Chapter 5 - Polemic Against Polytheism And Dualism
CHAPTER 5
POLEMIC AGAINST POLYTHEISM AND DUALISM
Polytheism In the Protrepticus Clement attacks polytheism, with special reference to mystery religion. He uses arguments which Athenagoras and Justin had used in their defence of Christianity as the true religion; but the tone has changed from defence to attack. 1 Two fundamental criticisms are the plurality and the immorality of the gods. The person who believes in many gods, and not in the one true God, is like a bastard who does not know his one, true father. 2 As for the 'mob of gods', there are three Zeuses, five Athenas, and innumerable Apollos. 3 But the true God is one
God. He is not to be confused with his works as the myths and philosophers have confused him. 4 'I seek after God, not the works of God.' 5 There is in all men some knowledge of the truth, that God is one, eternal, transcendent deity.
For there is a certain divine effluence instilled into all men without exception, but especially into those who spend their lives in thought; wherefore they admit, even though against their will, that God is one, that he is unbegotten and indestructible, and that somewhere on high in the outermost spaces of the heavens, in his own private watch tower, he truly exists for ever. 6
This knowledge is found in Plato, who calls God the king of all things, the measure and balance of all things, 'who holds the beginning and end and middle of all existence'. 7 Other philosophers are brought forward, 'declaring by his inspiration the one ____________________ 1Athenagoras says, 'It is not my intention to censure the worship of idols, but to refute the charges made against us and to give reasons for our way of life.' Presbeia, 18. Clement's tone is much more aggressive.
2Prot. 25; I, 18, 27.
3Prot. 28; I, 20, 30.
4Prot. 67; I, 51, 17.
5Prot. 67; I, 51, 25.
6Prot. 68; I, 52, 2. Butterworth's translation, with minor alterations, is used in this chapter.
7Prot. 68; I, 52, 21 and Prot. 69; I, 53, 8.
only true God to be God'. 1 The unity ascribed to God is not always a transcendent one. The Pythagoreans specifically state that the one God is not outside but in the cosmos. God is both 'overseer' and 'blending of all ages', both Father and principle of life. 2 The poets follow with their testimony to the one true God. 'One, only one, in very truth is God', says Sophocles. 3 Then come the prophets, whose inspiration is the purest. The Sibyl, who says, 'One God there is, who sends the rain and winds', 4 is followed by Biblical writers who denounce the worship of idols and proclaim the worship of the one God who is creator of all things. There is no god beside him. 'The Lord is one', and 'thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve.' 5 Yet despite the many statements of truth and the threats and. promises of the divine Word, men still ignore their God and Father. 6 There follows an exhortation to leave the pagan deities, who are many and bad, for the 'good unity'.
Let us hasten to salvation, to the new birth. Let us, who are many, hasten to be gathered together into one flock in accordance with the oneness of the One Being.
Similarly let us follow after unity by the practice of good works, seeking the good unity. And the union of many into one, bringing a divine harmony out of many scattered sounds, becomes one symphony, following one leader and teacher, the Word, and never ceasing till it reaches the truth itself, with the cry 'Abba Father'.
This is the true speech which God welcomes from his children. These are the first fruits of God's harvest. 7
Clement answers the objection that it is not reasonable to throw over the religious customs of one's fathers. It is not reasonable to hold on to such foolish beliefs concerning the gods.
Surely it is plain to every one that they are stones, just as Hermes himself. And as the halo is not a god, nor the rainbow either, but conditions of the atmosphere and clouds, and precisely as day is not a god, nor month, nor year, nor time which is made up of these; so also ____________________ 1Prot. 71; I, 53, 27.
2Prot. 72; I, 55, 8.
3Prot. 74; I, 56, 4. See Prot. ch. 7 passim.
4Prot. 77; I, 59, 22. See Prot. ch. 8 passim.
5Prot. 80; I, 61, 20, citing Deut. VI. 4 and 13, and X. 20.
6Prot. ch. 9.
7Prot. 88; I, 65, 27, adopting Stählin's suggestion of γἐλην for ἀγἀπην. Cf. Prot. 116; I, 81, 32.
neither is the sun or moon, by which each of the before-mentioned periods is marked off. Who then in his right mind would imagine such things as audit, punishment, right, and retribution, to be gods? 1
Thunder and lightning, fire and water, comets and shooting stars are not divine. If none of these things are gods, and yet there is evidence of divine providence about us, there is no alternative but to believe in the one and only true God. 2 People who do not see this act as though they were drugged. 'God grant that you may one day recover from this slumber and perceive God, and that neither gold, nor stone, nor tree, nor action, nor suffering, nor disease, nor fear, may appear to you as God.' 3 It is a terrible thing to be blind and deaf to God. How is it that such people Care not grieved, are not pained, have felt no longing to see heaven and its maker'? 4 It is time to stop wriggling about on the earth like a snake (restricting one's interests and devotion to earthly things), time to lift one's head and gaze in wonder at the heavens above. 5
In the eloquent invitation which concludes the Protrepticus 6 Clement portrays the blessedness of unity with the one God through the one Logos of God. Here is crystallised the theme of the Protrepticus, which is an exhortation to unity with the one God of whom all men have some innate knowledge, and of whom philosophers,
7 poets and prophets have spoken. Other objects of worship -- gods, demons, idols - - have been criticised because they are so many, so evil, so earthy, and ephemeral.
God is one, good, transcendent, and eternal. We can learn what Clement thought about God from the qualities he criticises in false gods, as well as from his explicit descriptions of the true God.
The unity of God, the Logos, and the believer, is described in this closing passage in the terms we have seen elsewhere in Clement and the contemporary philosophy.
God is one, the only real God. The eternal Jesus is the one great high priest of God who is also his Father. He calls the whole race of men to receive
____________________ 1Prot. 102; I, 73, 18.
2Prot. 103; I, 74, 7.
3Prot. 103; I, 74, 9.
4Prot. 105; I, 75, 11.
5Prot. 106; I, 76, 4.
6Prot. 120; I, 84, 23.
7Not all philosophers: some have deified the earth. Not all poets and prophets either, for that matter.
their place under the one God and one Logos of God. He is symphony, harmony, and the archetype according to which men may correct their imperfect image of God.
Dualism Against the heretical sects who taught there was more than one God, Clement constantly emphasises the unity of the God of both covenants. The same God is proclaimed by the Law, the prophets and the Gospel. The Marcionites separated the Law from the Gospel, and the just God of the Law from the good God of the Gospel.
1 'One God was a judge imbued with savage militarism. The other God was mild, peaceful and only good and excellent.' 2 Clement directs his attack 'against those who consider that the just is not good'. 3 Elsewhere he says, 'The Marcionites do not say that the law is bad; but they say it is just and distinguish the just from the good.' 4 Clement was not alone in his defence of the divine unity at this period.
Tertullian says, 'The chief, and thereby the whole dispute concerns number: whether two Gods may be admitted', and gives his own unambiguous verdict, 'God is not if he is not one'; and 'That Being, then, which is the great Most High, must be unique, by having no equal, lest he should cease to be the great Most High.' 5
Clement begins by stating the objections that are made against the Lord's goodness
'on account of the rod and threat and fear'. 6 These objections are due to a misunderstanding of the 'fear' of the Lord and a forgetfulness of his love in becoming man. Nothing exists which is hated by the Lord or by God. 'Both are one God.' God loves what he has made, especially 'man, the most excellent of created things, a God-loving being'. God and Logos are lovers of men. He who loves wants to benefit the object of his love. What benefits is better than what does not benefit.
Consequently the Good benefits. God benefits and cares ____________________ 1Harnack, Marcion, das Evangelium yore ftemden Gott, p. 86.
2Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem I, 6; V, II: quoted Harnack, p. 88.
3Paed. I, ch. 8, is the source of the argument expressed in this section. It begins I, 126, 21.
4Strom. II, 39; II, 133, 26.
5Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem I, 3.
6Paed. I, 62; I, 176, 22.
for men. The Good and Justice are good in themselves, coextensive and equal in every way.
If the Lord loves man and is good, how is it that he becomes angry and punishes? 1
He does this for the correct training of his children and for the cure and the surgery of the passions. He makes all things contribute towards the end of salvation and eternal health. The Logos is the general who takes disciplinary action for the benefit and improvement of those who are under him. 2 Reproof may come from a scornful enemy or from a wellmeaning friend. 3 It is clear from the fact that he suffered for us that our Lord would not rebuke as an enemy. 4
The argument is summed up. 5 God is good -- this is universally agreed. The same
God is just -- the Lord says in the Gospel (John xvii. 21) that God is one. God is one and beyond the One and above the quality of unity itself. The pronoun 'thou' is used of God to emphasise his timeless existence as 'he who alone really is, who was, and is, and will be, and who has at all three times the one name ó ων. 6 This same God is just, for he is addressed in the same chapter of St John's Gospel as 'just Father'.
God, who sets some on the left and some on the right, 7 as he is Father is good and is called good. As he is Son, the Logos in the Father, he is called just. The idea of a balance is here associated with justice. There is an equality of mutual love and power between Father and Son. God reveals Jesus as the embodiment of a perfect balance and of justice. We know God through his Son as by a perfect balance. God balances mercy and wrath, both of which serve the common end of the salvation of men.
The Logos has spoken of his Father as good. He also speaks of his Father as Creator. Every one admits that the Creator is just. So that from the words of the Logos himself it can be shown that the same Father is good and just. The identity of the Father and Creator, of the just and the good, is further substantiated. 'God is one, though declared by many powers.' 8 The conclusion is drawn, So that it is in truth evident that the ____________________ 1Paed. I, 64; I, 127, 33.
2Paed. I, 65; I, 128, 14.
3Paed. I, 66; I, 128, 28.
4Paed. I, 66; I, 128, 31.
5Paed. I, 71; I, 131, II 6Paed. I, 71; I, 131, 19 7Paed. I, 71; I, 131, 29.
8Paed. I, 74; I, 133, 6.
God of all things is one only, good, just, Creator, Son in Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.' 1
There is nothing inconsistent in the idea that the Saviour should speak severely in love. For this is the medicine which the divine love administers to produce modesty and shame. It is better to cause the soul a little pain than to let it die eternally. The activity of the paedagogus in this respect is described in succeeding chapters. But we must notice the argument with which the present chapter ends. God's anger (to which such strong objection had been made by Marcion) is actually a sign of God's love, for God descended to emotion for man's sake. 'But also the very feeling of wrath is full of love to man, in that God descends to feelings for man's sake. For the sake of man also the Logos of God became man.' 2
Conclusion: Two Kinds of Causes Where lay the strength of Clement's metaphysics or philosophical theology? What did he have to say which the philosophers of his time would have done well to hear?
With these questions we shall conclude the account of his philosophical theology.
The problem which concerned the philosophy of the time was the proceeding of many things from one. The Pythagoreans had claimed that 'The first principle of all things is the One. From the One came an indefinite Two as matter for the One, which is cause. From the One and indefinite Two came numbers . . . and out of them comes to be a cosmos.' 3 Everything came from the One. Parmenides objected that nothing could proceed from the One 'immovable in the limits of its mighty bonds' while 'overmastering Necessity holds it in the bonds of the limit that fences it about. 4 Plato's argument in the second hypothesis of the Parmenides might be regarded as an answer to Parmenides and a statement of reasons for the Pythagorean evolution of the many from the One. 5 Numenius shows the same
____________________ 1Paed. I, 74; I, 133, 8.
2Paed. I, 74; I, 133, 22.
3Alexander Polyhistor, Diog. Laert. VIII, 24. Quoted Cornford, Plato and Parmenides, p. 3.
4Parmenides, frag. 8, 30. Cornford, op. cit. p. 42.
5Cf. Cornford, op. cit. p. 204.
awareness of the problem which we have seen in Plotinus. 1 But Numenius, like Plotinus, imagined that the problem could be solved through the greatness of God's power. 2
God the Father, the transcendent One, is for Clement the first cause, not merely in the sense that he initiates a process or causes his subordinates to bring the world into existence. This was a popular solution of the problem, an attempt to bridge the gap between the One and the not-One. For Clement the ineffable One was none the less emphatically the cause of all things coming into being and being, 3 and was called Creator. 4 The Son of God, the 'one thing as all things', is called the second cause, 5 and Creator of all things. 6 There is not the same problem with the proceeding of many things from a One which is also All.
For a causal process to be at all intelligible, the effect must previously be somehow contained in the cause or causes (ex nihilo nihil fit). How then is it possible for one thing to cause many things? If there is no other kind of cause than that which contains its effects, then the One cannot be the cause of the Many. Yet Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers were united in the opinion that the One was the cause of the Many. Is there another kind of cause which does not contain its effects, an 'empty' as distinct from a 'full' cause? Clement maintained there was such a cause, that this cause was God and that his operation was wholly inexplicable. In this way the problem of the One and the Many is not so much solved as shown to be insoluble.
Musical composition affords analogues for the two types of causes. In the one case we have the work of a man like Schubert, who wrote music without premeditation and plan. He 'scarcely ever sketched or altered. Music just poured out of him.' 7
Under the most varying circumstances he wrote songs which were by no means dependent upon his state of mind and breadth of experience. A critic has said of his song 'Gretchen am Spinnrade'
____________________ 1See ch. 2.
2Numenius, De Primis Causis, Test. 30 (XIV). Nurnenius attributes his view to Pythagoras.
3Strom. V, 81; II, 380, 17.
4Strom. V, 82; II, 380, 26.
5Strom. VII, 16; III, 12, 24.
6Paed. III, 99-100; I, 290, 14 and 23.
7Bacharach, The Musical Companion ( London, 1936), p. 79.
that 'it is difficult to understand how any boy of 17 . . . could have written such a song, but it is impossible to offer any rational explanation as to how a raw inexperienced youth like Schubert produced a masterpiece of this kind'. 1 In cases such as this the mind of the composer which produces the song cannot be said to contain it previously. This analogue would help to explain the sense of cause in which 'X is the cause of Y' does not entail 'X contains Y'. This is the sense in which God made the world. Of his bare volition he made it, i.e. he willed it to be and it was so.
In the second case we have the work of one like Mozart whose mind contained the music that he wrote before he put a note on paper. In a much-quoted letter he says, 'And now my soul gets heated and if nothing disturb me the piece grows longer and brighter until, however long it is, it is all finished at once in my mind so that I can see it at a glance as if it were a pretty picture or a pleasing person.' 2
Here the mind of the composer produces something which it has previously contained.
Philo uses a similar analogue to this second one. 3 If a king wanted to build a city, he would not build it himself. He would employ an architect. The architect would not start building immediately. He would get some ideas together. He would plan it in his head and then perhaps put the plans on paper, and then get his engineers and builders to work. God's architect is the Logos who created the world at the divine command. Before he created he made a plan in his mind and then worked from it.
His mind was the Divine mind, the mind of God himself. The plan was the world of ideas, which exists in him as the pattern for his work. The creation was in his mind.
This analogue and the previous Mozart one would explain the sense of cause in which 'X is the cause of Y' entails 'X contains Y'. This is the sense in which for Clement the Logos made the world and the sense in which God could not make it.
The essential feature of the first kind of cause is that it is inexplicable and wholly mysterious. The musical analogue must ____________________ 1Bacharach, op. cit. p. 438.
2Mozart. Quoted by Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy ( Boston, 1892), p. 371.
3Op. Mundi, 4-5.
not be considered wholly adequate. Clement's account of creation ex nihilo (like all speech concerning the One) is also an approximation, not a scientific description of how God causes things. The essential feature of his account of creation is that in some wholly inscrutable way things come into being, and come into being solely because of God. Clement's recognition of this kind of causality, which is the only kind of causality that can be final, is something which his contemporaries might well have learnt. Clement realised that the introduction of the Logos or any other instrument of God did not solve the final mystery of creation. God remained the ultimate cause of all things in a unique and inexplicable way.
The second kind of causality explains the relation of the Son to the powers which he embraces and the things which he creates and sustains. It is as the cause of the powers that he is all the powers. It is as the cause of all things that he is all things.
It is as cause that he unites all things by his powers. By his emphasis on the πáντα of the ως πἀντα ἔν Clement preserved the unity of the cosmos in a way which the gnostic sects and others did not. 1 By his emphasis on the ἔν of the ως πἀντα ἔν he unified the cause and controller of things in a way which Philo and others did not. 2
____________________ 1E.g. Basilides V, ch. 3.
2Philo has six ruling powers, the Logos being the oldest and best. Prof. 1819. Cf. also the Amesha
Spentas of Zoroastrianism.
PART II GOODNESS