Clement and the mysteries

At some time of his life Clement acquired a close acquaintance with pagan mythology and its cults. It may be that he was initiated into mysteries; in his Protrepticus he gives an account of many of them, which is of great value to the modern student. It is probable enough that an earnest man in search of God would explore the obvious avenues to the knowledge he sought—avenues much travelled and loudly vaunted in his day. Having explored them, it is again not unlikely that a spirit so pure and gentle should be repelled by rituals and legends full of obscenity and cruelty. It is of course possible that much of his knowledge came from books, perhaps after his conversion, for one great part of Christian polemic was the simple exposure of the secret rites of paganism. Yet it remains that his language is permanently charged with technical terms proper to the mysteries, and that he loves to put Christian knowledge and experience in the old language—"Oh! mysteries truly holy! Oh! stainless light! The daduchs lead me on to be the epopt of the heavens and of God; I am initiated and become holy; the Lord is the hierophant and seals the mystês for himself, himself the photagogue."[28] It is again a little surprising to hear of "the Saviour "being" our mystagogue as in the tragedy—

He sees, we see, he gives the holy things (órgia);

and if thou wilt inquire

These holy things—what form have they for thee?

thou wilt hear in reply

Save Bacchus' own initiate, none may know."[29]

It is inconceivable that a Hebrew, or anyone but a Greek, could have written such a passage with its double series of allusions to Greek mysteries and to Euripides' Bacchæ. Clement is the only man who writes in this way, with an allusiveness beyond Plutarch's, and a fancy as comprehensive as his charity and his experience of literature and religion.

He had the Greek's curious interest in foreign religions, and he speaks of Chaldæans and Magians, of Indian hermits and Brahmans—"and among the Indians are those that follow the precepts of Buddha (Boûtta), whom for his exceeding holiness they have honoured as a god"—of the holy women of the Germans and the Druids of the Gauls.[30] Probably in each of these cases his knowledge was soon exhausted, but it shows the direction of his thoughts. Egypt of course furnished a richer field of inquiry to him as to Plutarch. He has passages on Egyptian symbolism,[31] and on their ceremonial,[32] which contain interesting detail. It was admitted by the Greeks—even by Celsus—that barbarians excelled in the discovery of religious dogma, though they could not equal the Greeks in the philosophic use of it. Thus Pausanias says the Chaldæans and Indian Magians first spoke of the soul's immortality, which many Greeks have accepted, "not least Plato son of Ariston."[33]

In the course of his intellectual wanderings, very possibly before he became a Christian, Clement investigated Jewish thought so far as it was accessible to him in Greek, for Greeks did not learn barbarian languages. Eusebius remarks upon his allusions to a number of Jewish historians.[34] His debt to Philo is very great, for it was not only his allegoric method in general and some elaborate allegories that he borrowed, but the central conception in his presentment of Christianity comes originally from the Jewish thinker, though Clement was not the first Christian to use the term Logos.

Clement does not tell us that he was born of pagan parents, nor does he speak definitely of his conversion. It is an inference, and we are left to conjecture the steps by which it came, but without the help of evidence. One allusion to his Christian teachers is dropped when he justifies his writing the Stromateis—"memoranda treasured up for my old age, an antidote against forgetfulness, a mere semblance and shadow-picture of those bright and living discourses, those men happy and truly remarkable, whom I was counted worthy to hear." And then the reading is uncertain, but, according to Dr Stahlin's text he says: "Of these, one was in Greece—the Ionian; the next (pl.) in Magna Græcia (one of whom was from Coele Syria and the other from Egypt); others in the East; and in this region one was an Assyrian, and the other in Palestine a Hebrew by descent. The last of all (in power he was the first) I met and found my rest in him, when I had caught him hidden away in Egypt. He, the true Sicilian bee, culling the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, begot pure knowledge in the souls of those who heard him. These men preserved the true tradition of the blessed teaching direct from Peter and James, John and Paul, the holy apostles, son receiving it from father ('and few be sons their fathers' peers'), and reached down by God's blessing even to us, in us to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds."[35] It is supposed that the Assyrian was Tatian, while the Sicilian bee hidden away in Egypt was almost certainly Pantænus.

Clement's education had been wide and superficial, his reading sympathetic but not deep, his philosophy vague and eclectic, and now from paganism with its strange and indefinite aggregation of religions based on cult and legend, he passed to a faith that rested on a tradition jealously maintained and a rule beginning to be venerable. He met men with a definite language in which they expressed a common experience—who had moreover seen a good many efforts made to mend the language and all of them ending in "shipwreck concerning the faith"; who therefore held to the "form of sound words" as the one foundation for the Christian life.

It says a great deal for Clement's character—one might boldly say at once that it is an index to his personal experience—that he could sympathize with these men in the warm and generous way he did. Now and again he is guilty of directing a little irony against the louder-voiced defenders of "faith only, bare faith"[36] and "straight opinion"—"the orthodoxasts, as they are called."[37] (The curious word shows that the terms "orthodox" and "orthodoxy" were not yet quite developed.) But he stands firmly by the simplest Christians and their experience. If he pleads for a wider view of things—for what he calls "knowledge," it is, he maintains, the development of the common faith of all Christians. It is quite different from the wisdom that is implanted by teaching; it comes by grace. "The foundation of knowledge is to have no doubts about God, but to believe; Christ is both—foundation and superstructure alike; by him is the beginning and the end.... These, I mean faith and love, are not matters of teaching."[38] As Jesus became perfect by baptism and was hallowed by the descent of the spirit, "so it befals us also, whose pattern is the Lord. Baptized, we are enlightened; enlightened, we are made sons; made sons we are perfected; made perfect we become immortal [all these verbs and participles are in the present]. 'I,' he saith, 'said ye are gods and sons of the Most High, all of you.' This work has many names; it is called gift [or grace, chárisma], enlightenment, perfection, baptism.... What is wanting for him who knows God? It would be strange indeed if that were called a gift of God which was incomplete; the Perfect will give what is perfect, one supposes.... Thus they that have once grasped the borders of life are already perfect; we live already, who are separated from death. Salvation is following Christ.... So to believe—only to believe—and to be born again is perfection in life."[39] He praises the poet of Agrigentum for hymning faith, which his verses declare to be hard; 'and that is why the Apostle exhorts 'that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men'—who offer to persuade—'but in the power of God'—which alone and without proofs can by bare faith save."[40]

"The real polymetis"

It was this strong sympathy with the simplest view of the Christian faith that made the life-work of Clement possible. He was to go far outside the ordinary thoughts of the Christian community round about him—inevitably he had to do this under the compulsion of his wide experience of books and thinkers—but the centre of all his larger experience he found where his unlettered friends, "believing without letters," found their centre, and he checked his theories, original and borrowed—or he aimed at checking them—by life. "As in gardening and in medicine he is the man of real learning (chrestomathés), who has had experience of the more varied lessons...; so, I say, here too, of him who brings everything to bear on the truth.... We praise the pilot of wide range, who 'has seen the cities of many men'... so he who turns everything to the right life, fetching illustrations from things Greek and things barbarian alike, he is the much-experienced (polypeiros) tracker of truth, the real polymêtis; like the touchstone—the Lydian stone believed to distinguish between the bastard and the true-born gold, he is able to separate,—our polyidris and man of knowledge (gnostikos) as he is,—sophistic from philosophy, the cosmetic art from the true gymnastic, cookery from medicine, rhetoric from dialectic, magic and other heresies in the barbarian philosophy from the actual truth."[41] This, in spirit and letter, is a very characteristic utterance. Beginning with the Lord as "the vine"—from which some expect to gather clusters of grapes in the twinkling of an eye—he ranges into medicine and sea-faring, from Odysseus "of many wiles, who saw the cities of many men and learnt their mind," to Plato's Gorgias, and brings all to bear on the Christian life. What his simple friends made of such a passage—if they were able to read at all, or had it read to them—it is not easy to guess, but contact must have shown them in the man a genuine and tender Christian as Christocentric as themselves, if in speech he was oddly suited,—a gay epitome of Greek literature in every sentence.

This, then, is the man, a Greek of wide culture and open heart, who has dipped into everything that can charm the fancy and make the heart beat,—curious in literature, cult, and philosophy, and now submitted to the tradition of the church and the authority of Hebrew prophet and Christian apostle, but not as one bowing to a strange and difficult necessity. Rather, with the humblest of God's children—those "tender, simple and guileless" children on whom God lavishes all the little names which he has for his only Son, the "lamb" and the "child"[42]—he finds in Christ "thanksgiving, blessing, triumph and joy," while Christ himself bends from above, like Sarah, to smile upon their "laughter."[43] Such was the range of Clement's experience, and now, under the influence of the great change that conversion brought, he had to re-think everything and to gather it up in a new unity. Thus in one man were summed up all the elements of import in the general situation of the church of his day. He was representative alike in his susceptibility to the ancient literature and philosophy and his love of Scripture—"truth-loving Isaiah" and "St Paul"—in his loyalty to the faith, and, not less, in his determination to reach some higher ground from which the battle of the church could be fought with wider outlook, more intelligent grasp of the factors in play, and more hope of winning men for God.

Faith and philosophy

Clement did not come before his time. Philosophy had begun to realize the significance of the church. The repression of the "harmful superstition" was no longer an affair of police; it was the common concern of good citizens. The model Emperor himself, the philosopher upon the throne, had openly departed from the easy policy laid down by Trajan and continued by his successors. He had witnessed, or had received reports of, executions. Writing in his diary of death, he says: "What a soul is that which is ready, if the moment has come for its separation from the body, whether it is to be extinguished, or dissolved, or to continue a whole. This readiness—see that it come from your own judgment, not in mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but reflectively and with dignity, in a way to persuade another, with nothing of the actor in it."[44] This sentence betrays something of the limitations of a good man—a beautiful spirit indeed, but not a little over-praised by his admirers in modern days. Celsus at once taunts his Christian opponents with their prospects of painful death and demonstrates the absurdity of their tenets from the point of view of philosophy. The Apologists say, too, that the philosophers lent themselves (as did also the dæmons) to inciting the mob to massacre. But after all the dialectical weapons of Philosophy were the more dangerous, for they shook the faith of the Christian which death did not shake.

Again, the candid and inquiring temper of some notable converts and friends had led them to question the tradition of the church and to examine their Christian experience with a freedom from prejudice, at least in the evangelic direction, which had resulted in conclusions fatal, it seemed, to the Christian movement. Their philosophy had carried them outside the thoughts of Jesus—they had abandoned the idea of the Abba Father, of the divine love, of the naturalness and instinctiveness of Christian life. Incarnation and redemption they rejected, at least in the sense which made the conceptions of value to men. Jesus they remodelled into one and another figure more amenable to their theories—a mere man, a demi-god, a phantom, into anything but the historic personality that was and could remain the centre and inspiration of Christian life. Of all this mischief philosophy, men said, was the cause.[45]

"I know quite well," writes Clement, "what is said over and over again by some ignorantly nervous people who insist that we should confine ourselves to the inevitable minimum, to what contains the faith, and pass over what is outside and superfluous, as it wears us out to no purpose and occupies us with what contributes nothing to our end. Others say philosophy comes of evil and was introduced into life for the ruin of men by an evil inventor."[46] They were afraid of philosophy, as children might fear a ghost, in case it should take them away[47]—but this, as Clement saw, was no way to meet the danger. The Christian must not philosophize, they said—Tertullian said it too; but how could they know they must not philosophize unless they philosophized?[48] Whether philosophy is profitable or not, "you cannot condemn the Greeks on the basis of mere statements about their opinions, without going into it with them till point by point you discover what they mean and understand them. It is the refutation based upon experience that is reliable."[49]

His defence of philosophy

So Clement has first of all to fight the battle of education inside the church, to convince his friends that culture counts, that philosophy is inevitable and of use at once for the refutation of opponents and for the achievement of the full significance of faith. Then he has to show how philosophy at its best was the foe of superstition and the champion of God's unity and goodness—a preparation for the Gospel. Lastly he has to restate the Christian position in the language of philosophy and to prove that the Gospel is reaffirming all that was best in the philosophic schools and bringing it to a higher point, indeed to the highest; that the Gospel is the final philosophy of the universe, the solution of all the problems of existence, the revelation of the ultimate mind of God.

Clement boldly asserts the unity of all knowledge. Everything contributes, everything is concentric. "Just as every family goes back to God the Creator, so does the teaching of all good things go back to the Lord, the teaching that makes men just, that takes them by the hand and brings them that way."[50] And again:—"When many men launch a ship, pulling together, you could not say there are many causes, but one consisting of many—for each of them is not by himself the cause of its being launched but only in conjunction with others; so philosophy, which is a search for truth, contributes to the perception (katalepsis) of truth, though it is not the cause of perception, except in conjunction and co-operation with other things. Yet perhaps even a joint-cause we might call a cause. Happiness is one, and the virtues more than one which are its causes. The causes of warmth may be the sun, the fire, the bath and the clothing. So, truth is one and many things co-operate in the search for it, but the discovery is by the Son.... Truth is one, but in Geometry we have geometrical truth, in Music musical; so in Philosophy—right Philosophy—we should have Greek truth. But alone the sovereign Truth is unassailable, which we are taught by the Son of God."[51] Elsewhere, when challenged to say what use there is in knowing the causes that explain the sun's motion,[52] geometry and dialectics, when Greek philosophy is merely man's understanding, he falls back upon the mind's instinctive desire for such things, its free will (tèn proaíresin toû noû), and quickly marshals a series of texts from the Book of Wisdom on the divine source of wisdom and God's love of it, concluding with an allegory drawn from the five barley loaves and the two fishes on which the multitude were fed, the former typifying the Hebrew Law ("for barley is sooner ripe for harvest than wheat") and the fishes Greek philosophy "born and moving amid Gentile billows." ("If you are curious, take one of the fishes as signifying ordinary education and the other the philosophy that succeeds it....

A choir of voiceless fish came sweeping on,

the Tragic muse says somewhere"[53]). His appeal to the mind is a much stronger defence than any such accumulation of texts, but for the people he had in view the texts were probably more convincing.

The impulse to Philosophy is an inevitable one, native to the human mind, and he shows that it is to the Divine Reason working in all things, to Providence, that we must attribute it. "Everything, so far as its nature permits, came into being, and does so still, advancing to what is better than itself. So that it is not out of the way that Philosophy too should have been given in Divine Providence, as a preliminary training towards the perfection that comes by Christ.... 'Your hairs are numbered' and your simplest movements; can Philosophy be left out of the account? [An allegory follows from Samson's hair.] Providence, it says, from above, from what is of first importance, as from the head, reaches down to all men, as 'the myrrh,' it says, 'that descends upon Aaron's beard and to the fringe of his garment'—viz.: the Great High Priest, 'by whom all things came into being, and without him nothing came'—not, that is, on to the beauty of the body; Philosophy is outside the people [possibly Israel is meant] just as raiment is. The philosophers then, who are trained by the perceptive spirit for their own perception,—when they investigate not a part of Philosophy, but Philosophy absolutely, they testify in a truth-loving way and without pride to truth by their beautiful sayings even with those who think otherwise, and they advance to understanding (synesin), in accordance with the divine dispensation, that unspeakable goodness which universally brings the nature of all that exists onward toward the better so far as may be."[54]

Thought (phronesis) takes many forms, and it is diffused through all the universe and all human affairs, and in each sphere it has a separate name—Thought, Knowledge, Wisdom or Faith. In the things of sense it is called Right Opinion; in matters of handicraft, Art; in the logical discussion of the things of the mind, it is Dialectic. "Those who say that Philosophy is not from God, come very near saying that God cannot know each several thing in particular and that He is not the cause of all good things, if each of them is a particular thing. Nothing that is could have been at all without God's will; and, if with His will, then Philosophy is from God, since He willed it to be what it is for the sake of those who would not otherwise abstain from evil."

"He seeth all things and he heareth all[55]

and beholds the soul naked within, and he has through all eternity the thought (epínoia) of each several thing in particular," seeing all things, as men in a theatre look around and take all in at a glance. "There are many things in life that find their beginning in human reason, though the spark that kindles them is from God.[56] Thus health through medicine, good condition through training, wealth through commerce, come into being and are amongst us, at once by Divine Providence and human co-operation. And from God comes understanding too. And the free will (proairesis) of good men most of all obeys God's will.... The thoughts (epinoiai) of virtuous men come by divine inspiration (epípnoia), the soul being disposed so and the divine will conveyed (diadidonénou) to human souls, the divine ministers taking part in such services; for over all nations and cities are assigned angelic governances—perhaps even over individuals."[57] Philosophy makes men virtuous, so it cannot be the product of evil—that is, it is the work of God. As it was given to the best among the Greeks, we can divine who was the Giver.[58]

This is a favourite thought with Clement, and, as he does with all ideas that please him, he repeats it over and over again, in all sorts of connexions and in all variety of phrase. When a man is avowedly making "patchwork" books (Stromateis), there is really no occasion on which we can call it irrelevant for him to repeat himself, and this is a thought worth repeating. "Before the advent of the Lord, Philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, and it is still profitable for piety, a sort of primary instruction for those who reap faith by revelation.... God is the cause of all good things, of some directly, as of the Old and New Testament, of others indirectly as of Philosophy. And perhaps even directly it was given in those times to the Greeks, before the Lord called the Greeks also; for Philosophy too was a paidagogos for the Greek world, as the Law was for the Hebrews, to bring them to Christ."[59] "Generally speaking, we should not be wrong in saying that all that is necessary and profitable to life comes to us from God—and that Philosophy was more especially given to the Greeks, as a sort of covenant (diathéke) of their own, a step (hypobathra) toward the Philosophy according to Christ,—if Greek philosophers will not close their ears to the truths, through contempt of the barbarian speech."[60] "God is the bestower (choregós) of both covenants, who also gave Philosophy to the Greeks, whereby among the Greeks the Almighty is glorified."[61] "In those times Philosophy by itself 'justified' the Greeks—though not to the point of perfect righteousness."[62] "As in due season the Preaching now comes, so in due season the law and the prophets were given to the barbarians and Philosophy to the Greeks, to train their ears for the Preaching."[63]

The origin of philosophy

Philosophy however fell short of the Law. Those, who were righteous by the Law, still lacked Faith; while the others, whose righteousness was by Philosophy, not only lacked Faith but failed to break with idolatry.[64] (This was in many quarters the capital charge against contemporary philosophy.) It was for this reason that the Saviour preached the Gospel in Hades, just as after him, according to Hermas, "the apostles and teachers, when they fell asleep in the power and faith of the Son of God, preached to those who had fallen asleep before them."[65] It is curious that Clement not only cites Philosophy as a gift of God to the Gentiles before Faith came, that God's judgments might be just, but he also says, on the authority of the Law (quoting inaccurately and perhaps from memory), that God gave them the sun, the moon and stars to worship, which God made for the Gentiles that they might not become utterly atheistic and so utterly perish. "It was a road given to them, that in worshipping the stars they might look up to God."[66] That they fell into idolatry was however only too patent a fact.

The exact means, by which the Greeks received the truths contained in their philosophy, is not certain. A favourite explanation with Christian writers, and one to which Clement gives a good deal of thought, is that Greek thinkers borrowed at large from the Old Testament, for Moses lived some six hundred years before the deification of Dionysos, the Sibyl long before Orpheus.[67] Clement's illustrations are not very convincing. "The idea of bringing Providence as far down as the moon came to Aristotle from this Psalm: 'Lord, in heaven is thy mercy and thy truth as far as (héos) the clouds.'" Epicurus took his conception of Chance from "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;" while the Sabbath is found in several lines of Homer—unfortunately spurious. An attempt to convict Euripides of plagiarism from Plato's Republic shows the worth of these suggestions, and the whole scheme wakes doubts as to the value of Clement's judgment.[68]

Another theory was angelic mediation. God might have communicated with the Greeks by inferior angels;[69] or those angels who fell into pleasure might have told their human wives what they knew of divine secrets, "and so the doctrine of Providence got about."[70] Or else by happy guess or accident the Greeks found parts of the truth for themselves—or in virtue of some naturally implanted notion (énnoia) or common mind, and then "we know who is the author of nature."[71]

Whatever the explanation, in any case the hand of God was to be traced in it—Providence foreknew all, and so designed that the wickedness of fallen angels and men should promote righteousness and truth.[72] So much for those who quote the text "All that ever came before me were thieves and robbers,"[73] or who say that the devil is the author of Philosophy[74] (though we may admit Epicureanism to have been sown by the sower of tares).[75] We might look far for a more vivid illustration of the contrast between sound instinct and absurd theory.

The Protrepticus

Thus he vindicates the right of the Christian to claim Philosophy as the manifestation of the Divine Logos, and as a fore-runner of the Gospel, and in his Protrepticus he shows how the Christian thus re-inforced can deal with paganism. If the Stromateis weary even the sympathetic reader with their want of plan, their diffuseness and repetition, and their interminable and fanciful digressions—faults inherent in all works of the kind—the Protrepticus makes a different impression. It is written by the same hand and shows the same tendencies, but they are under better control. Allegories, analogies and allusions still hinder the development of his thought—like Atalanta he can never let a golden apple run past him. He is not properly a philosopher in spite of all his love of Philosophy, and he thinks in colours, like a poet. Yet he is not essentially a man of letters or a poet; he is too indolent; his style is not inevitable or compulsive. It is too true a confession when he says that he does not aim at beauty of language. His sentence will begin well, and then grow intricate and involved—in breaks an allusion, not always very relevant, and brings with it a quotation that has captured his fancy and paralyses his grammar—several perhaps—some accommodation is made, and the sentence straggles on, and will end somehow—with a pile of long words, for which others have been patiently waiting since before the quotation, in pendent genitives, accusatives and so forth. But in the Protrepticus—in the better parts of it—something has happened to his style, for (to speak after his own manner)

Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

He is no longer arguing; he surrenders to a tide of emotion, and is borne along singing, and as he sings, he seems to gather up all the music of the ancient world; we catch notes that come from Greek and Hebrew song, and the whole is woven together into a hymn to "the Saviour," "my Singer," "our new Orpheus," that for sheer beauty, for gladness and purity of feeling is unmatched in early Christian literature. One comes back to it after years and the old charm is there still. That it can survive in a few translated fragments is hardly to be expected.

He begins with the famous singers of Greek myth—Amphion, Arion, and Eunomus with the grass-hopper... You will believe empty myths, he says, but "Truth's bright face seems to you to be false and falls under eyes of unbelief." But Cithæron and Helicon are old. "Let us bring Truth and shining Wisdom from heaven above to the holy mount of God and the holy choir of the prophets. Let her, beaming with light that spreads afar, illumine all about her them that lie in darkness, and save men from error." "My Eunomus sings not Terpander's strain, nor Capion's, not the Phrygian, the Lydian or the Dorian, but the eternal strain of the new harmony, the strain that bears the name of God, the new song, the song of the Levite, with

A drug infused antidote to the pains
Of grief and anger, a most potent charm
For ills of every name,[76]

a sweet and true cure of sorrow." Orpheus sang to enslave men to idols, to foolish rites, to shadows. "Not such is my singer; he has come, soon to end cruel slavery to tyrannic dæmons; he transfers us to the gentle and kindly yoke of piety, and calls to heaven them that were fallen to earth."[77]

It was this new song that first made the whole cosmos a harmony, and it is still the stay and harmony of all things. It was this Logos of God who framed "the little cosmos, man," setting soul and body together by the holy spirit, and who sings to God upon this organ of many tones—man. The Logos himself is an organ for God, of all the harmonies, tuneful and holy.[78] What does this organ, this new song, tell us?

The Logos, that was before the Day-Star was, has appeared among men as a teacher,—he by whom all things were made. As Demiurge he gave life; as teacher he taught to live well; that, as God, he may lavish upon us life forever. Many voices and many means has the Saviour employed for the saving of men. Lest you should disbelieve these, the Logos of God has himself become man that you might learn from man how man may become God.[79]

He casts a glance over Greek myths and mysteries—cymbals, tambourines, emblems, legends and uncleanness, the work of men who knew not the God who truly is, men "without hope and without God in the world." "There was from of old a certain natural fellowship of men with heaven, hidden in the darkness of their ignorance, but now on a sudden it has leapt through the darkness and shines resplendent—even as that said by one of old,

See'st thou that boundless æther there on high
That laps earth round within its dewy arms?

and again,

O stay of earth, that hast thy seat on earth,
Whoe'er thou art, beyond man's guess to see;

and all the rest that the children of the poets sing."[80] But wrong conceptions have turned "the heavenly plant, man," from the heavenly life and laid him low on earth, persuading him to cleave to things fashioned of earth. So he returns to the discussion of pagan worships—"but by now your myths too seem to me to have grown old"—and he speaks of the dæmon-theory by which the pagans themselves explained their religion. The dæmons are inhuman and haters of men; they enjoy the slaying of men—no wonder that with such a beginning superstition is the source of cruelty and folly. But "no! I must never entrust the hopes of the soul to things without souls."[81] "The only refuge, it seems, for him who would come to the gates of "Salvation is the Divine Wisdom."[82]

He now reviews the opinions of the philosophers about God. The Stoics (to omit the rest) "saying that the divine goes through all matter, even the most dishonourable, shame Philosophy."[83] "Epicurus alone I will gladly forget."[84] "Where then are we to track out God, Plato? 'The Father and maker of this whole it is hard to find, and, when one has found him, to declare him to all is impossible.' In his name why? 'For it is unspeakable.' Well said! Plato! thou hast touched the truth!"[85] "I know thy teachers," still addressing Plato, "Geometry thou dost learn from Egyptians, Astronomy from Babylonians, the charms that give health from Thracians; much have the Assyrians taught thee; but thy laws—such of them as are true—and thy thought of God, to these thou hast been helped by the Hebrews."[86] After the philosophers the poets are called upon to give evidence—Euripides in particular.[87] Finally he turns to the prophets and their message of salvation—"I could quote you ten thousand passages, of which 'not one tittle shall pass' without being fulfilled; for the mouth of the Lord, the holy spirit, spoke them."[88]

God speaks to men as to his children—"gentle as a father," as Homer says. He offers freedom, and you run away to slavery; he gives salvation, and you slip away into death. Yet he does not cease to plead—"Wake, and Christ the Lord shall lighten upon you, the sun of resurrection."[89] "What would you have covenanted to give, oh! men! if eternal salvation had been for sale? Not though one should measure out all Pactolus, the mythic river of gold, will he pay a price equal to salvation."[90] Yet "you can buy this precious salvation with your own treasure, with love and faith of life ... that is a price God is glad to accept."[91] Men grow to the world, like seaweed to the rocks by the sea, and despise immortality "like the old Ithacan, yearning not for Truth and the fatherland in heaven, and the light that truly is, but for the smoke."[92] It is piety that "makes us like God"—a reference to Plato's familiar phrase. God's function (érgon) is man's salvation. "The word is not hidden from any. Light is common and shines upon all men; there is no Cimmerian in the reckoning. Let us hasten to salvation, to re-birth. Into one love to be gathered, many in number, according to the unity of the essence of the Monad, let us hasten. As we are blessed, let us pursue unity, seeking the good Monad. And this union of many, from a medley of voices and distraction, receives a divine harmony and becomes one symphony, following one coryphæus (choreutés) and teacher, the Word, resting upon the Truth itself, and saying 'Abba Father.'"[93] Here indeed Philosophy and the Gospel join hands, when the Monad and Abba Father are shown to be one and the same.[94]

It is easy to see which of the thoughts represented by these names means most to Clement. "Our tender loving Father, the Father indeed, ceases not to urge, to admonish, to teach, to love; for neither does he cease to save"—"only, oh! child! thirst for thy Father, and God will be shown to thee without a price."[95] "Man's proper nature is to be at home with God;" as then we set each animal to its natural task, the ox to plough and the horse to hunt, so "man, too, who is born for the sight of heaven, a heavenly plant most truly, we call to the knowledge of God.... Plough, we say, if you are a ploughman, but know God as you plough; sail, if you love sea-faring, but calling on the heavenly pilot"[96] "A noble hymn to God is an immortal man, being built up in righteousness, in whom are engraved the oracles of truth"[97]; and very soon he quotes "Turn the other cheek" as a "reasonable law to be written in the heart."[98] "God's problem is always to save the flock of men. It was for that the good God sent the good Shepherd. The Logos has made truth simple and shown to men the height of salvation."[99] "Christ wishes your salvation; with one word he gives you life. And who is he? Hear in brief: the Word of truth, the Word of immortality, that gives man re-birth, bears him up to truth, the goad of salvation, who drives away destruction, who chases forth death, who built in men a temple that he might make God to dwell among men."[100]

The last chapter is a beautiful picture of the Christian life, full of wonderful language from Homer, the Bacchæ of Euripides, and the Mysteries, and in the centre of it—its very heart—"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

In the passages here quoted from the Protrepticus some of Clement's main ideas in the realm of Christian thought are clearly to be seen; and we have now to give them further and more detailed examination. We have to see what he makes of the central things in the new religion—of God, and the Saviour, and of man, and how he interprets the Gospel of Jesus in the language of Greek philosophy. It is to be noted that, whatever happened in the course of his work—and very few books are, when written, quite what the writer expected on beginning—Clement looked upon his task as interpretation. The Scriptures are his authorities—"he who has believed the divine Scriptures, with firm judgment, receives in the voice of God who gave the Scriptures a proof that cannot be spoken against."[101] Amid the prayers and hymns of the ideal Christian comes daily reading of the sacred books.[102] Clement has no formal definition of inspiration, but he loved the sacred text, and he made it the standard by which to judge all propositions. It is perhaps impossible to over-estimate the importance of this loyalty in an age, when Christian speculation was justly under suspicion on account of the free re-modelling of the New Testament text that went with it. Clement would neither alter, nor excise, but he found all the freedom he wanted in the accepted methods of exegesis. Allegory and the absence of any vestige of historical criticism—and, not least, the inability induced by the training of the day to conceive of a work of art, or even a piece of humbler literature, as a whole—his very defects as a student secured his freedom as a philosopher. He can quote Scripture for his purpose; the phrase will support him where the context will not; and sometimes a defective memory will help him to the words he wants, as we have seen in the case of the worship of sun, moon and stars. To the modern mind such a use of Scripture is unwarrantable and seems to imply essential indifference to its real value, but in Clement and his contemporaries it is not inconsistent with—indeed, it is indicative of—a high sense of the value of Scripture as the ipsissima verba of God. And after all a mis-quotation may be as true as the most authentic text, and may help a man as effectually to insight into the thoughts of God.

The Logos

We have seen that Clement quarrelled with the Stoics for involving God in matter—"even the most dishonourable." The World-soul was, in fact, repugnant to men who were impressed with the thought of Sin, and who associated Sin with matter. This feeling and a desire to keep the idea of God disentangled from every limitation led to men falling back (as we saw in the case of Plutarch) on the Platonic conception of God's transcendence. Neo-Platonism has its "golden chain" of existence descending from Real Being—God—through a vast series of beings who are in a less and less degree as they are further down the scale. It is not hard to sympathize with the thoughts and feelings which drew men in this direction. The best thinkers and the most religious natures in the Mediterranean world (outside the circle of Jesus, and some Stoics) found the transcendence of God inevitably attractive, and then their hearts sought means to bridge the gulf their thoughts had made. For now he was out of all knowledge, and away beyond even revelation; for revelation involved relation and limitation, and God must be absolute.

We have seen how Plutarch found in the existence of dæmons a possibility of intercourse between gods and men, while above the dæmons the gods, he implies, are in communication with the remote Supreme. But for some thinkers this solution was revolting. Philo, with the great record before him of the religious experience of his race, was not prepared to give up the thought "O God, thou art my God."[103] Linking the Hebrew phrase "the word of the Lord" with the Stoic Logos Spermaticos and Plato's Idea, he found in the resulting conception a divine, rational and spiritual principle immanent in man and in the universe, and he also found a divine personality, or quasi-personality, to come between the Absolute and the world. He pictures the Logos as the Son of God, the First-born, the oldest of angels, the "idea of ideas," and again as the image of God, and the ideal in whose likeness man was made. As the ambassador of God, and High Priest, the Logos is able to mediate directly between man and God, and bridges the gulf that separates us from the Absolute.[104] More than anything else, this great conception of Philo's prepared the way for fusion of Greek thought and Christianity. Clement is conspicuously a student and a follower of Philo—nor was he the first among Christian writers to feel his influence.

Clement, as already said, professed himself an eclectic in philosophy, and of such we need not expect the closest reasoning. Our plan will be to gather passages illustrative of his thoughts—we might almost say of his moods—and set side by side what he says from time to time of God. On such a subject it is perhaps impossible to hope for logic or consistency except at the cost of real aspects of the matter in hand. Something will be gained if we can realize the thoughts which most moved the man, even though their reconciliation is questionably possible. This doubt however does not seem to have occurred to himself, for he connects the dogmata of the philosophers and the teaching of the New Testament as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

To begin with the account of God which Clement gives in philosophical language. "The Lord calls himself 'one' (hèn)—'that they all may be one ... as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one.' Now God is 'one' (hèn) and away beyond the 'one' (henòs) and above the Monad itself."[105] Again, after quoting Solon and Empedocles and "John the Apostle" ("no man hath seen God at any time"), Clement enlarges on the difficulty of speaking of God:—"How can that be expressed, which is neither genus, nor differentia, nor species, neither indivisible, nor sum, nor accident, nor susceptive of accident? Nor could one properly call him a whole (hólon); for whole (tò hólon) implies dimension, and he is Father of the Whole (tôn hólon). Nor could, one speak of his parts, for the one is indivisible and therefore limitless, not so conceived because there is no passing beyond it, but as being without dimension or limit, and therefore without form or name. And if we ever name him, calling him, though not properly, one, or the good, or mind, or absolute being, or father, or God, or demiurge, or lord, we do not so speak as putting forward his name; but, for want of his name, we use beautiful names, that the mind may not wander at large, but may rest on these. None of these names, taken singly, informs us of God; but, collectively and taken all together, they point to his almighty power. For predicates are spoken either of properties or of relation, and none of these can we assume about God. Nor is he the subject of the knowledge which amounts to demonstration; for this depends on premisses (prótera) and things better known (gnorimótepa);[106] but nothing is anterior to the unbegotten. It remains then by divine grace and by the Logos alone that is from him to perceive the unknowable."[107] Again, "God has no natural relation (physikèn schésin) to us, as the founders of heresies hold (not though he make us of what is not, or fashion us from matter, for that is not at all, and this is in every point different from God)—unless you venture to say that we are part of him and of one essence (homoousíous) with God; and I do not understand how anyone who knows God will endure to hear that said, when he casts his eye upon our life and the evils with which we are mixed up. For in this way (and it is a thing not fit to speak of) God would be sinning in his parts, that is, if the parts are parts of the whole and complete the whole—if they do not complete it, they would not be parts. However, God, by nature (physei) being rich in pity (éleos), of his goodness he cares for us who are not his members nor by nature his children (méte moríon ónton autoû méte physei téknon). Indeed this is the chief proof of God's goodness, that though this is our position with regard to him, by nature utterly 'alienated' from him, he nevertheless cares for us. For the instinct of kindness to offspring is natural (physikè) in animals, and so is friendship with the like-minded based on old acquaintance, but God's pity is rich towards us who in no respect have anything to do with him, I mean, in our being (ousía) or nature or the peculiar property of our being (dynámei tê oikeía tês ousías hemôn), but merely by our being the work of His will."[108] "The God of the Whole (tôn hélon), who is above every voice and every thought and every conception, could never be set forth in writing, for his property is to be unspeakable."[109]

It follows that the language of the Bible is not to be taken literally when it attributes feelings to God. Clement has cited texts which speak of "joy" and "pity" in connexion with God, and he has to meet the objection that these are moods of the soul and passions (tropàs psychês kaì pathe). We mistake, when we interpret Scripture in accordance with our own experience of the flesh and of passions, "taking the will of the passionless God (toû apathous theoû) on a line with our own perturbations (kinémasi). When we suppose that the fact in the case of the Almighty is as we are able to hear, we err in an atheistic way. For the divine was not to be declared as it is; but as we, fettered by flesh, were able to understand, even so the prophets spoke to us, the Lord accommodating himself to the weakness of men with a mind to save them (soteríos)." Thus the language of our emotions, though not properly to be employed, is used to help our weakness.[110] For God is, in fact, "without emotion, without wrath, without desire" (apathès, athumos, anepithúmetos).[111] Clement repeatedly recurs with pleasure to this conception of "Apathy"; it is the mark of God, of Christ, of the Apostles, and of the ideal Christian, with whom it becomes a fixed habit (héxis).[112]

God is not like a man (anthropoeidès), nor does he need senses to hear with, nor does he depend on the sensitiveness of the air (tò eupathès toû héros) for his apprehensions, "but the instantaneous perception of the angels and the power of conscience touching the soul—these recognize all things, with the quickness of thought, by means of some indescribable faculty apart from sensible hearing. Even if one should say that it was impossible for the voice, rolling in this lower air, to reach to God, still the thoughts of the saints (agíon) cleave, not the air alone, but the whole universe as well. And the divine power instantly penetrates the whole soul like light. Again do not our resolves also find their way to God, uttering a voice of their own? And are not some things also wafted heavenward by the conscience? ... God is all ear and all eye, if we may make use of these expressions."[113] Thus it would seem that God is not so far from every one of us as we might have supposed from the passages previously quoted, and the contrast between the two views of God grows wider when we recall Clement's words in the Protrepticus about the Heavenly Father. While a Greek, the pupil of the philosophers, could never use the language of a Jew about "God our Father" with the same freedom from mental reservation, Clement undoubtedly speaks of God at times in the same spirit that we feel in the utterances of Jesus. He goes beyond what contemporary philosophers would have counted suitable or desirable, as we can see in the complaints which Celsus makes of Christian language about God, though Celsus, of course, is colder than the religious of his day. But the main difference between Christians and philosophers was not as to God the Father, but as to Christ.

When Clement, in his work of restatement, came to discuss Christ, he found Philo's Logos ready to his hand and he was not slow to use it. It is characteristic that, just as he unquestioningly accepted the current philosophic account of God and saw no great difficulty in equating a God best described in negations with the Abba Father of Jesus, so he adopted, not less light-heartedly, the conflate conception of the Logos. Whether its Platonic and Stoic elements would hold together; whether either of them was really germane to the Hebrew part; whether in any case any of the three sets of constituents corresponded with anything actually to be reached by observation or experience; or whether, waiving that point, the combination was equal to its task of helping man to conceive of God at once as immanent and transcendent, Clement hardly inquired. So far he followed Philo. Then came in a new factor which might well have surprised Plato, Zeno and Philo alike. Following once more, but this time another leader, Clement equates the Philonian Logos with the historic Jesus of Nazareth.

So stated, the work of Clement may well look absurd. But after all he is not the only man who has identified the leading of instinct with philosophic proof. In succession he touched the central thoughts of his various leaders, and he found them answer to cravings within him. He wanted a God beyond the contagion of earth, Supreme and Absolute; and Plato told him of such a God. Yet the world needed some divine element; it must not be outside the range and thought of God; and here the conception of divine Reason, linking man and nature with God Himself, appealed to his longing. Lastly the impossibility of thinking Jesus and his work to be accidental, of conceiving of them as anything but vitally bound up with the spiritual essence of all things, with God and with God's ultimate mind for man and eternity, was the natural outcome of entering into the thoughts of Jesus, of realizing his personality and even of observing his effect upon mankind.[114] When one remembers how in every age men have passed through one form and another of experience, and have then compacted philosophies to account for those experiences, have thought their constructions final, and have recommended their theories as of more value than the facts on which, after reflection, slight or profound, but perhaps never adequate, they have based them, it will not seem strange that Clement did the same.

Ah yet, when all is thought and said,
The heart still overrules the head;
Still what we hope we must believe,
And what is given us receive.

The old task is still to do. The old cravings are still within us; still the imperishable impulse lives to seek some solution of the great question of the relations of God and the soul and the universe, which may give us more abiding satisfaction than Clement's can now have, and which will yet recognize those old cravings, will recognize and meet them, not some but all of them.

"Most perfect, and most holy of all," says Clement, "most sovereign, most lordly, most royal and most beneficent, is the nature of the Son, which approaches most closely to the One Almighty Being. The Son is the highest Pre-eminence, which sets in order all things according to the Father's will, and steers the universe aright, performing all things with unwearying energy, beholding the Father's secret thoughts through his working. For the Son of God never moves from his watch-tower, being never divided, never dissevered, never passing from place to place, but existing everywhere at all times and free from all limitations. He is all reason, all eye, all light from the Father, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, with power searching the powers. To him is subjected the whole army of angels and of gods—to him, the Word of the Father, who has received the holy administration by reason of Him who subjected it to him; through whom also all men belong to him, but some by way of knowledge, while others have not yet attained to this; some as friends, some as faithful servants, others as servants merely."[115]

The Logos

The Logos is the source of Providence, the author, as already seen, of all human thought and activity, of the beauty of the human body too,[116] Saviour and Lord at once of all men—man being "his peculiar work," for into him alone of animals was a conception of God instilled at his creation. "Being the power of the Father, he easily prevails over whomsoever he will, not leaving even the smallest atom of his government uncared for."[117] "He it is in truth that devises the bridle for the horse, the yoke for the bull, the noose for the wild beast, the rod for the fish, the snare for the bird; he governs the city and ploughs the land, rules and serves, and all things he maketh;

Therein he set the earth, the heaven, the sea,
And all the stars wherewith the heaven is crowned.

O the divine creations! O the divine commands! This water, let it roll within itself; this fire, let it check its rage; this air, let it spread to æther; and let earth be fixed and borne, when I will it. Man I yet wish to make; for his material I have the elements; I dwell with him my hands fashion. If thou know me, the fire shall be thy slave."[118]

"All[119] gaze on the supreme Administrator of the universe, as he pilots all in safety according to the Father's will, rank being subordinated to rank under different leaders till in the end the Great High Priest is reached. For on one original principle, which works in accordance with the Father's will, depend the first and second and third gradations; and then at the extreme end of the visible world there is the blessed ordinance of angels; and so, even down to ourselves, ranks below ranks are appointed, all saving and being saved by the initiation and through the instrumentality of One. As then the remotest particle of iron is drawn by the breath (pneúmati) of the stone of Heraklea [the magnet] extending through a long series of iron rings, so also through the attraction of the holy spirit (pneúmati) the virtuous are adapted to the highest mansion; and the others in their order even to the last mansion; but they that are wicked from weakness, having fallen into an evil habit owing to unrighteous greed, neither keep hold themselves nor are held by another, but collapse and fall to the ground, being entangled in their own passions."[120] This last clause raises questions as to evil and freewill. Clement believed in freewill; for one thing, it was necessary if God was to be acquitted of the authorship of evil. "God made all things to be helpful for virtue, in so far as might be without hindering the freedom of man's choice, and showed them to be so, in order that he who is indeed the One Alone Almighty might, even to those who can only see darkly, be in some way revealed as a good God, a Saviour from age to age through the instrumentality of his Son, and in all ways absolutely guiltless of evil."[121]

Clement also brings in the Platonic Idea to help to express Christ. "The idea is a thought of God (ennóema), which the barbarians have called God's Logos."[122] "All the activity of the Lord is referred to the Almighty, the Son being, so to speak, a certain activity (enérgeia) of the Father,"[123] and a little lower he adds that the Son is "the power (dynamis) of the Father."[124] As such he may well be "above the whole universe, or rather beyond the region of thought."[125] And yet, as we have seen, he leans to the view that the Logos is a person—the Great High Priest. In criticizing him, it is well to remember how divergent are the conceptions which he wishes to keep, and to keep in some kind of unity.

Once again, in many of Clement's utterances upon the Logos there is little that Philo, or perhaps even a pagan philosopher, could not have approved; but through it all there is a new note which is Clement's own and which comes from another series of thoughts. For it is a distinctive mark of Clement's work that the reader rises from it impressed with the idea of "the Saviour." The Protrepticus is full of the thought of that divine love of men, warm and active, which Jesus associated with "your heavenly Father," but which Clement, under the stress of his philosophy must connect with the Logos—"cleansing, saving and kindly; most manifest God indeed, made equal with the ruler of the universe."[126] He is our "only refuge" (monè kataphygé), the "sun of resurrection," the "sun of the soul."[127] And yet one group of ideas, familiar in this connection, receives little notice from Clement. The Logos is indeed the Great High Priest, but the symbolism of priest and sacrifice and sin-bearer is left rather remarkably unemphasized. He is "the all-availing healer of mankind,"[128] but his function is more to educate, to quicken, and to give knowledge than to expiate.

The great and characteristic feature of the Logos is that "he took the mask (prosopeîon) of a man and moulded it for himself in flesh and played a part in the drama of mankind's salvation; for he was a true player (gnesios agonistés), a fellow-player with the creature; and most quickly was he spread abroad among all men, more quickly than the sun, when he rose from the Father's will, and proved whence he was and who he was by what he taught and showed, he, the bringer of the covenant, the reconciler, the Logos our Saviour, the fountain of life and peace, shed over the whole face of the earth, by whom (so to say) all things have become an ocean of blessings."[129] Though essentially and eternally free from passion (apathés) "for our sake he took upon him our flesh with its capacity for suffering" (tèn pathetèn sárka)[130] and "descended to sensation (aísthesis)."[131] "It is clear that none can in his lifetime clearly apprehend God; but 'the pure in heart shall see God' when they come to the final perfection. Since, then, the soul was too weak for the perception of what is (tôn ónton), we needed a divine teacher. The Saviour is sent down to teach us how to acquire good, and to give it to us (choregós)—the secret and holy knowledge of the great Providence,"[132]—"to show God to foolish men, to end corruption, to conquer death, to reconcile disobedient children to their Father.... The Lord pities, educates, encourages, exhorts, saves and guards, and as the prize of learning he promises us out of his abundance the kingdom of heaven—this alone giving him joy in us, that we are saved."[133] All this was foreknown before the foundation of the world; the Logos was and is the divine beginning or principle of all things, "but because he has now taken the long-hallowed name, the name worthy of his power, the Christ, that is why I call it the new song."[134] And indeed he is right, for "the Epiphany, now shining among us, of the Word that was in the beginning and before it"[135] is new in philosophy; and it is a new thing also that the doctrine of a Logos should be "essentially musical." The Incarnation of the divine Teacher is the central fact for Clement.