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
Wherefore also man is said “to have been made in [God’s] image and
likeness.” For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, the
impassible man; and the image of the image is the human mind. And if
you wish to apprehend the likeness by another name, you will find it
named in Moses, a divine correspondence. For he says, “Walk after the
Lord your God, and keep His commandments.”[843] And I reckon all the
virtuous, servants and followers of God. Hence the Stoics say that the
end of philosophy is to live agreeably to nature; and Plato, likeness
to God, as we have shown in the second Miscellany. And Zeno the Stoic,
borrowing from Plato, and he from the Barbarian philosophy, says that
all the good are friends of one another. For Socrates says in the
_Phædrus_, “that it has not been ordained that the bad should be a
friend to the bad, nor the good be not a friend to the good;” as also
he showed sufficiently in the _Lysis_, that friendship is never
preserved in wickedness and vice. And the Athenian stranger similarly
says, “that there is conduct pleasing and conformable to God, based
on one ancient ground-principle, That like loves like, provided it be
within measure. But things beyond measure are congenial neither to
what is within nor what is beyond measure. Now it is the case that
God is the measure to us of all things.” Then proceeding, Plato[844]
adds: “For every good man is like every other good man; and so being
like to God, he is liked by every good man and by God.” At this point
I have just recollected the following. In the end of the _Timæus_
he says: “You must necessarily assimilate that which perceives to that
which is perceived, according to its original nature; and it is by so
assimilating it that you attain to the end of the highest life proposed
by the gods to men,[845] for the present or the future time.” For those
have equal power with these. He, who seeks, will not stop till he find;
and having found, he will wonder; and wondering, he will reign; and
reigning, he will rest. And what? Were not also those expressions of
Thales derived from these? The fact that God is glorified for ever,
and that He is expressly called by us the Searcher of hearts, he
interprets. For Thales being asked, What is the divinity? said, What
has neither beginning nor end. And on another asking, “If a man could
elude the knowledge of the Divine Being while doing aught?” said, “How
could he who cannot do so while thinking?”
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