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and the partial truth created the longing for the future manifestation. In a more direct way and prior to this, the Word had intervened in the history of mankind. To the people of the Jews, alone among the nations of antiquity, He had given a direct revelation of Himself; and the record of that revelation had been preserved for the guidance of men. But something more than this was needed. The possibility of communication between God and man was an evidence of God's relation to man and of man's kinship with Him. But a theophany was only a transitory manifestation, and left the relation between God and man as external as before; the word in man was still alienated from the Word who was with God; the theophany must be consummated by an Incarnation; and so, the "Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us." When men began to search into the divine content of these words, new problems were created. Two things the Church sought to maintain and reconcile the absolute deity of Christ and His complete humanity: it sought to show that He was not a dual personality, half human, half divine, but one divinely-human personality, in which the divine and human aspects were alike to be acknowledged, neither aspect being exaggerated nor minimised. The humanity of Christ had been assailed in Alexandria; and, as has been noted, Clement was not altogether uninfluenced by the speculations in his environment. But he held so firmly by the humanity of Christ that he regarded the Incarnation as the basis and archetype of that which was in a measure possible for all His followers. In the fact and in the doctrine of the Incarnation he saw the bridging of the gulf, hitherto impassable, between man and God. He saw in it the consecration of nature and its redemption from the charge of being the cause of evil and antagonistic to God, as well as from the Epicurean charge

that it was outside the abiding love and care of the Almighty. He saw in it the consecration of the history of humanity as an ever-operative sphere for the activity of the Word. He saw in it the consecration of every son of man by presenting to him the possibility of becoming a son of God. Clement might have said with Browning 1

"I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason solves for thee

All questions in the earth and out of it."

1 Cf. Chase, Lectures on Ecclesiastical History (Norwich Cathedral), 1896, p. 296.

LECTURE V.

THE ETHICS OF CLEMENT.

3

WITH regard to the sources of the moral ideas in the teaching of Clement, as well as of the psychology that underlies them, there has been much discussion and controversy. According to Merk, he is an adherent of the Stoics;1 according to Reinkens, of Aristotle; 2 Ritter regards him as fundamentally a Platonist; Dähne as a NeoPlatonist. The truth is, if we accept his own statement, that he refused to be considered a narrow partisan of any school; that we find in his writings terms and definitions drawn indifferently from Plato or Aristotle; that in his conception of virtue, and even of its detailed applications, he has learned much from the Stoics. This need excite no surprise. Stoicism in its highest reach had much in common with Christianity, and even before his conversion it must have been attractive to an earnest spirit such as his; and it is probable, as we have noted, that Pantænus, in whose teaching he found intellectual rest, was an adherent of that system. But in delineating the Christian ideal he professed to exhibit the gnostic according to the rule of

1 Clemens Alexandrinus in seiner Abhängigkeit von der griechischen Philosophie. 1879.

* De Clemente Presbytero Alexandrino, 1851, pp. 300-309.

3 Geschichte der christlichen Philosophie, p. 447 et seq.

De гváσel, 1831, pp. 1-18, 69-112.

the Church;1 his ultimate authority is Scripture; and he would have accepted no maxim from any quarter as authoritative of which he did not regard Scripture as the source, or which could not in his opinion be reasonably deduced from it. "The Platonic and Stoic features are mingled with an inner confidence in the power of the spirit of Christianity." 2

Of man, his nature and destiny generally, Clement presents a high conception. Man is a plant of heavenly origin.3 It is his natural prerogative, as man, to have fellowship with God. By nature he is a lofty and majestic being, seeking after the good, as befits the creation of Him who alone is good. All men are the work of one God, invested with one likeness upon one nature. As the image of God is His Word, so the true man, the mind in the man, is the image of the Word." To be "after the image and likeness" does not apply to the body but to the mind and the reasoning faculty on which the Lord puts the seal of likeness. Man is superior to the animals in this, that by the inbreathing of God he shares in a purer essence than they, and that in him alone an idea of God has been instilled at his creation. As to the origin of the soul, the doctrine of traducianism is definitely set aside.10 Like the centaur, man is compounded of a rational and an irrational element-soul and body. The soul is superior to the body. But the soul is not good by nature, nor the body evil by nature. These two are diverse, but not opposite." Christ healed the soul as well as the body. If the flesh had been the enemy of the soul, He would not have restored it to

1 Str., vii. 7 41. τὸν τῷ ὄντι κατὰ τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν κανόνα γνωστικόν.

2 Gass, 'Geschichte der christlichen Ethik,' vol. i. p. 78.

3 Prot., ii.25.

7 Prot., x.98.

10 Ib., vi. 16 135.

4 Ib., x.100.
8 Str., ii. 19 102

5 Pæd., iii. 7 37. 6 Str., vii. 14 85. 9 Ib., v. 13 58; vii. 28. Cf. v. 14.

11 Ib., iv. 39; iv. 26 164.

health and fortified it in its hostility to the soul.1 The soul never sleeps. It is immortal and indestructible. Being formed of finer material, it suffered no injury in the flood from water, which is of grosser material. Without the spirit the body is nothing but dust and ashes. The soul is the final cause of the body. The body is the instrument, the seat, and the possession of the soul. The whole body, and not the upper part merely, was formed by God." Man by his constitution has been formed erect for the vision of heaven, and the mechanism of the senses tends to knowledge. All the parts are well ordered with a view to good, not pleasure. The body is the dwelling-place of the soul, and shares in the sanctification wrought by the Holy Spirit. The harmony of the body contributes to the goodly disposition of the mind.9 Yet, because of the passions inevitably associated with the body, it is a fetter to the soul.10 Natural death is the dissolution of the chains that bind the soul to the body, and this severance is the life-long "study" of the philosopher." The little piece of flesh tends to obscure the vision of the soul.12 Clement quotes with approval the saying of Plato,13 that the soul of the philosopher dishonours the body and seeks to be alone by itself,1 and without disapproval the saying that the body is the grave of the soul.15 A fleshly element involves a dead element.16 The hypothesis of transmigration of the soul and of purification by transmigration is to be rejected. The soul has not been sent into the world as into a prisonhouse.17 It is plain that we have here two different, if not contradictory, conceptions of the relation of the body to the

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