Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 17.1

Greek text · Stählin 3:170

ὁ δὲ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ τὸν πλοῦτον φέρων καὶ ἀντὶ θεοῦ πνεύματος ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ χρυσὸν φέρων ἢ ἀγρὸν καὶ τὴν κτῆσιν ἄμετρον ἀεὶ ποιῶν καὶ ἑκάστοτε τὸ πλεῖον βλέπων, κάτω νενευκὼς καὶ τοῖς τοῦ κόσμου θηράτροις πεπεδημένος, γῆ ὢν καὶ εἰς γῆν ἀπελευσόμενος, πόθεν δύναται βασιλείας οὐρανῶν ἐπιθυμῆσαι καὶ φροντίσαι. ἄνθρωπος οὐ καρδίαν, ἀλλὰ ἀγρὸν ἢ μέταλλον φορῶν, ἐν τούτοις εὑρεθησόμενος ἐπάναγκες [ἐν] οἷς εἵλετο; »ὅπου γὰρ ὁ νοῦς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ἐκεῖ καὶ ὁ θησαυρὸς αὐτοῦ.«

English · Claude translation

But the one who carries his wealth in his soul, and in his heart, instead of the Spirit of God, carries gold or land, always making his property boundless and forever looking for more, bent downward and fettered by the snares of the world, being earth and destined to go to earth: how can he desire and care for the kingdom of heaven, a man who wears not a heart but a field or a mine, and who must of necessity be found in the things he has chosen? “For where the mind of man is, there is his treasure also.”

About this passage

Source

Stählin 3:170 · 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

Gen 3:19 · echo, medium confidence
Matt 6:21 · quotation, high confidence
Luke 12:34 · quotation, medium confidence

Topics

Ethics

Notes

Translation notes

The quotation is a form of Matt 6:21 (Luke 12:34), with “mind” for “heart” and the order reversed; “earth … to earth” is Gen 3:19. The bracketed word in the Greek is the editor's deletion.

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Quis div. 17.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-quis-dives/17/1/).

Plain text

Clement of Alexandria, Quis div. 17.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-quis-dives/17/1/).