Christ the Educator

Chapter 2

CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 5 man that he may come to a full knowledge of the truth. Health and knowledge are not the same; one is a result of study, the other of healing. In fact, if a person is sick, he cannot master any of the things taught him until he is first completely cured. We give instructions to someone who is sick for an entirely different reason than we do to someone who is learning; the latter, we instruct that he may acquire knowledge, the first, that he may regain health. Just as our body needs a physician when it is sick, so, too, when we are weak, our soul needs the Educator to cure its ills. Only then does it need the Teacher to guide it and develop its capacity to know, once it is made pure and capable of retaining the revelation of the Word. Therefore, the all-loving Word, anxious to perfect us in a way that leads progressively to salvation, makes effective use of an order well adapted to our development; at first, He persuades, then He educates, and after all this He teaches. Chapter 2 (4) Our Educator, 0 children, resembles His Father, God, whose Son He is. He is without sin, without blame, without passion of soul,1 God immaculate in form of man, accomplishing His Father's will. He is God the Word, who is in the bosom of the Father, and also at the right hand of the Father, with even the nature of God. He it is who is the spotless image.2 We must try, then, to resemble Him in spirit as far as we are able. It is true that He Himself is entirely free from human passion; that is why I Apathes. For this typical Stoic term, d. Introduction, p. xvi. 2 Cf. 2 Cor. 4.4; Col. 1.15. 6 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA He alone is sinless. Yet we must strive, to the best of our ability, to be as sinless as we can. There is nothing more important for us than first to be rid of sin and weakness, and then to uproot any habitual sinful inclination. The highest perfection, of course, is never to sin in any least way; but this can be said of God alone. The next highest is never deliberately to commit wrong; this is the state proper to the man who possesses wisdom. In the third place comes not sinning except on rare occasions; this marks a man who is well educated. Finally, in the lowest degree, we must place delaying in sin for a brief moment; but even this, for those who are called to recover their loss and repent, is a step on the path to salvation. (5) It seems to me that the Educator expresses it aptly through Moses when He says: 'If anyone die suddenly before him lthe priest], the head of his consecration shall be defiled; and he shall immediately shave it.'3 By 'sudden death' He means an indeliberate sin, and says that it 'defiles' because it pollutes the soul. For the cure He prescribes that the head be shaved on the spot as soon as possible, meaning that the locks of ignorance that darken the reason should be shorn so that the reason (which has its seat in the head), stripped of hair, that is, wickedness, may the better retrace its course to repentance. A few words afterwards He adds: 'The former days were without reason,'4 by which He surely means that deliberate sin is an act done contrary to reason. Involuntary sin He calls 'sudden,' but deliberate sin 'without reason.' It is precisely for this purpose that the Word, Reason Itself,5 has 3 Num. 6.9. 4 Num. 6.12. 5 Logos, which Clement uses here for Word, with a play on the secondary meaning of reason. Cf. Introduction, p. xvi. CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 7 taken upon Himself, as the Educator of little ones, the task of preventing sins against reason. Understand in this light that expression in the Scriptures: 'For this reason, thus speaks the Lord ... .'6 The words that follow describe and condemn some sin that has been committed. The judgment contained in these words is just, for it is as if He were giving notice in the words of the Prophet that, if you had not sinned, He would not have made these threats. 1be...