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.