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]]