Conclusion
CONCLUSION
Masha.
But what's the point of it all?
Tuzenbakh.
The point? Look, it's snowing out there.
What's the point of that?
A. CHEKHOV, The Three Sisters (Act II) B: this stage the theme must be clear. Clement of Alexandria's speculation on the problem of evil is in a large measure dictated by his anti-gnostic polemic. This does not mean, however, that had Clement not been pursued by that particular gadfly he would have overlooked this subject, for it was too central a Christian issue to be avoided. What it does mean is that Clement's thought is geared to the questions which the Gnostics posed and their erroneous answers which he felt obliged to refute.!
Throughout we have hinted to what extent Clement's evangelizing zeal might have taken him wide of the mark of orthodox
Christianity. But on the whole his argument is sound. While the Gnostics had regarded the world as intrinsically evil and the unfortunate result of something that went wrong within the Pleroma itself, Clement insisted that the world was essentially good, the creation of the Supreme God through the mediation of his Son. Whereas the Gnostics considered man as basically helpless and his eternal destiny plotted according to some predetermined plan, Clement saw man as free, either to choose evil or to conform himself to the likeness of God which was made possible by the saving act of Christ. In spite of this freedom, however, the powers of evil in the world remain no less effective.
Man is liable to distraction from his eternal goal through their agency and will continue to suffer their taunts until the final restoration. At its simplest, then, this is Clement's argument.
His originality as a Christian thinker stems not so much from his treatment of these theological issues (for in that regard he does not differ substantially from the theologians who preceded him), but rather the way in which he weighed them up in order to vindicate God in the face of existential evil and thereby offer a solution to the problem.
I Cf. Str. vii. 102. 6.
CONCLUSION
For the Gnostics, the problem of evil was insoluble in any ordinary terms; evil had no raison d'étre. In fact, whether it was immanent in matter like an evil World-Soul or the result of a process of emanation! set in motion by a pre-cosmic crisis at the Pleroma level, mattered little. The gnostic conviction of its utter purposelessness in the natural order made it an obvious contradiction to a universe ordered by God. They made no attempt to accept the evil in the cosmos and use it as a means for their salvation. Instead, as we have noticed, they rethought their worldview in an elaborate mythology in order to protect the innocence of the transcendent deity. They despaired of any temporal happiness and sought flight from the material world through gnosis, by which they were redeemed.
Clement, however, like Chekhov's heroine, asks himself, 'What's the point of it all?' and elicits a more positive answer than the Gnostics had done. Clement's theodicy hinges on the purposefulness of evil. It may be recalled that a fundamental feature of Clement's anthropology and soteriology was man's original creation in the 'image and likeness of God' ; the former, an intellectual affinity which man had by nature, the latter, an identification through virtue which had to be acquired.? Now it was Clement's opinion that the Fall interrupted man's progress in this creative process of arranging himself after the 'divine likeness'.
With that event began the multifarious evils against which man would have to wage a life-long combat in order to achieve his deification. The Fall had not taken away the divine likeness from man, but produced an environment in which it was just that much more difficult to attain. Thus, in Keats's fine phrase, the world became a 'vale of soul-making'+ in which man, following the example of the Incarnate Lord, is able to work out his salvation and attain that divine likeness for 1 Cf. Hippolytus, Ref. vii. 22. 2: 'Why do we need ''emanation" or why do we posit ''matter'' in order for God to make the universe, as if he were a spider making a web or a mortal man using bronze or wood or pieces of material ?'
2 Cf. Jenkins, Glory of Man: "To be human and personal is to be open to whatever is given, to all data. We are in the image of God, but this describes our potentialities more than our present realities' (p. 111).
3 Though, of course, Original Sin brought with it mortality, and immortality was the primary requisite for deification (cf. Sir. iv. 10-11).
+ Adopted by Hick as a meaningful theodicy for today. For full particulars on the origin of this phrase, see Hick, Evil, p. 295, n. 1. Cf. Dodds, Pagan and Christian, pp. 23 f., the world as a 'school for souls'.
CONCLUSION
which he was originally made. The soul, then, had much to learn from evil.
It almost seems as though Clement thought of God arranging the physical world at its creation with a view to Adam's lapse.'
The world, as Clement saw it, was in a very real sense 'the best of all possible worlds', that is, the best for facilitating man's return to God. In short, the world with all its limitations is exactly according to God's plan; he wished it to be none other than it is.
In an intricately argued passage commenting on Wisdom 11:
24 f. Clement demonstrates that there is nothing in the universe which God loathes and which cannot assist his ultimate design.
He says, 'God does not hate anything, and yet wish that which he hates to exist. Nor does he wish anything not to exist and yet become the cause of existence to that which he wishes not to exist.
Nor does he wish anything not to exist which yet exists. But nothing exists, the cause of whose existence is not supplied by God. Nothing, then, is hated by God, nor yet by the Word."2
In view of this, however, evil was not a direct creation of God, but a natural accessory to the material world, like chaff to wheat.3
In perhaps Clement's most explicit text, he says that 'the cause of evil is in the weakness of matter, and the random impulses of ignorance and the irrational forces to which we fall victims from our incapacity to learn'.+ Evils, then, like disease or accidents, even death itself, are a necessary result of creation.5 Evil and finitude go hand in hand. It is part and parcel of the created order, just as natural as snow, given the appropriate meteorological conditions.
Clement, then, is able to justify an omnipotent creator despite the manifest evil in the universe by looking beyond its existential reality to its providential role. This is the essence of Clement's
I Str. vi. 152. 3. This amounts to calling Adam's Fall a pre-cosmic event.
2 Paed. i. 62. 3.
3 Cf. Chrysippus ap. Plutarch, De Stoicorum repugnantiis 37, 1051 be.
4 Str. vii. 16. 2 (kaxdv S€ airiay Kal vAns av tis dobeveray brodaBo .
. .). Cf.
Celsus ap. C. Cels. iv. 65: "It is enough for the masses to be told that evils are not caused by God [cf. Plato, Rep. 379 c], but inhere in matter and dwell among mortals' (cf. idem, Theaet. 176 a).
5 Str. vii. 61. 5, 65 (death, poverty, and disease only appear to be evil; in Str. ii. 34. 1 they are intermediate between virtue and vice). Cf. Str. iv. 11. 2, given the nature of the body and the soul, death follows 'naturally'. According to Chrysippus, disease, etc., are not xara ¢vow, but what he calls 'card rapaxodovbnow', i.€., certain inevitable consequences (see S.V.F. ii. Fr.
1170 Arnim).
CONCLUSION
theodicy. It is a view which owes much to contemporary Stoicism, but Clement gives it his own distinctive mark and employs it for a specifically Christian end. The Christian accepted suffering although desirous of passing through it; the Stoic denied its existence altogether and thus tried to make himself immune to it.
For both, however, evil in the universe was explicable on three grounds. It was part of the natural balance and harmony of things, paedagogic and teleological. In the first respect, Clement thought that there was something aesthetically appealing about a world composed of opposites held in harmony by the providential design of an omnipotent creator'—heat and cold, dry and wet, givers and receivers,? life and death,3 even good and evil4— all different from one another but preserved by their relationship to the whole.' Only a world with these antagonistic forces could challenge man to use his power of free choice,® that capacity by which he was conformed to the image of God and capable of possessing the divine likeness.
Evil was also justifiable on the grounds that it was educative.
In fact it is worth recalling that Clement classified providence primarily as a 'disciplinary art'.7 Job was perhaps the classic example where evil circumstances reaped a spiritual reward.®
But he was in no sense unique. All things are helpful to virtue without hindering the freedom of man's choice.? Therefore, tragedy of all sorts!® may be used by divine providence for a virt Str. iv. 40. 3. Cf. Chrysippus, S.V.F. ii. Fr. 1169 Arnim: no opposite is conceivable without something to oppose it. If you take away one, you take away both. Chrysippus legitimates evil by making it metaphysically necessary; ap.
Plutarch, Stoic. repugn. 35, 1050 f.
2 Str. ili. 55. 1.
3 Str. vi. 48. 7.
4 Cf. Str. ii. 39. 3.
5 Str. i. 57. 5.
© Str. vi. 48. 7; cf. Deut. 30:15, 19.
7 Str. iv. 87. 2: maieurixfs téxvyns; see above, p. 40. For a Stoic parallel, see
Chrysippus ap. Plutarch, Stoic. repugn. 15, 1040 c; cf. C. Cels. iv. 64; S.V.F. ii. Fr.
1174 Arnim: God 'purifies' the world with floods and conflagrations.
8 Str. iv. 19. 2; cf. Str. vii. 80. 6-8.
9 Str. vii. 12. 1. to It is regrettable that Clement does not specifically interpret the problem of evil in terms of tragedy as do many modern writers (e.g. T. R. Henn, The Harvest of Tragedy (London, 2nd edn., 1966) ; F. L. Lucas, Tragedy (London, revised edn.,
1957); D. D. Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy (London, 1960); R. Williams, Modern Tragedy (London, 1966)). Of all the Christian theologians of the patristic period he might well have pointed out what we could learn from this comparison, but he does not. Clement did know tragedy as a literary genre, and from his reading of Aristotle's Poetics he had some conception of the nature of tragedy. He says: 'For my part, mere legends though they are, I cannot bear the thought of all the calamities that are worked up into tragedy; yet in your hands the records of these
CONCLUSION
tuous end—namely an admonition, with an eye to amendment of the past and care for the future.! By the power of God, then, these natural faults of creation are made a 'medicine of salvation'? Man is continually in the position of learning from the consequences of Adam's mistake.
Carrying this theme one stage further, the legitimacy of evil in a God-created world can be defended by a teleological argument.3 Working on the principle that all things are managed with a view to the safety and continuance of the superior, lesser beings administer to the needs of the more noble creatures.+ Moreover, since all things were created by God for our use,' then tools like the bit for the horse, the yoke for the ox, the noose for the wild beast, the rod for the fish, and the snare for the bird are all good® because of the function they serve for man, quite apart from the fact that they endanger the welfare of certain inferior creatures.
This is of a piece with Clement's cosmogonic'chain of being'. "That to be is better than not to be will be admitted by anyone', he says;
'then according to the capabilities of their nature, each creature was and is made, advancing to that which is better'." Therefore, since the harmony of the universe dictates that the lower phyla contribute to the well-being of the higher species, it is understandable how evil rightly used can assist man in his pursuit of God.
In spite of this coolly reasoned defence of evil which views it not as something inexpedient but as serving a function in God's providential design, the realities of evil are no less cruel. The case of martyrdom dramatizes this most vividly. Clement's opposition understandably asks, 'If God cares for you, why are you persecuted and put to death?'§ But even in this evils have become dramas, and the actors of the dramas are a sight that gladdens your heart' (Protr. 2. 2). None the less, Clement does not elaborate how the tragic was manifested in a particular type of experience or its theological significance.
I Str, vii. 81. 6; death as the prime example, Str. iv. 11. 3 (cf. Rom. 6: 20-3), ie aie vii. 61. 5 (Euripides, Phoen. 1. 893). Cf. T. S. Eliot: "The whole world is our hospital' ('East Coker', Four Quartets).
3 Cf. Chrysippus ap. Plutarch, Stoic repugn. 32, 1049 a, 35, 1050 €; cf. Seneca,
Epist. 74, 20; Marcus Aurelius, ix. 39.
4 Str. vii. 12. 3.
5 Str. iv. 147. I.
6 Paed. iii. 99. 2.
7 Str. vi. 152. 3.
8 Str. iv. 78. 1. Basilides got round the difficulty of the martyrdom of the innocent by seeing it not as punishment for personal sin, but for some misdeed committed in the soul's previous existence (Sir. iv. 83. 2). Cf. 2 Macc. 6: 18-31
(the story of Eleazar).
CONCLUSION
instance Clement cheerfully maintains (perhaps because he was already at a safe distance) that good is ultimately brought out of every evil, martyrdom included. Since man is treated as he deserves and God is not a 'hater of men', martyrdom cannot be totally negative, but must have some positive value as well.
Therefore, while women as well as men, who all their lives have courted 'the death which raises up to life',2 are outcasts in the eyes of the world, they are themselves confident that divine providence orders all things well, even their untimely death.
However, lest the enthusiasm of the over-zealous approach paranoia, Clement tempers the excellence of martyrdom with the caution that it ought not to be directly sought.+ Suicide prompted by a death-wish and perhaps a secret longing to share in the limelight is to be discouraged.5 None the less, if martyrdom is one's appointed lot, Clement maintains that God does not actively will the affliction. Rather, it follows as a logical consequence upon natural events.© God does not intervene, but allows the death of the martyr for his own good purpose; namely, as a witness to the faith? and the salvation of the individual. In this way
Clement rationalizes even this paradox as ultimately playing a part in God's providential design.
Yet Clement's theodicy does not offer a solution to the problem of evil so much as a rationale for understanding it. There still remain the thorny problems of why God allowed the revolt of the angels and the sin of Adam in the first place, knowing full well the consequences that would follow. Clement knew that this could never be solved. None the less, he did not try to explain away the reality of evil, nor did he merely answer it by appealing to Stoic endurance. His specifically Christian contribution to the 1 Str. vii. 8. 1 (cf. Exc. ex Theod. 4. 2); cf. Paed. i. 62. 3.
2 Str. iv. 58. 2 (cf. Plato, Phaedo 67 e, 81 a).
3 Str. iv. 52. 3, 80. Cf. Str. i. 86. 2 (see Chrysipp. Fr. phys. 1184 Arnim), re philosophy.
SUS e1vet ye Ts 5 Str. iv. 17 (Clement seems to have in mind the self-immolations of the Brahmins in the East). Cf. Marcus Aurelius, xi. 3, which spurns the histrionic selfadvertisement of the Christians. For evidence that many persons were consciously or unconsciously in love with death during these centuries, see Dodds, Pagan and Christian, pp. 135f., n. 4. On pagan parallels and attitudes to martyrdom, see
Nock, Conversion, pp. 193 ff.
® Str. iv. 87. 1. On primary and secondary causality, see Str. viii. 25, and cf.
Chrysipp. Fr. phys. 346 Arnim, 7 Str. iv. 85.
CONCLUSION
discussion centred on the Incarnation and Redemption. 'Justice came down to men both in the letter and in the body, in the Word and in the law.'! By entering the very world created by Adam's fall, Christ removed the lasting effects of Adam's sin and demonstrated how we might humanly and hopefully face up to evil and use it for our deification. Clement's theodicy meant using evil creatively, rather than ignoring it.
However, the debate did not end here. Before two centuries had run their course the same issues had reappeared and been settled in an even fiercer dispute: that of Augustine against the Manichees. The general features of that controversy closely parallel Clement's contretemps with the second-century Gnostics of Alexandria. Both Clement and Augustine were Christian
Platonists. They were reared in an atmosphere in which the philosophy of Plato enjoyed considerable popularity ; in fact, in some circles, it was on an equal footing with the Bible. But Clement and Augustine had their priorities right. Platonism was a way of interpreting the meaning of the Scriptures; Scripture was not a key for understanding Plato. Moreover, the historical situation in which these two thinkers found themselves bred a similar theosophy which threatened orthodox Christianity by claiming a unique possession of the secrets of the universe in addition to those imparted by revelation. Gnosticism, then, is by no means peculiar to the second century. It is 'more than a local cult; it is more like a false shekinah which accompanies man in his march through time'.? No matter what form it takes,
Gnosticism seems to be one of those unfortunate forms of thought for which human beings have a chronic appetite when society meets with disillusionment. Clement and Augustine faced a common adversary.
The extent of the similarity is not, however, confined to these broad outlines alone. There is also a certain affinity between the particulars of Clement's treatment of the problem of evil and that of Augustine, though this likeness is probably more the product of their common scriptural source than of their Platonic bond.
Both hold that the origin of evil in the universe did not rest with God, the omnipotent creator, nor with some inferior deity
I Paed. i. 88. 3.
2 M. C. D'Arcy, The Mind and Heart of Love (London: Fontana Library, 1962), p. 70.
826707X H
CONCLUSION
incapable of handling intractable matter, nor with an antagonistic power like Satan. Instead, they blamed man for the origin of evil.
He sinned of his own free will, and consequently incurred the punishment due from divine justice, namely evil in all its forms.
Finally, both thinkers were anxious to refute the common gnostic tendency of directly associating evil with matter and drew upon their Platonic schooling in order to develop an anhypostatic conception of evil (although Augustine, it must be remembered, carried this a good deal further).
But this resemblance between the theodicies of Clement and Augustine must not be overstressed. The differences go far deeper than the similarities. For example, Augustine saw man as utterly helpless to win his salvation without divine grace, whereas
Clement viewed man's destiny as charted on the basis of foreseen merits freely performed. Thus, it would indeed be misguided to pretend that Clement's confrontation with the Gnostics over the problem of evil was nothing more than a dress rehearsal for that fuller treatment which the subject would receive in Augustine's polemic against the Manichees. Much more to the point is that this is another illustration of the truth which has become increasingly realized in recent studies: Augustine stands much closer to Clement and Origen than has originally been supposed.!
So we see that Clement makes his mark in the history of this idea. Before the dawn of Christianity, pagan philosophers had recognized the problem of evil and offered various solutions. The Platonists, for example, spared God the embarrassment of the imperfection of the universe by incriminating an inferior demiurge.
The Stoics, on the other hand, equated God with the world, thereby making him pervade every corner of the universe, including the most vile matter.? But these natural solutions to the problem somehow missed the point. Even for the second-century
Gnostics, the crux of the problem posed little real difficulty. The problem of evil is at its sharpest only when the wills of finite individuals come into play. For everything which results from their volition seems with a religious hypothesis to have a double
* e.g. see R. Holte, Béatitude et Sagesse. Saint Augustin et le probleme de la fin de
Phomme dans la philosophie ancienne (Paris, 1962). R. E. Witt has also stressed the resemblance between Alexandrian theology and Neoplatonism without going so far as to posit a direct connection between the two (art. cit., 'The Hellenism of Clement of Alexandria').
2 Cf. Str. i. 51. 1 for Clement's express condemnation of hylotheism.
CONCLUSION
determination: to be determined by the Supreme Will in the universe, and to be determined also by the finite individual will.
When both will identically, happiness results. When, however, the human will recognizes as evil what the divine will obviously appears to sanction, then the problem of evil arises. To the Gnostics, who by virtue of their determinism deliberately overlooked the capacity of human free will, the question of evil as a problem was virtually non-existent. Rather than wrestle with the issues, they found an escape from them in their cosmogonic myths. To Clement, on the other hand, who laid great emphasis on man's ability to choose, the problem of evil appeared with all its urgency. Although thinkers before him had considered the paradox of evil, Clement of Alexandria is one of the first
Christian theologians to feel the contradiction of evil in God's world.
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