The identification of this incarnate Logos with Jesus of Nazareth was part of Clement's inheritance, and as usual he accepted the form which the tradition of the Church had assumed. But Clement's theology altered the significance of Jesus. For the Abba Father whom Jesus loved, he substituted the great Unknowable, and then he had to bring in a figure unfamiliar to the thought of Jesus—the Logos, whom he clothed with many of the attributes of the Father of Jesus, and then identified with Jesus himself. Not unnaturally in this combination the historic is outweighed by the theoretic element, and indeed receives very little attention. The thought of Incarnation is to Clement much more important than the Personality.
The virgin-birth
Jesus is "God and pedagogue," "good shepherd," and "mystic Angel (or messenger)," "the pearl," "the great High Priest," and so forth.[136] In a few passages (some of them already quoted) Clement speaks of the earthly life of Jesus—of the crown of thorns, the common ware, and the absence of a silver foot-bath. But he takes care to make it clear that Jesus was "not an ordinary man," and that was why he did not marry and have children—this in opposition to certain vain persons who held up the Lord's example as a reason for rejecting marriage, which "they call simple prostitution and a practice introduced by the devil."[137] So far was Jesus from being "an ordinary man" that Clement takes pains to dissociate him from ordinary human experience. To the miraculous birth he refers incidentally but in a way that leaves no mistake possible. "Most people even now believe, as it seems, that Mary ceased to be a virgin through the birth of her child, though this was not really the case—for some say she was found by the midwife to be a virgin after her delivery."[138] This expansion of the traditional story is to be noted as an early illustration of the influence of dogma. The episode appears in an elaborate form in the apocryphal Gospels.[139] But Clement goes further. "In the case of the Saviour, to suppose that his body required, quâ body, the necessary attentions for its continuance, would be laughable (gélos). For he ate—not on account of his body, which was held together by holy power, but that it might not occur to those who consorted with him to think otherwise of him—as indeed later on some really supposed him to have been manifested merely in appearance [i.e. the Docetists who counted his body a phantom]. He himself was entirely without passion (apathés) and into him entered no emotional movement (kínema pathetikón), neither pleasure nor pain."[140] A fragment (in a Latin translation) of a commentary of Clement's upon the first Epistle of John, contains a curious statement: "It is said in the traditions that John touched the surface of the body of Jesus, and drove his hand deep into it, and the firmness of the flesh was no obstacle but gave way to the hand of the disciple."[141] At the same time we read: "It was not idly that the Lord chose to employ a body of mean form, in order that no one, while praising his comeliness and beauty, should depart from what he said, and in cleaving to what is left behind should be severed from the higher things of thought (tôn noetôn)."[142]
It is consistent with the general scheme of Clement's thought that the cross has but a small part in his theology. "It was not by the will of his Father that the Lord suffered, nor are the persecuted so treated in accordance with his choice"—it is rather in both cases that "such things occur, God not preventing them; this alone saves at once the providence and goodness of God."[143] Yet "the blood of the Lord is twofold; there is the fleshly, whereby we have been redeemed from corruption, and the spiritual, by which we have been anointed."[144] The cross is the landmark between us and our past.[145] On the whole Clement has not much to say about sin, though of course he does not ignore it. It is "eternal death";[146] it is "irrational";[147] it is not to be attributed "to the operation (energy) of dæmons," as that would be to acquit the sinner, still it makes a man "like the dæmons" (daimonikós).[148] God's punishments he holds to be curative in purpose.[149] He says nothing to imply the eternity of punishment,[150] and as we have seen he speaks definitely of the Gospel being preached to the dead.
The vision of the true gnostic
The Christian religion, according to Clement, begins in faith and goes on to knowledge. The heavier emphasis with him always falls on knowledge, though he maintains in a fine chapter that faith is its foundation.[151] "The Greeks," he says, "consider faith an empty and barbarous thing,"[152] but he is far from such a view. Faith must be well-founded—"if faith is such as to be destroyed by plausible talk, let it be destroyed."[153] But the word left upon the reader's mind is knowledge. A passage like the following is unmistakable. "Supposing one were to offer the Gnostic his choice, whether he would prefer the knowledge of God or eternal salvation, one or the other (though of course they are above all things an identity); without the slightest hesitation he would choose the knowledge of God for its own sake."[154] The ideal Christian is habitually spoken of in this way, as the "man of knowledge"—the true "Gnostic," as opposed to the heretics who illegitimately claim the title. A very great deal of Clement's writing is devoted to building up this Gnostic, to outlining his ideal character. He is essentially man as God conceived him, entering into the divine life, and, by the grace of the Logos, even becoming God.
This thought of man becoming God Clement repeats very often, and it is a mark of how far Christianity has travelled from Palestine. It begins with the Platonic ideal of being made like to God, and the means is the knowledge of God or the sight of God given by the Logos. "'Nought say I of the rest,'[155] glorifying God. Only I say that those Gnostic souls are so carried away by the magnificence of the vision (theopía) that they cannot confine themselves within the lines of the constitution by which each holy degree is assigned and in accordance with which the blessed abodes of the gods have been marked out and allotted; but being counted as 'holy among the holy,' and translated absolutely and entirely to another sphere, they keep on always moving to better and yet better regions, until they no longer greet the divine vision in mirrors or by means of mirrors, but with loving souls feast for ever on the uncloying never-ending sight, radiant in its transparent clearness, while throughout the endless ages they taste a never-wearying delight, and thus continue, all alike honoured with an identity of pre-eminence. This is the apprehensive vision of the pure in heart. This, then, is the work (enérgeia) of the perfected Gnostic—to hold communion with God through the Great High Christ being made like the Lord as far as may be. Yes, and in this process of becoming like God the Gnostic creates and fashions himself anew, and adorns those that hear him."[156] In an interesting chapter Clement discusses abstraction from material things as a necessary condition for attaining the knowledge of God; we must "cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ and thence go forward."[157] "If a man know himself, he shall know God, and knowing God shall be made like to him.... The man with whom the Logos dwells ... is made like to God ... and that man becomes God, for God wishes it."[158] "By being deified into Apathy (apatheian) a man becomes Monadic without stain."[159] As Homer makes men poets, Crobylus cooks, and Plato philosophers; "so he who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him, is fully perfected after the likeness of his Teacher, and thus becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh."[160] "Dwelling with the Lord, talking with him and sharing his hearth, he will abide according to the spirit, pure in flesh, pure in heart, sanctified in word. 'The world to him,' it says, 'is crucified and he to the world.' He carries the cross of the Saviour and follows the Lord 'in his footsteps as of a god,' and is become holy of the holy."[161]
We seem to touch the world of daily life, when after all the beatific visions we see the cross again. Clement has abundance of suggestion for Christian society in Alexandria, and it is surprising how simple, natural and wise is his attitude to the daily round and common task. Men and women alike may "philosophize," for their "virtue" (in Aristotle's phrase) is the same—so may the slave, the ignorant and the child.[162] The Christian life is not to eradicate the natural but to control it.[163] Marriage is a state of God's appointing—Clement is no Jerome. Nature made us to marry and "the childless man falls short of the perfection of Nature."[164] Men must marry for their country's sake and for the completeness of the universe.[165] True manhood is not proved by celibacy—the married man may "fall short of the other as regards his personal salvation, but he has the advantage in the conduct of life inasmuch as he really preserves a faint (olígen) image of the true Providence."[166] The heathen, it is true, may expose their own children and keep parrots, but the begetting and upbringing of children is a part of the married Christian life.[167] "Who are the two or three gathering in the name of Christ, among whom the Lord is in the midst? Does he not mean man, wife and child by the three, seeing woman is made to match man by God."[168]
The real fact about the Christian life is simply this, that the New Song turns wild beasts into men of God.[169] "Sail past the siren's song, it works death," says Clement, "if only thou wilt, thou hast overcome destruction; lashed to the wood thou shalt be loosed from ruin; the Word of God will steer thee and the holy spirit will moor thee to the havens of heaven."[170] To the early Christian "the wood" always meant the cross of Jesus. The new life is "doing good for love's sake,"[171] and "he who shows pity ought not to know that he is doing it.... When he does good by instinctive habit (en héxei) then he will be imitating the nature of good."[172] God breathed into man and there has always been something charming in a man since then (philtron).[173] So "the new people" are always happy, always in the full bloom of thought, always at spring-time.[174] The Church is the one thing in the world that always rejoices.[175]
Clement's theology is composite rather than organic—a structure of materials old and new, hardly fit for the open air, the wind and the rain. But his faith is another thing—it rests upon the living personality of the Saviour, the love of God and the significance of the individual soul, and it has the stamp of such faith in all the ages—joy and peace in believing. It has lasted because it lived. If Christianity had depended on the Logos, it would have followed the Logos to the limbo whither went Æon and Aporrhoia and Spermaticos Logos. But that the Logos has not perished is due to the one fact that with the Cross it has been borne through the ages on the shoulders of Jesus.
Chapter IX Footnotes:
[1] See the letter of Hadrian quoted by Vopiscus, Saturninus, 8 (Script. Hist. Aug.).
[2] Pædag. ii, 2; 13; 14.
[3] Pæd. ii, 20, 2, 3.
[4] Pæd. ii, 32, 2.
[5] Pæd. ii, 38, 1-3.
[6] Pæd. ii, 45-60.
[7] Pæd. ii, 61-73; Tertullian, de corona militis, 5, flowers on the head are against nature, etc.; ib. 10, on the paganism of the practice; ib. 13 (end), a list of the heathen gods honoured if a Christian hang a crown on his door.
[8] Pæd. ii, 129, 3; iii, 56, 3; Tertullian ironically, de cultu fem. ii, 10, scrupulosa deus et auribus vulnera intulit.
[9] iii, 4, 2. Cf. Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, p. 22: "In the temple of Sobk there was a tank containing a crocodile, a cat dwelt in the temple of Bast." The simile also in Lucian, Imag. 11, and used by Celsus ap. Orig. c. Cels. iii, 17.
[10] iii, 64, 2.
[11] iii, 79, 5.
[12] iii, 50.
[13] iii, 59, 2.
[14] ii, 60, 61.
[15] iii, 92. Cf., in general, Tertullian, de Cultu Feminarum.
[16] Euseb. E.H. v, 10.
[17] Euseb. E.H. vi, 11, 6; vi, 14, 8.
[18] Euseb. E.H. vi, 6; see de Faye, Clément d'Alexandrie, pp. 17 to 27, for the few facts of his life—a book I have used and shall quote with satisfaction.
[19] Epiphanius, Haer. I, ii, 26, p. 213; de Faye, Clément d'Alexandrie, p. 17, quoting Zahn.
[20] Euseb. Præpar. Ev. ii, 2, 64. Klémes ... pántôn mèn dià peìras elthòn anèr, thâttón ge mèn plánes ananeúsas, hôs àn pròs toû sôteríou lógou kaì dià tês euaggelikês didaskalías tôn kakôn lelutrômenos.
[21] Pæd. i, 1, 1.
[22] Strom. i, 48, 1; ii, 3, 1.
[23] Strom. vii. 111. Such hills are described in Greek novels; cf. Ælian, Varia Historia, xiii, 1, Atalanta's bower.
[24] One may perhaps compare the admiration of the contemporary Pausanias for earlier rather than later art; cf. Frazer, Pausanias and other Sketches, p. 92.
[25] Strom. i, 22, 5.
[26] Strom. i, 37, 6; and vi, 55, 3.
[27] Strom. i, 29, 10 (the phrase is Philo's); Truth in fact has been divided by the philosophic schools, as Pentheus was by the Mænads, Strom, i, 57. Cf. Milton, Areopagitica.
[28] Protr. 120, 1; ô tôn hagíon hos alethôs mysterion, ô phoòos akerátou. dadouchoûmai toùs ouranoùs kaì tòn theòn epopteûsai, hágios gínomai muoúmenos, hierophanteî dè ho kyrios kaì tòn músten sphragízetai photagogôn. Strange as the technical terms seem to-day, yet when Clement wrote, they suggested religious emotion, and would have seemed less strange than the terms modern times have kept from the Greek—bishop, deacon, liturgy, diocese, etc.
[29] Strom. iv, 162, 3.
[30] Strom. i, 71, 4. The Brahmans also in iii, 60.
[31] Strom. v, 20, 3; 31, 5; etc.
[32] Strom. vi, ch. iv, § 35 f.
[33] Origen, c. Cels. i, 2. Celsus' words: hikanoùs ehureîn dógmata toùs barbárous, and then krînai dè kaì bebaiôsasthai kaì askêsai pròs aretèn tà hypò barbaron ehurethénta ameínonés eisin héllenes. Pausanias, iv, 32, 4, egò dè Chaldaíous kaì Indôn toùs mágous prôtous oîda eipóntas hos athánatos estin anthrótou phyche. kaí sphisi kaì Hellénon álloi te epeísthesan kaì ouch hékista Plâton ho Arístonos.
[34] Euseb. E.H. vi, 13.
[35] Strom. i, 11. The quotation is roughly from Homer, Od. ii, 276.
[36] Strom. i, 43, i. Some who count themselves euphueîs, mónen kaì psilèn tèn pístin apaitoûsi.
[37] Strom. i, 45, 6, oi orthodoxastaí.
[38] Strom. vii, 55.
[39] Pædag. i, 26; 27. Perhaps for "he saith," we should read "it saith," viz. Scripture.
[40] Strom. v, 9.
[41] Strom. 43, 3-44, 2.
[42] Pæd. i, 14, 2; 19. Cf. Blake's poem.
[43] Pæd. i, 22, 3.
[44] Marcus Aurelius, xi, 3. He may have had in mind some who courted martyrdom.
[45] Euseb. E.H. v, 28, quotes a document dealing with men who study Euclid, Aristotle and Theophrastus, and all but worship Galen, and have "corrected" the Scriptures. For the view of Tertullian on this, see p. 337.
[46] Strom. i, 18, 2.
[47] Strom. vi, 80, 5.
[48] Strom. vi, 162, 5.
[49] Strom. i, 19, 2. psilê tê perì tôn dogmatisthenton autoîs chromenous phrâsei, ue synembaínontas eis tèn kata meros áchri syggnóseos ekkálypsin.
[50] Strom. vi, 59, 1. The exact rendering of the last clause is doubtful; the sense fairly clear.
[51] Strom. i, 97, 1-4.
[52] Spherical astronomy. A curious passage on this at the beginning of Lucan's Pharsalia, vii.
[53] Strom. vi, 93, 94. The line comes from a play of Sophocles, fr. 695. It may be noted that Clement has a good many such fragments, and the presence of some very doubtful ones among them, which are also quoted in the same way by other Christian writers (e.g. in Strom, v, 111-113), raises the possibility of his borrowing other men's quotations to something near certainty. Probably they all used books of extracts. See Justin, Coh. ad. Gent. 18; Athenagoras, Presb. 5, 24.
[54] Strom. vi, 152, 3-154, 1. Cf. Strom. iv, 167, 4, "the soul is not sent from heaven hither for the worse, for God energizes all things for the better."—If the English in some of these passages is involved and obscure, it perhaps gives the better impression of the Greek.
[55] Cf. Iliad, 3, 277.
[56] We may note his fondness for the old idea of Plato that man is an phytòn ouránion and has an emphytos archaia pròs ouranon koinoniá. Cf. Protr. 25, 3; 100, 3.
[57] Strom. vi, 156, 3-157, 5.
[58] Strom. vi, 159. Cf. vi, 57, 58, where he asks Who was the original teacher, and answers that it is the First-born, the Wisdom.
[59] Strom. i, 28, kata proegoúmenon and kat epakoloúthema. See de Faye, p. 168, 169. Note ref. to Paul, Galat. 3, 24.
[60] Strom. vi, 67, 1.
[61] Strom. vi, 42, 1.
[62] Strom. i, 99, 3.
[63] Strom. vi, 44, 1.
[64] Strom. vi, 44, 4.
[65] Strom. vi, 45-7; Cf. Strom. ii, 44, citing Hermas, Sim. ix, 16, 5-7. A curious discussion follows (in Strom. vi, 45-52) on the object of the Saviour's descent into Hades, and the necessity for the Gospel to be preached in the grave to those who in life had no chance of hearing it. "Could he have done anything else?" (§ 51).
[66] Strom. vi, 110, 111; Deuteronomy 4, 19, does not bear him out—neither in Greek nor in English.
[67] Strom. i, 105 and 108. Cf. Tert. adv. Marc. ii, 17, sed ante Lycurgos et Salonas omnes Moyses et deus; de anima, 28, mutio antiquior Moyses etiam Saturno nongentis circiter annis; cf. Apol. 19.
[68] For the Scripture parallels see Strom. v, 90-107. For Euripides and other inter-Hellenic plagiarisms, Strom. vi, 24.
[69] Strom. vii, 6.
[70] Strom. v, 10, 2. See an amusing page in Lecky, European Morals, i, 344.
[71] Strom. i, 94, 1; katà períptosin; katà syntychian; physikèn ennoian; koinòn noûn.
[72] Strom. v, 10; i, 18; 86; 94.
[73] Strom. i, 81, 1; John 10, 8.
[74] Strom. vi, 66; 159.
[75] Strom. vi, 67, 2.
[76] Odyssey, iv, 221, Cowper's translation.
[77] Protr. 1-3.
[78] Ibid. 5; 6.
[79] Protr. 8, 4, lógos ho toû theoû ánthropos genómenos hína dè kaì sù parà anthropou máthes, pê pote ára anthropos gentai theós.
[80] Protr. 25, 3; ref. to Euripides, fr. 935, and Troades, 884. The latter (not quite correctly quoted by Clement) is one of the poet's finest and profoundest utterances.
[81] Protr. 56, 6.
[82] Ibid. 63, 5.
[83] Protr. 66, 3.
[84] Ibid. 66, 5.
[85] Ibid. 68, 1.
[86] Protr. 70, 1; in Strom. i, 150, 4, he quotes a description of Plato as Mousês attikíxon. Cf. Tertullian, Apol. 47.
[87] Protr. 76. He quotes Orestes, 591 f.; Alcestis, 760; and concludes (anticipating Dr Verrall) that in the Ion gymnê te kephalê ekkukleî tô theátro tous theoús, quoting Ion, 442-447.
[88] Protr. 82, 1.
[89] Ibid. 84, 2.
[90] Ibid. 85, 4.
[91] Ibid. 86, 1.
[92] Protr. 86, 2. The reference is to Odyssey, i, 57. One feels that, with more justice to Odysseus, more might have been made of his craving for a sight of the smoke of his island home.
[93] Protr. 88, 2, 3.
[94] Elsewhere, he says God is beyond the Monad, Pæd. i, 71, 1, epékein toû henòs kaì hypèr autèn tèn monáda. See p. 290.
[95] Protr. 94, 1, 2. On God making the Christian his child, cf. Tert. adv. Marc. iv, 17.
[96] Protr. 100, 3, 4.
[97] Ibid. 107, 1.
[98] Ibid. 108, 5.
[99] Protr. 116, 1, hypsos (height) is the word used in literature for "sublimity," and that may be the thought here. Cf. Tert. de Bapt. 2, simplicitas divinorum operum ... et magnificentia. See p. 328.
[100] Protr. 117, 4.
[101] Strom. ii, 9, 6.
[102] Ibid. vii, 49.
[103] Psalm 63, 1.
[104] See Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, ii, pp. 183 ff; de Faye, Clément, pp. 231-8.
[105] Pæd. i, 71, 1; cf. Philo, Leg. Alleg. ii, § 1, 67 M. táttetai oûn ho theòs katà tò en kaì tèn monáda, mâllon dè kaì he monàs katà tòn héna theón. Cf. de Faye, p. 218.
[106] Expressions taken from Aristotle, Anal. Post. i, 2, p. 71 b, 20.
[107] Strom. v, 81, 5-82, 3.
[108] Strom. ii, 74, 1-75, 2; cf. Plutarch, de def. or. 414 F, 416 F (quoted on p. 97), on involving God inhuman affairs; and also adv. Sto. 33, and de Sto. repugn. 33, 34, on the Stoic doctrine making God responsible for human sin. Cf. further statements in the same vein in Strom. ii, 6, 1; v 71, 5; vii, 2.
[109] Strom. v. 65, 2.
[110] Strom. ii, 72, 1-4.
[111] Strom. iv, 151, 1.
[112] See Strom. ii, 103, 1; iv, 138, 1; vi, 71-73; Pæd. i, 4, 1.
[113] Strom. vii, 37, Mayor's translation. The "expressions" are said to go back to Xenophanes (cited by Sext. Empir. ix, 144) oulos gàr horâ, oûlos dè noeî, oûlos dé t' akoúei. Cf. Pliny, N. H. ii, 7, 14, quisquis est deus, si modo est alius, et quacumque in parte, totus est sensuus, totus visuus, totus audituus, totus animæ, totus animæ, totus sui.
[114] Cf. Strom. ii, 30, 1, ei gàr anthrópinon ên tò epitédeuma, hos Hellenes epélabon, kàn apésbe. he dè aúxei (sc. he pístis). Protr. 110, 1, ou gàr àn oútos en olígo chróno tosoûton érgon áneu theias komidês exénusen ho kúrios.
[115] Strom. vii, 5, J. B. Mayor's translation.
[116] Pæd. i, 6, 6, tò dè sôma kallei kaì eurythmia synekerásato.
[117] Phrases mostly from Strom, vii, 6-9. ennoian enestáchtai theoû. See criticism of Celsus, p. 244.
[118] Pæd. iii, 99, 2-100, 1. The quotation is from Homer's description of Hephaistos making the shield for Achilles, Il. 18, 483.
[119] All parts of the universe.
[120] Strom. vii, 9. Mayor's translation, modified to keep the double use of pneûma. For the magnet see Plato, Ion. 533 D, E.
[121] Strom. vii, 12.
[122] Strom. v, 16, 3 (no article with Logos).
[123] Strom. vii, 7
[124] Strom. vii, 9.
[125] Strom. v, 38, 6, ho kúrios hyperáno tou kósmon, mâllon dè epekeino toû noetoû.
[126] Protr. 110, 1.
[127] Protr. 63, 5; 84, 2; 68, 4.
[128] Pæd. i, 6, 2, ólou kédetai toû plásmatos, kaì sôma kaì psychèn akeîtai autoû no panarkès tès anthropótetos iatrós.
[129] Protr. 110, 2, 3. Cf. also Pæd. i, 4, 1-2.
[130] Strom. vii, 6. Cf. Pæd. i, 4, 2. apólutos eis tò pantelès anthropinon pathôn.
[131] Strom. v, 40, 3.
[132] Strom. v, 7, 7-8.
[133] Protr. 6, 1-2, touto mónon apolaúon hemôn hò sozómetha.
[134] Protr. 6, 5.
[135] Protr. 7, 3.
[136] The references are (in order) Pæd. i, 55; i, 53, 2; i, 59, 1; ii, 118, 5; Protr. 120, 2.
[137] Strom. iii, 49, 1-3, oudè anthropos ên koinós.
[138] Strom. vii, 93.
[139] See Protevangelium Jacobi, 19, 20 (in Tischendorf's Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 36), a work quoted in the 4th century by Gregory of Nyssa, and possibly the source of this statement of Clement's. Tischendorf thinks it may also have been known to Justin. See also pseudo-Matthei evangelium, 13 (Tischendorf, p. 75), known to St Jerome.
[140] Strom. vi, 71, 2. A strange opinion of Valentinus about Jesus eating may be compared, which Clement quotes without dissent in Strom. iii, 59, 3. See p. 249, n. 4.
[141] Printed in Dindorf's edition, vol. iii, p. 485.
[142] Strom. vi, 151, 3. Cf. Celsus, p. 249, and Tert. de carne Christi, 9, Adeo nec humanæ honestatis corpus fuit; Tertullian however is far from any such fancies as to Christ's body not being quite human, see p. 340.
[143] Strom. iv, 86, 2, 3; contrast Tertullian's attitude in de Fuga in Persecutione, etc.
[144] Pæd. 19, 4.
[145] Pæd. iii, 85, 3.
[146] Protr. 115, 2.
[147] Pæd. i, ch. 13.
[148] Strom. vi, 98, 1.
[149] Cf. Strom. i, 173; iv, 153, 2; Pæd. i, 70, he gàr kolasis ep' agathô kaì ep' opheleia toû kolazoménon.
[150] Cf. J. B. Mayor, Pref. to Stromateis, vii, p. xl.
[151] Strom. ii, ch. 4. Cf. ii, 48.
[152] Strom. ii, 8, 4.
[153] Strom. vi, 81, 1.
[154] Strom. iv, 136, 5.
[155] From Æsch. Agam. 36.
[156] Strom. vii, 13. (Mayor's translation in the main). Cf. Protr. 86, 2, theosébeia exomoioûsa tô theô; Pæd. 1, 99, 1; Strom. vi, 104, 2.
[157] Strom. v, 71, 3.
[158] Pæd. iii, 1, 1, and 5.
[159] Strom. iv, 152, 1.
[160] Strom. vii, 101.
[161] Strom. ii, 104, 2, 3, with reff. to Paul Gal. 6, 14; and Odyssey, 2, 406. Other passages in which the notion occurs are Strom. iv, 149, 8; vii, 56, 82. Augustine has the thought—all the Fathers, indeed, according to Harnack. See Mayor's note on Strom. vii, 3. It also comes in the Theologia Germanica.
[162] Strom. iv. 62, 4; 58, 3; the aretè in Pæd. i, 10, 1.
[163] Pæd. ii, 46, 1.
[164] Strom. ii, 139, 5.
[165] Strom. ii, 140, 1, a very remarkable utterance.
[166] Strom. vii, 70, end.
[167] Pæd. ii, 83, 1,
toîs dè bebamekósi skópos he paidopoiîa, telos dè he euteknía. Cf. Tertullian, adv. Marc. iv, 17, on the impropriety of God calling us children if we suppose that he nobis filios facere non permisit auferendo connubium. The opposite view, for purposes of argument perhaps, in de exh. castitatis, 12, where he ridicules the idea of producing children for the sake of the state.
[168] Strom. iii, 68, 1.
[169] Protr. 4, 3.
[170] Protr. 118, 4.
[171] Strom. iv, 135, 4.
[172] Strom. iv, 138, 2, 3.
[173] Pæd. i, 7, 2.
[174] Pæd. i, 20, 3, 4.
[175] Pæd. i, 22, 2, móne púte eis toùs aiônas menei chaírous aeí.
CHAPTER X
TERTULLIAN
In his most famous chapter Gibbon speaks at one point of the affirmation of the early church that those who persisted in the worship of the dæmons "neither deserved nor could expect a pardon from the irritated justice of the Deity." Oppressed in this world by the power of the Pagans, Christians "were sometimes seduced by resentment and spiritual pride to delight in the prospect of their future triumph. 'You are fond of spectacles,' exclaims the stern Tertullian, 'expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs, and fancied gods, groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers——' But the humanity of the reader will permit me to draw a veil over the rest of this infernal description, which the zealous African pursues in a long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms."[1]
The passage is a magnificent example of Gibbon's style and method,—more useful, however, as an index to the mind of Gibbon than to that of Tertullian. He has abridged his translation, and in one or two clauses he has missed Tertullian's points; finally he has drawn his veil over the rest of the infernal description exactly when he knew there was little or nothing more to be quoted that would serve his purpose. He has made no attempt to understand the man he quotes, nor the mood in which he spoke, nor the circumstances which gave rise to that mood. Yet on the evidence of this passage and a sonnet of Matthew Arnold's, English readers pass a swift judgment on "the stern Tertullian" and his "unpitying Phrygian sect." But to the historian of human thought, and to the student of human character, there are few figures of more significance in Latin literature. Of the men who moulded Western Christendom few have stamped themselves and their ideas upon it with anything approaching the clearness and the effect of Tertullian. He first turned the currents of Christian thought in the West into channels in which they have never yet ceased to flow and will probably long continue to flow. He was the first Latin churchman, and his genius helped to shape Latin Christianity. He, too, was the first great Puritan of the West, precursor alike of Augustine and of the Reformation. The Catholic Church left him unread throughout the Middle Ages, but at the Renaissance he began once more to be studied, and simultaneously there also began the great movement for the purification of the church and the deepening of Christian life, which were the causes to which he had given himself and his genius.
Such a man may be open to criticism on many sides. He may be permanently or fitfully wrong in thought or speech or conduct; but it is clear that an influence so great rests upon something more profound than irritability however brilliant in expression. There must be somewhere in the man something that corresponds with the enduring thoughts of mankind—something that engages the mind or that wins the friendship of men—something that is true and valid. And this, whatever it is, is the outcome of many confluent elements—of temperament, environment and experience, perhaps, in chief. The man must be seen as his personal friends saw him and as his enemies saw him; what is more, they—both sets of them—must be seen as he saw them. The critic must himself, by dint of study and imagination, be played upon by as many of the factors of the man's experience as he can re-capture. Impressions, pleasures, doubts, hopes, convictions, friendships, inspirations—everything that goes to shape a man is relevant to that study of character without which, in the case of formative men, history itself becomes pedantry and illusion. Particularly in the case of such a man as Tertullian is it needful to repeat this caution. The impetuous dogmatism in which his mind and, quite as often, his mood express themselves, and his hard words, harder a great deal than his heart, no less than his impulsive convictions, "seem," as Gibbon put it, "to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age." On the other side, the church, which the historian in a footnote saddles with the responsibility of sharing Tertullian's most harsh beliefs, is at one with "the present age" in repudiating him on grounds of her own. Yet, questioned or condemned, Tertullian played his part, and that no little one, in the conflict of religions; he stood for truth as he saw it, and wrote and spoke with little thought of the praise or blame of his contemporaries or of posterity—all that he had abandoned once for all, when he made the great choice of his life. Questioned or condemned, he is representative, and he is individual, the first man of genius of the Latin race to follow Jesus Christ, and to re-set his ideas in the language native to that race.
Carthage
Tertullian was born about the middle of the second century A.D. at Carthage, or in its neighbourhood. The city at all events is the scene of his life—a great city with a great history. "Tyre in Africa" is one of his phrases for Carthage and her "sister-cities," and he quotes Virgil's description of Dido's town studiis asperrima belli.[2] But his Carthage was not that of Dido and Hannibal. It was the re-founded city of Julius Cæsar, now itself two hundred years old—a place with a character of its own familiar to the reader of Apuleius and of Augustine's Confessions,—a character confirmed by the references of Tertullian to its amusements and its daily sights. "What sea-captain is there that does not carry his mirth even to the point of shame? Every day we see the frolics in which sailors take their pleasure."[3] Scholars have played with the fancy that they could trace in Tertullian's work the influence of some Semitic strain, as others with equal reason have found traces of the Celt in Virgil and Livy. Tertullian himself has perhaps even fewer references to Punic speech and people than Apuleius, while, like Apuleius, he wrote in both Greek and Latin,[4] and it is possible that, like Apuleius, and Perpetua the martyr, he spoke both.
Jerome tells us that Tertullian was the son of a centurion.[5] He tells us himself, incidentally and by implication, that he was the child of heathen parents. "Idolatry," he says, "is the midwife that brings all men into the world;" and he gives a very curious picture of the pagan ceremonies that went with child-birth, the fillet on the mother's womb, the cries to Lucina, the table spread for Juno, the horoscope, and finally the dedication of a hair of the child, or of all his hair together, as the rites of clan or family may require.[6] Thus from the very first the boy is dedicated to a genius, and to the evil he inherits through the transmission of his bodily nature is added the influence of a false dæmon—"though there still is good innate in the soul, the archetypal good, divine and germane, essentially natural; for what comes from God is not so much extinguished as overshadowed."[7] The children of Christian parents have so far, he indicates, a better beginning; they are holy in virtue of their stock and of their upbringing.[8] With himself it had not been so. It is curious to find the great controversialist of later days recalling nursery tales, how "amid the difficulties of sleep one heard from one's nurse about the witch's towers and the combs of the sun"—recalling too the children's witticisms about the apples that grow in the sea and the fishes that grow on the tree.[9] They come back into his mind as he thinks of the speculations of Valentinus and his followers.
His training
His education was that of his day,—lavish rhetoric, and knowledge of that very wide character which in all his contemporaries is perhaps too suggestive of manual and cyclopaedia[10]—works never so abundant in antiquity as then. But he was well taught, as a brilliant boy deserved, and his range of interests is remarkable. Nor is he overwhelmed by miscellaneous erudition, like Aulus Gellius for instance, or like Clement of Alexandria, to come to a man more on his own level. He is master of the great literature of Rome; he has read the historians and Cicero; he can quote Virgil with telling effect. Usque adeone mori miserum est? he asks of the Christian who hesitates to be martyred;[11] "a hint from the world" he says. Sooner or later, he read Varro's books, the armoury of every Latin Christian against polytheism.
He "looked into medicine," he tells us, and a good many passages in his treatises remind us of the fact.[12] It may help to explain an explicitness in the use of terms more usual in the physician perhaps than in the layman.
But his career lay not in medicine but in law, and he caught the spirit of his profession. It has been debated whether the Tertullian, whose treatise de castrensi peculio is quoted in the Digest, is the apologist or another, but no legal treatises are needed to convince the reader how thoroughly a lawyer was the author of the theological works. He has every art and every artifice of his trade. He can reason quietly and soundly, he can declaim, he can do both together. He is a master of logic, delighting in huge chains of alternatives. He can quibble and wrest the obvious meaning of a document to perfection, browbeat an opponent, argue ad hominem,[13] evade a clear issue, and anticipate and escape an obvious objection, as well as any lawyer that ever practised. Again and again he impresses us as a special pleader, and we feel that he is forcing us away from the evidence of our own sense and intelligence to a conclusion which he prefers on other grounds. His epigrams rival Tacitus, and there is even in his rhetoric a conviction and a passion which Cicero never reaches. The suddenness of his questions, and the amazing readiness of his jests, savage, subtle, ironic, good-natured, brilliant or commonplace,[14] impress the reader again and again, however well he knows him. Yet Tertullian never loses sight of his object, whatever the flights of rhetoric or humour on which he ventures. In one case, he plainly says that his end will best be achieved by ridicule. "Put it down, reader, as a sham fight before the battle. I will show how to deal wounds, but I will not deal them. If there shall be laughter, the matter itself shall be the apology. There are many things that deserve so to be refuted; gravity would be too high a compliment. Vanity and mirth may go together. Yes, and it becomes Truth to laugh, because she is glad, to play with her rivals, because she is free from fear."[15] Then, with a caution as to becoming laughter, he launches into his most amusing book—that against the Valentinians.