A couple of remarks. We find that with Clement we're in different territory than we were with Irenaeus. He's got a different audience, that's one thing. And his audience is kind of mixed, and apparently some of them are dilettantes, you know, are not all that serious, and what he's trying to do is make them serious. He's trying to attract them to Christ, to the Word. And they're mostly cultured people, so he's not teaching catechumens. And he's concerned with the Greek culture, especially in this first book. I think it's true in the first book, the Procepticos, and it's true again in Astromata, but in two different ways. See, in the first one he's sort of trying to woo the people who are steeped in this Greek culture, Greek literature and Greek philosophy, to woo them to the superiority and the power of the Logos, of the Word. And then in the Pedagogue, the second book, he's teaching Christians. So even though he's got this Greek mind himself, it's not so prominent, I think, or rather

[01:09]

it comes around in another way, it comes around in his theory of education. And in Astromata, it comes around in his trying to unite philosophy with faith, philosophy with revelation. And he takes up those problems explicitly. But here his scope is to win people over to this song of the Logos. Now, it's good to realize the importance of this for us, or how it relates to some things that are very much in our lives. And it brought to mind, since Pete Griffith is coming soon, because what's he trying to do? He's trying to incarnate Christianity in a culture in which it hasn't been incarnated before in that manner. That is, a monastic Christianity, you could say in the sense of patristic Christianity, it has to be. At any rate, he's trying to incarnate the Word in, that at least is the basic experiment, that's what's happening in a new culture. Now, Clement is one of the first to do this. In fact, he's the first one to take it on explicitly and optimistically.

[02:13]

And so, it's good for us, I think, to reflect on the way that Clement is doing, the way that he relates to the Greek culture, the Greek world, which is a very powerful world at that time. We've got no idea. Because here we grow up in a Christian culture, or at least we grow up among the kind of wreckage of Christendom, of a Christian culture. And so, we just don't know that alien culture until it comes to us from the East, until it comes to us through Buddhism and Hinduism. And that attempts to knock us off balance, like it was a whole new world. Well, it's a new world to us, but it's the same as the new world in a sense that the Fathers were confronting. There's a difference. Because if Clement was steeped in the Greek thing, then his Christianity is relating to something that's very much in him, whereas for us we discover the East as something new. But it's that same attempt at incarnation. So, it's important for us, I think especially, to see the relationship between the Word for Clement, to try to get the feel of the relationship between the Word and what the Word is being

[03:17]

sown in, or what the Word is being prepared with, or what the Word is being translated into or expressed in, which is this Greek culture. And then to compare, for instance, with the attempt that the Eccles makes, that kind of thing. You get a principle of discernment there. Because the Fathers were very close to the Source, and you can feel the power of the Word coming out of Clement. Now, that power of the Word has to be maintained. That's the thing we can't lose. That's the criteria. I had hoped today to finish with the Protrepticos, but then the trouble is that if I try to get into it all deeply, then it's hard to get out. That is, with Clement, as with Ernest, you discover a lot of rich passages. So, it's hard for us to do a whole book like this in one period. Let's see what we can do, however, because we don't want to spend too long on him, important as he is.

[04:17]

Last time we took Merton's introduction to his selections from the Protrepticos. So, let's not return to that, but let's go on with the Protrepticos itself, or what we call the Exhortation. That's the first of his three books. Exhortation to the Heathen. It's a nice, cheery title. Don't be put off by the language. Let me give you, first of all, the structure of this Protrepticos, or the Exhortation. It's got 12 chapters. You have only some parts of it there. You have Chapter 1, I think you have Chapter 6, and then you've got Chapters 9 through 12. This is what's in the other chapters. Chapter 1 is the new song. So, that's kind of his overture, and he brings out most powerfully and most seductively this charm, this beauty of the Logos. A marvelous charm. And he does it, of course, with all of these allusions to the Greek literature. Chapter 2, he turns a bit mean, and starts talking about the Heathen mysteries and how

[05:22]

awful they are, and how absurd they are, and so on. He goes on in this vein for several chapters. So, he alternately woos and castigates. It's alternatively this sweet, seductive song of the Logos, and this prophetic denunciation of these disgraceful things that the Greeks, that they have here, pagans. So, the second chapter is on the absurdity and impiety of the mysteries, the pagan mysteries and myths. Thirdly, human sacrifice and such things, in the same vein. Chapter 4, the idols, the stupidity of idolatry, and the falsity and shamelessness of the Greek gods. He says a lot about the impurity of the legend of the Greek gods. Chapter 5, now, he begins to come around. There's a pivot there. So, he speaks of the philosophers and how they have seen God, and he begins by making fun

[06:24]

of the ones who have a more materialistic notion of God. There, of course, we have to be careful, because what we take as materialism sometimes is symbolism. In Chapter 6, he comes around and starts talking about the positive grains of truth that are in the Greek philosophers. And here, he centers particularly on Plato. He gives a real private place to Plato. Chapter 7, the poets also have something true to say. And then, Chapter 8, it's to the prophets that we have to go to really find the way pointed to the truth. Here, you see a kind of parallel, of course. Then, you have three of the philosophers. He's had the myths up here, don't worry. The philosophers, the poets, and the prophets. And they're all pointed towards the Lord, towards the incarnation of the Lord, not the

[07:29]

creation of the Lord. But the prophets have this continuity with the Word of God, and the other two don't because they only have glimpses. Now, this too, you know, we can bring it to our own time. If you reflect on this, it opens up some things as we regard the culture around us. The different thing being that not only does the culture around us have the seeds of the Logos, but it has the decomposition products of the Logos as well, okay? It has the breakdown products of two thousand years of Christian civilization, which makes it a different ballgame, and makes it even richer, in a sense, in the sparks or the particles of the Logos. And so we can talk about a recapitulation in a different way today, because we recapitulate what is already Christian, a lot of it. Or what is just soaked in Christian truth, and then has in some way been obscured or clouded.

[08:30]

Okay, then, God calls us to Himself by His Logos. Chapter 9, 10, 11, and 12 are His strong chapters. There's Chapter 1, and then 9, 10, 11, and 12. Those are the strong chapters in which He talks about the Logos. And He picks up there what He started in the first chapter, and it's not that the chapters differ so much. The titles that we have, for instance, are not that significant. It is 10, 10, 11, and 12. That's His grand conclusion. And that's where we tend to get sunk, I found, because there's so many passages that we would like to talk about. Okay, let's do what we can, starting with Chapter 1. Now, you have here Merton's translation of the New Song, but he has taken only a little bit of it, actually. Because we find that all that Merton has translated is on the first page and a half in your ancient

[09:31]

Ananias and Fathers, and even then it's broken. That is, he's taken just a few verses. Well, he starts out with this rather strange introduction, talking about a couple of very powerful minstrels, very powerful singers. And there's another one in the background who is more important than the two. He mentions three, and I think the one that's in the background is more important, and I don't know why he doesn't mention it. Now, oftentimes the omissions in the Fathers, sometimes also in the Scripture, are very significant. See, the one that's really behind all this, I think, is Orpheus. And, you know, Orpheus was a symbol of Christ for the early Christians. Sometimes you'll see these mosaics in the apses of old churches with Orpheus and his lyre, you know. So that's there, and he doesn't even mention his name. Hardly. He comes back to him later on. And several other characters that he mentions here are connected to Orpheus. We'll turn this up now. I don't know anything about Greek mythology, so I have to jump to a book and try to... under a book and try to find something.

[10:32]

I'll read a few things. Just something on Orpheus just to start out. And see the reflections which this raises in your mind as a kind of... What would you call it? The kind of parable of the redemption. If you read mythology... Greek mythology, of course, is quite a thing. But if you read, say, folk tales or fairy tales, you'll find many, many parables of salvation. Because, basically, the human person is very simple, and life is very simple in its deepest search. And so they're all parables of the one search. You know, the one search for... call it for happiness. And they have varying degrees of progress towards the real truth. I'm putting it very crudely. Here's something about Orpheus from this book on Greek mythology. I don't think he's aiming at this building. They did the posthumous portrait the other day.

[11:35]

It worked it out in an hour and a half. Orpheus, the great hero of Thrace, was very different in character from the other Greek heroes. He was not distinguished for his warlike exploits. He was in origin, perhaps, a Thracian king. And he owed his fame above all to his amazing musical talent. Son of Apollo. Now, Apollo, the great... who becomes a sun god, kind of. And this is another thing that's behind Conan, is the idea of the divinity of the sun. I don't think he ever mentions Apollo. Maybe he does. But that's behind it, too. And Apollo was also a musician. Now, you'll find that in this work of Clement, there are two big images behind it. Two big images for Christ. One is the singer and the song. Okay? The new song that pulls everything together and transforms everything. The word is a song for him. And the other is light, which is in the concrete image of the sun. So, a kind of sun god. Okay? Now, these two are one. Remember in the prologue of John, that in the beginning was the word,

[12:38]

and the word was of God, and the word was God. But the word is the light, too. You see, the word is the light. I think that image is even in St. John. I think St. John is not the song, but the word and the sun. These are both behind Clement, because they're very powerful. If we're going to talk about human culture, if we're going to talk about beauty, how can we talk about it? We think with our eyes and we think with our ears in that area. And Clement is using both of them, and he's using the strongest images both on the auditory and on the visual levels to communicate, to connect Christianity, connect the word with beauty. And therefore, and really with Eros, I think we have to talk about that. Because what Clement is doing is building a bridge between the word and Eros, or between agape and Eros, or between the divine love that we have in the New Testament and that, call it natural love or whatever, that is especially manifest in the Greek religion. And also it's manifest in Plato.

[13:39]

Plato's loaded with it, and he talks about it explicitly sometimes. There are references to Plato's dialogues in here, as well as to Greek mythology. Okay, going on with Orpheus. Orpheus, Apollo therefore, also is a musician. But he's everything. And Orpheus is specifically, he's a specialist, he's a musician. Son of Apollo, he sang and played the lyre with such art that the savage beasts came running to listen, and even trees would follow. That sounds absurd. When you think about it, it's really powerful. There are fairy tales like that. The violinist and the fiddler that goes into the woods and the beasts come out from behind the trees and follow. There's one beautiful fairy tale about the violinist and the fiddler. The beasts would come out and they'd follow and save him. What would they do? They'd ask him, I guess, what they... And then he'd send them away. He says, I don't want an animal, I want a man.

[14:39]

I want a human person. And then finally a human being comes along and follows him away. His talent performed miracles during the voyage of the Argonauts, a member of the Golden Fleece. The ship Argo, high on the beach, descended to the sea of its own accord at the sound of his singing. His songs arrested the simple gates as terrible moving rocks which threatened to crush the ship and sent them down to the bottom of the sea. By singing, he helped to lull to sleep the dragon who guarded the Golden Fleece. And finally, his songs conquered the sirens and permitted the Argonauts to escape their fearful seduction. Now this is important later on, at the end of Clement's book, the last chapter, he says, close your ears to that song. It's either in the Odyssey, you know, Odysseus who has to go by, he has to go by the sirens too. And he ties himself to the mast, and the mast is the cross. So he says, shut your ears to that song, the seductive song of the demons, and listen to the new song of Christ. So that's underneath his whole book here, you see, coming out at the end.

[15:40]

Such was the power of his voice and the harmony of his lyre that even the infernal deities submitted to them. He had married the nymph Eurydice, whom he passionately loved. One day, when Eurydice was fleeing from Aristeas, she was mortally bitten by a snake hidden in the grass. Orpheus was heartbroken at the death of his wife and resolved to descend into the underworld to reclaim her. And this, I think, is where the Orpheus myth has its greatest power, as a parable of Christ, see, he goes down into hell. He was able to charm Hades and Persephone, who gave him permission to take Eurydice back to earth on the sole condition that he should not turn to look at her during the journey. The couple had almost reached the gates of Hades when Orpheus impatiently and imprudently turned to look at his wife. At once she was whisked back into the somber abode of the dead and vanished this time forever. Orpheus was inconsolable and, some said, killed himself. The rest of it still extends there. But that's behind a lot of what Carmen is saying here. And I don't know why he doesn't bring it out more. Maybe because it was so commonly known. And maybe that was his artisanship, his craftsmanship,

[16:43]

that he didn't want to make everything obvious. There's a lot that's implicit in his work, just as there is in Hades. Okay, then he tells the story of this Eunomos, the musician who busts his string in the cricket and grasshopper. What was it? Grasshoppers? The cricket came and took the place of his string and everything was carried on successfully. So he tells them this little story, which maybe they don't know, and then he turns on them and says, Now, let me ask, how have you believed famed fables and supposed animals to be churned by music? While truth's shining face alone is what's in Orpheus to you, disguised and looked on with incredulous eyes. Now, those Scytheron and Helicon, those are holy mountains indeed. Helicon is the mountain of the muses, I think, where the nine muses dwelt and sported and danced. So he says, let us consign all these poets to Scytheron and Helicon

[17:49]

and put them behind us, but let us bring from above out of heaven truth with wisdom and all its brightness in the sacred prophetic work. Note the sound and the vision here come together. He's talking about music all the time, but he can't keep from talking about light. He can't keep from talking about the sun, the heavenly light. The holy mountain of God, which is Zion. So he's replacing these other holy mountains with Zion. The mountains of fiction with the mountain of truth. But truth, darting her light to the most distant points, casts her rays all around on those that are involved in darkness. You seem to get a hint of Orpheus there. Deliver men from delusion, stretching out a very strong right hand which is wisdom for their salvation. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem The celestial word, the true athlete crowned in the theater of the whole universe. I don't know if there's a specific reference there or not, this true athlete. What my view it almost seems is not the name of the song. I think it's a reference to, you know, the Olympian.

[18:51]

Oh, that's right. Fender would emphasize that the answer becomes most like the gods when they conquered all their competitors in the Olympian. I see. And Paul also uses that if he wants to. Oh, yeah. Crowned in the theater. It connects with what he's been saying in some way. Maybe also with those mountains because they may have been athletic against them if they were as real as the Olympic Games. Then he mentions, he does mention Orpheus. Sweet and true is the charm of persuasion which blends with history. To me, therefore, that Thracian Orpheus, that's who I'm talking about. And the others seem to have been deceivers and so on. The enticement, the idols, statues, and images. And then he gets down to the place where it becomes powerful.

[19:56]

Not such is my belief. My song. Merton takes it up again on his page, page 16. It's very different from the mythical singer. It is the one I now propose to you. He comes and instantly dissolves the bonds of bitter slavery to the demon parents. And with a kind and humane rule of piety, he leads back to heaven. Those who have been thrown down upon the earth. Sounds like Orpheus, leading people out of Hades. The servitude to demons. And then there are these different kinds of men who have been, as it were, transformed into different kinds of beasts. The frivolous, the fowls of the air. Merton says, the light-minded among men are birds. And the deceitful are snakes. The violent are lions. Pleasure-lovers are swine. And the rapacious are wolves. The senseless ones are wood and stone. The ones who adore the idols, who adore the wood and the stone. And then, like Irenaeus, he picks up this phrase of the Gospel. For God is able, of these stones, to raise up children to Abraham.

[20:58]

So God raises up, out of people who were stones because they adored stones, his own children. Okay? Through faith. Faith in the Word. He, commiserating their great ignorance and hardness of heart, who are petrified against the truth, has raised up a seed of piety, sensitive to virtue. You get an echo also of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, remember? That you have a heart of stone, not tender, but a heart of flesh. Or a human heart, that is. A seed of piety, sensitive to virtue of those stones. Or the nations, that is, who trusted in stones. And then the vipers and the wolves. So, all such most savage beasts and all such blocks of stone, the celestial song has transformed into tractable men. This is good to think about a little bit. If you rush through this, you don't get the power and the beauty of it. The idea that people are transformed by beauty. Who was it that said that nothing is going to save the world except beauty?

[22:00]

Christianity suppresses the beauty of Christ, who is unable to communicate. They won't be able to save the world. That would be the thesis. And that beauty somehow transforms us into what we love. This is very important. If you read the Gospel, what is it that draws people to Christ? Is it just a kind of straight truth? If you read the Gospel of John and ask yourself, what is it that makes them, in the first chapters of John, what is it that makes them go after Christ? Whom do you seek? Come and seek. They're in love with that beauty, which is the glory of God shining out of them, even in all its obscurity. And the song expresses that very well. So, he's been able to catch that harmonic of the word, which is beauty. It's like an overtone, we'll call it, of the word, which is beauty. Or it's all the overtones beyond just the straight, flat truth. And this is extremely important. So, the song transforms beasts and stones into men.

[23:09]

There's something there that just tugs at the heart. And we know it's true, even though it's hard to put it into words. Behold the might of the new song that has made men out of stones, men out of beasts. Those, moreover, that were as dead, not being partakers of the true life, have come to life again, simply by becoming listeners to this song. See, as we're here... The Gospel of John is very close to this. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever listens to me, whoever hears me, whoever believes in me, has life. And in the Gospel of John, we feel that beauty, even though he's not talking about song. Somehow, the Jewish thing is too austere for that, in a way. We talk much about it. We have the wedding man called King. It also composed the universe into melodious order and tuned the discord of the elements to harmonious remission. Now, let's return again to the notion of the Logos. The Logos, in which all things are created, and then it comes into the world, in Christ, is born in the world, and tunes everything.

[24:15]

So, everything is waiting, as it were, as an instrument for the Word to come into it, and then tune it, and produce the right song. You know how music somehow pulls everything into one? Music has a power itself. It's a mystery of oneness in multiplicity. Even if you ring a bell, the whole thing rings. It's the whole body of the thing which rings when the proper music is produced. As it were, each body has its own note. Each body has its own tone, its own frequency. So, you can knock down a bus station with a violin, whatever it is, you know, you can play it. Because it has its own wavelength. So, there's something about totality, and the right note, the right music, the song of the whole. And that's what the Word brings, because it was all created in Him. And then he talks about the four elements, the ocean, and the earth, and the fire, and the air.

[25:17]

And there, there are two pairs of opposites. Two pairs of opposites. I can't read this print, this figure, of the four elements. You'll find that very often they're kind of figured in the mind of the fathers, which they don't make explicit, but which is there. Let's see. And then he talks about moving from the center, moving from the center to the periphery. So, there's this kind of image there. And the locus of how it brings together and harmonizes the extremes. Those are the extremes of one another, and the periphery with the center. And then he talks about the different modes of Greek music. He talks about different kinds of Greek music,

[26:21]

and then he comes to David. Now, there's a subtlety here. I'm talking about David. And David is the singer. Okay, fine. So, we have those three or four Greek singers culminating in Orpheus, which comes out kind of subtly from underneath. And then there's David. Now, David is the Christ. David is the anointed. David is the one who has the Holy Spirit. The one who is anointed with the Holy Spirit. And his very name, Christos, the Messiah, is the son of David. So, this is a very deep connection with Christ. It's not just incidental. And he's going to expand a little bit on it later on. He who is of David, and yet before him the word of God, despising the life and the heart. David played the harp. Having tuned by the Holy Spirit the universe, and especially man, who composed a body and soul as a universe in miniature, a microcosm, a microcosmos. You see, there are two instruments. Everything is supposed to resound. Everything is supposed to play one music. And the universe somehow resounds with this note.

[27:24]

And man resounds with this one note. But the word has become man in the universe. That is, man somehow is the intermediate that brings the universe to play its right music. Makes melody to God on this instrument of many tones. And to this instrument I mean man who sings. For you are my harp and my pipe and my temple. Merton has that translated too. It's on... You may prefer Merton's translation. Certainly his language here is much... But in this he hasn't brought across all the power that's in there. You are to me a harp, a flute, and a temple. A harp by the unity of parts in one whole, a flute by the living breath, a temple by thy reason. Well, he doesn't bring it out. That's on page 18 of Merton. But there's a deliberate Trinitarian pattern behind there. Because... What he's translated, living breath there, is pneuma.

[28:28]

So that means the spirit. And Carmen intends it on two levels. The breath that's in man and the Holy Spirit. And when he says a temple by your reason, that's logos. So it's the spirit and the word, you see. Now, first of all, you've got the unity of parts in one whole, which in the Greek is harmonion, it's harmony. So the harmony of the whole somehow reflects the Father. The pneuma, the breath in the flute, by which the flute is played, is the spirit. The temple, because of your reason, the logos dwells in you. Maybe it's the structure of the temple. Maybe. I don't know what it is. But there's a Trinitarian reference there. So man is in the image of God as Trinitarian, as Carmen is saying. A harp for harmony, a pipe by reason of the spirit, a temple by reason of the word, so that the first may sound, the second breathe, the third contain the Lord. That's the more literal translation of the Nicene-Protestant words.

[29:31]

Actually, it carries it better. And then David the king, the harper whom you mentioned. So far from celebrating demons in song, that he drove them away by his music. Remember, he banished the demons of soul by playing his harp and singing. And now there's a very rich passage here, which Merton doesn't have, because Merton's translation of this part ends at that point. A beautiful breathing instrument of music, the Lord made man, after his own image, and he himself also, surely, who is the super mundane, super earthly wisdom, the celestial word, is the all harmonious, melodious, holy instrument of God. Now here we get a bunch of things coinciding, overlapping. Before he called Jesus the new song, he's also the singer, he's also the instrument, and he's also, of course, the image, and he's the logos. Now man also, as the image of the image, or the image in the image, is somehow all of these things.

[30:31]

Now there's a thing here, which Clement continually is bringing up again and again. That is, the way that man is an image of a logos, his rationality, the fact that he is a thinking, believing, knowing being, is his connection, his basic, his ontological connection with the logos. And that which makes it possible for him, that fellowship, that relationship with God. Now that's pretty Greek, you see there, this thing about man being a logical creature, a rational creature. We'll run across it again. What then does this instrument, the word of God, the Lord, the new song, desire? Once again, reading this quickly, you don't get the power of it. There's a sense of exaltation, it's kind of a hymn. To open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf, and to lead the lame or the erring to righteousness. The sense of liberation that's in there. And liberation by the song, right? Liberation by the new song. The instrument of God loves mankind.

[31:34]

And the only thing he gets out of it is that we are saved. For wickedness feeds on man's destruction, but truth, like the bee, harming nothing, delights only in the salvation of men. And then a new section starts. You have then God's promise, you have his love. Become a partaker of his grace. Do not suppose the song of salvation to be new, as a vessel or a house or another manufactured thing is in the present. So, he says it's the new song. Now, he wants to tell you how it's new. For before the morning star it was, and in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. Error seems old, but truth seems a new thing. But he's going to show us the oldest thing and the newest thing at the same time. And he doesn't simply do that, he does something else. If you're watching, before the foundation of the world, he's talking about these ancient races, they used to debate about which was the oldest race. None of these existed before the world, but before the foundation of the world were we, who because destined to be in him, preexisted in the eye of God before.

[32:40]

We, the rational creatures of the word of God. Now, the word rational rings with the word word in Greek, see? It's tu theou logou, ta logika plasmata. Logika plasmata. The rational formations of the reason of God, the word of God. We haven't got any way in English to get it all together. Now, remember the plasma, plasmata, that's Irenaeus' word. That which God molded. Irenaeus would talk about man as being the image of God. Remember, it was his body that was the image of God. Now, Clement is beginning to get into the intellectual, intellectual thrust. So, he speaks about man as being the image, some way, through his reason. I don't think Irenaeus ever said that. So, notice the shift. But plasma, plasmata, is very much Irenaeus' language. I don't think it's in the... It might be in the Septuagint, I don't know, but I don't think it's in the New Testament. So, are there any books that we know of which Irenaeus had written? I don't think that, biographically, I don't think that we know,

[33:42]

but from his writings, you could prove it in some places. He said, by some way, quite a critical text of Irenaeus. Okay, you see why we're the image of the word, in particular, because of our reason. Now, he's taking something which is a Greek intuition and finding it, finding the same truth in the Gospel, in the Scriptures. On whose account we date from the beginning. We existed in him. In the beginning was the Word. Inasmuch as the Word was from the first, he was and is the divine source of all things. Inasmuch as he is now assumed the name Christ. Now, this is pretty good, watch it. He was the source as the Word at first, but now he's taken on the name Christ, Christos, which means the anointed one, you see. And this is the connection with David. Now, the Word becomes Psalm, okay? The Word, as it were, comes into the world and confers the Holy Spirit somehow upon the world.

[34:44]

So Christos is the anointed one who also gives the Holy Spirit so that what was kind of flatness in the Word becomes a Psalm. This is in there, even though it doesn't come out clearly. He never kind of theoretically, logically lines it all up. But what was Word, as it were, as if... Now, the Word was not without the Spirit, of course, but the Spirit was not in the World. The way the Word was in the World before was as it were, without the christening, without the anointing of the Spirit. But now the Word has come into the World in Christ as Christos, anointed one, and conferred the anointing upon the World. So that what was Word becomes Psalm, okay? It is as if everything was flat before Christ came. It's like, once again, the Wedding Feast of Cain. But this is in a Greek and not a Jewish context. So Christ comes into the World and what was Water becomes Wine. What was Flat Word becomes Psalm, you see? Due to the gift of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, we looked at it before, but he's present in the contrast, you see? You can take it both ways.

[35:47]

And he's taking it the other way right now. It means just the continuity where you can express the difference. You see, the Spirit was in the World before, but it's absolutely, basically, Christian faith that the Spirit is poured out in a new way by the coming of Christ in the Church, and through baptism. I'll get to that in a moment. Inasmuch as he is now assumed the name Christ, consecrated of old and worthy of power. That's a pregnant phrase, too. See, the word is Christ, Christos, consecrated. It makes the kingly consecration of David, okay? Which signifies, also symbolizes, the Holy Spirit. Worthy of power, that's the power of the Holy Spirit. See, it's not only song, it's power. And music has a certain amount of power. The power of the Spirit. Ought in spirit, be spirit, the Holy Spirit, and do them as power, and take them as servants. He has been called by me the new song. The Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first, and of our well-being.

[36:49]

This very Word has now appeared as man. And here, there's a parallel with what he said about Word and song, or Word alone, and Christ Word, and this being and well-being, okay? I didn't study it to see how it works out. They say often, also, that Clement will write an intuition without working it out, okay? He'll put something in there which is very pregnant, very full of meaning, that's very suggestive, but he doesn't do the exegesis himself. Now, sometimes he's hiding something for you that he's already thought out, and sometimes he hasn't thought it out himself. And sometimes it's because, they say, Christian theology simply hasn't pursued it as far in his time. So it remains a kind of lump of crude ore later to be refined. Okay, this is the new song, the manifestation of the Word that was in the beginning and before the beginning. So it's as if the song, the Word becomes song at its manifestation. Now, that's kind of nice. The Word becomes song at its manifestation in the sense that it poured out, okay? It becomes yours.

[37:51]

You are given its being in some way, so that your life changes. And that's the joy of the wedding feast, as it were. Once again, referring to Cain. It's as if, he never mentions it, but it's like he's always there. That is, this joy at the coming, the manifestation of the glory of God in the Word, in the Logos. Remember how at Cain, John says that he manifested himself. That was his first sign. He manifested his glory. And that the joy of the wedding, the wine, and the manifestation, and the glory of God, they're all in one line. It's all one thing. For the Word was with God, and by whom all things were created, okay. Let's skip through a little bit now before we get any more down. He talks about the different ways in which the Word speaks. Sometimes He woos, and sometimes He threatens, and chastises, and so on. God spoke in the fire, and God spoke through men,

[38:52]

the prophets. And now the Word Himself clearly speaks to you. This is on the top of 174. Yes, I say, the Word of God became man, that you may learn from man that man may become God. You see the bridge that's built. And the Fathers, each of them says this in his own way, this great mystery of God's becoming man so that man may become God. Many, many different ways in which you can express it, different angles from which we can approach it. Then he talks about John, John the Baptist. Now, this is a very dense passage here. There's some plays on words and things which it's hard for us to grasp in the translation. Let's just point to what is buried there as we go through it. The part on John. Doesn't John also invite salvation? And is he not entirely a voice of exaltation? Now, the first play on words or play on meanings is between voice and word. John is a voice. And this is deliberate in John's Gospel too.

[39:53]

John says, I am a voice, but I'm deliberate. He's not the word, he's the voice. And Jesus isn't the word, He's the word. They're both in John chapter 1. Jesus is the word and John is the voice. Jesus is the light, John is the lamp. There's a kind of emptiness and hollowness and sterility about John's mission. Just like the silence of exactly one. And this is also now in contrast to the fertility of the word. And John is the friend of the bridegroom and Jesus is the bridegroom. The word is the bridegroom. It's the word that fertilizes, that changes the world. And so John has this kind of muted quality about him. Now, the voice of exhortation, it's phonē protreptikē, phonē protreptikē in Greek. So, that's the very title of the whole thing. So, he returns to John here as his protreptikos. A voice crying in the wilderness, he's not Elias and he's not the Christ. Who then is John? In a word we may say, the beseeching voice of the word.

[40:55]

Now, once again, beseeching is protreptikos. Or it's a derivative. It's the same word. Of the word crying in the wilderness. What do you cry? John is the forerunner and that voice the precursor of the word. An inviting voice preparing for salvation, a voice urging men on, protreptikos. And through which the barren and the desolate is childless no more. Childless no more. Now, here he's referring, it seems, to two passages in Isaiah. At least two. One in which the land is barren and is a desert. And the other in which Jerusalem, the woman, is barren. So, you've got a city, you've got the woman and you've got the land. And you can see there's a relation between a city which is barren and a desert, of course. And the thing between woman and land is very deep. This fecundity the angel's voice foretold. Okay, we've got the angel Gabriel and we've got John. Each is a voice coming

[41:55]

before the word comes and somehow a herald of the word, both of them, a twin herald of it. Now, remember, you've got two annunciations. This goes pretty deep in the New Testament. You've got two annunciations, haven't you? You've got the one to Mary and you've got, this is in Luke's gospel, the one to Mary and the one to Zachary, one after the other. There's another one, of course, in Matthew's gospel, which is to Joseph. He doesn't talk about that. This is also the precursor of the Lord preaching glad tidings to the barren woman as John did to the wilderness. So, woman and wilderness. Now, there's a reflection of Irenaeus here, especially in his demonstration of the apostolic preaching where he talks about Mary as being the second earth. He talks about Eve as... Man was created first from virgin earth in the Garden of Eden. The second man was created from Mary who is therefore somehow in the line of virgin earth. The new earth, as it were. And then, again,

[42:59]

against the heresies, the whole thing about Mary and bearing Christ in the new earth. By reason of this voice of the words of the Lord, the barren woman bears children and thus it becomes fruitful. The two voices which heralded the Lord is that of the angel and John animate, as I think, the salvation in store for us to do. And on the appearance of this Word, we should reap as the fruit of His productiveness, eternal life. Now, let me refer you to Genesis chapter 3 for the first ground of this whole business about the land and woman. Do you remember the sentence that was given by God to Adam and to Eve? I think what Clement is writing is built on top of this now. Every one of these sentences to the serpent, to woman and to man is somehow related to the earth. To the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children,

[44:01]

yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall love you. Woman's fate, her destiny, is concerned with childbearing, bringing forth, okay? So it's a question of barrenness, bringing forth and so on, the pain of childbearing. To Adam He said, listen to the voice of your wife. Cursed is the ground because of you and tired you should eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall bring forth to you and you shall eat the plants and peel the sweat of your face until you return to the ground from which you have taken. Okay, it's a question of the fertility in both cases. The fertility, the bearing forth of woman in pain, the bearing of the earth, the bearing of man. Remember Irenaeus' bearing, that central word that we found in Irenaeus' against Ares' book five. Bearing, the pivot word around which everything turns. So here it's a question of bearing also, okay? Woman bearing is humanity bearing

[45:02]

and the earth bearing. Man and universe bearing and in the third part always of course is God. And here it's a question not of sterility but it's a question of the tribulation, the sterility that comes later on with the exclusion from paradise especially in the whole existence of the desert which is the opposite of God. And then he quotes Isaiah referring both the voices to the same thing. Let her hear who is not brought forth and her who has not had the kinds of childhood let her voice. Actually Isaiah in our modern translation doesn't say let her hear, let her cry out, let her rejoice. For more of the children of the desolate and her who had a husband. Now the desolate, the word used is eremos, eremos. The two words are estera and eremos. And eremos of course is desert, is wilderness. And it's used for a woman, for a desolate woman. And then there's a play on these other two words

[46:04]

husband and husband. Actually the pun doesn't exist in the Greek but it's had it in the English because it's gergos on it. It looks like more of a pun than it is in the translation. The husband and the husbandman are one and the same. And that of course is the word. The barren woman receives the husband, the desert the husbandman. And yet between husband and husbandman in that third chapter of Genesis you see there's a connection. Adam is both the husband and the husbandman. So the fertility of both the woman and of the earth are connected with him. But really it was the second Adam who was the word. And both become mothers through the word. The one of fruits, the other of believers. And then later on, it was this which was signified by the dumbness of Zacharias which waited for fruit in the person of the harbinger of Christ. That the word, the light of truth,

[47:07]

word is light, you see, by becoming the gospel might break the mystic silence of the prophetic beliefs. And then the rest of that is concerned with initiation of the mysteries, initiation of the Greek mysteries. And he's picking that up and using it as a kind of parallel of the new initiation of Christ which is a baptismal initiation. There's one significant, Jesus's eye on the door, the idea of being admitted to the esoteric, the inner mysteries. They probably have doors in the Greek mysteries to be admitted to. For the gates of the word being intellectual are opened by the key of faith. He's connecting faith, once again, with the intellectual power of the human person which is not something that you're going to ask us. He was stepping over into the Greek intellectual world as well as the world of poetry and beauty. And that he who has opened the door hitherto shut, he opens the door by his coming, he opens the door first by baptism, by initiation, will afterward reveal what is within. And that would be Gnosis.

[48:07]

And will show what we could not have known before had we not entered in by Christ through whom alone God is beheld. There's a lot of depth there and one could, you know, study for a long while what he's doing

[48:19]

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