Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticus) (chapters 10–12)
Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticus)
continued
Chapter 10
Answer to the Objection of the Heathen, that It Was Not Right to Abandon the Customs of Their Fathers.
10a “But,” you say, “it is not reasonable to overturn a custom handed down to us from our fathers.” Then why do we not still live on our first food, milk, which our nurses accustomed us to from birth? Why do we increase or reduce our inheritance, and not keep it exactly the same as we received it? Why do we no longer spit up on our fathers’ laps? Why do we no longer keep doing the other things that made us laughingstocks as babies raised by our mothers? We have corrected ourselves, even if we never had good tutors. Again, on a sea voyage, detours are costly and dangerous, yet somehow they seem sweet. But in the conduct of life, shall we not leave behind the custom that is evil, passion-driven and godless, even if our fathers are angry? Shall we not turn to the truth and seek the One who is truly Father, throwing off habit like a poisonous drug?
10b This is in fact the finest part of my undertaking: to show you that godliness was hated because of madness and this thrice-wretched custom. Such a good thing, greater than anything God has ever given to the human race, would never have been hated or rejected if you had not been swept away by custom. You then stopped your ears against us. Like stiff-necked horses that refuse the rein, you took the bit in your teeth and ran away from our words. You longed to throw us off, though we were the drivers of your life, and in your folly you were carried toward the cliffs of destruction. You took the holy word of God to be something defiled. So, as Sophocles says, the wages of your choice follow you: “a mind gone, ears useless, empty cares.” And you do not know that this above all is true: the good and godly, who honored what is good, will receive a good reward, while the wicked, on the other hand, will receive fitting punishment. Punishment hangs over the ruler of wickedness himself.[124]
10c So the prophet Zechariah threatens him: “May he who chose Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked out of the fire?” Why, then, are people still gripped by a desire for a death they choose for themselves? Why have they run for refuge to this deadly brand, with which they will be burned up, when they could live well according to God and not according to custom? God gives life freely. But evil custom, after we leave this world, brings empty repentance together with punishment. “The fool learns by suffering” that superstition destroys and godliness saves. Let any of you look at those who serve at the idols. Their hair is filthy, and they are disgraced by dirty, ragged clothes. They have never so much as tried a bath, and their long fingernails make them like wild beasts. Many of them have even been castrated. They show in practice that the idols’ sacred precincts are tombs or prisons. To me these people seem to be mourning the gods, not worshiping them. What they have suffered deserves pity rather than reverence.[125] [Zechariah 3:2]
10d Do you see all this and still stay blind? Will you not look up to the Master of all, the Lord of the universe? Will you not escape from the prisons here and take refuge in the mercy that comes from heaven? Out of his great love for humanity, God holds fast to man, as a mother bird flies to a nestling that has fallen from the nest. If a creeping beast gapes at the chick, “the mother flutters around, wailing for her dear children.” But God the Father seeks his creature, heals his fall, drives off the beast, and takes the chick up again, urging it to fly back to the nest. Dogs that have wandered off track down their master by scent. Horses that have thrown their rider obey their master at a single whistle. “The ox knows its owner,” it says, “and the donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know me.” What, then, does the Lord do?[126] [Isaiah 1:3]
10e He does not hold grudges. He still shows pity, and he still calls for repentance. I want to ask you something. Does it not seem absurd to you that you, who are human beings, God’s own creation, who received your soul from him and belong wholly to God, should serve another master? Worse, you serve a tyrant in place of the king, and the evil one in place of the good. For tell me, by the truth, what sane person leaves the good behind and lives with wickedness? Who runs away from God to live with demons? Who, when he can be a son of God, enjoys being a slave? Or who, when he can be a citizen of heaven, chases after Erebus? He could instead tend Paradise, walk about in heaven, and share in the living, unpolluted spring. Like Elijah, he could travel through the air in the track of that shining cloud and watch the rain that brings salvation.[127]
10f But others, like worms, roll about in swamps and mud, the streams of pleasure, and feed on useless and senseless luxuries. They are swinish people. For pigs, it is said, “enjoy mud” more than clean water, and, as Democritus says, “they go mad with desire over filth.” No, let us never, never be made slaves, and let us not become swinish. As true “children of light,” let us look up and gaze at the light, so that the Lord does not expose us as illegitimate, as the sun does with eagles. So let us repent and move from ignorance to knowledge, from folly to wisdom, from lack of self-control to self-control, from injustice to justice, and from godlessness to God. The risk of deserting to God’s side is a good one. Those of us who love righteousness and pursue eternal salvation can enjoy many other good things as well. Above all, there are the things God himself hints at when he speaks through Isaiah: “There is an inheritance for those who serve the Lord.” It is a fine and lovable inheritance. It is not gold, silver or clothing, where the moth creeps in, and where the thief, eyeing earthbound wealth, breaks in. It is that treasure of salvation, and we must hurry toward it, becoming lovers of the Word. Our good works depart with us from here and fly with us on the wing of truth.[128] [Ephesians 5:8; Isaiah 54:17; Matthew 6:19-20]
10g The eternal covenant of God hands this inheritance over to us, supplying an everlasting gift. This loving Father of ours, the one who is truly a Father, never stops urging, warning, training and loving us. For he never stops saving us, and he gives the best advice: “Become righteous, says the Lord. You who are thirsty, go to the water. And all of you who have no money, go, buy and drink without money.” He calls us to the washing, to salvation, to enlightenment. He all but cries out and says: “I give you land and sea, child, and heaven too, and I freely give you all the living creatures in them.” Only thirst for your Father, child. God will be shown to you without payment. The truth is not peddled in the marketplace. He gives you the birds, the fish, and the animals of the land. The Father made all these for you to enjoy with thanksgiving.[129] [Isaiah 55:1]
10h The illegitimate one, a child of destruction who has chosen to “serve mammon,” will have to buy things with money. But God entrusts to you what is yours. I mean to you, the true child, who loves the Father, and for whose sake he is still at work. To this child alone he makes the promise: “And the land will not be sold into permanent ownership.” For it is not signed over to decay. “For all the land is mine,” and it is also yours, if you receive God. So the Scripture rightly brings good news to those who have believed: “The holy ones of the Lord will inherit the glory of God and his power.” What glory, blessed one? Tell me. The glory “which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the human heart. And they will rejoice in the kingdom of their Lord forever. Amen.” You people have the divine promise of grace. You have also heard the other side, the threat of punishment. By both of these the Lord saves, training people with fear and with grace. Why are we waiting?[130] [Matthew 6:24; Leviticus 25:23; 1 Corinthians 2:9]
10i Why do we not turn away from the punishment? Why do we not accept the gift? Why do we not choose the better things: God instead of the evil one, wisdom over idol-worship, life in exchange for death? “See,” he says, “I have set death and life before your face.” The Lord is trying to get you to choose life. Like a father, he advises you to obey God. “For if you listen to me,” he says, “and are willing, you will eat the good things of the land.” That is the grace given for obedience. “But if you do not obey me and are not willing, the sword and fire will devour you.” That is the judgment on disobedience. “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.” The word of the Lord is a law of truth. Do you want me to be a good counselor to you? Then listen, and I will show you what I can. People, when you thought about the Good itself, you ought to have brought in an inborn faith. That would have been a trustworthy witness from your own household, plainly choosing what is best. Then you would not ask whether the Good should be pursued, but would work hard at it.[131] [Deuteronomy 30:15; Deuteronomy 30:19; Isaiah 1:19-20]
10j Take drunkenness, for example. If anyone is going to get drunk, he ought to hesitate over it. But you get drunk before you even think about it. And if you are going to behave outrageously, you make no inquiry at all; you do it as fast as you can. Only when it comes to worshiping God do you start asking questions. Should we follow this wise God and Christ? That is the one thing you think deserves deliberation and study, though you have not even grasped what is fitting for God, whatever that is. Believe us at least as you believe drunkenness, so that you may become sober. Believe us at least as you believe outrage, so that you may live. But if you want to be persuaded after looking at the clear assurance that the virtues give, then I will set before you, from my abundance, the case for the Word. As for you, your ancestral customs no longer keep you busy and distract you from the truth, now that you have already been instructed. So you can now hear how the rest of the matter stands. Do not let any shame at this name take hold of you first. That shame “greatly harms men” and turns them aside from salvation.[132]
10k So let us strip openly and compete in the stadium of truth like true athletes. The holy Word will be the umpire, and the Master of all things will preside over the contest. The prize set before us is not a small one: immortality. So do not worry any more, not even a little, about what some marketplace rabble say about you. They are godless dancers in the chorus of superstition, driven by folly and madness into the very pit. They make idols and bow down to stones. These people have dared to turn men into gods. They have even listed Alexander the Macedonian as a thirteenth god, though “Babylon exposed him as a corpse.” So I admire the sophist from Chios, whose name was Theocritus. After Alexander’s death, Theocritus mocked the empty ideas people held about gods. He said to his fellow citizens, “Men, take courage, as long as you see the gods dying before men.” But whoever worships the visible gods, and this mixed crowd of created things, and attaches himself to them, is far more wretched than those demons themselves.[133]
10l For God is not unjust in any way, as the demons are. He is as perfectly just as can be. Nothing is more like him than the one of us who becomes perfectly just. “Be on your way, all you working folk, who turn in prayer to Ergane, the fierce-eyed goddess, daughter of Zeus, with winnowing-baskets set up beside you.” You fools, you are makers and worshipers of stones! Let your Phidias come, and Polycleitus, and Praxiteles and Apelles, and everyone who practices the manual crafts. They are earthly men, workers in earth. For a certain prophecy says that affairs here will go badly when people put their trust in statues. So let the petty craftsmen come again, for I will not stop calling. Not one of them has ever made a breathing image, or kneaded soft flesh out of earth. Who melted the marrow? Who set the bones?[134] 10m Who stretched the sinews? Who made the veins swell? Who poured blood into them? Who stretched the skin around the body? Which of them could ever make eyes that see? Who breathed a soul into it? Who gave righteousness? Who promised immortality? Only the Maker of the universe, “the Father, the best of craftsmen,” formed us human beings as such a living statue. But your Olympian, an image of an image, far out of tune with the truth, is the dumb work of Attic hands. For the “image of God” is his Word. The divine Word is the true Son of the Mind, light that is the original pattern of light. The image of the Word is the true human being, the mind in man. For this reason he is said to have been made “in the image” and “after the likeness” of God. By the understanding in his heart he is made like the divine Word, and in this way he is rational.[135] [Genesis 2:7; Genesis 1:26; Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4]
10n But the man-shaped statues are only an earthly image of the visible, earth-born man. They are a short-lived imprint, plainly far from the truth. To me, then, human life seems to have become nothing but madness, when it spends such zeal on raw material. Custom has given you a taste of slavery and of senseless, overbusy concern, and it has been corrupted by empty opinion. Ignorance is the cause of lawless customs and deceitful pretenses. It has devised many forms of demons, deadly fates and hateful idols for the human race, and it has stamped the stain of long death on those who follow it. So take the water of the Word. Wash, you who are defiled. Sprinkle yourselves clean of custom with the true drops. The pure must go up into the heavens. You are a human being, which is the most common thing about you, so look for the one who made you. You are a son, which is the most personal thing about you, so acknowledge your Father.[136] [Isaiah 1:16]
10o Yet do you still stay in your sins, clinging to pleasures? To whom will the Lord say, “Yours is the kingdom of the heavens”? It is yours if you are willing, you who have set your choice toward God. It is yours if you are willing simply to believe and to follow the short, plain message. The Ninevites obeyed that message. By genuine repentance they exchanged the capture they expected for a good salvation. “How then,” someone asks, “shall I go up to the heavens?” The Lord is “the way.” It is “narrow,” but it comes “from the heavens.” It is narrow, but it sends us up to the heavens. It is narrow on earth, where it is despised, and wide in the heavens, where it is worshiped. Now the person who has never heard the word has his ignorance to excuse his error. But the person who has heard it with his own ears carries disobedience in his soul by his own decision. The wiser he seems to be, the more his understanding works against him. By not choosing the best, he has made his own good sense his accuser. For by nature, as a human being, he is made for close kinship with God.[137] [John 14:6; Matthew 7:14]
10p We do not force a horse to plough or a bull to hunt. We lead each animal toward what it is naturally suited for. In the same way we call human beings to the knowledge of God. They were made to gaze at heaven, and they are truly a heavenly plant. We have grasped what belongs to them and sets them apart from the other living creatures. So we advise them to equip themselves with godliness, a provision sufficient for the ages. We say: if you are a farmer, farm, but know God as you farm. You who love the sea, sail, but call on the heavenly pilot. Has knowledge found you as a soldier? Listen to the commander who gives just orders. So, like people weighed down with stupor and drunkenness, sober up. Open your eyes a little and think what the stones you worship mean to you, and what you spend with empty zeal on mere matter. You waste your money and your livelihood on ignorance, just as you waste your life on death. That is the only end your vain hope finds. You cannot even pity yourselves, and you are not ready to listen to those who pity you for your error. You are enslaved to a bad custom. You cling to it by your own choice until your last breath, and so you are carried off to ruin. “For the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light.” Yet you could wipe away what stands in the way of your salvation: conceit, wealth and fear. You could say aloud that line of the poet: “Where am I carrying all this wealth?[138] [John 3:19]
10q And where am I myself wandering?” Will you not throw away these empty fantasies and say goodbye to custom itself? Say to vain glory: “Farewell, false dreams; you were nothing after all.” What do you think, my friends, of Hermes Tychon, the Hermes of Andocides, and Hermes Amyetus? Surely it is clear to everyone that they are stones, just like Hermes himself. The halo is not a god, and the rainbow is not a god. They are conditions of the air and the clouds. In the same way, day is not a god, nor is the year, nor is the time that is made up of them. Neither are the sun and the moon, which mark off each of these. So who in his right mind would take Reckoning, Punishment, Justice and Retribution to be gods?[139] 10r Neither are the Furies, the Fates or Destiny gods, since the State, Glory and Wealth are not gods either. Painters even show Wealth as blind. If you make gods of Shame, Love and Aphrodite, then let Disgrace, Desire, Beauty and Sexual Union follow them as gods too. So it no longer makes sense for you to regard Sleep and Death as twin gods. These are conditions that happen naturally to living creatures. Nor could you rightly call Doom, Destiny or the Fates goddesses. If Strife and Battle are not gods, then neither are Ares and Enyo. Again, if lightning, thunderbolts and rainstorms are not gods, how can fire and water be gods? And how can shooting stars and comets be gods, when they come about through a disturbance of the air?[140]
10s Whoever calls Fortune a god may as well call Action a god. Suppose none of these is held to be a god, and neither are those senseless figures made by human hands. Yet a providence of divine power is plainly at work around us. Then nothing is left but to admit that he alone truly is and exists who alone is truly God. But you foolish people are like men who have drunk mandrake or some other drug. May God at last grant you to wake from this sleep and to understand God. May you no longer picture gold, or stone, or a tree, or an action, or a suffering, or a disease, or a fear as a god. For truly there are “thirty thousand” demons “on the many-nourishing earth.” They are “not immortal,” and not mortal either. They have no share in sensation, and so they have no share in death. They are masters of human beings, made of stone and wood, who abuse human life and break faith with it through custom.[141]
10t “The earth is the Lord’s,” it says, “and its fullness.” Then how do you dare to live in luxury on the Lord’s property and not know your Master? The Lord will say to you, “Leave my land. Do not touch the water that I send up. Do not share in the fruits that I cultivate.” Pay God back for the cost of your upbringing, O man. Recognize your Master. You are God’s own creature. How could what is his own rightly come to belong to someone else? For what has been estranged, and so has lost its belonging, has also lost the truth. Are you not, in a way, like Niobe? Or rather, to speak to you more mystically, are you not like the Hebrew woman (the ancients named her after Lot), turning into something without feeling? We have received the account that this woman was turned to stone because she loved Sodom. And the Sodomites are the godless, those who turn to impiety, the hard-hearted and the foolish.[142] [Psalm 24:1; 1 Corinthians 10:26; Genesis 19:26]
10u Think of these words as spoken to you from God. Do not suppose that stones, wood, birds and snakes are sacred, but human beings are not. The truth is just the opposite. Regard human beings as truly sacred, and take the animals and stones for what they are. For wretched, miserable people think that God cries out through a raven or a jackdaw but is silent through a man. They honor the raven as a messenger of God, but they persecute the man of God. He does not croak or chatter. He speaks. Alas, he teaches them with reason and with love for humanity, and they try inhumanly to cut his throat. He calls them to righteousness, yet they neither wait for the grace from above nor turn away from the punishment. For they do not believe God, and they do not learn his power. 10v But the one whose love for humanity is beyond words also has a hatred of evil beyond all measure. Anger feeds punishment for sin, but love for humanity does good to those who repent. The most pitiable thing of all is to be deprived of help from God. Blindness of the eyes and deafness of the ears are more painful than the other ways the evil one gets the better of us. The one robs a person of the sight of heaven, and the other deprives him of divine teaching. But you are crippled toward the truth, blind in mind and deaf in understanding, and yet you feel no pain and no distress. You have not longed to see heaven and the Maker of heaven. You have not sought to hear and learn from the Creator and Father of all, joining your choice to your salvation. For nothing stands in the way of the person who hurries toward the knowledge of God: not lack of education, not poverty, not obscurity, not lack of possessions. And no one prays to gain the truly real wisdom by “slaying with bronze,” or with iron. This saying is well spoken, better than any other: the good person brings salvation everywhere. For the one who is zealous for what is right, as a lover of the One who lacks nothing, needs little himself. He has stored up his blessedness in nothing other than God himself, where there is no moth, no thief, no pirate, but the eternal Giver of good things.[143] [Matthew 6:20]
10w So it is fitting that you have been likened to those serpents whose ears are shut against the charmers. For the Scripture says, “Their anger is like that of a serpent, like a deaf asp that stops up its ears and will not hear the voice of charmers.” But as for you, let your savagery be charmed away. Accept our gentle Word, and spit out the poisonous venom, so that you may be given the chance, as far as possible, to strip off corruption, as those serpents strip off old age. Listen to me. Do not stop up your ears or block your hearing, but take what is said to heart. The medicine of immortality is good. Stop at last your crawling, snakelike trails. “For the enemies of the Lord,” it says, “will lick the dust.” Lift your heads from the earth to the sky, look up to heaven, and marvel. Stop lying in wait for the heel of the righteous and blocking “the way of truth.” Be wise and harmless. Perhaps the Lord will give you the wing of simplicity (he has chosen to give wings to those born of the earth), so that you may leave your holes and live in the heavens.[144] [Matthew 10:16; Genesis 3:15]
10x Only let us repent with our whole heart, so that we may be able to hold God with our whole heart. “Hope in him, all you assembly of the people,” it says. “Pour out all your hearts before him.” This is said to those who are empty of wickedness. He has mercy on them and fills them with righteousness. Believe, O man, in the one who is man and God. Believe, O man, in the living God, who suffered and is worshipped. Believe, you slaves, in the one who died. All people, believe in him who alone is God of all people. Believe, and receive salvation as your reward. “Seek God, and your soul will live.” The one who seeks God is busy about his own salvation. Have you found God? Then you have life. So let us seek, so that we may live. The reward of finding is life with God. “Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you, and let them say always, ‘Let God be magnified.’” A beautiful hymn to God is an immortal man, built up in righteousness, in whom the words of truth are engraved.[145] [Psalm 62:8]
10y For where else should righteousness be written than in a self-controlled soul? Where else love? Where else reverence? Where else gentleness? I think that those who have stamped these divine writings on their soul should regard wisdom as a good starting point for anyone, whatever part of life they turn to. They should also count the same wisdom as the calm harbor of salvation. Through this wisdom, those who have run to the Father are good fathers to their children. Those who have come to know the Son are good sons to their parents. Those who remember the Bridegroom are good husbands to their wives. Those who have been ransomed from the worst slavery are good masters to their servants. Oh, the beasts are more blessed than people in their error! They feed on ignorance, as you do, but they do not put on a show of truth. Among them there are no tribes of flatterers. Fish are not superstitious, and birds do not worship idols. They are struck with awe by the one heaven alone, since, denied reason, they cannot conceive of God.
10z Are you not ashamed? You have made yourselves even more irrational than the irrational animals, you who have worn away so many stages of life in godlessness. You were children, then boys, then young men, then grown men, but never good. At least respect old age. Now that you have reached the sunset of life, come to your senses. Even at the end of life, come to know God, so that the end of your life may become the beginning of salvation. You have grown old in superstition; come to the worship of God as young people. God will accept guileless children. Let the Athenian follow the laws of Solon, the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus. But if you enroll yourself as belonging to God, heaven is your homeland and God your lawgiver. And what are the laws? “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt boys, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; you shall love the Lord your God.” There are also the supplements to these: rational laws and holy words written on the hearts themselves. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” “To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” “You shall not desire, for by desire alone you have committed adultery.” How much better it is for people not even to want to desire what they should not, in the first place, than to get what they desire![146] [Exodus 20:13-16; Matthew 22:37-39; Luke 6:29; Matthew 5:28]
10aa But you cannot bear the severity of salvation. We enjoy sweet foods and prefer them for the smooth pleasure they give, yet bitter things that roughen the taste heal us and make us well, and the harshness of medicines strengthens those with weak stomachs. In the same way, custom is pleasant and tickles the senses, but custom pushes us into the pit, while truth leads up to heaven. Truth is “rugged” at first, “but a good nurse of the young.” She is a dignified women’s quarters and a sober council of elders. She is neither hard to approach nor impossible to grasp. She lives very near us, within us, as the all-wise Moses hints, dwelling in three parts of us: “in hands, mouth, and heart.” This is a true symbol that truth is completed by three things altogether: purpose, action, and speech. Do not fear that the many delightful things that appear before you will rob you of wisdom. You will willingly step over the nonsense of custom yourself, just as children, once grown, throw away their toys.[147] [Deuteronomy 30:14; 1 Corinthians 13:11]
10ab With unsurpassable speed and easily approached goodwill, the divine power shone on the earth and filled the whole world with the seed of salvation. For the Lord could not have accomplished so great a work in so short a time without divine care. He was despised in appearance but worshiped in fact: the purifier, the savior, the gentle one, the divine Word, truly the most plainly visible God, made equal to the Master of all, because he was his Son and “the Word was in God.” He was not disbelieved when he was first announced beforehand. Nor was he unrecognized when he took up the mask of a man, formed himself in flesh, and acted out the saving drama of humanity. For he was a true contender, fighting side by side with his own creature. He spread to all people very quickly, rising faster than the sun from the Father’s own will, and most easily made God shine upon us. By what he taught and showed, he made clear where he himself came from and who he was. He is the bearer of the peace treaty, the reconciler, our Savior, the Word, a life-giving, peaceful spring, poured out over the whole face of the earth. Through him, one might say, everything has already become a sea of good things.[148] [John 1:1]
Chapter 11
How Great are the Benefits Conferred on Man Through the Advent of
11a If you wish, look back briefly to the beginning and see God’s kindness. The first man played freely in Paradise, because he was a child of God. But he gave way to pleasure. (The serpent is an allegory for pleasure, crawling on its belly, an earthly vice turned toward material things.) He was led astray by desires. The child grew into a man through disobedience, and having disobeyed his Father, he was ashamed before God. See what pleasure could do. The man who had been free because of his simplicity was found bound by sins. Then the Lord wished to free him from his bonds once more. He was bound in flesh (a divine mystery!), subdued the serpent, and enslaved the tyrant, death. Most astonishing of all, by outstretched hands he showed that man, who had been led astray by pleasure and held fast by corruption, was set free. O mystical wonder! The Lord lay down, and man rose up. He who fell out of Paradise receives a greater prize for obedience: the heavens.[149] [Genesis 3:14]
11b For this reason, now that the Word himself has come to us from heaven, it seems to me we no longer need to go after human teaching, busying ourselves with Athens and the rest of Greece, and Ionia too. If our teacher is the one who filled all things with holy powers, in creation, salvation, kindness, lawgiving, prophecy and teaching, then that teacher now instructs us in everything. Through the Word the whole world has already become Athens and Greece. You believed a poet’s myth that records Minos the Cretan as a close companion of Zeus. Will you then refuse to believe us, who have become disciples of God and have taken up the wisdom that is really true? The leaders of philosophy only hinted at that wisdom, but the disciples of Christ have grasped it and proclaimed it. And so, one might say, everyone … [words missing] … Christ is not divided. There is neither barbarian nor Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female, but a new human being, remade by the Holy Spirit of God.[150] [1 Corinthians 1:13; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11]
11c Furthermore, all the other counsels and instructions are poor things and concern particular matters: whether to marry, whether to take part in public life, whether to have children. But there is one exhortation that is universal. It covers the whole of life, in every season and every circumstance, and it directs us toward the highest goal, which is life. That exhortation is godliness. It is the only rule we must live by if we are to live forever. Philosophy, as the elders say, is a counsel of long duration, courting an everlasting love of wisdom. But “the commandment of the Lord is far-shining, enlightening the eyes.” Receive Christ, receive sight, receive your light, “that you may know well both God and man.” The Word who has enlightened us is “sweet, above gold and precious stone”; he is desirable “above honey and the honeycomb.” How could he not be desirable, when he has brought into clear light a mind buried in darkness and sharpened the “light-bringing eyes” of the soul?[151]
11d For just as “if there were no sun, it would be night everywhere, despite the other stars,” so, if we had not known the Word and been lit up by him, we would be no better than fattened birds, grown plump in darkness and fed for death. Let us take in the light, so that we may take in God. Let us take in the light and become disciples of the Lord. This is what he promised the Father: “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the assembly I will sing hymns to you.” Sing, then, and tell me about your Father, God. Your accounts will save me, and your song will teach me. Until now I was wandering, seeking God. But since you lead me into the light, Lord, Lord, I find God through you and receive the Father from you. I become your fellow heir, since you were not ashamed of me, your brother.[152] [Psalm 22:22; Hebrews 2:11-12; Romans 8:17]
11e So let us remove, let us remove, our forgetfulness of the truth. Let us strip away ignorance and the darkness that stands in the way like a mist over the eyes, and let us look upon the God who truly is. First let us sing to him this greeting: “Hail, light!” Light has shone on us from heaven, on us who were buried in darkness and shut up in the shadow of death. It is purer than the sun and sweeter than the life we have here. That light is eternal life, and whatever shares in it lives. Night is afraid of the light, and in fear it sets and yields to the Lord’s day. Everything has become sleepless light, and the west has been turned into the east. This is what the new creation means. For the “sun of righteousness,” who drives his chariot over all things, travels equally around all humanity. He imitates the Father, who “makes his sun rise on all people,” and he sprinkles on them the dew of truth.[153] [Luke 1:79; Malachi 4:2; Matthew 5:45]
11f He turned the west into the east, and through the cross he turned death into life. He snatched man out of destruction and lifted him up to hang in the upper air. He transplanted corruption into incorruption and changed earth into heaven. He is God’s farmer, “giving favorable signs, rousing the people to work,” to good work, “reminding them of their livelihood,” the true one. He has given us the Father’s inheritance, which is truly great and divine and cannot be taken away. By heavenly teaching he makes man divine, “putting laws into their mind and writing them on their heart.” What laws does he write? “That all will know God, from small to great; and I will be merciful to them,” says God, “and I will by no means remember their sins.” Let us receive the laws of life and obey God when he exhorts us. Let us learn to know him, so that he may be merciful. Even though he needs nothing, let us pay him a wage of thanks, which is willing obedience, like a kind of rent paid to God for our dwelling here.[154] [Hebrews 8:10-12; Jeremiah 31:33-34]
11g “Gold for bronze, the price of a hundred oxen for the price of nine.” So it is with you: for a little faith God gives you all this earth to farm, water to drink and to sail on, air to breathe, fire to serve you, and a world to live in. He has even allowed you to send a colony from here to the heavens. All these great works of his hands, and all these gifts, he has paid out to you for a little faith. People who trust sorcerers accept their amulets and charms, supposing these will save them. Will you not be willing to have the heavenly Word, the Saviour, fastened on you like an amulet? Will you not trust God’s own charm and be set free from the passions, which are diseases of the soul, and be torn away from sin? For sin is eternal death. Truly you are completely toothless and blind, like moles. You live in the dark, doing nothing but eating, and you are wasting away in corruption. But there is, there is a truth that cries out: “Out of darkness light will shine.”[155] [2 Corinthians 4:6]
11h So let the light shine in the hidden part of a person, in the heart. Let the rays of knowledge rise and bring out the person hidden within, making him shine: the disciple of the light, the friend and fellow heir of Christ. This is especially so when a devout and good child comes to know the most honored and venerable name, the name of a good Father. This Father gives gentle commands and urges his child toward what will save him. The one who obeys him gains in every way. He follows God, he obeys the Father. He came to know him while he was still wandering. He has loved God, he has loved his neighbor, he has fulfilled the commandment. He looks for the prize, he claims the promise. It is always God’s purpose to save the flock of humanity. For this reason the good God sent the good Shepherd. And the Word, laying the truth open, showed people the height of salvation, so that they would either repent and be saved, or refuse to obey and be judged.[156] [1 Peter 3:4; Matthew 22:37-39; John 10:11]
11i This is the proclamation of righteousness: good news for those who obey, a judgment for those who refuse to listen. Now when the “loud-crashing” trumpet sounds, it gathers soldiers and announces war. Christ has breathed a song of peace to the ends of the earth. Will he not, then, gather his own soldiers of peace? He has indeed gathered them, my friend. By his blood and by his word he has gathered a bloodless army, and he has entrusted the kingdom of heaven to them. Christ’s trumpet is his gospel. He has sounded it, and we have heard it. Let us arm ourselves in peace, “putting on the breastplate of righteousness,” taking up the shield of faith, putting on the helmet of salvation, and sharpening “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” This is how the apostle draws us up for battle, in peace. These are our weapons, and nothing can pierce them. Armed with them, let us take our stand against the evil one. Let us put out the evil one’s flaming arrows with blade-points of water, dipped by the Word. Let us repay his kindness with grateful praise, and honor God with the divine Word.[157] [Ephesians 6:14-17]
11j “While you are still speaking,” he says, “he will say, ‘Look, I am here.’” What a holy and blessed power this is, by which God lives as a fellow citizen with human beings! It is better and finer, then, to become both an imitator and a servant of the best being there is. For no one can imitate God except through the holy service he gives him, and no one can serve and honor him except by imitating him. The heavenly and truly divine love comes to people in this way: when true beauty, fanned into flame by the divine Word, is able to shine out somewhere within the soul itself. And most important of all, salvation runs together with sincerely wanting it, since choice and life are, so to speak, yoked together. For this reason, this appeal of the truth alone is likened to the most faithful of friends. It stays with us to our last breath. For those who depart for heaven, it becomes a good escort for the whole and perfect spirit of the soul.[158] [Isaiah 58:9]
11k What, then, am I urging you to do? I am pressing you to be saved. This is what Christ wants. In a word, he gives you life as a gift. And who is this? Learn it in brief: the Word of truth, the Word of incorruption, who gives people new birth and brings them back to the truth. He is the goad that drives us to salvation. He drives out corruption and chases away death. He has built a temple in human beings, so that he might enshrine God in them. Make the temple clean. Leave pleasures and carelessness to the wind and the fire, like a flower that lasts a day. But farm the fruits of self-control with good sense, and dedicate yourself to God as a first-fruits offering. Then you will be not only God’s work but also his gift. Both suit Christ’s disciple: to be shown worthy of the kingdom, and to have been counted worthy of the kingdom.[159] [1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Thessalonians 1:5]
Chapter 12
Exhortation to Abandon Their Old Errors and Listen to the Instructions of Christ.
12a So let us flee from custom. Let us flee it as we would a dangerous headland, or the menace of Charybdis, or the Sirens of the myths. Custom chokes a person, turns him away from the truth, and leads him away from life. It is a snare, a chasm, a pit, a greedy evil. “Keep your ship clear of that smoke and that surge.” Let us flee, fellow sailors, let us flee this wave! It belches out fire. It is a wicked island, piled high with bones and corpses. On it sings a pretty little harlot, Pleasure, who delights in music for the common crowd. “Come here, much-praised Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans; bring your ship to rest, that you may hear a diviner voice.” She praises you, sailor, and calls you famous in song, and the harlot claims for herself the glory of the Greeks. Let her feed on the dead. A heavenly Spirit helps you. Pass Pleasure by; she is a deceiver. “Do not let a woman with swaying hips cheat your mind, coaxing you with wheedling talk while she pries into your barn.”[160]
12b Sail past the song; it brings death. Only be willing, and you have conquered destruction. Bound to the wood, you will be set free from all corruption. The Word of God will steer you, and the Holy Spirit will bring you to anchor in the harbors of heaven. Then you will look upon my God. You will be initiated into those holy mysteries, and you will enjoy the hidden things in heaven that are kept for me, “which no ear has heard, and which have not entered the heart” of anyone. “Indeed, I seem to see two suns, and two Thebes,” said one who was in a Bacchic frenzy over idols, drunk with undiluted ignorance. I would pity him in his drunken raving. Even in such madness I would urge him toward a sober salvation, because the Lord welcomes the repentance of a sinner and not his death. Come, you who are out of your mind. Do not lean on the thyrsus or wrap yourself in ivy. Throw away the headband, throw away the fawn-skin, and come to your senses. I will show you the Word and the mysteries of the Word, explaining them in images you will recognize.[161] [1 Corinthians 2:9; Ezekiel 33:11]
12c This is a mountain beloved by God. It is not the subject of tragedies, as Cithaeron is, but is given over to the dramas of truth. It is a sober mountain, shaded by pure woods. On it revel not the sisters of Semele “the lightning-struck,” the Maenads, who are initiated into an unholy sharing out of flesh, but the daughters of God, the fair lambs. They proclaim the solemn rites of the Word and gather a sober chorus. The chorus is the righteous, and the song is a hymn to the King of all. The maidens sing, the angels give glory, the prophets speak. The sound of music goes out. They run to follow the festal band, and those who have been called hurry on, longing to receive the Father. Come to me, old man, you also. Leave Thebes, give up prophecy and Bacchic revelry, and be led by the hand to the truth. Look, I give you the wood to lean on. Hurry, Tiresias, believe, and you will see. Christ shines more brightly than the sun, and through him the eyes of the blind receive their sight. Night will flee from you, fire will fear you, and death will be gone. You will see the heavens, old man, you who cannot see Thebes.[162]
12d O truly holy mysteries! O pure light! I am led by torchlight to look upon the heavens and God. I become holy by being initiated. The Lord is the one who reveals the sacred things. He seals the initiate as he leads him into the light, and he presents the believer to the Father, to be kept for the ages. These are the revels of my mysteries. If you wish, be initiated yourself, and you will dance with angels around the unbegotten, indestructible, and only true God, while the Word of God sings the hymn with us. This Jesus is eternal, the one great High Priest of the one God, who is also his Father. He prays for human beings and calls out to them: “‘Listen, countless tribes,’ or rather, all of you among humankind who have reason, barbarians and Greeks alike. I call the whole human race, whose Maker I am by the Father’s will. Come to me, to be placed under the one God and the one Word of God. You do not only surpass the irrational animals by reason. Out of all mortal creatures, I grant to you alone the harvest of immortality.”[163] [Hebrews 4:14]
12e “For I want, I truly want, to share this grace with you as well, and to give you the whole benefit, which is incorruption. I give you the Word, the knowledge of God. I give you myself, complete. This is what I am. This is what God wants. This is concord, this is the harmony of the Father. This is the Son, this is Christ, this is the Word of God, the arm of the Lord, the power of the universe, the will of the Father. You were images long ago, but not all of you were true likenesses. I want to set you right according to the original, so that you may become like me. I will anoint you with the ointment of faith, by which you throw off corruption. I will show you the form of righteousness, bare of any covering, by which you climb up to God. ‘Come to me, all you who labor and are weighed down, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is kind and my burden is light.’” Let us hurry, let us run, you who are loved by God, you godlike statues of the Word. Let us hurry, let us run, let us take up his yoke. Let us strive for incorruption, and let us love Christ, the noble charioteer of humanity. He brought the colt, the beast of burden, together with the old one. Having yoked the pair of humankind, he steers the chariot toward immortality. He hurries toward God to fulfil in plain fact what he once hinted at. Before, he drove into Jerusalem; now he drives into the heavens. The eternal Son, victorious, is a most beautiful sight for the Father.[164] [Matthew 11:28-30; Matthew 21:2-7]
12f So let us be people who eagerly pursue what is good and who are loved by God, and let us gain the greatest of all goods, God and life. The Word is our helper. Let us trust him, and let no desire for silver and gold, or for glory, ever come over us as strongly as our desire for the Word of truth himself. For it does not please even God himself if we count what is most valuable as worth least, and instead value more highly the glaring outrages of ignorance, stupidity, laziness, and idolatry, and the extreme of ungodliness. It is not without reason that the children of the philosophers regard everything the foolish do as unholy and impious. They describe ignorance itself as a form of madness, and so they declare that the many are simply mad. Reason, then, leaves no room for doubt about which of the two is better, to be sane or to be mad. Instead we must hold on to the truth with all our grip and follow God with all our strength. With a sound mind we must regard everything as his, as it truly is. Beyond that, since we have learned that we are the finest of his possessions, we must entrust ourselves to God, loving the Lord God and treating this as our work through the whole of life.[165] [Deuteronomy 6:5]
12g Now if “friends have all things in common,” and man is loved by God (for he is indeed a friend of God, with the Word as mediator), then everything becomes man’s, because everything is God’s. All things are shared by both friends, God and man. So it is time for us to say that only the devout Christian is rich, sound-minded and well-born, and in this way is God’s image, together with his likeness. We should say and believe that he has become “righteous and holy with understanding” through Christ Jesus, and so is already that far like God. The prophet does not hide this grace when he says, “I said, You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.” For he has adopted us, yes us, and wishes to be called the Father of us alone, not of those who disobey.[166] [Psalm 82:6; Genesis 1:26] 12h This is how it stands with us who follow Christ: as our purposes are, so are our words; as our words are, so are our actions; and as our deeds are, so is our life. The whole life of those who have known Christ is good. I think I have said enough, even though, out of love for humanity, I have gone on rather long. I have poured out whatever I had from God, to urge you toward the greatest of goods, salvation. For when the subject is a life that has no end at all, the words themselves never want to stop revealing its sacred mysteries. What remains for you is this final step: to choose what is to your advantage, judgment or grace. I do not think there should even be any hesitation over which of the two is better. Nor is it even right to compare life with destruction.[167]
Notes
[124] The Sophocles line does not appear in his surviving plays. It probably comes from a lost work.
[125] “The fool learns by suffering” is from Hesiod (Works and Days 218); Homer has a similar saying (“the fool learns when it is done,” Iliad 17.32, 20.198).
[126] The “it says” quotation is from Isaiah 1:3.
[127] Clement draws on the Elijah stories: the cloud and rain after the drought (1 Kings 18:44–45) and Elijah’s being taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2:11). “Shining cloud” is also the phrase used for the cloud at the Transfiguration, where Elijah appears (Matthew 17:5).
[128] “Lovers of the Word” translates a Greek word that can also mean “lovers of learning” or “lovers of discourse.”
[129] The words “You who are thirsty... without money” are Isaiah 55:1. The opening words, “Become righteous, says the Lord,” do not match any single known Bible verse.
[130] The saying about the saints inheriting God’s glory has no exact match in our Bibles. “What no eye has seen...” is close to 1 Corinthians 2:9, which echoes Isaiah 64:4.
[131] “Death and life” comes from Deuteronomy 30:15 and 30:19, where Moses urges Israel to “choose life.” The two “if” sayings and “the mouth of the Lord has spoken” are from Isaiah 1:19–20. The words “grace” and “judgment” are Clement’s own comments on them.
[132] “Greatly harms men” is from a line of Homer (Iliad 24.45), also found in Hesiod (Works and Days 318). The original line is about shame, which “greatly harms men, and helps them too.” Clement quotes only the harmful half.
[133] “Thirteenth god” means one more than the twelve Olympian gods. The Greek calls Theocritus “the sophist from Chios,” that is, from the island of Chios.
[134] Phidias, Polycleitus and Praxiteles were famous sculptors, and Apelles a famous painter.
[135] “Image of God” echoes Colossians 1:15 (compare 2 Corinthians 4:4). “Image” and “likeness” echo Genesis 1:26. “Breathed a soul into” recalls Genesis 2:7.
[136] “Wash, you who are defiled” may echo Isaiah 1:16, “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean.”
[137] The Greek (oikeiōs echein pros theon) says that a human being is by nature closely akin to God.
[138] The poet’s lines are from Homer’s Odyssey (13.203-204). Odysseus speaks them when he wakes up in Ithaca and does not recognize where he is.
[139] The Greek word for rainbow, iris, is also the name of the rainbow goddess Iris.
[140] Wealth (Plutus) was pictured as blind because he hands out riches without regard to merit.
[141] Clement adapts Hesiod (Works and Days 252-253), who says there are thirty thousand immortal watchers of Zeus over mortal men on the many-nourishing earth. Clement calls them “demons” and denies they are immortal, to make his point that they are only lifeless images of stone and wood.
[142] In Greek myth, Niobe was turned to stone while grieving for her children.
[143] “No moth, no thief” echoes Matthew 6:19–20.
[144] “Will lick the dust” adapts Psalm 72:9 (71:9 in the Greek Bible). “The heel of the righteous” recalls the serpent and the heel in Genesis 3:15. “Wise and harmless” echoes Matthew 10:16.
[145] The quotations follow the Greek Old Testament: Psalm 62:8 (61:9 in the Greek Bible), Psalm 69:32 (68:33), and Psalm 70:4 (69:5); in the last, Clement leaves out the psalm’s words “who love your salvation.”
[146] The “supplements” come from Leviticus 19:18 (compare Matthew 22:39), Luke 6:29, and a free combination of “You shall not covet” (Exodus 20:17) with Matthew 5:28.
[147] The words about hands, mouth and heart echo Deuteronomy 30:14. “Hands” appears in the Greek Old Testament there but not in the Hebrew.
[148] “Mask” and “drama” are theater words in the Greek. Clement pictures the incarnation as an actor taking on a role, but he does not mean the role was unreal: the Word truly “formed himself in flesh.”
[149] The Greek does not say whose hands are outstretched, but they are commonly taken as the Lord’s hands stretched out on the cross.
[150] “Christ is not divided” echoes 1 Corinthians 1:13. The rest of the sentence echoes Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:10-11 (“the new self”).
[151] “That you may know well both God and man” adapts Homer, Iliad 5.128. There Athena removes the mist from Diomedes’ eyes so that he can tell gods from men.
[152] The Psalm quotation ends after “I will sing hymns to you”; what follows (“Sing, then…”) is Clement’s own prayer, not Scripture.
[153] The older translation reads “the west has given credence to the east.” The Greek printed here says the west (sunset) has been turned around into the east (sunrise), and this version follows the Greek.
[154] After “rent,” the edition used has the word “piety” in brackets, marking it as a possible later addition. It is left out here.
[155] The closing words quote 2 Corinthians 4:6, “Light will shine out of darkness.”
[156] “The good Shepherd” recalls John 10:11. Loving God and neighbor recalls Matthew 22:37–39.
[157] The Greek verb for “dipped” is used for tempering metal by plunging it into water. It is related to the word for “baptize,” so Clement may be alluding to baptism.
[158] The quotation matches the Greek (Septuagint) text of Isaiah 58:9 (“while you are still speaking, he will say, ‘Here I am’”).
[159] “His work... his gift” translates *ergon... charis tou theou*, literally “work... grace (or favor) of God.”
[160] “A greedy evil” follows the Greek *lichnon*, “greedy.” The older English’s “winnowing fan” seems to read a similar-looking word, *liknon*.
[161] The “two suns” line is spoken by Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae. The “ear has not heard” wording echoes 1 Corinthians 2:9. The “sinner’s repentance” echoes Ezekiel 18:23 and 33:11.
[162] The older translation’s “[of the cross]” is a bracketed addition; the Greek says only “the wood,” as in the previous section.
[163] “Listen, countless tribes” is a line from Homer’s Iliad (17.220), where Hector addresses his allies. Clement puts it in the mouth of Christ and then corrects it to “all who have reason.”
[164] The colt and “the old one” refer to the animals in Christ’s entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:2-7, quoting Zechariah 9:9). The Greek says only “the old one”; “with its parent” in the older translation is not in the Greek. Clement does not spell out his meaning here. He seems to see the two animals as a picture of the new and old peoples of humanity, both brought under Christ’s yoke.
[165] The idea that human beings are God’s possessions echoes Plato’s Phaedo (62b). “Loving the Lord God” recalls Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37.
[166] Clement calls the devout person sōphrōn, “sound-minded” or “self-controlled,” rather than simply “wise,” and calls the others apeithountes, “those who disobey,” a word sometimes also rendered “unbelieving.”
[167] “Revealing its sacred mysteries” translates a verb taken from the hierophant, the chief priest of the Eleusinian mysteries, who displayed the sacred objects to those being initiated. Clement has mocked these mysteries earlier in the work, and here he applies their language to the gospel. The Greek also plays on “end” and “stop”: a life without end, words that never want to stop.