what he means;

for the realities escape those who cling to mere words and busy themselves about them.

It is, then, the mark of a good farmer to pluck without injury the rose that grows among thorns, and of a skilled craftsman to discover the pearl buried in the flesh of the oyster; and they say too that birds have the sweetest quality of flesh when, food not having been set abundantly before them, they scratch with their feet and gather their food with labor.

If, then, anyone capable of discerning the like desires the truth that lies hidden amid the many plausible, Greek-flavored arguments—as though the true face lay concealed beneath bogey-masks—by diligent inquiry he will hunt it out.

For in the vision the power that appeared to Hermas says:

'Whatever it is possible for you to have revealed will be revealed.'

'Be not exalted in your own wisdom,' the Proverbs say, 'but in all your ways acknowledge her, that she may make straight your paths;'

'and your foot shall in no wise stumble.'

For by these words he wishes to show that deeds must be consonant with reason, and moreover to indicate that we ought, by selecting it out, to possess whatever is useful from every branch of learning.

The ways of wisdom, then, are various, all cutting straight toward the way of truth, and the way is faith;

'and let not your foot stumble'—he says this concerning certain things that seem to stand opposed to the one, divine, providential administration.

'Be not wise in your own conceit'—that is, according to the godless reasonings that stand in opposition to God's dispensation—'but fear the only powerful God,' from which it follows that nothing is set against God; and besides, what follows clearly teaches that the fear of God is a turning away from evil.

'and turn away from every evil.'

'For whom the Lord loves He disciplines'—causing pain for the sake of understanding, but restoring him to peace and incorruptibility.

The barbarian philosophy, then, which we follow, is in truth perfect and true.

'For He Himself has given me unerring knowledge of the things that are, to know the structure of the world,' and so on, 'even to the powers of roots.'

In all these he has comprised the natural contemplation concerning all the things that have come to be in the sensible world.

And next he also hints at the intelligible things, in what he adds:

'and I came to know whatever things are hidden and manifest;'

'for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.'

You have, in brief, the profession of the philosophy according to us.

And the learning of these things, practiced together with an upright manner of life, leads up, through wisdom the fashioner of all, to the Ruler of the universe—a thing hard to capture and hard to hunt down, ever withdrawing and standing far off from the one who pursues it.

Yet this same One, while being far off, has come to stand nearest—an ineffable wonder:

'I am a God who draws near,' says the Lord;

far off in essence (for how could that which is begotten ever draw near to that which is unbegotten?), yet nearest in power, by which all things are enfolded in His bosom.

'If anyone does anything in secret,' He says, 'shall I not see him?' And indeed the power of God is ever present, touching us with a power that is at once watchful, beneficent, and disciplinary.

Hence Moses, persuaded that God could never be known by human wisdom, says, 'Show yourself to me,' and forces his way to enter into the darkness where the voice of God was, that is, into the inaccessible and formless conceptions concerning Him who is;

for God is not in darkness or in a place, but is above both place and time and the peculiar property of created things.

For this reason He is never confined to a part, since He is the One who encompasses and is not encompassed, whether by any boundary or by any division.

'For what kind of house will you build for me?' says the Lord;

but indeed He has not even built one for Himself, being uncontainable; and although heaven is said to be His throne, not even so is He contained, but He rests, delighting in His work of creation.

It is clear to us, then, that the truth has been hidden—as has already been shown from a single example—and a little later we shall demonstrate it also through several more.

'to understand words of prudence, and to receive the subtleties of arguments, and to understand true righteousness'—implying that there is also another righteousness, not taught according to truth, namely that taught by the laws of the Greeks and the other philosophers—'and to make judgments straight,' he says—meaning not judicial verdicts, but signifying that we must keep the tribunal within us sound and unerring, 'that He may give shrewdness to the guileless, and to the young child perception and understanding.'

'For the wise man, hearing these things'—that is, one persuaded to obey the commandments—'will be wiser still in knowledge, and the man of understanding will acquire skill to steer, and will understand a parable and a dark saying, and the sayings of the wise and their riddles.'

For those inspired by God do not put forth counterfeit words, nor do those who traffic in them, nor indeed snares, with which the many sophists entangle the young, occupying themselves with nothing true; but those who have acquired the Holy Spirit search the depths of God, that is, they come to share in the hidden meaning concerning the prophecies.

But it is forbidden to give a share of holy things to dogs, so long as they remain beasts.

For it is never fitting to mingle the divine and pure stream, the living water, with envious and troubled and still unbelieving characters, shameless in the barking of inquiry.

Let not your waters overflow beyond your own fountain, but let your waters pass through your own streets.

For most men do not understand such things as they encounter, nor do they know them even when they have learned them, though they seem to themselves to know — as the noble Heraclitus says.

Does it not seem to you that this man too censures those who do not believe? 'But my righteous one shall live by faith,' the prophet has said.

And another prophet also says:

'If ye will not believe, neither shall ye understand.'

For how could the soul ever attain to the transcendent contemplation of these things, while unbelief concerning learning still wars within? But faith, which the Greeks slander, reckoning it empty and barbarous, is a voluntary preconception, an assent to piety — 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,' according to the divine apostle.

For it was especially by this that the elders obtained their testimony.

But without faith it is impossible to please God.

But others have defined faith as an intellectual assent to a thing unseen, just as, indeed, demonstration is an evident assent to a thing previously unknown.

If, then, it is a deliberate choice, being a desire for something — desire here being intellectual — and since choice is the beginning of action, faith is found to be a beginning; for it is the beginning of action, the foundation of an intelligent choice, someone having already, by means of faith, furnished him beforehand with the demonstration.

And to follow what is beneficial willingly is the beginning of understanding.

An undistracted choice, then, contributes greatly to the inclination toward knowledge.

At once the exercise of faith becomes knowledge, firmly grounded upon a sure foundation.

The disciples of the philosophers define knowledge as a state not to be overthrown by argument.

Is there, then, some other such true state belonging to piety itself, of which reason alone is the teacher? I, for one, do not think so.

But Theophrastus says that sense-perception is the beginning of faith.

For from this the first principles extend toward the reason within us and toward understanding.

He, then, who has believed the divine Scriptures, holding a sure judgment, receives as an irrefutable demonstration the voice of the God who bestowed the Scriptures.

Faith, then, is no longer established by [human] demonstration.

'Blessed, then, are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.'

The enchantments of the Sirens, then, displaying a power beyond that of men, would astound those who chanced upon them, preparing them, almost against their will, for acceptance of what was said.

Here the followers of Basilides consider faith to be natural, insofar as they also assign it a place under election, [faith] discovering doctrines without demonstration, by intellectual apprehension.

...of faith, whereby the spiritual is distinguished from the soulish, saying...

Further, the followers of Basilides say that faith and election alike are proper to each interval [of being], and that, following upon the supra-cosmic election, the cosmic faith of every nature attends it, and that the gift of faith is proportioned to each one's hope.

No longer, then, is faith an achievement of [free] choice, if it is an advantage of nature; nor will he who does not believe meet with just recompense, being not responsible, nor is he who believes responsible; and the whole peculiarity and difference of faith and unbelief would, for those who reason rightly, fall under neither praise nor blame, having as its antecedent a natural necessity arising from him who is able to do all things.

And since we are worked like puppets, as inanimate things, by natural energies, both the voluntary and the involuntary become superfluous, along with the impulse that goes before and leads them.

And I, for one, no longer conceive of this as a living creature, whose impulsive faculty necessity has obtained by lot, moved as it is by a cause from without.

Where, then, any longer is the repentance of him who was once an unbeliever, through which comes forgiveness of sins? So that neither is baptism any longer reasonable, nor the blessed seal, nor the Son, nor the Father.

But their distribution of natures turns out, I think, to be their god, not having voluntary faith as the foundation of salvation.

But we, who have received from the Scriptures that the sovereign power of choice and refusal has been given to men by the Lord, rest upon faith as an unchangeable criterion, having shown a willing spirit, in that we have chosen life and have believed God through his voice.

And he who has believed the word knows the matter to be true.

But he who has disbelieved the one speaking has disbelieved God.

'By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which appear' — says the apostle. 'By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained testimony that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts.'

'And by it, though dead, he still speaks' — and so on, down to 'than to have the temporary enjoyment of sin.'

These men, then, even before the Law, faith, having justified them, made heirs of the divine promise.

Why, then, should I still gather and set before you testimonies of faith out of our own history? For time would fail me in relating concerning Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David also, and Samuel, and the prophets, and what follows upon these.

There being four faculties in which truth resides — sense-perception, intellect, knowledge, and opinion — by nature the intellect is first, but for us and relative to us, sense-perception is first; and out of sense-perception and intellect the substance of knowledge is composed, while clarity is common to both intellect and sense-perception.

But sense-perception is the gangway to knowledge, while faith, having journeyed through the objects of sense, leaves opinion behind, and presses on toward things that are not false, and abides in the truth.

But if anyone should say that knowledge is demonstrative, proceeding by reason, let him hear that the first principles too are indemonstrable.

For they are known neither by art nor indeed by practical wisdom.

For the one is concerned with things that admit of being otherwise, while the other is only productive, and not also contemplative.

By faith alone, then, is it possible to attain to the first principle of the universe.

For all knowledge is teachable.

And what is teachable proceeds from what is already known beforehand.

But the first principle of the universe was not known beforehand by the Greeks — neither by Thales, who supposed water to be the first cause, nor by the other natural philosophers who followed.

For even if Anaxagoras was the first to set Mind over things, yet not even he preserved the efficient cause, but depicted certain senseless whirls, together with the inactivity and thoughtlessness of the Mind.

'Call none your teacher upon the earth.'

For knowledge is a demonstrative state, but faith is a grace which, from things indemonstrable, raises one up to the universal, to that which is simple — which is neither along with matter, nor matter, nor under matter.

But unbelievers, it seems, drag everything down from heaven and the unseen to earth, quite literally embracing rocks and oaks with their hands, as Plato says.

defining a certain impact and contact, and identifying body and being as one and the same.

But those who dispute against them defend themselves very cautiously from somewhere above, out of the unseen, contending that certain intelligible and incorporeal forms are the true reality.

'Behold, I make new things,' says the Word, 'which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.'

With a new eye, a new hearing, a new heart, [they perceive] all that is visible and audible and apprehensible through faith and understanding, as the disciples of the Lord speak, hear, and act in a spiritual manner.

For there is genuine coin, and there is other counterfeit coin, which deceives ordinary people no less, though it does not deceive the money-changers, who, having learned, know how to separate and distinguish the debased from the genuine.

Thus the money-changer tells the layman only this about the coin, that it is counterfeit.

But the manner of it, only the banker's own acquaintance, and he who is trained for this very purpose, learns.

But Aristotle says that the judgment which follows upon knowledge, affirming a particular thing to be true, is faith.

Faith, then, is more authoritative than knowledge, and is its criterion.

But conjecture, being a weak sort of opinion, counterfeits faith, just as the flatterer counterfeits the friend, and the wolf the dog.

But since we see that the carpenter becomes a craftsman by learning something, and the pilot, having been trained in the art, will be able to steer — considering that merely wishing to become noble and good is not sufficient — there is, then, a necessity to learn by being persuaded.

And to be persuaded by the Word, whom we have proclaimed as Teacher, is to believe that very One, opposing him in nothing.

For how is it possible to set oneself against God? Knowledge, then, is made faithful, and faith is made known, coming about by a certain divine sequence and reciprocal sequence.

Indeed, even Epicurus, who especially preferred pleasure to truth, supposes faith to be a preconception of the mind.

And he defines preconception as an attention directed to something evident, and to the evident conception of the thing.

And he says that no one is able either to seek, or to be at a loss, or indeed to hold an opinion, nor even to refute, apart from preconception.

For how could anyone, not having a preconception of what he desires, learn concerning that which he seeks? And he who has already learned makes his preconception into full apprehension.

But if the learner does not learn apart from a preconception capable of receiving what is said, then he indeed has ears that are receptive of the truth.

Blessed is he who speaks into ears that hear, just as, naturally, he too is blessed who possesses obedience.

But to hearken attentively is to understand.

If, then, faith is nothing other than a preconception of the mind concerning the things spoken, and this has been called both obedience and understanding and persuasion, no one will ever learn without faith, since indeed nothing is learned without preconception.

That, then, which was spoken by the prophet is shown to be true beyond everything else:

'If you do not believe, neither will you understand.'

This same oracle Heraclitus of Ephesus also paraphrased when he said:

'If he does not hope for the unhoped-for, he will not discover it, since it is unsearchable and impassable.'

But Plato the philosopher too, in the Laws, says that the man who is to become blessed and happy must from the very beginning be a partaker of truth, so that, being truthful, he may live as long a time as possible;

but he is faithless to whom a voluntary lie is dear;

and of these, neither creature is to be envied;

for everyone, indeed, who is faithless and unlearned is friendless.

And is it not this same royal wisdom that he speaks of in a hidden manner in the Euthydemus?

At any rate, in the Statesman he says word for word:

'so that the knowledge of the true king is a kingly knowledge, and he who possesses it, whether he happens to be a ruler or a private person, will in every case, according to the art itself, rightly be called kingly.'

Accordingly, those who have believed in Christ are indeed good, and are called so, just as those cared for by a king are truly kingly.

For as the wise are wise by wisdom, and the lawful are lawful by law, so those who belong to Christ the king are kings, and those who belong to Christ are Christians.

Then, going on a little further, he clearly adds:

'What is right would be lawful, and right reason, being law by nature, is not found in written letters nor in anything else.'

Such a one is he who fulfills the law and does the will of the Father, and who has been openly inscribed upon a certain lofty tree, set forth as an example of divine virtue for those able to discern.

The Greeks know the scytales of the ephors at Lacedaemon, which by law are inscribed upon pieces of wood;

but my law, as has been said before, is both kingly and living, and is right reason;

'Law, the king of all things, both mortal and immortal,' as the Boeotian Pindar sings.

For Speusippus, in the first book Against Cleophon, appears to write things like those of Plato, in this passage:

'For if kingship is an excellent thing, and the wise man alone is king and ruler, then law, being right reason, is likewise an excellent thing.'

In agreement with these, the Stoic philosophers hold as dogma that kingship, priesthood, prophecy, the power of legislation, wealth, true beauty, noble birth, and freedom belong to the wise man alone;