Christ the Educator

Chapter 13

CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 89 gratitude from the divine Educator when He corrects the acts of disobedience that sweep us on to ruin and uproots the desires that drag us into sin, refusing to be silent and connive at them, and even offers counsels on the right way to live? Certainly we owe Him the deepest gratitude. Do we say, then, that the rational animal, I mean man, ought to do anything besides contemplate the divinity? I maintain that he ought to contemplate human nature, also, and live as the truth leads him, admiring the way in which the Educator and His precepts are worthy of one another and adapted one to the other. In keeping with such a model, we ought also to adapt ourselves to our Educator, conform our deeds to the Word, and then we will truly live. Chapter 13 (101) Everything contrary to right reason is a sin. The philosophers,l for example, maintained that the more generic passions are defined in some such way as this: lust is desire disobedient to reason; fear, aversion disobedient to reason; pleasure, elation of mind disobedient to reason; and grief, depression of mind disobedient to reason. Now, if it is in its relationship with reason that disobedience is the origin of sin, is it not necessarily true that obedience to reason, or the Word,2 which is what we call faith, is the very substance of what is called a person's duty?3 This is said with good reason, I Principally. the Stoics. 2 That is, lOgos. This whole chapter is a play on the twofold meaning of this word: according to the Stoics, sin is acting contrary to reason (logos); according 10 Christians, this lOgos is the Second Person of the Trinity, the Word. S to kathikon, a familiar Stoic term. 90 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA for virtue itself is a disposition of soul attuned to the dictate of reason in the whole course of life. Besides, even philosophy is defined as the pursuit of right reason, so that an error arising from faulty reasoning is necessarily, and properly, called a defection.· By way of illustration, when the first man sinned and disobeyed God, 'man became,' as Scripture puts it, 'like to the beasts,'5 because he sinned against reason. With good cause was he considered unreasonable and likened to the beasts. ( 102) Similarly, Wisdom says: 'The pleasure-seeker and the adulterer is a stallion-horse,'6 because they have become like the most unreasoning of animals. Therefore, it adds: 'He neighed under everyone that sitteth upon him.' Such a man is no longer said to speak, for he who sins against reason is no longer rational, but is an irrational animal wholly given up to lust, whom every sort of pleasure sits upon and drives. The followers of the Stoics call virtuous action performed in obedience to reason 'the dutiful and the fitting." But what is a duty is also fitting, and obedience has as its foundation commands. Since these are the same as counsels, in the sense that both have the truth as their goal, they guide us to the final goal we desire, which is spoken of as the end.8 The end of service of God is eternal rest in God; our end is the beginning of eternity. But, that which is done properly in the service of God fulfills in deeds the duty imposed on it. Therefore, duty consists not in words but in actions. But the deed of a Christian soul is the work of its reason accomplished 4 A play on words: 'error' is diamartia, or 'missing the goa\'; 'sin' is hamartema, or 'defection: 5 Ps. 48.13,21. 6 Cf. Ecc1i. 33.6. 7 kathekon ka! prosekon, a Stoic definition of virtue. 8 telos, end or purpose. CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 91 by means of its friend and companion, the body, obeying the dictate of an educated judgment and of a desire for the truth. But man's duty is to cultivate a will that is in conformity and united throughout his life to God and Christ, properly directed to eternal life. Indeed, the life of the Christian, in which we are now being educated, is a united whole made up of deeds controlled by reason; that is, it is the persevering accomplishment of the truths taught by reason, or rather, the Word,