Stromateis 1 part 13/42

Why, then, should I list Ariston for you? He said the end was indifference, and he leaves the indifferent as simply indifferent.

Or should I bring forward the doctrines of Herillus? Herillus posits that the end is living according to knowledge.

For some maintain that the more recent members of the Academy hold the end to be the secure suspension of judgment with regard to sense-impressions.

Moreover, Lyco the Peripatetic said the end was the true joy of the soul, as Leucimus said, the joy that comes from noble deeds.

And Critolaus, himself also a Peripatetic, spoke of the perfection of a life flowing smoothly according to nature, indicating a threefold perfection completed out of the three classes of goods.

We must not, then, stop here content with these, but must be at pains to set forth, as far as possible, also the doctrines held by the natural philosophers on the subject before us.

For they say that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae declared contemplation to be the end of life, and the freedom that comes from it; and that Heraclitus of Ephesus held well-pleasedness to be the end.

And Heraclides of Pontus relates that Pythagoras handed down that the happiness of the soul is the knowledge of the perfection of numbers.

But the men of Abdera, too, teach what the end is: Democritus, in his work On the End, teaches it to be cheerfulness, which he also called well-being; and he often adds:

For delight and the absence of delight are the boundary of those who have reached their prime; while Hecataeus taught the end to be self-sufficiency, and Apollodotus of Cyzicus, again, enchantment of soul, just as Nausiphanes taught it to be freedom from consternation.

For he said that this was what Democritus called freedom from wonder-struck confusion.

Further, in addition to these, Diotimus declared the end to be the entire completeness of goods, which is called well-being.

Again, Antisthenes held the end to be freedom from vanity; while those called the Annicerians, of the Cyrenaic succession, set no defined end for life as a whole, but held that each action has its own proper end—the pleasure that arises from that action.

These Cyrenaics reject Epicurus's definition of pleasure, that is, the removal of pain, calling it the condition of a corpse.

For, they say, we rejoice not only in pleasures, but also in social intercourse and in the pursuit of honors.

But Epicurus supposes that every joy of the soul arises only after the flesh has first been affected.

He says: 'What else could the good of the soul be, than the stable condition of the flesh and the trustworthy expectation concerning it?' Moreover, Plato the philosopher says the end is twofold: the one participable, existing first and foremost in the Forms themselves, which he also names the Good; and the other, that which participates in it and receives the likeness proceeding from it, which comes to be in men who lay claim to virtue and true philosophy.

Wherefore also Cleanthes, in the second book of his On Pleasure, says that Socrates taught on every occasion that the just man and the happy man are one and the same, and that he cursed the man who first separated the just from the advantageous, as one who had done an impious deed.

For truly impious are those who separate the advantageous from what is just according to law.

And Plato himself says that happiness is the having of one's guiding spirit in good condition—by 'spirit' meaning the ruling faculty of our soul—and he says that happiness is the most perfect and most complete good.

At times he calls it a life that is consistent and in harmony with itself; and at other times, the most complete life according to virtue; and this he sets in the knowledge of the Good and in likeness to God, declaring the likeness to be becoming just and holy together with prudence.

For is it not thus that some of our own teachers hold, that man received the 'according to the image' immediately at his generation, but is to receive the 'according to likeness' afterward, at his perfecting? Plato, for instance, teaching that this likeness will belong to the virtuous man together with humility, expounds it somewhere thus:

'Everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.'

At any rate, he says in the Laws:

God, then, even as the ancient saying has it, holding the beginning, middle, and end of all things, proceeds on a straight course, moving in a circuit according to nature.

And justice, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law, ever follows in his train.

Do you see how he too attaches reverent fear to the divine law? At any rate, he goes on to add:

He who is destined to be happy follows close upon her, holding fast to her, humble and well-ordered.

Then, having joined to these words what follows, and having admonished by means of fear, he adds:

What action, then, is dear to God and follows him? One, and having one ancient principle: that like is dear to like when it is measured, but the unmeasured things are dear neither to one another nor to the measured.

The man, then, who is to become dear to God must, so far as possible, himself become such as well.

And according to this principle, the self-controlled man among us is dear to God, for he is like him; while the man who is not self-controlled is unlike him and at variance with him.

By saying that this doctrine is ancient, he has hinted at the teaching that came to him from the Law.

And in the Theaetetus, having granted that evils necessarily hover about mortal nature and this place here, he adds:

Wherefore one must also try to flee from here to there as quickly as possible.

And the flight is likeness to God, so far as is possible.

And the likeness is to become just and holy together with prudence.

And Speusippus, Plato's nephew, says that happiness is a perfect condition among things that are according to nature, or a possession of good things—a state that all men desire, though only the good aim truly at it, namely freedom from disturbance.

And the virtues would be productive of happiness.

And Xenocrates of Chalcedon defines happiness as the possession of one's own proper virtue, together with the power that serves it.

Then, as to that in which it comes to be, he plainly means the soul.

And as to that by which it comes to be, he means the virtues.

And as to that out of which it is composed, as parts, he means noble actions, and excellent habits, dispositions, movements, and relations.

And as to that without which it cannot exist, he means the bodily and the external goods.

For Polemo, the disciple of Xenocrates, evidently wishes happiness to be a self-sufficiency in all goods, or at least in the most and greatest of them.

At any rate, he lays it down that without virtue happiness could never exist, but that virtue, even apart from bodily and external goods, is sufficient for happiness.

...to the commandments, that is, to God, and to those who live according to them blamelessly and with understanding, through the knowledge of the divine will...

and the assimilation, so far as possible, to right reason, is the end; as is also the restoration to complete adoption as sons through the Son, ever glorifying the Father through the great High Priest, who has deemed us worthy to be called brothers and joint heirs.

And the apostle, briefly describing the end in his Epistle to the Romans, says:

'But now, having been set free from sin and having become enslaved to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life.'

And knowing that hope is twofold—the one still expected, the other already laid hold of—he teaches, in effect, that the end is the fulfillment of hope.

'For endurance,' he says, 'produces proven character, and proven character, hope;'

'and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.'

And it is on account of this love that there comes the restoration unto hope, which elsewhere he calls the rest that is laid up for us.

You would find similar things in Ezekiel as well, stated as follows:

'The soul that sins, it shall die.'

'And the man who is righteous and does judgment and righteousness—who has not eaten upon the mountains, and has not lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, and has not defiled his neighbor's wife, and has not approached a woman during the uncleanness of her separation (for he does not wish the seed of man to be treated with outrage), and, it says, has not wronged a man, has returned the debtor's pledge, has not seized plunder by robbery, has given his bread to the hungry, and has covered the naked with a garment, has not given his silver at interest, and has not taken increase, has turned his hand away from iniquity, has executed true judgment between a man and his neighbor, has walked in my statutes and kept my ordinances so as to deal truly—'

'he is righteous, he shall surely live, says the Lord Adonai.'

And Isaiah too, exhorting the believer to dignity of life, and the Gnostic to attentive contemplation, showing thereby that the virtue of man and of God is not the same, speaks thus:

'Seek the Lord, and when you find him, call upon him;'

And when he draws near to you, let the ungodly man forsake his ways, and the lawless man his ways, and let him turn back to the Lord, and he will find mercy... even until your thoughts are far from my thought.

We, then, following the noble Apostle, await from faith the hope of righteousness.

For in Christ neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.

And we desire that each of you show the same diligence for the full assurance of hope, even unto him who became a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Things similar to Paul's the all-virtuous Wisdom also says:

'But he who hears me shall dwell in confidence, trusting in hope':

for the restoration that is the object of hope is called, by the same name, 'hope':

Therefore he most fittingly added the word 'confiding' to the word 'shall dwell,' showing that such a one has come to rest, having received the hope he hoped for... wherefore he also adds:

'and shall rest without fear from all evil.'

And the Apostle, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, says outright and explicitly:

'Be imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ,' so that this might come to pass:

'If you are mine, and I am Christ's, then you too become imitators of Christ... and Christ is God's.'

He therefore sets forth, as the aim of faith, likeness to God so far as it is possible to become just and holy together with prudence, and as its end, the restoration promised through reliance on faith.

From these, then, spring the sources of those who have dogmatized concerning the end, which we mentioned before.

Since marriage seems to fall under pleasure and desire, we must discuss this matter also.

Marriage, then, is the first union of man and woman according to law, for the begetting of legitimate children.

Thus the comic poet Menander says, 'I give you my own daughter for the plowing of legitimate children.'

'One must marry' — this is one of those terms named according to a certain relation to something.

For to whom, and in what condition, must one marry, and whom, in what condition? For not everyone must marry, nor at every time; but there is a time when it is fitting, and a person for whom it is proper, and an age... up to which it is permitted.

So then, not every man may marry any woman, nor at every time, nor indeed absolutely and without restraint; but he who is in a fitting condition should marry such a woman as one ought, and when one ought, and for the sake of children, and one who is in every way suitable, and who cherishes the husband who loves her not by force or necessity.

Whence Abraham, alleging concerning his wife that she was his sister, says:

'She is my sister by my father, but not by my mother, and she became also my wife' — teaching that those who share the same mother must not be taken in marriage.

Let us briefly go over the history.

Plato, then, ranks marriage among external goods, having contrived for it the immortality of our race, and, as it were, a certain continuance handed on like a torch from children to children's children.

But Democritus rejects marriage and the begetting of children on account of the many annoyances arising from them, and the distractions they cause from more necessary pursuits.

And Epicurus agrees with him, along with all who place the good in pleasure and freedom from disturbance, and further in freedom from pain.

Furthermore, according to those of the Stoa, both marriage and the raising of children are indifferent, whereas according to those of the Peripatos they are a good.

In sum, these men, having carried their doctrines only as far as their tongues, were enslaved to pleasures, some consorting with concubines, others with courtesans, and most of them with boys.

And that wise foursome, in the Garden, together with the courtesan, honored pleasure by their very deeds.

They, then, would not escape the Buzygian curse — those who, judging something not to be to their own advantage, urge others to do it, or, conversely, the opposite.

This Scripture has briefly made plain, saying:

'What you hate... you shall not do to another.'

However, those who approve of marriage say that nature has made us fit for marriage, as is clear from the bodily constitution of both males and females, and they continually invoke the words, 'Increase and multiply.'

But even if this is so, let it seem shameful to them that man, fashioned by God, should be more incontinent than the irrational animals, which do not mate promiscuously with many and without restraint, but with one of their own kind — such as doves, ring-doves, the race of turtle-doves, and whatever else is like these.

Furthermore, they say, the childless man falls short of the perfection that accords with nature, since he has not set up in his own place a successor belonging to him.

For he is perfect who has produced from himself one like himself — or rather, when he sees that one, too, has done the same thing, that is, when the one begotten has been brought to the same nature as the one who begot it.

One must therefore by all means marry, both for one's homeland's sake, and for the succession of children, and for the completion of the world so far as it depends on us; since indeed the poets pity a marriage that is half-fulfilled and childless, ... and count blessed the one who flourishes on both sides.

And bodily illnesses especially show marriage to be necessary:

For a wife's care and the earnestness of her continual presence surpass, it seems, the attendance received from other relatives and friends, inasmuch as she chooses, above all others, to excel in sympathy and to remain always at one's side; and she is, in very truth, according to Scripture, a necessary helper.

The comic poet Menander, then, having run down marriage, yet also setting forth its useful aspects in reply, answers the one who said, 'I fare badly in this matter.'

{B.} 'For you take it the wrong way.'

'You see in it the difficulties and the things that will grieve you, but you do not look upon its good points'... and so on.

Marriage also helps those advanced in years, by providing a wife who takes care of them, and by raising up from her children who nourish them in old age.

'For a man once dead, children are the tokens left behind:'

'And like corks they hold up the net, saving from the depths the twisted thread of the line' — according to the tragedian Sophocles.

And the lawgivers do not permit those who have not married to hold the highest offices.

He established a penalty not only for celibacy, but also for ill-marrying, late-marrying, and living alone.

The noble Plato commands that the one who has not married pay to the public treasury the cost of a wife's maintenance, and render the appropriate expenses to the magistrates.

For if, not marrying, men do not beget children, they will, so far as depends on them, bring about a scarcity of men and will dissolve both the cities and the world order that arises from them.

And such a thing is impious, on the part of those who abolish the divine order of generation.

Moreover, it is unmanly and weak to flee from life together with a wife and children.

For that whose loss is an evil, the possession of it is, in every case, a good:

and this holds true in the case of everything else as well.

But indeed, they say, the loss of children is among the greatest of evils.

Therefore, the possession of children is a good.

'Without a father,' he says, 'there could never be a child, nor, without a mother, even the conception of a child.'

And marriage makes a man a father, just as a husband makes a woman a mother.

Homer too sets forth, as the greatest prayer, a husband and a household — but not simply so, rather together with noble like-mindedness:

For the marriage of other men agrees in aiming at sensual enjoyment, but the marriage of those who philosophize leads to concord according to reason — a marriage that permits wives to adorn themselves not in outward form but in character, and does not command husbands to treat their wives as mere objects of erotic pleasure, making the abuse of their bodies their aim, but rather to secure marriage as a help for the whole of life and for the attainment of the highest self-control.

For, I think, more precious than the seeds of wheat and barley, which are sown at their proper seasons, is the man who is sown, for whom all things grow; and indeed even farmers sow those seeds while sober.

Every filthy and polluted practice, then, must be purged from marriage, lest we be reproached that, according to the acknowledged standard, the mating of irrational animals accords more with nature than human wedlock.

For some of these animals, having leapt at the season appointed by nature, immediately withdraw, leaving the work of generation to nature's own governance.

By the tragic poets, Polyxena, though being slaughtered, is recorded as having taken great care, even as she died, to fall decorously, 'hiding what ought to be hidden from the eyes of men.'

And for her too, that calamity was her marriage.

To submit, then, and yield to the passions is the utmost slavery, just as, indeed, to master them is the only true freedom.

Divine Scripture, at any rate, says that those who transgress the commandments have been sold to strangers, that is, to sins foreign to nature, until, turning back, they repent.

Marriage, then, must be kept pure, like some sacred image, from those who would defile it — rising from sleep with the Lord in mind, and going again to sleep with thanksgiving and in prayer, 'both when you lie down to rest and when the sacred light comes,' calling the Lord to witness throughout the whole of our life, possessing piety toward God in the soul, and carrying self-control through even to the body.

For it is truly pleasing to God to lead decorum by the hand from the tongue to one's deeds; whereas shameful speech is a road toward shamelessness, and the end result of both is shameful action.

And that Scripture counsels marriage, and never permits one to depart from wedlock, it plainly legislates:

'You shall not divorce your wife, except on the ground of fornication.'

He considers it adultery for one of those who have been separated to marry another while the other party is still living.

It is the not adorning herself, nor even decking herself out beyond what is fitting, but devoting herself continually to prayers and supplications, guarding against frequent excursions from the house, and shutting herself off as far as possible from the sight of those who do not belong to her, ... esteeming the care of the household of greater importance than untimely chatter, that shows a woman to be free from suspicion of slander.

'He who takes a divorced woman commits adultery,' he says; 'for if anyone divorces his wife, he makes her commit adultery' -- that is, he compels her to be made an adulteress.

And not only he who divorces her becomes guilty of this, but also he who receives her, by furnishing the woman an occasion to sin.

For if he did not receive her, she would return to her husband.

What then does the Law say? For the checking of the ready proneness of the passions, it commands that the woman who has committed adultery, and has been convicted of it, be put to death;

and if she is a priestess, it commands that she be delivered to the fire.

The adulterer, too, is stoned, but not in the same place, so that not even their death should be shared in common.

The Law, then, does not conflict with the Gospel, but is in harmony with it.

How could it not be, seeing that the Lord is the one giver of both? For she who has committed fornication lives to sin, but has died to the commandments; while she who has repented, as though born again through the conversion of her life, has a regeneration of life, the old harlot having died, and she who has been begotten anew through repentance having passed once more into life.

The Spirit bears witness to what has been said, speaking through Ezekiel:

'I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as his turning [in repentance].'

Accordingly they are at once stoned, as having died to the Law -- to which they did not yield -- through hardness of heart; but for the priestess the punishment is intensified, because 'from him to whom more has been given, more will be required.'

Let this, then, be marked as the boundary for us here of the second Miscellany (Stromateus), on account of the length and multitude of its chapters.

THE THIRD BOOK OF CLEMENT'S MISCELLANIES. The followers of Valentinus, then, having traced their conjugal pairings down from above, from the divine emanations, are well pleased with marriage; but the followers of Basilides say that when the apostles inquired whether it were not better not to marry, the Lord answered:

'Not all can receive this saying.'

'For there are eunuchs, some from birth, and some by necessity.'

They expound the saying in some such way as this:

Some have, from birth, a natural aversion to woman; these, following this natural constitution, do well not to marry.

These, they say, are the eunuchs from birth.

Those by necessity are those theatrical ascetics who, through the counter-attraction of glory, hold themselves in check; while those who have been castrated by misfortune have become eunuchs by necessity.

Those, then, who become eunuchs by necessity do not do so by reason.

But those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the eternal kingdom, they say, adopt this reasoning on account of what results from marriage, fearing the distraction involved in providing for life's necessities.

And to the apostle's word, 'Better to marry than to burn,' [they add], lest you cast your soul into the fire, holding out night and day and fearing lest you fall away from continence;

for the soul, being made to hold out, becomes divided in its hope.

'Hold out, then,' says Isidore verbatim in his Ethics, 'against a quarrelsome wife, lest you be torn away from the grace of God; and having discharged the fire [of desire] through seed, pray with a good conscience.'

'But when,' he says, 'your thanksgiving falls into petition, and you ask, thereafter, not to succeed [in continence] but not to fail, marry.'

'But if one is young, or poor, or prone to lust, and does not wish to marry as reason dictates, let him not be separated from his brother:'

'Let him say, "I have entered into the holy things; nothing can happen to me."'

'But if he has a suspicion of himself, let him say:'

'Brother, lay your hand upon me, that I may not sin.'

'And he will receive help, both intelligible and sensible.'

'Let him only be willing to accomplish the good, and he will attain it.'

'But sometimes we say with the mouth:'

'We do not wish to sin, but our mind is set upon sinning.'

'Such a one, through fear, does not do what he wishes, lest the punishment be reckoned against him;'

'Human nature has certain things that are both necessary and natural, and other things that are natural only.'

'It has the wearing of clothes as necessary and natural; but the matter of sexual intercourse is natural, though not necessary.'

on the ground that they will be saved by nature, even should they sin now, on account of their innate election -- since not even the forefathers of these doctrines allow that the same things be done by them.

Let them not, then, while assuming the name of Christ, live more licentiously than even the most incontinent among the Gentiles, and so bring blasphemy upon that name;

for such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, whose end shall be according to their works.

Continence, then, is a disdain of the body, in accordance with the confession made toward God;

for continence has to do not only with sexual matters, but with everything else which the soul wrongly desires, not being content with what is necessary.

There is also continence with regard to the tongue, to possessions, to their use, and to desire.

And this does not merely teach self-control, but actually supplies us with self-control, being itself a power and a divine grace.

We must now state what seems right to those of our own persuasion concerning the matter before us:

We indeed count blessed the state of eunuchhood, and those to whom this has been granted by God; and we admire monogamy and the dignity of a single marriage; but we say that we must sympathize with one another, and bear one another's burdens, lest anyone who thinks he stands firm should himself also fall.

Regarding second marriage, the apostle says, 'if you burn, marry.'

Those who trace their descent from Carpocrates and Epiphanes maintain that wives should be held in common, from which practice has flowed the greatest blasphemy against the Name.

This Epiphanes, whose writings are also still in circulation, was the son of Carpocrates, and of a mother named Alexandra; on his father's side he was an Alexandrian, but on his mother's a Cephallenian. He lived, in all, seventeen years, and he is honored as a god in Same, in Cephallenia, where a temple of hewn stones has been built and consecrated to him, together with altars, sacred precincts, and a shrine of the Muses; and the Cephallenians, gathering into the temple at the new moon, sacrifice to Epiphanes as one deified, on his birthday, pour libations to him, feast, and sing hymns.

He was educated by his father in the general course of studies, and in the philosophy of Plato, and he became the leader of the 'monadic' gnosis, from which also sprang the heresy of the Carpocratians.

This man, then, says in his work On Righteousness, that the righteousness of God is a certain communion joined with equality.

The heaven, at any rate, stretched out equally on every side, encircles the whole earth round about; and the night displays all the stars alike to all; and God has poured out from above, equally upon the earth, the sun, the cause of day and father of light, upon all who are able to see, and all see it in common, since it makes no distinction between rich and poor, people and ruler, foolish and wise, female and male, free and slave.

Nor indeed does it make any distinction on this account even among the irrational animals, but pouring itself out equally in common from above upon all living creatures, it establishes righteousness for the good and the wicked alike, since none is able to have more, nor to take from his neighbor, so as himself to have his neighbor's light also doubled.

The sun rises to give common nourishment to all living creatures, since righteousness, being common, is given equally to all; and in this respect the race of oxen becomes like the oxen, and of swine like the swine, and of sheep like the sheep, and so with all the rest;

for in them righteousness is manifested as commonality.

Furthermore, in accordance with this commonality, all things are sown alike according to their kind; and common food, growing up from the ground, is set free for all cattle that graze upon it, and for all equally, restrained by no law, but present in harmony with all through the provision of him who gives and commands it, in righteousness.

Nor indeed do the affairs of procreation have any law written down (for it would have been transcribed); but they sow and beget equally, having a community implanted in them by righteousness.

The Maker and Father of all, legislating by the righteousness that is from himself, has furnished the eye for seeing to all in common and equally, distinguishing not female from male, not rational from irrational, and in a word, none from none at all; but apportioning the power of sight by equality and community, he has by one single command bestowed it as a gift alike on all.

'But the laws,' he says, 'being unable to punish men's ignorance, have taught them to transgress;'

not understanding the apostle's saying, who declares, 'through the law I came to know sin.'

He says that 'mine' and 'thine' crept in surreptitiously through the laws, so that land and possessions were no longer enjoyed in common, nor even marriage;

'for he made the vines in common for all, which refuse neither the sparrow nor the thief, and likewise the grain and the other fruits.'

'But this community, when it was transgressed, along with that of equality, gave birth to the thief of livestock and of fruits.'

'God, then, having made all things in common for man, and having joined the female to the male in common, and having likewise brought all the animals together, manifested righteousness as a communion joined with equality.'

'But those who were thus born have denied the community that brought them together -- the very source of their own begetting -- and say:'

'Let him who takes one wife keep her,' though all might share in common, just as [nature] has shown with the rest of the animals.

Having said this word for word, he again adds, likewise in these very words: