CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 189 says,* Man played like a little child of God in Paradise, being seduced by the Serpent, which allegorically is explained to mean sensuality; Man became a full-grown man in disobedience, and subject to mortality, bound by sin, from the fetters of which Christ will release him. Clement, consequently, regarded the original state of Man as a childhood: it devolves upon him to obey the Divine law, but he is seduced to disobedience by sensuality. In consequence of this, he is more subjected to sensuality and to temptations, and far from átálɛα. He considers, therefore, the present weakness of Man as the consequence of an original disturbance, although, in another passage, he asks, how a child who has done nothing, can fall under Adam's curse. We observe a certain influence of the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the origin of Evil in matter, which oppresses the Reason and produces an ignorance of good, when Clement says, The cause of evil is the weakness of matter, the irrational propensities of ignorance, the necessity which lies in unreason and ignorance. Notwithstanding the dominion of sensuality, he maintains the free self-determination of Man, which makes resistance to it in the higher part of his nature, and which must be strenuously retained as a condition of ali divine influence. In disputing against the Gnostics, he combats the arguments which were at a later period brought forward, for the doctrine of absolute Predestination, and which led to arbitrary interpretations of the Bible. He urges that if Man only followed a necessity of Nature, there would be no such thing as criminal unbelief or righteous condemnation.§ The Apostles were not chosen on account of any peculiar natural preeminence, as the presence of Judas among them shows; their election was only an act arising from the Divine prescience of their conduct. Paul's question (1 Cor. 1. 20), “Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" appeared to him objectionable as an interrogation, since it seemed to exclude free will, and hence he understands the words as a negative assertion-God hath not made the wisdom of the * Protresst. p. 69.—ὁ πρῶτος, ὅτε ἐν παραδείσῳ, ἐπαιζε λελυμένος, ἐπεὶ παιδίον ἦν τοῦ Θεοῦ ὅτε δὲ ὑπέπιπτεν ἡδονῇ, οφις ἀλληγορεῖται ἡδονὴ ἐπὶ γαστέρα ἕρπουσα, κακία γηΐνη, εἰς ἅλας τρεφομένη παρήγετο ἐπιθυμείαις ὁ παῖς ἀνδριζόμενος ἀπειθείᾳ —ὁ δι ̓ ἁπλότητα λελυμένος ἄνθρωπος ἁμαρτίας εὑρέθη δεδεμένος. + Strom. iii. p 468. Ibid. ii. p. 363. Ibid. vii. p. 707. Ibid. vi. p. 667. world foolishness, so that he cannot be charged with hardening men. But however important the interest of Freedom is to him, yet the need of Redemption is by no means excluded The ways to grace are various: either it first arouses a man, or the beginning proceeds from free-will. The Father may please to draw every one to him who has lived purely; or Free Will in us which attains to the knowledge of God may overleap the bounds; without special grace the soul can never be fledged, nor made capable of being united to that to which it has an affinity. He expresses his opinion in his treatise ris i owZómavos Thouoos: Man does not attain to perfection by his own exertions; but when there is earnest, longing, and zealous striving in the soul, he attains it by the aid of divine power. God gives his blessing to those who make these exertions; when they give these up, God gives them up. The kingdom of God belongs not to the sleepy and the indolent, but to those who take it by force. 66 ORIGEN, in common with Clement, felt a strong interest in the freedom of the will, but differed from him in his clearly expressed theory of pre-existence. He refers§ to Job xiv. 4, 5, and says, this passage proceeds on the mystery of man's birth, according to which no one is free from evil. By this he does not mean the doctrine of original sin, but the mysterious doctrine of an earlier being and the Fall in this pre-existent state. Thus elsewhere he says,|| In Adam is represented what relates to all human nature; not that we are to understand that he is a type of the good and evil tendencies of mankind, but inasmuch as the History of his Fall in Genesis is a symbolic representation of the Fall of Souls." He goes on to say, T "The expulsion from Paradise had a mystical sense; Paradise is a symbol of that heavenly region from * Strom. i. c. 18, § 89. Ibid. v. p. 518. Ibid. v. § 21. § In Matth. t. xv. § 23.—τάχα δὲ καὶ κατὰ μὲν τὴν γένεσιν οὐδείς ἐστι καθαρὸς ἀπὸ ῥύπου, οὐδ ̓ εἰ μία ἡμέρα ειη ἡ ζωὴ αὐτοῦ, διὰ τὸ περὶ τῆς γενέσεως μυστήριον, ἐφ' ἡ τὸ ὑπὸ τοῦ Δαβὶδ ἐν πεντηκοστῷ πρώτῳ ψαλμῷ λελεγμένον ἕκαστος πάντων εἰς γένεσιν ἐληλυθότων λέγοι, ἔχον οὕτως· “ ὅτι ἐν ἀνομίαις συνελήφθην, καὶ ἐν ἁμαρτίαις ἐκίσσησέ με ἡ μήτηρ μου.” ¡ c. Cels. iv. $ 40.—καὶ ἐν τοῖς δοκοῦσι περὶ τοῦ ̓Αδὰμ ειναι, φυσιολογεῖ Μωϋσῆς τὰ περὶ τῆς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως. { Ibid.—καὶ ὁ ἐκβαλλόμενος δὲ ἐκ του παραδείσου ἄνθρωπος κατὰ τῆς γυναικὸς, τοὺς δερματίνους ἠμφιεσμένος χιτῶνας (οὕς διὰ τὴν παράβασιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησε τοῖς αμαρτήσασιν ὁ Θεὸς) ἀπόῤῥητόν ORIGEN ON THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF SOULS. 191 which Souls have fallen. The coats of skins denote the bodies which form the prison of Souls." He refers also to the estrangement from the divine life, when Satan is called a murderer,* not because he has inflicted death on any particular person, but because he has been the agent in the fall of the whole race. He opposed the doctrine of Pre-existence to Traducianism, which was too sensuous for him, and on this point felt himself at liberty to indulge in speculation, because Holy Writ and the Church doctrine had determined nothing positive upon it. From the passages we have quoted, it appears that the universal sinfulness of man and the need of Redemption occupied their proper place in his mind, though somewhat differently expressed from the current mode. Hence he says, As no man is pure, righteous, and without sin, so no one is always pure from evil spirits; perhaps many would give as examples to the contrary, the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles, as those who could say like Christ, "I have not a demon,” but we reply, these also have sinned, otherwire Paul's expressions and other words of Scripture would be untrue. But the Scriptures speak the truth. As a means of believing, he supposes a higher divine influence. On this account, he says, we do not believe because we do not recognise what Christ says, to be truth; and the reason we do not is because the eye designed by Nature to perceive truth has not been purified. It is sin by which the eye is covered and darkened.§ τινα καὶ μυστικὸν εχειλογον, ὑπὲρ τὸν κατὰ Πλάτωνα, τῆς ψυχῆς πτεροῤῥυούσης καὶ δεῦρο φερομένης, ἕως ἂν στερεοῦ τινος λάβηται. * In Joann. t. xx. § 21.—"Εστι δὲ καὶ ἀποῤῥητότερόν τι, διὸ ὁ ἀπ ̓ ἀρχῆς ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἄρχων ἐστὶ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, λέγω δὲ τοῦ περιγείου τόπου, ὅπου εἰσιν οὓς ἀπέκτεινεν ἄνθρωποι. + See the Apology of Pamphilus. † In Joann. t. xx. § 29.—καὶ ἔστιν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὥσπερ οὐδεὶς καθαρὸς ἀπὸ ῥύπου, καὶ οὐδεὶς δίκαιος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, ὅς ποιήσει ἀγαθὸν καὶ οὐχ ἁμαρτήσεται, οὕτω καὶ οὐδεὶς ἀεὶ ἀπὸ δαιμονίων καθαρεύσας, καὶ μηδέποτε γενόμενος τῆς ἀπὸ τούτων ἐνεργείας ἀνεπίδεκτος.Αλλ εἰκός τινας, τοὺς ἁγίους πατριάρχας, ἢ τὸν ἱερὸν θεράποντα, ἢ τούς θαυμασίους προφήτας, ἢ τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ ἀποστόλους φέροντας εἰς τὴν ἐξέτασιν δυσωπήσειν ἡμᾶς, ὡς ἄρα καὶ οὗτοι εἴποιεν ἂν ὁμοίως τῷ Ἰησοῦ· “ ἐγὼ δαιμόνιον οὐκ ἔχω” πρὸς οὓς ἔστιν εἰπεῖν· ἄρα καὶ οὗτοι ποτε ἥμαρτον, ἢ ψεῦδος τὸ “ πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ ὑστεροῦνται τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἀληθὲς τὸ οὐδεὶς καθαρὸς ἀπὸ ῥύπου” οὐδὲ τεθεωρημένως εἴρηται τὸ “ οὐκ ἔστι δίκαιος ἐπὶ γῆς, ὃς ποιήσει ἀγαθὸν καὶ οὐχ ἁμαρτήσεται.” ̓Αλλὰ σαφές, ὅτι ἀληθεῖς αἱ πᾶσαι γραφαί, κ.τ.λ. § In Joann. t. xx. § 26. 66 We perceive therefore, as the collective result, that a disturbance in human nature owing to which it needed Redemption and Regeneration, and a susceptibility of Redemption, were maintained by all the Church teachers. Nor is the doctrine of Free Will carried to the length of self-sufficiency, nor the doctrine of human depravity to the exclusion of free self-consciousness and a point of connexion for Redemption. This is characteristic of the Period; yet in Tertullian and Clement two diverging tendencies may be observed: in the one, the doctrine of the need of redemption and the transforming power of grace; in the other, that of free will, is more prominent; and in this difference lies the germ of the controversies of the following period. It is also evident that the doctrine of Redemption must be everywhere conditioned by the Anthropology. C. THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. Among the strictly new truths which Christianity presents, is the doctrine of a Man in whom may be recognised the perfect union of the divine and human. In the existing tendencies of the age there was nothing analogous, and it stands in opposition to the Jewish standpoint, which places a chasm between God and man, as well as to the Heathen deification of nature and man, or its depriving humanity of its characteristic qualities. If Christianity presents any apparent affinity to other religions, it must be owing to that presentiment of our nature which springs from its affinity to God. The Heathen myths of transient appearance of the gods in human form, especially the Incarnations of the Oriental gods, are connected with Pantheism, which in all forms of existence beholds the Divine made an object of the senses, and, therefore, admits an Incarnation of it in the forms of lower nature. This was something altogether different from the full revelation of the of the divine essence in the form of a definite human life which was to share all its limitations. The humiliation of Christ and his death on the cross were at variance with the conceptions of the Heathen, who delighted in sensuous splen dour, and adorned with it the fabled appearances of their deities This contrariety may be known from the fabulous description of the heroes whom they set up in opposition to the power of Christianity, as in the life of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostra THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 193 tus.* For although this history was not written with a polemical design against Christianity, yet the decoration of the life of Apollonius proceeded from the necessity of investing the sinking cause of heathenism with fresh splendour. NeoPlatonism could indeed allow some individuals to be organs of divine Revelations and thus admit of an Eclectic attachment to Christ as a teacher of Philosophy among others but the acknowledgment of an individual as the absolute revelation of God and as the archetype of humanity, from whom all divine life proceeded, and the consequent dependence of the whole human race upon him-was in direct contradiction to this Philosophy. As the religious spirit of the age took offence at this doctrine of Christianity, it mixed itself with it to corrupt it, and the narratives of the life of Christ were remodelled according to the ideas current in society. This is the element of the Apocryphal writings. In the monstrous narratives of this kind respecting the Saviour's childhood, we see what offence was taken at the humiliation of the real life of Christ for instance when he was learning his Alphabet and his Teacher asked him to point out A, he said B at the same time, because he connected a mysterious meaning with it. Of the standpoints previous to Christianity there were two tendencies, which in opposite ways exploded the union of the divine nature with the human, as presented in the actual appearance of the God-Man, according as they gave prominence to the Divine or the Human alone. On the Jewish standpoint this was regarded as an impossibility. Here also the specifically Divine in Christ was denied. The Ebionitish tendency in the narrower sense gave rise to it, which as it regarded Christianity only as a continuation of Judaism, could not distinguish Christ specifically from the earlier messengers of God, but made him a sort of potentiated Moses, who at his baptism was equipped for his Messianic work by the communication of special divine powers. The other tendency presented itself in Gnosticism, which despised the human in Christ, and in a one-sided manner brought forward the divine. But there were also combinations of the Ebionitish and Gnostic views, as for example, in Cerinthus† and * Flav. Philostrati quae supersunt, ed Kayser: 1844, 2 t. Baur, Apollonius v. Tyana u. Christus: Tüb. 1832. Hippol. λεyx. vii. 33, p. 256. |