Miscellanies 5.14.93
Summary: Plato's teaching on evil spirits and an undying battle matches Paul's warfare against spiritual powers; Scripture too distinguishes an intelligible world, made “in the beginning,” from the sensible world made in six days.
Greek text · Stählin 2:387–388
ὁμοίως δὲ κἀν τῷ Φαίδρῳ ταῦτα γράφει· ἔστι μὲν δὴ καὶ ἄλλα κακά, ἀλλά τις δαίμων ἔμιξε τοῖς πλείστοις ἐν τῷ παραυτίκα ἡδονήν. ἀλλὰ κἀν τῷ δεκάτῳ τῶν Νόμων ἄντικρυς τὸ ἀποστολικὸν δείκνυσιν ἐκεῖνο· οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμῖν ἡ πάλη πρὸς αἷμα καὶ σάρκα, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς ἀρχάς, πρὸς τὰς ἐξουσίας, πρὸς τὰ πνευματικὰ τῶν ἐν οὐρανοῖς, ὧδέ πως γράφων· ἐπειδὴ γὰρ συνεχωρήσαμεν ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς εἶναι μὲν τὸν οὐρανὸν πολλῶν μεστὸν ἀγαθῶν, εἶναι δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐναντίων, πλειόνων δὲ τῶν μή, μάχη, φαμέν, ἀθάνατός ἐσθʼ ἡ τοιαύτη καὶ φυλακῆς θαυμαστῆς δεομένη. Κόσμον τε αὖθις τὸν μὲν νοητὸν οἶδεν ἡ βάρβαρος φιλοσοφία, τὸν δὲ αἰσθητόν, τὸν μὲν ἀρχέτυπον, τὸν δὲ εἰκόνα τοῦ καλουμένου παραδείγματος· καὶ τὸν μὲν ἀνατίθησι μονάδι, ὡς ἂν νοητόν, τὸν δὲ αἰσθητὸν ἑξάδι· γάμος γὰρ παρὰ τοῖς Πυθαγορείοις, ὡς ἂν γόνιμος ἀριθμός, ἡ ἑξὰς καλεῖται. καὶ ἐν μὲν τῇ μονάδι συνίστησιν οὐρανὸν ἀόρατον καὶ γῆν ἀειδῆ καὶ φῶς νοητόν· ἐν ἀρχῇ γάρ φησιν ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν· ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος.
English · Claude translation
Similarly he writes this in the Phaedrus too: “There are indeed other evils, but some daemon has mixed with most of them a pleasure of the moment.” And in the tenth book of the Laws he plainly shows that apostolic saying, “Our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the authorities, against the spiritual forces in the heavenly places,” writing thus: “For since we have agreed among ourselves that heaven is full of many good things, and also of their opposites, but more of those that are not good, such a battle, we say, is undying and needs wonderful vigilance.” Again, the barbarian philosophy knows one world as intelligible and another as sensible, the one the archetype, the other the image of what is called the pattern; and it assigns the one, as intelligible, to the monad, and the sensible to the hexad; for among the Pythagoreans the hexad is called marriage, as a generative number. And in the monad it establishes an invisible heaven and an unformed earth and intelligible light; for it says: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible.”
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations are Plato, Phaedrus 240a–b and Laws 10.906a, Eph 6:12, and Gen 1:1–2. The monad and the hexad (the six days) are Pythagorean number symbolism, which Clement shares with Philo, On the Creation of the World 13–35.
Cite this passage
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.14.93 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/5/14/93/).
Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 5.14.93 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/5/14/93/).
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