Sophia Scriptura

Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 12.1

Clement of Alexandria · Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? · ca. 190–210 · Alexandria · Read in context

Summary: What Christ commands that is new is not giving up property, which others did, but stripping the soul of its passions and uprooting what is alien to it.

Greek text · Stählin 3:167

Τί οὖν ὡς καινὸν καὶ ἴδιον θεοῦ παραγγέλλει καὶ μόνον ζωοποιοῦν, ὃ τοὺς προτέρους οὐκ ἔσωσεν; εἰ δὲ ἐξαίρετόν τι ἡ »καινὴ κτίσις«, ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, μηνύει καὶ διδάσκει, οὐ τὸ φαινόμενον, ὅπερ ἄλλοι πεποιήκασι, παρεγγυᾷ, ἀλλʼ ἕτερόν τι διὰ τούτου σημαινόμενον μεῖζον καὶ θειότερον καὶ τελεώτερον, τὸ τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτὴν καὶ τὴν διάθεσιν γυμνῶσαι τῶν ὑπόντων παθῶν καὶ πρόρριζα τὰ ἀλλότρια τῆς γνώμης ἐκτεμεῖν καὶ ἐκβαλεῖν. τοῦτο γὰρ ἴδιον μὲν τοῦ πιστοῦ τὸ μάθημα.

English · Claude translation

Why, then, does he command as new, proper to God, and alone life-giving what did not save those before? If “the new creation,” the Son of God, reveals and teaches something special, he does not enjoin the visible act, which others have done, but something else signified by it, greater, more divine, and more perfect: to strip the soul itself and its disposition of the passions that lie hidden in it, and to cut out by the roots and cast away what is alien to the mind. This is the lesson proper to the believer,

About this passage

Source
Stählin 3:167 · Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, Quis dives salvetur, Fragmente, GCS 17 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909) · Greek text: Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus 3 (GCS 17, 1909), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0
Text
As printed in Stählin, GCS 17. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.
Translation
Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Stählin (1909); made independently of existing English translations.
Compare
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)
Scripture
Topics
Ethics, Christology

Notes

Translation notes

  • “New creation” is from 2 Cor 5:17 (Gal 6:15), here used of Christ himself.

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Quis div. 12.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-quis-dives/12/1/).

Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Quis div. 12.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-quis-dives/12/1/).

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