Chapter 12 - Spiritual Knowledge
CHAPTER 12
SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE
'OUR knowledge and the spiritual paradise is our Saviour Himself into whom we are now planted, after being transferred and transplanted out of the old life into good soil. The change of soil conduces to fruitfulness. The Lord, then, into whom we have been transplated, is the Light and true knowledge.'
1. PLANTED IN CHRIST
The metaphor of a garden 1 1 is used to describe the relation of the gnostic to his
Lord. The gnostic must first be transplanted from another place. He is pulled up by the roots and planted in Christ. He must break with his former way of life, put aside godless opinion and turn to the truth. 2 Any man in Christ is a new creature, washed free of the old life, for old things (fornication, incontinence, unrighteousness) are passed away, and new things (purity, continence, righteousness) have taken their place. 3 Knowledge is dependence on and unity in Christ. We climb the upward path by hanging on to Christ in faith, knowledge, and love. To grow in knowledge is to grow in Christ in whom we are planted and from whom we draw our life. Henry
Vaughan wrote of 'The seed growing secretly':
Slowly and sadly doth he grow, And soon as left, shrinks back to ill; O feed that life which makes him blow And spread and open to thy will! 4
The garden in which we are planted is the garden of Paradise. Paradise had two main associations for Clement -- it included the tree which was the source of knowledge and it was also a synonym for heaven. The tree of life is the Cross, which is our sole need and ____________________ 1Παπáδειωοο 2Strom. VII, 27; III, 20, 16.
3Strom. III, 62; II, 224, 23 (2 Cor. v. 17).
4Henry Vaughan, 'The Seed Growing Secretly'.
salvation. 1 Its fruit is the knowledge of the truth. 2 It is the divine Logos who was planted in the world as the tree in the garden, and who flowered and gave fruit. By the tree of his cross we find knowledge. 'For our life was hung upon the Tree, that we might believe.' 3
The garden of Paradise was for Clement, as for most people, also a symbol of heaven. For a Christian to be in Paradise meant nothing else than to be in heaven.
Clement speaks twice about being in Paradise. It is remarkable that on both occasions he is talking of a present not a future event. 'Who', he says, 'goes hurrying off to hell when he can be a citizen of heaven, when he can farm Paradise, walk around heaven and draw on the pure source of life, when he can fly through the air in the path of the bright cloud, like Elijah, looking at the rain of salvation?' 4
Writing of the wearing of floral crowns and their overpowering scent, he remarks upon the fading beauty of the flower and says, 'It is fitting that we should revel with restraint ὡσἐνΠαπαδεíωῳ.' 5 Consequently when Clement speaks of the Lord as our spiritual Paradise he has in mind the divine source of our knowledge and our present enjoyment of Paradise. These two points recur throughout his account of knowledge.
II. FROM FAITH TO KNOWLEDGE
The transferring of the plant makes it fruitful. The growth of the plant in new soil symbolises the development of the man in Christ. The plant grows continuously and not by a series of intermittent jerks. Leaf follows tender shoot, flower follows bud.
So grows the gnostic, quietly and continuously in his Lord. When we believe in God we start to know him. When we know him we
____________________ 1Paed. III, 25; I, 251, II.
2Strom. III, 104; II, 244, 5.
3Strom. V, 72; II, 374, 26.
4Prot.92; I, 68, 3. Butterworth notes, ' Clement has drawn together the Elijah of the Transfiguration
(Matt. xvii. 5) and the Elijah of Mount Carmel' (1 Kings xviii. 44).
5Paed. II, 71; I, 200, 14. Cf. Strom. II, 51; II, 140, 15 where 'Eden' is translated τπυφń, i.e. delight, revel. Cf. Gen. ii. 15. 'And God took the man whom he had formed and placed him in the garden of delight' (ἐντῶ+Παπαδεíωῳτñσ τπñσ). Paed. II, 71; I, 200, 14 is not merely an historical reference but an eschatological one.
start to love him. When we know and love him we live as though we were in heaven, and we see his face because our hearts are pure. His face is Jesus Christ.
We pray all the time because we know that he is with us all the time. This development is described in Strom. VII, ch. 10. 1 ωισ), says Clement, is the perfection of man as man. This perfection is achieved by the understanding (ἐΠιΩτńμη) of divine things concerning conduct, manner of life and speech, and is harmonious with itself and with the Logos of God. Through such understanding faith is brought to perfection and the believer grows to full manhood. Faith is an intrinsic good. It does not inquire about God but accepts the fact of his existence and glorifies him. To obtain knowledge one must begin with faith and grow in it by divine grace. 2 To put aside doubts and to believe is the foundation of knowledge. Christ is both the foundation and the superstructure. Neither faith which is the starting point nor love which is the goal can be directly taught. The tradition of knowledge is entrusted to those who have shown themselves worthy of it. We pass from knowledge to the splendour of love, from light to light. 'To him that hath it shall be added.' To faith shall be added knowledge, to knowledge love and to love the inheritance.
Depending completely on Christ by faith, knowledge and love, we may climb with him to the very presence of God. All knowledge comes from God, and by knowledge we are led to the perfect end which has no end. 3 We are taught in advance what kind of life we will enjoy when, chastened and purified, we take our place among the gods. For those who have been made perfect and who are pure in heart there is the restoration to eternal contemplation. Knowledge purifies and prepares us for the heavenly place. It leads to this crowning place of rest, and teaches the pure in heart to gaze on God 'face to face'. 4
____________________ 1Strom. VII, 55; III, 40, 21.
ωισ. The former is restricted to what is spoken. The latter includes σοφíα and other things.
A second description of the upward path follows. 'Faith is, as it were, a direct knowledge of the essential things. Knowledge is the demonstration from the things received through faith, built up strongly and firmly on faith through the teaching of the Lord. 1 It leads on from faith to what cannot be shaken and is grasped by understanding.' There is one conversion from paganism to faith and another from faith to knowledge. Knowledge in turn is consummated in love. He who knows anticipates on earth the angelic status which will be his in heaven. When he has climbed. as high as flesh can climb, he continues on through the seventh heaven to the Father's house, the 'mansion' of the Lord where he will remain as an eternal light, changeless and constant. David speaks of this when he says, 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. . . . He shall receive a blessing from the Lord and mercy from God his Saviour. This is the generation of them that seek the Lord, that seek the face of the God of Jacob.' When David speaks of the Saviour as God, and of the Lord as the face of the God of Jacob, he is emphasising the unity of God. 2
The 'generation of those that seek the Lord' are the elect who seek after knowledge
-- the Christian gnostics.
Those who are not gnostics may appear to act rightly by doing the same things as the gnostics do. But however brave they may be, their bravery remains an irrational impulse. Though they give up their bodies, they lack the love which follows from knowledge. Every action of the man with understanding is good action. Every action of the man without understanding is bad action 3 because it is unreasoned. The whole profession of the gnostic is in accordance with his rational piety. 4 There is truth and grandeur in the way the gnostic looks at the universe. He starts with wonder for the world about him. 5 This wonder is proof of his
____________________ 1Knowledge is the demonstration of faith in that its starting point is faith. Cf. Strom. II, 48; II, 138, 17;
Strom. viii, 8; III, 84, 13. See Camelot, op. cit. p. 60.
2This is directed against the dualism of the heretics.
3Strom. VII, 59; III, 43, 18.
5Here begins ch. II. Strom. vii, 60; III, 43, 29. Cf. Theaetetus 155D: μáλα ∯ γàρ ἄλλη ἀρχή φιλοσοφíας ἥ αὕτη.
ability to receive knowledge, and causes him to believe as soon as he bears about God and providence. Driven on from here he learns everything he can and strives in every way towards the knowledge for which he longs.
This busy, vast inquiring soul Brooks no control, No limits will endure, Nor any rest: it will all see, Not time alone; but ev'n eternity. What is it? Endless sure. 1
The gnostic does not deal with mere words but with the realities which they indicate. He interprets words in a special way.
III. LIGHT AND TRUE KNOWLEDGE
'The Lord then is the Light and true knowledge.' Through knowledge we see our Lord face to face, we pray to him continually and we are joined to him by love.
(1) Face to Face. 2 Quoting I Cor. xiii. 12, Clement distinguishes (in several places) the vision of God through a mirror (δι ἐσóπτρου) from the vision of God face to face (πρóσωπον πρòς πρóσωπον). This distinction is mentioned in Paedagogus I, ch. 6 where Clement is defending the perfection of faith against the heretical gnostics. He quotes the words of St Paul. 'Now we see through a glass, but then face to face.' We are unable to see because we are still carnal, wrapped up in all kinds of lusts. Our carnal condition is not, as some suppose, the result of our being in the body (ἐν σαρκí). 'For with this flesh and the face of an angel we shall see the promise face to face.' 3
In Stromateis I, ch. 19 we are said to see God through a mirror by seeing his reflection in ourselves. 4 'You have seen your
____________________ 1Thomas Traherne, 'Insatiableness'. Cf. Henry More's encounter with his schoolmaster who wanted to know why More was so studious. More replied that it was because he wanted to know. ' "But, young man, what is the reason that you so earnestly desire to know things?" To which I instantly returned, "I desire, I say, so earnestly to know, that I may know." ' Quoted in Inge, The Platonic Tradition in English Religious Thought ( London, 1926), p. 55.
2A treatment of this point is given by Békés, De continua oratione Clementis Alexandrini doctrina, pp.
37-88.
3Paed. I, 36; I, III, 34.
4Strom. I, 94; II, 60, 22.
brother, you have seen your God', quotes Clement. 1 After putting aside the flesh 2 we see face to face because our heart is pure. The putting aside of the flesh is not physical death but the setting aside of fleshly passions. The gnostic becomes ἄσρκος.
God's face is his Son and the vision of this face belongs to the highest state of blessedness. There are many mansions in the Father's house. The gnostic climbs to the highest mansion.
But I declare also that those gnostic souls, excelling in magnificence of vision the condition of each holy rank, among whom the blessed dwellings of the gods are severally allotted, counted holy among the holy, are transported perfect from among perfect [souls]. They reach places better than better places, holding in embrace the divine vision not in mirrors or through mirrors; but they feast on that clearest and absolutely pure insatiable vision which is granted to greatly loving souls. They pluck eternally the fruit of eternal gladness and remain honoured with unchanging, perfect excellence. This is the apprehending vision of the pure in heart.
This ascent and vision belong to the life after death; but the gnostic anticipates these things while still on earth. 4 He leaves the flesh behind when it has gone as high as it can go, and goes on to the top alone. 5 Knowledge is a rational death, a separation of the body from the soul.
(2) Continual Prayer. We reverence one God in one life. 'We are commanded to worship and adore the Logos, in the conviction that he is our Saviour and Leader, and through him to worship the Father. We do this not on selected days, as certain others do, but continually through the whole of life and in every way.' 6 The gnostic worships in every place, at every time, in gratitude for the gift of the knowledge of how to live. 7 Good company makes good men. How can the gnostic help growing better, when he is always in the company of God? He sings praises as he farms the earth or sails the sea. God knows and sees and hears everything,
____________________ 1Also quoted Strom. II, 70; II, 150, 22 and by Tertullian, De Orat.26. There is no ground for supposing that it was regarded as a saying of Jesus, the subject of φησí being probably 'the Scripture' or something similar, not 'the Lord'. J. H. Ropes, Die Sprüche Jesu ( Leipzig, 1896), p. 49.
3Strom. VII, 13; III, 10, 6.
4Strom. VII, 56; III, 41, 15.
5Strom. VII, 57; III, 42, II.
6Strom. VII, 35; III, 27, 9.
7Strom. III, 27, 18.
not just words and actions but thoughts as well. 1 Prayer is conversation with God.
It is the crying, the longing, the upward flight of the soul, to God. God hears all inward speech. 2 He does not need talkative tongues to tell him, for he knows in one eternal glance all the thoughts of our minds. 'It is possible therefore to send up a prayer without speaking, by concentrating the inner spirit alone on mental speech, in undivided attention to God.' 3
The final state of the gnostic is that of light which shines, unchanging and eternal, in the presence of God. In his earthly anticipation of this state he lives a life that is timeless and unchanging, a life that is always sensitive to the presence of God.
Gnosis is the understanding and apprehending of things past, present, and future. 4
Contemplation sees clearly what is, what was, and what is to be. 5 In his daily life there is a timeless constancy of behaviour. He alone acts rightly and he acts rightly in all things. Nothing can throw him off his balance or rob him of his sure knowledge of the good. 'Knowledge never turns into ignorance, nor does good change into evil.'
6 He knows that he is in God's world and as his wonder grows into knowledge he learns to live by the essences, not the appearances of things. 7 He turns from distresses to the things that are really his, attaching no importance to the world's pleasures or its pains. 8 'His whole life is prayer and conversation with God.' 9 He sees his Lord and looks on things invisible, paying no attention to what his eyes see.
10 Yet he appreciates beauty of body when it is blended with beauty of soul and he lives in love to his brethren. He prays from a pure heart in fellowship with angels and saints. He does good by habit and obeys his Lord's commandments day and night with gladness and thanksgiving. 11 The gnostic is 'the temple of God', divine,
God-bearer and God-borne. 12 The believer may act rightly in one or two ways that have been mentioned. Only ____________________ 1Strom. VII, 37; III, 29, 7 and 14.
10Strom. VII, 76; III, 54, 21.
11Strom. VII, 80; III, 57, 6 and 13.
12Strom. VII, 82; III, 58, 25.
2Strom. VII, 39; III, 30, 15.
3Strom. VII, 43; III, 32, 25.
4Strom. VI, 61; II, 462, 21.
5Strom. VI, 62; II, 462, 21.
6Strom. VII, 70; III, 51, 1.
7Strom. VII, 60; III, 44, 9.
8Strom. VII, 63; III, 45, 28.
9Strom. VII, 73; III, 52, 22.
the gnostic acts rightly in them all and with complete understanding. 1
(3) Love. The light of knowledge is absorbed in the fuller light of love. Knowledge ends in love, in the union of the lover and the loved, of the knower and the known.
The gnostic does all things from love to God. He is free from passions except those, like hunger and thirst, which are necessary for physical existence. 2 He loves the Creator through the creatures. He is joined to his Beloved through love, and united to him by his choice. Love is divine, for love is no longer the desire of the lover but a loving union 3 which has restored the gnostic to the unity of the faith, independent of time and place. He who has already acquired his inheritance through love, and has anticipated hope through knowledge, does not desire anything, as he has exactly what he desires. He remains in the one unalterable disposition, knowing and loving. He will not try to be like beautiful things for he possesses Beauty itself through love. 4
He who has once been made perfect through love and who feasts eternally and insatiably on the unending joy of contemplation can no longer delight in the trivial things of dust. How can a man who has found the 'light inaccessible' turn back to earthly things? The gnostic has anticipated through love the inheritance and the perfect restitution. 5 He is predestined to this end. He has predestined himself through his knowledge and love of God. The future, which he foresees with gnostic faith, is clear, 'and through love the future is already present to him'. He has trusted his future to God. The trustworthiness of God is such that future blessedness is already his. He goes on to meet the future which through love he knows already with complete certainty.
Clement's distinction between desire and love, his connection of timelessness and love are expressed in T. S. Eliot Four Quartets.
____________________ 1Strom. VII, 84; III, 60, 2.
2Strom. VI, 71; II, 467, 7.
4Strom. VI, 73; II, 468, 17.
5Cf. John Smith, Select Discourses, p. 420. 'Heaven is not a thing without us, nor is happiness anything distinct from a true conjunction of the mind with God in a secret feeling of his goodness and reciprocation of affection to him, wherein the Divine glory most unfolds itself. . . . Then shall we be happy, when God comes to be all in all in us.'
(a)Desire itself is movement, Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring, Except in the aspect of time, Caught in the form of limitation Between unbeing and being.
(b) Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.
(c) Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled. 1
There is in love a contentment which overrides time and place, and will remain the same, come what may. The treasure of the gnostic is laid up in heaven.
And he prays that the things which are really good, and which concern the soul, may be his and abide with him. Accordingly he does not reach after any of the things that are absent but rests content with the things that are present. For he lacks none of the things that he thinks are good, being already sufficient for himself through the grace of God and knowledge. But having become self-sufficient he wants for no other things. Knowing the will of the Almighty, and having a thing at the same time as he prays for it, he is come close to almighty power, and striving to be spiritual through infinite love he is made one with the Spirit. 2
The gnostic loves God through his creatures. He does good more quickly than others speak of their intention to do it. He does not remember who has wronged him but readily and completely forgives. On earth his varied works of love are manifest. In heaven he finds his end in love to God. This love unites him with God and union with God fulfils his final hope. He does not want to be warmed by the heat of a spiritual fire nor lit by the light of a spiritual lamp. He wants to be light himself in the Lord who is Light and True Knowledge.
____________________ 1Eliot, Four Quartets ( London, 1944).
2Strom. VII, 44; III, 33, 13.
CONCLUSION
'The Lord is our Light and True Knowledge.' To know is to know Christ, to be planted in him, and to hang upon him. To know is to be one with Christ in God. 'There is', wrote John Smith, 'a knowing of "the truth as it is in Jesus" -- as it is in a Christlike nature, as it is in that sweet, mild, humble, and loving spirit of Jesus, which spreads itself like a morning sun, upon the souls of good men, full of light and life.' 1 To know is to know Light, to be lifted from the darkness of sin and error into the eternal Light of God. It is to be not illuminated, but to be Light.
To know in this way is to anticipate on earth the splendour of heaven. Such knowledge lies the other side of death.
'They are all gone into the world of light! And I alone sit ling'ring here.' 2
But Clement believed he could anticipate death by putting off the body with its affections and lusts. This was more than the tuning of the instrument in anticipation
-Since I am coming to that holy room, Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music: as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before. 3
It was a present possession of that 'joy which is unspeakable and full of glory': which leads us into the porch of heaven, and to the confines of eternity. It carries up the soul into a mount of transfiguration, or to the top of Pisgah, where it may take a prospect of the promised land, and gives it a map or scheme of its future inheritance: it gives it sometimes some anticipations of blessedness, some foretastes of those joys, those rivers of pleasure which run at God's right hand for evermore. 4
Such knowledge needs no comment but the prayer of Clement, 'Do thou thyself make us who dwell within thy peace, who have been brought across into thy city, and who have sailed serenely over the angry waves of sin, do thou make us to be borne along in stillness by the soft wind of thy Holy Spirit, the unspeakable Wisdom, by night and by day unto thy perfect day.' 5
____________________ 1Select Discourses, p. 8.
2Henry Vaughan, 'Ascension Hymn'.
3John Donne, 'Hymn to God my God, in my sickness'.
4John Smith, Select Discourses, p. 426.
5Paed. III, 101; I, 291, 3.