Stromateis 1 part 16/42

Who then are the two or three gathered together in the name of Christ, in whose midst the Lord is? Is it not that he means husband, wife, and child, the three, since a wife is joined to a husband through God? But even should someone wish to travel light, not choosing to have children because of the cares involved in child-rearing, let him, says the apostle, remain unmarried as I also am.

For they explain that the Lord means to say that with the majority is the Demiurge, the god who brings about generation, while with the one, the elect, is the Savior, who is by nature the son of another god, evidently the good God.

But God, through the Son, is present likewise both with those who have married with self-control and begotten children, and with the one who has practiced continence according to reason -- the very same God.

Desire and reason [correspond to the two]; flesh, soul, and spirit according to another reckoning.

Perhaps, too, the aforesaid triad hints at the calling, and election as second, and third, the race that is ranked into the first rank of honor;

with whom is the all-surveying power of God, indivisibly divided.

He, then, who employs the soul's natural activities as is fitting, desires what is suitable and hates what is harmful, just as the commandments direct;

'for you shall bless him who blesses, and curse him who curses,' it says.

But when, having risen above these two -- anger and desire -- he loves creation in deed for the sake of the God and maker of all things, he will live according to knowledge, having acquired an effortless habit of continence in accordance with likeness to the Savior, having united knowledge, faith, and love; being from henceforth one in judgment and truly spiritual, altogether unreceptive to reasonings that arise from anger and desire -- this man, being wrought after the image by the Craftsman himself, is the perfect man, already worthy to be called brother by the Lord, being at once both friend and son.

Thus the two and the three are gathered together into one and the same -- namely, the gnostic man.

And the concord of the many, reckoned from the three with whom the Lord is, might also be the one church, the one man, the one race.

Or was it not the case that with the one, the Jew, the Lord was giving the law, while already prophesying, and sending Jeremiah to Babylon, and also calling those from the nations through prophecy, gathering the two peoples together -- and a third came to be created out of the two, one into a new man, in whom indeed he walks about and dwells, namely, in the church itself? Law and prophets together, along with the gospel, are gathered into one knowledge in the name of Christ.

Therefore, those who do not marry out of hatred, or who indiscriminately abuse the flesh out of desire, are not among the number of those who are saved, among whom the Lord is.

Now that these points have thus been demonstrated, come, let us next set out as many scriptures as oppose these sophists of the heresies, indicating the rule of continence observed according to reason.

And the one who understands, choosing for each heresy the scripture aptly opposed to it, will use it at the appropriate time for the refutation of those who teach doctrines contrary to the commandments.

From of old, then, the law, as we have said before, proclaimed beforehand, 'You shall not desire that which is your neighbor's,' this same voice belonging to the Lord, who is close at hand according to the new covenant, speaking in his own person and saying:

'You have heard that the law commands:'

For that the law wished men to have relations with their wives with self-control and only for the sake of begetting children is clear from this: it forbids the unmarried man from having relations at once with a captive woman, but if he has once desired her, it allows her thirty days to mourn, having shaved off her hair; and if even then the desire does not subside, then he may beget children with her, the impulse having been tested and proved to be mastered, within the appointed span of time, into a legitimate longing.

Hence you could not point, according to scripture, to any of the patriarchs having approached a pregnant woman, but only afterward, after her pregnancy and after the nursing of the child born, would you find the women again being known by their husbands.

For instance, you will find that Moses' own father kept to this same principle, letting three years pass after the birth of Aaron before he begot Moses.

And again, the tribe of Levi, keeping this law of nature from God, entered the land previously promised fewer in number than the other tribes;

for a race does not readily increase into a great multitude when the men who have entered into lawful marriage beget children, yet wait not only for the period of pregnancy but also for the period of nursing.

'We, then, are temples of God;'

as the prophet said, 'I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people,' if we conduct our lives according to the commandments -- whether each of us individually, or the church assembled together as one.

'Therefore come out from among them and be separate,' says the Lord, 'and touch no unclean thing;'

'And I will receive you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons... and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.'

Not, as they say, of those who have married, but of the Gentiles still living in fornication; and in addition to these, it prophetically bids us also to be separated from the aforesaid heresies, as unclean and... godless.

Hence Paul too, directing his words against people like those just mentioned, says, 'Having therefore these promises, beloved,'

'let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.'

'for I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one... husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.'

Now the Church, having gained her one bridegroom, does not marry another; but each of us individually has the right, according to the law, to marry whomever he wishes — I mean, in a first marriage.

'But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ' — the apostle has said this with great reverence and in a manner fit for teaching.

Wherefore also the admirable Peter says:

'Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul, keeping your conduct honorable among the Gentiles,'

'for so is the will of God, that by doing good you should silence the ignorance of foolish men — as free men, and not as those who have their freedom as a covering for malice, but as servants of God.'

Likewise Paul also writes in the Epistle to the Romans:

'We who died to sin, how shall we still live in it?' — 'because our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with,' down to 'do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin.'

And now that I have come to this point, I think I should not pass over unnoted the fact that the apostle preaches the same God through the law and the prophets and the gospel.

For the commandment 'You shall not covet,' though written in the gospel, he attributes to the law in the Epistle to the Romans, knowing that the Father preached through the law and the prophets is one and the same as the Father proclaimed as good news through him.

'What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not!'

'But I would not have known sin except through the law.'

'For I would not have known covetousness, unless the law had said,'

And even should the heterodox opponents suppose that what follows — 'For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh' — is Paul speaking further against the Creator, let them instead read what precedes and what follows.

'but sin that dwells in me' — on account of which it followed to say 'nothing good dwells in my flesh.'

'But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me' — which, he says, warring against the law of God and of my mind, 'takes me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.'

'Who will deliver me from this body of death?' And again — for he never in any way grows weary of doing good — he does not hesitate to add:

'For the law of the Spirit has set me free from the law of sin and death, since God, through his Son, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.'

In addition to this, further clarifying what has been said, he cries out:

showing that the body is dead because of sin, in that it is not yet a temple, but is still a tomb of the soul.

'through his Spirit who dwells in you.'

Again, then, rebuking those who love pleasure, he adds these words:

'for the mind set on the flesh is death, because those who live according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh; and the mind set on the flesh is enmity toward God,'

'for it does not submit to the law of God.'

But 'those who are in the flesh cannot please God' — not as some dogmatize, but as we have already explained.

Then, in contrast to these, he says to the church:

'But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.'

'Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.'

'But if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.'

'So then, brethren, we are debtors — not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.'

'For if you live according to the flesh you will die,'

'but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.'

'For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.'

And in regard to that nobility and that freedom which is contemptibly introduced by the heterodox — those who boast in licentiousness — he goes on to say:

'For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry,'

that is, we received this so that we might know the one to whom we pray — the Father who truly is, the only Father of all that exists, who trains us as a father toward salvation, and threatens us with fear.

Now the union which by mutual agreement devotes itself for a season to prayer is a teaching of self-control.

For he added 'by agreement,' so that no one might dissolve the marriage; and 'for a season,' lest the married man, practicing continence not by necessity, should at some point slip into sin — sparing his own spouse, yet falling into desire for another.

For this same reason he also said that the man who supposes it unbecoming of himself to keep his daughter unmarried does well to give his daughter in marriage.

And the resolve of each — both of him who has made himself a eunuch and, again, of him who has joined himself in marriage for the sake of begetting children — ought to remain unyielding, so as not to fall short.

For if he is able to intensify his manner of life, he will win for himself a greater dignity before God, having practiced continence both purely and with sound judgment.

But if, having exceeded the rule he had chosen in pursuit of greater glory, he should afterward fall short of the hope he set for himself...

For just as celibacy has, so too marriage has its own distinct offices and ministries rendered to the Lord — I mean, caring for children and for one's wife.

For, as it seems, the intimacy of the conjugal union becomes, for the man who is perfect in marriage, an occasion for taking upon himself the care of all things pertaining to the common household.

Accordingly, he says, bishops must be appointed from among those who have trained themselves to preside well both over their own household and over the whole church.

Let each one, then, carry out his ministry in the work to which he was called, that he may become free in Christ, receiving the wage proper to his ministry.

Again, discoursing about the law and employing allegory, he says: 'For the woman who has a husband is bound by law to her living husband,' and so on.

'The wife is bound for as long a time as her husband lives.'

'But if he dies, she is free to be married, only in the Lord.'

'But she is more blessed if she remains as she is, according to my judgment.'

But in the earlier passage he says 'you were put to death,' not to marriage but to the law, so that you might become the bride and church of another, of him who was raised from the dead — a bride who must be kept pure both from the inward notions that are contrary to the truth and from the tempters without, that is, from those who pursue the heresies and persuade her to commit fornication away from the one husband, the almighty God, lest, just as the serpent deceived Eve, who is called 'life,' we too be deceived by the greedy cunning practiced through the heresies and transgress the commandments.

But the second passage establishes monogamy.

For one must not suppose, as some have interpreted it, that the binding of a woman to a man signifies the intercourse of the flesh with corruption.

...the lawgiver would be blasphemed.

It is Tatian the Syrian, I think, who dares to teach such doctrines.

At any rate, he writes verbatim in his work On Perfection according to the Savior:

'Agreement, then, is fitting for prayer, but the communion of corruption dissolves the intercession.'

At any rate, he most reproachfully excludes it by means of the concession.

For again, having conceded that this may occur on account of Satan and incontinence, he declared that the one persuaded by it will be about to serve two masters — through agreement, God; but through disagreement, incontinence and fornication and the devil.

He says this while interpreting the apostle.

But he sophisticates the truth, fabricating a falsehood by means of what is true.

For we too confess that incontinence and fornication are diabolical passions; but agreement mediates chaste marriage, leading it with self-control toward prayer, and joining it in wedlock with dignity toward the begetting of children.

At any rate, 'knowledge' is also the term used by Scripture for the occasion of begetting children, whenever it says:

'And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and called his name Seth,'

'for God has raised up for me another seed instead of Abel.'

Do you see against whom they blaspheme, those who abhor chaste procreation and attribute its generation to the devil? For it was not simply 'God' whom she named — she who, by placing the article before it, indicated the Almighty.

The apostle's added clause—'and to come together again for the same purpose, because of Satan'—forestalls this: that one should never be turned aside to other desires.

For the temporary agreement, in shaming the desires of nature, does not utterly repel them; on account of which he again introduces the conjugal union of marriage—not unto incontinence and fornication and the work of the devil, but so that one may not fall into incontinence and fornication and the devil.

Tatian also separates the old man from the new, but not as we say.

That the old man is the law, and the new is the gospel, we too agree with him in saying; only not in the way he intends—abolishing the law as belonging to another god.

But it is the same man and Lord who, in renewing the old things, no longer permits polygamy (for that the time then demanded, when it was necessary to increase and multiply), but introduces monogamy for the sake of child-bearing and the care of the household, for which the woman was given as a helper.

And if to anyone, on account of incontinence and burning, the apostle grants, by way of concession, a second marriage—since such a one does not indeed sin against the covenant (for he is not forbidden by the law), yet he does not fulfill the heightened perfection of the citizenship according to the gospel.

But he procures for himself heavenly glory by remaining as he is, keeping undefiled the union dissolved by death, and obeying well-pleasingly the dispensation according to which he has become undistracted for the service of the Lord.

Nor indeed does the divine providence through the Lord now enjoin, as of old, that one be washed after conjugal intercourse in the same manner as before.

For the Lord does not, by necessity, deter believers from child-bearing, having washed away entirely, by one baptism, the defilement of intercourse—he who also comprehended the many washings of Moses in one baptism.

From the beginning, then, the law, prophesying our regeneration by means of fleshly generation, applied its washing to the generative emission of seed, not abhorring the generation of man.

For that which appears as a man born, this is what the emission of seed is capable of producing.

It is not, then, frequent intercourse that is generative, but the reception by the womb that effects generation, the seed being shaped into an embryo in the workshop of nature.

How, then, can marriage be only an old thing and an invention of the law, while marriage according to the Lord is something different, when it is the same God who is kept faith with by us? For man could never reasonably dissolve what God has joined together; and much more will the Son keep what the Father has commanded.

But if the same one is at once lawgiver and evangelist, he never contradicts himself.

For the law lives, being spiritual and understood in a gnostic manner.

...through the body of Christ, that we might belong to another—to him who was raised from the dead, who was foretold by the law—that we might bear fruit to God.

Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

We were made dead, then, to the law—that is, to the sin made manifest by the law, which the law shows but does not beget, by commanding what is to be done and forbidding what is not to be done, thereby exposing the underlying sin, in order that sin might be made manifest.

But if marriage according to the law is sin, I do not know how anyone who says that God's command is sin can claim to have known God.

But since the law is holy, marriage is holy.

This mystery, then, the apostle applies to Christ and the church.

Just as that which is born of the flesh is flesh, so that which is born of the Spirit is spirit—not only with respect to birth, but also with respect to instruction.

At once the children are holy—that is, the deeds pleasing to God—the Lord's words having wedded the soul to God.

Fornication and marriage, then, are set apart from each other, since the devil stands far removed from God.

So you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead.

For it is understood along with this, in a proper sense, that we have become obedient—since, according to the truth of the law also, we obey the same Lord who has given commandment from afar beforehand.

And is it not indeed fitting that concerning such persons the Spirit says outright: 'In later times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose conscience is seared, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and those who have come to know the truth'?

For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.

For it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer.

One must not, then, absolutely forbid marrying, nor indeed the eating of meat or the drinking of wine, for it is written:

It is good not to eat meat nor to drink wine, if one eats to another's stumbling.

And it is good to remain as I am; but let both the one who partakes, with thanksgiving, and the one who does not partake, likewise with thanksgiving and with self-controlled enjoyment, live according to reason.

And in general, all the epistles of the apostle, teaching temperance and self-control concerning marriages, concerning child-bearing, and concerning the management of the household, and containing countless commandments, nowhere set aside temperate marriage; rather, preserving the continuity of the law with the gospel, they approve both the one who uses marriage temperately with thanksgiving to God, and the one who lives in continence as the Lord wills—each abiding, as he was called, in his choice, unfailingly and perfectly.

'And the land of Jacob was praised above all the earth,' says the prophet, ... glorifying the vessel of his spirit.

But someone runs down generation, calling it corruptible and perishing, and does violence to the text, saying that the Savior spoke, concerning child-bearing, the words 'Lay not up treasures on earth, where moth and consumption destroy'; and he is not ashamed to adduce alongside these also the words of the prophet.

'All of you, like a garment, will grow old, and the moth will eat you.'

But neither do we contradict Scripture, that our bodies are corruptible and by nature subject to flux.

Perhaps, too, the prophet was foretelling corruption to those with whom he was speaking, as being sinners.

But the Savior did not speak concerning child-bearing, but was exhorting to the sharing of fellowship those who wished only to acquire an abundance of wealth, while being unwilling to assist those in need.

'Labor not for the food that perishes, but for that which endures unto eternal life.'

And likewise they also adduce that saying:

'The sons of that age neither marry nor are given in marriage.'

But if one reconsiders this question concerning the resurrection of the dead, and those who were asking it, he will find that the Lord was not disapproving of marriage, but was correcting the expectation of fleshly desire with regard to the resurrection.

He did not speak of sons of some other age, but on a par with those who, having come to be in this age, being sons by reason of birth, both beget and are begotten—since no one will pass into this life apart from generation; but this mode of generation, admitting the same kind of corruption as before, no longer awaits the one who has once been separated from this life.

'One, then, is your Father who is in heaven'; but he is also the Father of all, by virtue of creation.

'Call no man your father on earth,' he says—meaning, do not regard as the cause him who sowed in you, according to the flesh, the seed of your being, but rather as a co-cause of your generation, or rather as a minister of generation.

Thus, then, he wishes us, having been converted, to become again as little children, recognizing the true Father, having been regenerated through water—this being a different sowing from that in natural creation.

'Yes,' he says, 'the unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord.'

'But the one who has married is anxious how he may please his wife.'

But what then? Is it not also permitted to the wife, by pleasing her husband according to God, to give thanks to God? And is it not likewise granted to the married man, together with his spouse, to be anxious about...

...the things of the Lord? But just as the unmarried woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit, so too the married woman is anxious about the things of her husband and the things of the Lord, in the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.

For both are holy in the Lord, the one as a wife, the other as a virgin.

But for the shaming and restraining of those readily inclined toward a second marriage, the apostle fittingly raises his voice to a higher pitch, and at once says:

'Every sin that a man commits is outside the body.'

'But he who commits fornication sins against his own body.'

But if anyone dares to call marriage fornication, he blasphemes, running back again against the law and the Lord.

For just as covetousness is called fornication, being opposed to contentment, and just as idolatry is a distribution from the one God to many gods, so fornication is a falling away from the one marriage to many.

For in three ways, as we have said, both fornication and adultery are understood by the apostle.

Concerning these things the prophet says:

'For your sins you were sold'; and again:

'You were defiled in a foreign land'—considering that fellowship to be defiled which is entangled with a body not one's own, and not given, according to conjugal union, for the purpose of child-bearing.

Wherefore also the apostle says: 'I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give no occasion to the adversary for reviling.'

'For already some have turned aside after Satan.'

Indeed, he fully approves the husband of one wife, whether he be presbyter, deacon, or layman, using marriage blamelessly.

'But she will be saved through child-bearing.'

Again, moreover, the Savior, calling the Jews an evil and adulterous generation, teaches that they, not having known the law as the law intends, but having followed the tradition of the elders and the commandments of men, commit adultery against the law, not having received it as the husband and lord of their virginity.

Perhaps, too, he knew them as enslaved to strange lusts, on account of which, being continually enslaved by their sins, they were sold to foreigners—since among the Jews, at any rate, women were not established as held in common, but adultery was also forbidden.

But he who said, 'I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come to the supper,' was the divine paradigm for the refutation of those who, for the sake of pleasures, withdraw from the divine commandment; since by this reasoning neither the righteous before the coming, nor those who married after the coming—even if they be apostles—would be saved.

And even if they again bring forward that saying, as the prophet also says, 'I have grown old among all my enemies'—let them understand 'enemies' to mean sins.

But there is a certain single sin—not marriage, but fornication; otherwise let them also call generation itself a sin, and the Creator of generation a sinner too.

Julius Cassianus, the leader of Docetism, also attempts arguments of this sort.

In his treatise On Continence, or On Eunuchism, he says, word for word:

'...for her to receive, but for him with a view to sowing, it has been permitted... that such intercourse is from God.'

'For if this arrangement, toward which we hasten, were from God, he would not have called the eunuchs blessed, nor would the prophet have said that they are not a barren tree — transferring the image from the tree to the man who, by deliberate choice, castrates himself of such a... notion.'

And still contending on behalf of his godless opinion, he adds:

'And how would one not justly blame the Savior, if he refashioned us and delivered us from error and from fellowship with our members, appendages, and private parts?' — teaching doctrines similar to Tatian's on this point.

But he had gone forth from the school of Valentinus.

For this very reason Cassianus says:

When Salome asked when the things she inquired about would be known, the Lord said:

'When you have trampled underfoot the garment of shame, and when the two become one, and the male together with the female is neither male nor female.' ... Now, in the first place, we do not have this saying in the four Gospels handed down to us, but in the Gospel according to the Egyptians.

And next, he seems to me to be ignorant that by 'male' the saying hints at the impulse of anger, and by 'female,' desire — passions which, once acted upon, are followed by repentance and shame.

Whenever, then, a person, indulging neither anger nor desire — passions which, growing through habit and evil upbringing, overshadow and cloud the reasoning faculty — but rather, having stripped off the mist arising from these, being humbled through repentance, unites spirit and soul in obedience to the Word, then, as Paul also says, 'among you there is neither male nor female.'

For the soul, having departed from this form by which male and female are distinguished, is transposed into unity, being neither of the two.

This noble fellow holds, in a rather Platonic fashion, that the soul, being divine, having been feminized by desire from above, has come down here into generation and corruption.

At once he forces Paul, by means of the following words, to say that generation is composed of deceit:

'But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve, your thoughts should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ.'