Chapter 10 - Faith
CHAPTER 10
FAITH CLEMENT'S account of faith and knowledge has received considerable attention in the past. This attention is well justified, because he was saying something new and because what he said is neither simple nor of one pattern. However, the main points of his arguments are clear, and for this reason we shall look first at these main points and then examine their interweaving in Stromateis II and Stromateis v. We shall consider the moral and spiritual elements in separation from the logical elements, and then see how Clement blends them all together.
I. THE MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS OF FAITH
Faith is an act of the will, a voluntary choice. It is not a natural quality nor the result of a process of reasoning. It is the act of a free soul. For Clement the will is supreme, and the powers of reason are subordinate to it. 1 People disbelieve because they do not want to control their passions. 2 The decision of faith is of twofold importance. It is necessary for salvation and for knowledge. In the first place it is a choice between death and life, between sin and salvation. 'Faith is strength to salvation and power to eternal life.' 3 Clement's chief desire, seen clearly in the Protrepticus, was to save men from a state of sin and death. The same Logos trains men for the one salvation of faith in God, to which exhortation, training and teaching are directed. 4 Clement's reason for refuting philosophers in the Stromateis is not, he says, vengeance on his accusers but a desire for their conversion. 5 There is nothing lacking to faith, which is perfect in itself and complete. 6 There are no differences of salvation. 'Faith is the one
____________________ 1Strom. II, 77; II, 153, 21.
2Prot.61; 1, 47, 16.
3Strom. II, 53; II, 142, 12.
4Paed. I, 1; 1, go, 9.
5Strom. II, 2; II, 113, 22.
6Paed. I, 29; I, 107, 17. This is part of a defence of faith against the derogatory attitude of heretical gnostics.
universal salvation of mankind.' 1 There are no divisions into 'gnostic' and 'animal' men. All believers who have put aside lusts are equal and 'spiritual' before the Lord.
In the second place the decision of faith is a choice between perpetual ignorance and the possibility of knowledge. 'Faith is more elementary, being as necessary to the gnostic as breathing is necessary for life to him who lives in this world. As it is impossible to live without the four elements, so it is impossible to gain knowledge without faith. Faith is then the basis of knowledge.' 3 One reason for this is that there is a barrier between us and the important things we want to get at, and nothing we do can surmount this barrier. Consider these antitheses -- 'Guessing at truth is one thing -- the truth is another. A "likeness" is one thing -- the real thing is another. One comes from learning and training -- the other from power and faith.' 4
All our learning and discussion bring us to mere conjecture. On the other hand, 'Born again, we received immediately the perfection after which we had striven. For we were enlightened, which is to know God. Therefore he is not imperfect who knows the perfect.' 5 Faith is something divine which is not easily unsettled. It has two sides -our decision and God's gift, or God's gift and our response.
The first reason why we cannot know without faith is that truth is a gift of God and until we are willing to receive it we know nothing. Human reason is helpless to discover the first principles of knowledge. The second reason why we cannot know without faith is that a kind of perception is necessary to apprehend spiritual objects.
Since 'like perceives like' we cannot see. God until we become like him. 6 The linking of faith with perception is very important for Clement. We apprehend things in two ways -- directly, as by perception, and indirectly, as by inference. Ultimate truth is not to be reached by inference. It is reached immediately or directly and is therefore perceived or appre____________________ 1Paed. I, 30; I, 108, 10.
2Paed. I, 31; I, 108, 23.
3Strom. II, 31; II, 129, 26.
4Strom. I, 38; II, 25, 13.
5Paed. I, 25; I, 104, 28.
6It was a matter of controversy in Greek philosophy whether 'like perceived like' or 'unlike perceived unlike'. Aristotle said that our sense organs are actually unlike but potentially like the sense data which they receive.
hended. 'Like knows like.' The Greeks have made mistakes in their notions about God, because they were bad in themselves and saw the wrong things. Xenophanes was right in his description of the way in which men make their gods in their own images. 1 If by the miracle of conversion we are made good, then we shall see the goodness of God.
God is love, the God who is known to those who love, and God is faithful who is commended through instruction to the faithful. It is necessary for us to be joined to him by divine love, so that by like we may see like, hearing and obeying the word of truth, guilelessly and purely in the manner of children who obey us. 2
Using the imagery of the mystery religions Clement says the same thing in a more striking way.
And they will be pleased with nothing more than what is like themselves. For he who is still blind and deaf, not having the comprehension of the steady keen sight of the contemplative soul which the Saviour alone implants, like the uninitiated at a celebration of the mysteries or the unmusical at dances, not yet pure and not worthy of the pure truth, but still discordant, disordered, and material, must stand outside the divine chorus. 3
The impure cannot perceive the pure, the discordant the harmonious, the disordered the ordered, nor the material the spiritual. The unbeliever is blind and deaf concerning the perception of the truth, for it is pure, harmonious, ordered, and spiritual, and he is the opposite of these qualities. He needs new faculties of perception and he gets these by accepting the salvation of God and being born again. 'Behold I make new things,' says the Logos, 'which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man. With a new eye, a new ear and a new heart, whatever things are to be seen or heard are to be comprehended through faith and understanding, by the Lord's disciples who speak, hear and act in a spiritual way.' 4 To sum up, faith, which is both an act of the will and the results of that act, is necessary for salvation and for knowledge. It is necessary for knowledge because ultimate truth is from God and so cannot be
____________________ 1Strom. VII, 22; III, 16, 5. R.P. 100b.
2Strom. v, 13; II, 334, 17.
3Strom. V, 19; II, 338, 21.
4Strom. II, 15; II, 120, 15.
reached by our own efforts but only revealed to us by God. Again, faith is necessary to knowledge because we cannot see spiritual things until we are like them, and so the natural man needs new eyes and ears.
Most of this is new and different, but the general principle, that only the good can know the truth, had been maintained by philosophers before. In the writings of Plato there is a frequent emphasis on the distinctive life and character of the philosopher. In the Phaedo, the philosopher is one who devotes himself to the pursuit of the real. He controls and disciplines his body so that it will not hinder that pursuit. A lover of wisdom cannot be a lover of the body. The way of the philosopher is a way of renunciation, of purification from distracting desires. 1 In the Republic the guardians are trained not only as scientific thinkers, but also as saints.
The man whose soul is not in harmony will not see the harmony of the good.
Nothing evil is allowed to influence the guardian in childhood or in early youth.
Unless moral and aesthetic influences were carefully controlled it would not be the case that 'when reason comes he would welcome her as one he knows'. 2 Even for those trained in this way a conversion is necessary. 'So this faculty must be wheeled away from that which is becoming until it is able to endure being and the brightest blaze of being.' 3 One passage is similar to that of Clement quoted earlier.
'Then the philosopher, associating with what is divine and ordered, becomes ordered and divine as far as mortal may.' 4 The most striking passage is, 'It [the dialectic] finds the eye of the soul embedded in what is really a swamp of barbarism and gently draws and raises it upwards, using the arts we have enumerated as handmaids in the work of conversion.' 5 The constant insistence on the importance of character in the training of the guardians is based on a belief that no one can have knowledge who is not good. In the Theaetetus the philosophic man is described.
In the divine there is no shadow of unrighteousness, only the perfection of righteousness; and nothing is more like the divine than any one of us who becomes as righteous as possible. It is here that a ____________________ 1Phaedo 64C-65A.
2Rep.402.
3Rep.518.
4Rep.500.
5Rep.533.
man shows his true spirit and power, or lack of spirit and nothingness. For to know this is wisdom and excellence of the genuine sort; not to know it is to be manifestly blind and base. 1
Here virtue or excellence and wisdom are inseparable and he who lacks them is both base and blind. The eye of his soul is unable to see the truth. Plato not only maintains the general principle that only the good man can know the truth, but links this knowledge with a form of perception as Clement later did.
II. THE LOGICAL ELEMENT IN FAITH
Faith is the logical foundation of all knowledge. There can be no knowledge which is not based on faith. The first principles of knowledge cannot themselves be rationally demonstrated. Until they are somehow accepted there can be no knowledge. The acceptance of them is called faith. This is the view to be explained in the following section. Its precise meanings will appear as the arguments in its favour are considered. We cannot assume that we know what Clement means by 'faith' or any other word. We can assume that his arguments were for him valid, and find the meanings of 'faith' for which each argument will hold. This may be compared with the solving of equations to find the values of an 'x'. One point to be noted is that Clement does not claim that the basic elements of Christian truth can be proved by the light of natural reason. He claims it is logically necessary that they cannot be proved (or disproved) by the light of natural reason. Knowledge must depend on something other than knowledge.
Argument l 2 Either all things are in need of demonstration, or some are believed of themselves.
But if the former is the case, and we ask the demonstration of each demonstration, we shall go on ad infinitum and demonstration will be brought to nothing. But if the latter is the case, those very things which are believed of themselves will become first principles of ____________________ 1Theaetetus, 176C. Translation from Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge.
2This argument is placed first because it is of basic importance. The other arguments follow in the order of the text.
demonstrations. Indeed the philosophers agree that the first principles of all things are indemonstrable. So that if indeed there is demonstration, there is an absolute necessity that there is something prior which is believed from itself and is called first and indemonstrable. Consequently all demonstration is referred back to indemonstrable faith. 1
Demonstration is the important part of knowledge. We know a proposition to be true when we give a reason for it and understand it as inferred from true premisses.
We know the premisses true by understanding them as inferred from other true premisses and so on. The truth of the conclusion depends on the truth of the premisses, which in the end depends on the truth of the ultimate premiss. This ultimate premiss is called a starting point or first principle. Since it depends for its truth on no other proposition it cannot be known as true in the above sense. It must be received and recognised as true in some other sense. The receiving and recognising is called faith and the first principle is 'believed from itself'.
This argument is derived from a theory of inference which stretched back to Aristotle and to Plato. We find the following passages in Aristotle. 'For demonstration proceeds from what is more certain and is prior . . . we get to know some things naturally through themselves and other things by means of something else (the first principles through themselves, what is subordinate to them through something else).' 2 'Intellect has to do with the first principles of things intelligible and real. For science has to do with things that admit of demonstration, but the principles are indemonstrable so that it will not be science but intellect that is concerned with the principles.' 3 For Plato, knowledge (which consisted in inferring a proposition from a higher, more general one) depended upon the ultimate first principle, the Form of the Good which was itself unknowable simply because there was nothing beyond it from which it might be inferred. 4
The validity of Clement's argument cannot be doubted. We may doubt the validity of this theory of demonstration or the possibility of knowledge and demonstration. If these two points ____________________ 1Strom. VIII, 6-7; III, 83, 6.
2Anal. Prior. II, 16, 64b. Ross translation.
3Magna Moralia, 1197a. Ross translation.
4Plato's position is discussed further at the conclusion of this chapter.
are on the other hand accepted (as they were by Clement and the people for whom he was writing), then there must be an indemonstrable first principle. The meaning of the argument can be best seen in the following story, told by A. A. Milne in his
The Man in the Bowler Hat. The Chief Villain has captured and is torturing the hero for information concerning the Rajah's Ruby. This, it is disclosed, is in a hat-box in the cloak-room at Waterloo. The ticket for this hat-box is in another hat-box at Paddington. After the fifth hat-box ticket is mentioned:
Chief Villain (quite broken up): Also in a hat-box?
Hero: Yes.
Chief Villain: How much longer do we go on?
Hero (cheerfully): Oh, a long time yet.
Chief Villain (to Bad Man): How many London stations are there?
Bad Man: About twenty big ones, governor.
Chief Villain: Twenty! (To Hero) And what do we do when we've gone through the lot?
Hero: Then we go all round them again.
Chief Villain (anxiously): And -- and so on?
Hero: And so on.
Chief Villain (his hand to his head): This is terrible. I must think. (To Bad Man) Just torture him again while I think . . .
Chief Villain (triumphantly): I've got it!
(He rises with an air, the problem solved. They all look at him.) John: What?
Chief Villain (impressively to Hero): There is somewhere -logically there must be somewhere -- a final, an ultimate hat-box.
John: By Jove! That's true!
Hero: Yes.
Bad Man (scratching his head): I don't see it. 1
Argument 2 This argument begins with a statement of Argument 1 with variations. 2 'First principles are indemonstrable. For they can
____________________ 1A. A. Milne, The Man in the Bowler Hat.
2Strom. II, 13; II, 119, 26.
be known neither by art nor by discrimination. 1 For the latter is concerned with things which could be otherwise and the former is practical only and not contemplative.' This statement of Argument 1 is reinforced by two arguments which can be stated syllogistically.
(a) All things capable of being taught are founded on what is known before. All knowledge is a thing capable of being taught. Therefore, all knowledge is founded on what is known before.
(b) All knowledge is founded on what is known before. Accounts of first principles are not founded on what is known before. Therefore, accounts of first principles are not knowledge. The minor premiss of (b) is proved by showing the errors which philosophers have made concerning first principles. They couldn't have made errors if they had previous knowledge. The conclusions which Clement draws from the ignorance of human teachers and their inability to know the first principles of things are, 'The first principle of the universe can be reached by faith alone', 2 and, 'Call no man your teacher on earth.' 3
Clement continues, For knowledge is a condition which comes from demonstration.
But faith is a grace which leads on from indemonstrable things to what is absolutely simple, which neither is with matter, nor is matter, nor is dependent on matter.'
Faith lays hold of ultimate truth because it actually sees the objects of this truth.
Quoting from Plato Sophist, 4 Clement says that those who have not seen by faith try to drag all things down to earth out of heaven and the unseen, literally grasping rocks and trees in their hands, for they lay hold of all things and vigorously assert that that alone exists which can be handled and touched. They define body and reality as the same thing. Those who dispute against them very cleverly defend their position somewhere above from the unseen world, forcefully declaring that certain intelligible and bodiless forms are the true reality.
Their trouble is not that they have made mistakes in their reasoning, but that they have started from wrong first principles. They cannot 'see' the important things -- 'with a new eye, new ear, new ____________________
2Strom. II, 13; II, 119, 20.
3Ibid. II, 120, 5. Matt. xxiii. 8.
4Sophist, 246A, B.
heart, all things can be seen, heard, and apprehended by faith and understanding when the Lord's disciples speak and hear and act in a spiritual way'. In this way the logical necessity for faith is linked with its moral necessity and its power of perceiving things not ordinarily seen. The only way to learn first principles is by faith in him who can show them to us and give us eyes to see them.
Argument 3 Clement goes on to speak about genuine and counterfeit money. 1 Untrained people cannot tell the difference. Only the knowledge of the trained professional can differentiate. The application of his trained perceptions is an act of judgement and Aristotle calls this act faith. 'Aristotle says that the act of judging whether a thing is true, the decision which follows knowledge, is faith. Faith is then something superior to knowledge and its test of truth.' Guessing, despite its pretensions, is not faith.
Learning and the acquisition of knowledge are essential to the practice of any craft.
One must obey one's teacher if one is to learn. 'To obey the Logos, whom we call teacher, is to believe in him and not to go against him in anything.' 2 So that for the process of learning faith is necessary, and for the judgements of faith a background of learning is necessary. 'Faith, then, is to be known and knowledge is to be believed, by a kind of divine reciprocity.' 3
Argument 4 The next argument is attributed to Epicurean sources.
And indeed Epicurus, who strongly preferred pleasure to truth, assumes faith to be a preconception 4 of the intellect. He defines preconception as fixing the attention on something clear and on a clear notion of the thing. No one can investigate or raise a question, or hold an opinion, or argue without a preconception. How can one, not having a preconception of what he is after, learn about what he investigates? When he has learned he has now turned his preconception into a comprehension. 5
____________________ 1Strom. II, 15; II, 120, 19.
2Strom. II, 16; II, 121, 5.
3Ibid. II, 121, 7.
4ππóλνφισ 5Ibid. II, 121, 8.
Faith is defined elsewhere as a voluntary preconception. 1 This notion was very important to the thought of Epicurus. It was the second of his three criteria of truth
-- sensation, preconception, and feeling. It was the source of all general concepts and systematic knowledge. It was a 'clear vision' of something not given immediately in sense experience though derived from it. Without a preconception as to what a 'horse' or a 'cow' is, one could neither ask nor answer such questions as,
'Is that animal a horse or a cow?' 2
A modern version of this argument is to be found in R. G. Collingwood's 'logic of question and answer'. Examination of any truth depends on seeing it as the answer to a specific question. The specifying of the question implies preconceptions concerning the object of the inquiry. One must know what one is looking for.
Collingwood writes of his archaeological work, 'Experience soon taught me that under these laboratory conditions one found out nothing at all except in answer to a question; and not a vague question either, but a definite one. That when one dug saying merely, "Let us see what there is here", one learnt nothing.' 3 Another version of this argument is found in Kant. Kant attributed the advance in physical science to the fact that scientists 'learned that reason has insight only into that which is produced after a plan of its own. . . . Reason . . . must approach nature in order to be taught by it' as 'an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated. . . . It is thus that the study of nature has entered on the secure path of a science after having for so many centuries been nothing but a process of merely random groping.' 4 Clement did not regard preconception as the whole content of faith. But he did wish to point out the necessity of preconception to any inquiry, doubt or argument. Unless we believe certain things about God, any inquiry concerning him will be nothing but a 'process of merely random groping'. This necessity is not merely the spiritual
____________________ 1Strom. II, 8; II, 117, 9. ππóλνφισ ἑκοúωιοσ.
2Diog. Laert. X, 33. See C. Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, p. 247.
3Autobiography ( London, 1939), p. 24.
4Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Preface to 2nd ed., p. 14 ( Kemp-Smith abbrev . ed.).
necessity mentioned earlier, but also the logical necessity in any realm of inquiry for preconception which in some way anticipates the result. We cannot answer a question until we know what it means. We cannot know what it means until we have preconceptions about its terms.
Argument 5 This argument 1 follows the idea brought forward in Argument 3, that faith both follows and is followed by knowledge. Faith in Scripture leads to a demonstration which reacts on faith to confirm and strengthen it. The strength of the demonstration is the strength of the Scripture which is the strength of God. Faith in God learns the Scriptures, obeys the commandments, and is strengthened by the power of God.
Demonstration (like belief) is of two kinds -- that which is scientific or based on reasoned knowledge and that which is based on opinion. 2 The only true demonstration is that supplied from the Scriptures, 'wisdom taught by God'.
Learning is obedience to the commandments, which obedience is faith in God. Faith is a power of God and the strength of truth. This is the faith which moves mountains, heals the sick and raises the dead. On. the one hand, demonstration which is based on opinion is not divine but human, mere rhetoric or dialectic. On the other hand, the highest demonstration, which is based on reasoned knowledge, produces faith in the souls of those who want to learn, through examination and exposition of the Scriptures.
Argument 6 This argument 3 repeats the idea of Argument 4 that we determine our beliefs. Not only the Platonists but also the Stoics say that assent 4 is in our power. All opinion, judgement, notion, and learning, by which we live and are ever bound together with the human race, is an assent -- which can be nothing else than faith. This statement may seem hard to reconcile with Platonism. It shows the extent of Stoic influence on Middle Platonism. The ____________________ 1Strom. II, 48; II, 138, 21.
3Strom. II, 54, 5; II, 142, 25.
Stoic theory of perception compared the soul to a 'tabula rasa', yet attributed to it the activity of forming general concepts and of obtaining knowledge from its impressions. The soul had the power to assent to or to deny the reality of an impression or the truth of a proposition. Whenever error occurred, the fault lay with the mind which had assented where it should have denied. Assent is the action of the soul in admitting reality or truth to an impression. 1 It is distinct from preconception which is the formation of concepts spontaneously and independently of experience.
This Stoic theory of perception was the subject of much controversy, especially as the Stoics claimed that some impressions, 'grasping impressions', 2 were such that error was impossible. They are 'representations proceeding from the object and agreeing with it, stamped and sealed upon the soul, such as could have no existence but for the existence of the object'. 3 Such a representation 'takes hold of us by the hair and drags us to assent'. 4 The Wise Man distinguishes between 'grasping' and 'nongrasping' impressions and assents to the former only. It is therefore impossible for him to make mistakes. The story is told of a trick played by a King Ptolemy on a Stoic philosopher, Sphaerus, by placing a pomegranate made of wax before him. When the philosopher tried to eat it, the king claimed that he had assented to a false impression. The philosopher replied that he had just assented to the probability that the king would give him real fruit. 5 This story is perhaps in the mind of Clement when he argues that truth must not be abandoned because of the diversities of heresy. He says, 'For when fruit is placed before us, some real and ripe, and some made of wax and as like the real thing as possible, we must not abstain from both because of the resemblance. We must, at once, with grasping vision and most decisive reasoning, distinguish the real from the apparent.' 6 Logical reasoning by itself will not answer the most important questions
____________________ 1Cicero, Academica2, 37 and 2, 47.
3Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos VII, 248.
4Ibid. VII, 257.
5Diog. Laert. VII, 6, cited Davidson, The Stoic Creed, p. 78.
6Strom. VII, 91; III, 64, 30.
for us. We have to decide what is true and what is false. The Stoics called this decision 'assent'. Clement calls their assent 'faith'.
Argument 7 In this argument faith is opposed to logical investigation. A thing which is accepted on faith cannot be submitted to logical investigation. A thing which can be submitted to logical investigation cannot be accepted on faith.
We know that neither are obvious things investigated, such as if it is day (while it is bright day light), nor are obscure things which will never be clear, as whether the stars are even or odd in number; nor are convertible things, and those things are convertible which can be equally said by those who hold the opposite view, as whether what is in the womb is a living being or not. A fourth mode is when from one of the sides is put forward an argument which cannot be disputed or destroyed.
If then the reason for investigation is removed in accordance with all these modes, faith is established. For we put before them the indisputable consideration that it is
God who speaks and who gives in writing information concerning every single point
I want to know. Who then would be so impious as to disbelieve God and to ask for proofs from him as from men? 1
Some questions cannot be made the subject of a logical investigation and with these faith alone can deal. We cannot argue with God. We must believe or (if we are utterly perverse) disbelieve.The meanings of faith in these arguments may be set out.
(1) Faith is the acceptance of an indemonstrable first principle.
(2) Faith accepts this first principle not from man but from God.
(3) Faith is the judgement of a soul which has been trained by God to distinguish true from false.
(4) Faith is a preconception which gives a meaning to words like 'God'.
(5) Faith obeys God's commands and learns from his Scriptures.
(06) Faith is an assent of the mind.
____________________ 1Strom. V, 5; II, 328, 29.
(7) Faith is the one alternative left when logical means of inquiry are useless.
To these may be added the results of the moral and spiritual account of faith. Faith is an act of the will, a free choice of salvation. Faith is the perception of spiritual things with a new heart and eye and ear. When all these points are brought together we see that the one common feature of them all is that faith is a simple unique thing. It is an act, not a process. While it is connected with a process of examining the Scriptures, or of learning the truth from God, faith is essentially a simple act. We choose, accept, see, assent to God's truth.
III. TWO PASSAGES
The main reasons why Clement considered faith to be necessary have been set out.
From these the content of Clement's concept of faith can be seen. A brief examination of the interweaving of the various ideas in the text will now be given.
The first half of Book II and the first chapters of Book V of the Stromateis present
Clement's account of faith.
Stromateis Book II There are many ways of wisdom that lead to the way of truth, but faith is itself the way of truth. 1 Our barbarian (i.e. nonHellenic) philosophy is really perfect and true.
It leads through the whole universe of knowledge visible and invisible to the God who is far distant but who has come very near. Truth is hidden from us but by the Holy Spirit we may search the deep things of God. The multitude, says Heraclitus, do not understand things and do not really know what they have learnt.
Understanding is the result of faith. Faith, 2 which the Greeks think is inane and barbaric, is a voluntary preconception and an assent of piety, 'the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'. It has also been defined as a mental assent to something unseen. 3 It is a choice 4 and as such the first principle of activity. 5
____________________ 1Strom. II, 4; II, 114, 29 (we begin at ch. 2).
2Strom. II, 8; II, 117, 8.
3ἐ .
It develops into a knowledge which rests on firm foundations and which is an enduring disposition. 1 He who believes the divine Scriptures receives in God's voice an irrefutable demonstration. The demonstration follows after faith, not faith after the demonstration.
The heretics think that faith is an innate property which some people possess. They make men mere puppets and exclude the possibility of the sinner's repentance, forgiveness, and baptism in the three-fold Name. 'But we who have learned from the Lord by the Scriptures that freedom of choice or refusal has been given to men, let us rest on the unshakable criterion of faith, displaying an eager spirit, because we chose life and have believed in God through his voice.' 2 The greatness of this faith is shown in Hebrews xi. It is a higher form of sensation, and not a form of opinion. 3 We are ignorant of first principles without faith. We need new eyes to see spiritual things.
Faith is the criterion of knowledge and the preconception which makes knowledge possible. Faith is superior to knowledge. Drawing on Plato, Clement describes the man of faith as kingly and a living law. He is set on high that all may contemplate the excellence of his example. 4 Other Greeks besides Plato said these things, all of them drawing on Moses who foreshadowed Christ. For example, the Pythagoreans believed the αὐτ ἔφα of their master, and Epicharmus wrote of mental sight and hearing as being the only sight and hearing that mattered.
Faith is in the word of God, 5 is our part in the co-operative process of learning, produces repentance, and provides the basis for hope. The faithfulness of God makes assent to him something stronger than assent to the philosophers. Unbelief is the weak negative supposition of a man who opposes him. 6 There is nothing weak about the faith that trusts in the glory and salvation of God. The promises and providence of this God will not fail. Faith stands firm because like its object it is divine. Faith is the first inclination 7 towards salvation and all the virtues follow it.
____________________ 1ἔισ.
2Strom. II, 12; II, 119, 4.
3Strom. II, 13; II, 119, 25.
4Strom. II, 19; II, 122, 16.
5Strom. II, 25; II, 126 8 (ch. 6) 6Strom. II, 28; II, 127, 31.
Faith is elementary and as essential to knowledge as the elements are to life.
Faith is proved from the Scriptures 1 and imparts to the faithful a unique stability and constancy. It is two-fold in that we believe that certain things have happened and that certain things will happen. 2 Faith links past and future together in the present. It is an assent and is in our power.
Stromateis Book V Some people 3 say that one has faith in the Son and knowledge of God. But, says
Clement, we cannot believe in the Son without knowing who and what he is. 'Now faith is not without knowledge nor the Father without the Son.' We cannot believe in the Son without knowing the Father. We cannot know the Father without believing in the Son who teaches us. Only a few believe and know. Only a few have ears to hear. Faith is the ears of the soul. There is a common faith which all believers possess, and from which they go on from faith to faith. This is the faith which like a grain of mustard seed stings the soul into life and grows so greatly that statements about heavenly things can rest upon it. 4 The heretical gnostics deny that faith is the rational assent of a free soul and call it a natural property; but their doctrines are inconsistent. The best form of investigation is that which is built on faith, 5 a faith which is itself established because investigation into its subject matter is impossible. God has spoken and it is unthinkable to question the truth of what he has said. 6 The power of God can save by itself, without proofs, and through bare faitb. 7 Faith must not however be inactive and isolated but must move on through investigation. 8 The clear sight of the soul must be free from the obstructions of sin.
9 We can only see God as we are joined to him by divine love, seeing like by like.
Faith and hope both deal with things which only the mind can see. When we say things are just, good, true, we are talking about things
____________________ 1Strom. II, 48; II, 138, 15 (ch. 11).
2Strom. II, 53; II, 141, 25 (ch. 12).
3Strom. V, 1; II, 326, 3.
4Strom. V, 3; II, 327, 16.
5Strom. V, 5; II, 328, 27.
6Strom. V, 6; II, 329, 8.
7Strom. V, 9; II, 331, 19.
8Strom. V, 10; II, 332, 27.
9Strom. V, 11; II, 333, 8.
which can be seen only with the mind. 1 Plato speaks of philosophers as those who love to look at truth. 2 He says that it is important to know our ignorance. Those who do not believe can have neither understanding nor the steady clear sight of the contemplative soul. 3 Only the Saviour can implant this vision. Unbelievers are blind and deaf to spiritual things because they can only see what is like themselves. 4
IV. CONCLUSION
Clement's treatment of faith was more than a defence and justification of an essential Christian idea. It made the weak point of classical philosophy intelligible and sound. The weakness of the Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of knowledge was the hook on which their chain of inference must hang. The weak points of Epicurean and Stoic epistemology were 'preconception' and 'assent'. There were some things that could not be proved. These things were unfortunately essential and important things. This was embarrassing because no one likes to live in a house, however well constructed it may be, if that house is built on sand. All this was apparent in Clement's day. He faced an age which had little confidence in reasoned argument. Clement was able to say, 'God tells you all about these things through his Word. What could be more safe than to build on his foundation, and what more reasonable than to believe in him?' Clement says this with subtlety and variety, drawing on previous inadequate solutions.
Plato shows the gap which Clement filled with the idea of Christian faith. Knowledge for Plato 5 is the ability to define a form or idea in terms of a more comprehensive form, showing that the nature of the thing known is logically necessary because of a more ultimate form. Knowledge, then, is like a chain, each link depending on the previous one, or like a series of steps, each
____________________ 1Strom. V, 14; II, 316, 1. This is Platonic. Cf. Phaedrus 247c.
ñσ.
4Strom. V, 19; II, 338, 21. After this Clement goes on to discuss the concealment of truth in riddles and symbols.
5Meno98.
one leading to a higher and more comprehensive truth. To say 'x is true' means 'x follows from y which follows from z. . . .' At the end of the chain there is that upon which all knowledge and truth depend. But it can hardly be called knowledge or truth itself, for there is nothing for it to be inferred from. The problem is: The first principle must be known and true if knowledge and truth of the above sort are to be valid. But the first principle cannot be known and true in the above sense of knowledge and truth. 'This then, says Plato, 'which imparts truth to the things that are known and the power of knowing to the knower, you may affirm to be the Form of the good. It is the cause of knowledge and truth and you may conceive it as being known, but while knowledge and truth are both beautiful, you will be right in thinking it other and fairer than these.' 1 It is the cause of knowledge and truth, but different from them. 'We have no proper knowledge of the Form of the good. And if we don't know it, though we should have the fullest knowledge possible of all else, you know that that would be of no use to us.' 2 If we cannot know it, we must get hold of it in some other way. 'Do you think it right to make pretensions to knowledge where one has none? No -- but it is right that you should be prepared to state what you think, as being what you think.' 3
The Form of the Good cannot be 'known' in the usual sense but is 'seen' in an unusual sense. The education of Plato's 'guardians' is the preparation of souls for the sight of the Form of the Good. This education is a search for the first principle of everything by taking the first principles of each science and inferring them from another first principle. For example, the first principle or set of axioms upon which solid geometry is built may be inferred from axioms of plane geometry, which in turn may be inferred from axioms of arithmetic. This suggests that the whole of mathematics may be inferred from one first principle, or one set of primitive propositions. Plato believed that if you continued destroying your hypotheses, you would get a first ____________________ 1Republic 508. A. D. Lindsay's translation is used here and in the following passages. Italics are mine in each passage.
2Republic505.
3Republic506.
principle of everything from which the axioms of mathematics and ethics would follow. The first principle cannot be 'known' in the way things are 'known' further down the line. Yet if knowledge down the line is to be valid, it must be fixed in some other way. It is fixed by the perception of a powerful reality.
'Then, Glaucon,' I said, 'is not this at last the real melody played by dialectic? It is intelligible, and its copy is the power of sight which we described as at length endeavouring to look at the real animals, then at the real stars, and finally at the real sun. So too when any one tries by dialectic through the discourse of reason unaided by any of the senses, to attain to what each reality is and desists not until by sheer intelligence he apprehends the reality of good; then he stands at the real goal of the intelligible world, as the man in our simile stood at the goal of the visible.' 1
The education of the philosopher 'leads what is best in the soul up to the vision of what is best in things that are'. 2
This dependence of knowledge on the vision of a supreme reality shows how much Clement had to give. His account of faith and conversion was a more practicable thing than any system of education. Conversion worked for all sorts and conditions of men while philosophical training was never meant for any but the few. Clement's account of faith as perception of spiritual things was a thing to which Christians could testify. They had been blind but could now see. The supreme reality in which faith found its object was a God who had revealed himself in a living as well as a written Word.
____________________ 1Republic532.
2Ibid.