The writings of Clement of Alexandria, Vol. 2 (of 2)Clement, of Alexandria, Saint
Religion
The writings of Clement of Alexandria, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Clement, of Alexandria, Saint
Theology -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
And that the devil so spoken of by the Barbarian philosophy, the
prince of the demons, is a wicked spirit, Plato asserts in the tenth
book of the _Laws_, in these words: “Must we not say that spirit
which pervades the things that are moved on all sides, pervades also
heaven? Well, what? One or more? Several, say I, in reply for you.
Let us not suppose fewer than two--that which is beneficent, and
that which is able to accomplish the opposite.” Similarly in the
_Phædrus_ he writes as follows: “Now there are other evils. But
some demon has mingled pleasure with the most things at present.”
Further, in the tenth book of the _Laws_, he expressly emits that
apostolic sentiment, “Our contest is not with flesh and blood, but
principalities, with powers, with the spiritual things of those which
are in heaven;” writing thus: “For since we are agreed that heaven is
full of many good beings; but it is also full of the opposite of these,
and more of these; and as we assert such a contest is deathless, and
requiring marvellous watchfulness.”
Again, the Barbarian philosophy knows the world of thought and the
world of sense--the former archetypal, and the latter the image of that
which is called the model; and assigns the former to the Monad, as
being perceived by the mind, and the world of sense to the number six.
For six is called by the Pythagoreans marriage, as being the genital
number; and he places in the Monad the invisible heaven and the holy
earth, and intellectual light. For “in the beginning,” it is said, “God
made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible.” And it is
added, “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”[842]
And in the material cosmogony He creates a solid heaven (and what is
solid is capable of being perceived by sense), and a visible earth,
and a light that is seen. Does not Plato hence appear to have left
the ideas of living creatures in the intellectual world, and to make
intellectual objects into sensible species according to their genera?
Rightly then Moses says, that the body which Plato calls “the earthly
tabernacle” was formed of the ground, but that the rational soul was
breathed by God into man’s face. For there, they say, the ruling
faculty is situated; interpreting the access by the senses into the
first man as the addition of the soul.
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