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| Chapter V.—The Greeks Had Some Knowledge of the True God.
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Chapter V.—The Greeks Had Some Knowledge of the True God.
And that the men of highest repute among
the Greeks knew God, not by positive knowledge, but by indirect
expression,3253
| 3253
We have the same statement made, Stromata, i. 19, p. 322,
ante, Potter p. 372; also v. 14, p. 465, ante, Potter
p. 730,—in all of which Lowth adopts περίφρασιν
as the true reading, instead of περίφασιν.
In the first of these passages, Clement instances as one of the
circumlocutions or roundabout expressions by which God was known to the
Greek poets and philosophers, “The Unknown God.”
Joannes Clericus proposes to read παράφασιν
(palpitatio), touching, feeling after. [See Strom., p.
321, and p. 464, note 1.] | Peter says in the Preaching:
“Know then that there is one God, who made the beginning of all
things, and holds the power of the end; and is the Invisible, who sees all
things; incapable of being contained, who contains all things; needing
nothing, whom all things need, and by whom they are; incomprehensible,
everlasting, unmade, who made all things by the ‘Word of
His power,’ that is, according to the gnostic scripture, His
Son.”3254
| 3254 i.e.,
“The Word of God’s power is His Son.” |
Then he adds: “Worship this God not as the
Greeks,”—signifying plainly, that the excellent among the
Greeks worshipped the same God as we, but that they had not learned by
perfect knowledge that which was delivered by the Son. “Do not
then worship,” he did not say, the God whom the Greeks worship, but
“as the Greeks,”—changing the manner of the worship of
God, not announcing another God. What, then, the expression “not
as the Greeks” means, Peter himself shall explain, as he adds:
“Since they are carried away by ignorance, and know not God”
(as we do, according to the perfect knowledge); “but giving shape
to the things3255
| 3255 Instead of
ἡν
… ἐξουσίας
, as in the text, we read ὦν
εξουσίαν . |
of which He gave them the power for use—stocks and stones,
brass and iron, gold and silver—matter;—and setting up the
things which are slaves for use and possession, worship them.3256
| 3256 None of the attempts to
amend this passage are entirely successful. The translation adopts
the best suggestions made. | And what God hath given to them
for food—the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea, and the
creeping things of the earth, and the wild beasts with the four-footed
cattle of the field, weasels and mice, cats and dogs and apes, and
their own proper food—they sacrifice as sacrifices to mortals;
and offering dead things to the dead, as to gods, are unthankful to
God, denying His existence by these things.” And that it is said,
that we and the Greeks know the same God, though not in the same way,
he will infer thus: “Neither worship as the Jews; for they,
thinking that they only know God, do not know Him, adoring as they do
angels and archangels, the month and the moon. And if the moon be not
visible, they do not hold the Sabbath, which is called the first;3257
nor do they hold the new moon, nor the feast
of unleavened bread, nor the feast, nor the great day.”3258
Then he gives the finishing stroke to the question: “So that do
ye also, learning holily and righteously what we deliver to you; keep
them, worshipping God in a new way, by Christ.” For we find in
the Scriptures, as the Lord says: “Behold, I make with you a new
covenant, not as I made with your fathers in Mount Horeb.”3259
He made a new covenant with us; for what belonged
to the Greeks and Jews is old. But we, who worship Him in a new way,
in the third form, are Christians. For clearly, as I think, he showed
that the one and only God was known by the Greeks in a Gentile way,
by the Jews Judaically, and in a new and spiritual way by us.
And further, that the same God that furnished
both the Covenants was the giver of Greek philosophy to the Greeks,
by which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks, he shows. And it
is clear from this. Accordingly, then, from the
Hellenic training, and also from
that of the law are gathered into the one race of the saved people those
who accept faith: not that the three peoples are separated by time, so
that one might suppose three natures, but trained in different Covenants
of the one Lord, by the word of the one Lord. For that, as God wished to
save the Jews by giving to them prophets, so also by raising up prophets
of their own in their own tongue, as they were able to receive God’s
beneficence, He distinguished the most excellent of the Greeks from the
common herd, in addition to “Peter’s Preaching,”
the Apostle Paul will show, saying: “Take also the Hellenic books,
read the Sibyl, how it is shown that God is one, and how the future
is indicated. And taking Hystaspes, read, and you will find much more
luminously and distinctly the Son of God described, and how many kings
shall draw up their forces against Christ, hating Him and those that bear
His name, and His faithful ones, and His patience, and His coming.”
Then in one word he asks us, “Whose is the world, and all that is in
the world? Are they not God’s?”3260
| 3260 Most likely taken from some apocryphal book bearing
the name of Paul. | Wherefore Peter says, that the Lord said
to the apostles: “If any one of Israel then, wishes to repent,
and by my name to believe in God, his sins shall be forgiven him,
after twelve years. Go forth into the world, that no one may say, We
have not heard.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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