Okay, to review a little bit, last time we did this Profeptikos, and we were going to do it all, and we did one chapter, and I'll try not to repeat it today, but I'm not so sure, because there's a lot in there, in those chapters, in fact, I gave you a little more just to make it worse. Remember that we find fun at presenting the Logos as the new song, also as the singer and as the instrument too, and he's Orpheus, and he transforms everything else, he liberates people, which means to transform them from stones into men, from beasts into men, and so on. And remember that image of the sun, it just begins to be suggested there, so you've got the sun and you've got this new song, the music and the light. There's a book written on Sunday, on the origin of the day of the sun, Dia Solis, in which a lot of the best quotes come from Clement, if anybody's interested, I'll give you a reference

[01:02]

to it. There was a thesis at the Catholic University of America on the history of the notion of Sunday. We never even reflect on what that means, but the idea of a day and of sun, and that Christ identified as the sun of justice or the sun of righteousness, or simply that today, and I kind of think that Sunday morning is one of the best sources for that notion, it's very rich, it's remarkable. The basic question here, we can say, is the encounter of Christianity with Greek culture. And there are all these analogies, there are all these things that are in those two columns like we've got, faith and reason and grace and nature and agape and eros, and all of those things. And it runs right down to the present moment, and I put it a little bit in the context of St. Griffith's visit, because what he's trying to do is to really work out the same thing in our time. But it's like a wider circle that he's working on. If Clement was mediating between the word of God and the Greek culture, in a way it

[02:09]

was easier. But now, trying to mediate between the word of God, between Christian theology, Christian truth, and say, the Indian culture, that's where we're at. And in between, I've got 1,800 years, almost 2,000 years. Excuse me if I shoot out a couple of ideas about this, but he criticizes this in terms of the marriage of reason and intuition. That's one level of it. The West has followed the line of reason, scientific development, and so on. And the East has remained, not to say with intuition, but the East has remained with a whole bunch of them. It's like the difference between mythos and logos. And we find Conant talking about both of them, and he talks about the myths and the poets in the Greek families, like Homer, and then he talks about Plato. It's like mythos and logos. It's like myth and reason, poetry and reason, the same two lines. Now, Gregory Griffiths finds one in the East and one in the West, which is a simple picture.

[03:11]

But there's something else going on there, too. And that is simply the marriage of the word with something... See, this is unhorizontal, but there's something else, which is the marriage of the word of God with creation. The marriage of God with creation, which is not precisely a marriage of East and West, but it's behind this other one. And if we look at the problem of inculturating Christianity in other cultures, to a Christian it looks something like that. The word of God is already implanted in every human being and in all the other cultures, but the revealed word of God is something else. The revealed word in Christ comes to find that word that's implanted in everybody and bring it out somehow, bring it out fully. So, it's like the marriage of the word, the logos, which is Christ, with the soil of human nature, human mind, human soul, human heart, and human culture, too, including the religious cultures of the world. So, B. Griffiths found a reflection of what he was doing in the Tao of Physics, you know,

[04:17]

in that kind of wedding between Eastern mysticism and Western physics, in Capra's book. It's interesting, because he had rejected Western science, you know, they made it sort of the bad guy up until then, and now he has accepted the kind of breakthrough that's come from it in no time, because it rediscovers the kind of intuition he's talking about, the kind of universe that he finds. But, strangely, Christianity is absent from that whole thing. It's as if, if you look in the Tao of Physics, Christianity, the Christian revelation is not necessary to it, and there's not necessarily concern for it. If you read Capra's later books, the turning point is very different. But, it's a cosmic and a mystical thing. Now, what about history? See, the Christian revelation is a distinctly historical revelation. If you read Irenaeus, the word, the logos, is a historical word which recapitulates not

[05:24]

only the cosmos, but especially history. It recapitulates the whole of history. And we have to ask ourselves if the Christian contribution to this whole thing, the point of connection with Christianity, is not the historical dynamic of the whole thing. In other words, if in the Christian word, the logos, Christ, does not lie the secret of the whole of this development, where it's coming from, where it's going, and where it's at right now, we have to ask ourselves something like that. Now, not in an elementary way, so we can just lay it out there and say that this is it. So, besides the Tao of Physics, there's a Tao, the cosmic Tao, there's a Tao of history, and I think it's the logos, it's the word. So, we can ask ourselves, what is the law which relates that word, relates that logos to history? What is the principle? How do you make the translation? How do you make the relation of the connection? How do you move from the logos to history and back? How do you understand history in the light of the logos, in the light of the word? Do you call it an incarnation of the word?

[06:25]

Do you call it a kind of successive incarnations, each one being incomplete or failing or thriving and dying? It's a very interesting question, a very important question. So, I'll just leave that. Maybe you can say something about it after. Because climate is making like a first try at that, at that reconciliation. But now, that joining, that marriage of Christianity and the whole of the rest. And now, if we want to do it, we have to do it in terms of history, I think. That's enough of that, because otherwise it will be a problem. Let's go back to climate. And we got as far as chapter 5. I was about to say something on chapter 5, and then I realized that you didn't have the text, so that's what I just gave to you. Now, chapter 5, 6, 7 and 8 are related. In chapter 5, Clement talks about the Greek philosophers and their failure to attain true

[07:33]

knowledge of God. So, he talks about the negative. In chapter 6, he gives the positive side of the same thing. In chapter 7, he talks about the Greek poets. And in chapter 8, finally, he talks about the prophets, who, of course, for him, had the truest knowledge of God. So, let's go through that rather quickly and just try to get to main points. Chapter 5 is like Clement's history of philosophy, especially the Greek philosophers, the early ones, before Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, before the ones that we know best. And he tells how they thought that God was one of the elements and so on, you know, fire or earth or water or air. And here, maybe, it's not quite fair to them, because usually the people who write about this, those philosophers who have studied them, see that there's a lot of depth in those notions and that they were more symbolic than literal sometimes, especially somebody like Heraclitus.

[08:33]

If you say that Heraclitus believed that fire was God, that's not really fair to him. You'll find that Clement quotes Heraclitus a number of times. His fragments are scattered throughout him, they pop up time after time after time, in spite of the fact that he never looks at them straight on, proving them. Okay. Here we have, over on the right-hand side of page 190 there, he kind of makes a summary and says... Like, the Greeks supposed stocks and stones to be images of the gods. Those would be human images, statues. Now, Epibuses and Numens, like the Egyptians, who would make images of animals, or fire and water, as the philosophers. So you have three levels, as it were, of cosmic religion, of finding God in the cosmos.

[09:37]

And he's doing it very summarily, and he kind of dismisses it, and he's not... He's saving his favorable attention for the next chapter, and he's going to just give it to a couple of those philosophers. He speaks here of the weak and beggarly elements of the world, as Paul does. Let's skip over to chapter 6. After the pre-Socratic philosophies, he talks about the Stoics and the Aristotelians in chapter 5, but he skips by Plato. He doesn't investigate Plato again. He saves him for the next chapter in order to praise him for having had a true knowledge of God. So he starts out with a kind of moan, a lament, about the kinds of things that they worship. And then he makes this marvelous confession of faith, down in the bottom of the left-hand column of 191, after Degas was in it. It is the Lord of the spirits, the Lord of the fire, the maker of the universe, him who

[10:38]

lighted up the sun by the month of... That's a comment. And then he turns to Plato. And here the translation is not so helpful. So, let's take it from the source books again. And he seems to adopt the tone of one of Plato's dialogues here. He's kind of subtle in that comment. He slips into dialogue form here, questions and answers. So, he's talking, as it were, to the philosophers, and he says, What help will you give me for this quest? For I haven't lost all hope in me. That is, in the philosophers, in the crowd of philosophers. It's everybody's great crowd. Plato, if you will, is the reply. How then, Plato, does one discover God? And then there's a quote from Plato. It's a great thing to find the father and the creator of this universe, and when one has found him, it's impossible to explain him to all,

[11:42]

or to explain it to all. So, that's different from the English translation. To declare him fully is not what it says. And then, why so? The dialogue continues. Because he's absolutely ineffable. And that's a quotation, it seems, from a letter of Plato. And the quotations from Plato are simple to remember. The references are in the source material, kind of what he's interested in. It's quite a labor to look closely at. Well done, Plato, you have touched on the truth. It says in the original, evidently, that you're skimming over the truth, or something like that. But don't get discouraged. So, he's in a dialogue with Plato. Undertake with me the inquiry respecting the good. For unto all men, whatever, especially those who are occupied... It's a strange thing to say, but it's as if the philosophers know God. The people who search for wisdom know God better than others. That's a somewhat snobbish statement.

[12:44]

A certain divine effluence has been instilled in him. I don't know what the original effluence is. And so, all these people have hints of the true nature of God. And Clement is going to let that boom out. He's going to let it blaze out later on. Meanwhile, he carefully chooses his quotes in order to prepare the way for himself. And notice how many times he mentions the sun. Here's a quotation from Euripides. Tell me what I am to conceive God to be. He who sees all things and is himself unseen. Well, I'm going to slip over that, you know what I'm saying? And then we remember that the Hindus call God the knower, who is not known. The Greeks tend to put it out in front of you. And then, oh sun. They say, well, you don't worship the sun. But yet the sun somehow is pointing towards God. And he talks of those who call the whole expanse of the heavens, really, Zeus or God. They weren't so far from it, he says. For the sun could never show me the true God, but that healthful word... Now, healthful word means a healing word.

[13:54]

A lot of things are mixed in here. Remember in Malachi, the sun of righteousness arises with healing in his wings. Now, what are the wings of the sun? Do you ever see one of those Egyptian images, or golden images, where it's kind of winged under a face, something like that? You get that kind of idea. And as if those rays have the power to heal, it's quite striking. That healing word that is the son of the soul. Now, there it's noose. The son of the intellect. By whom alone, when he arises in the depths of the intellect, the eye of the intellect itself is irradiated. That's a very significant statement. And that's the first time we've run into that idea of the logos being the sun which dwells in the human person. Now, here's something that you don't find much in Irenaeus. There's a contrast between Irenaeus and Clement on two lines. One is that Irenaeus never talks about the intellect. He's not interested in it. He's not into that polemic thing. And Clement does, all the time.

[14:58]

Secondly, Irenaeus doesn't talk about interiority very much. Very little. Which surprises you on a Christian who knows John the Pope. Because he's fighting the Gnostics, and evidently it's a little too dangerous to get into that kind of talk, and so he avoids it. And you may think somewhat unfortunately. He's using it very externally. He doesn't like the image of God in the body. Whereas Clement loves that kind of thing. And so he moves into interiority. Intellect and interiority both. So here our discussion, our Gnosis, our Christian wisdom, is moving in a certain direction from which it never withdraws. In other words, that remains there, right up until our own time. For better or for worse. And certainly it's an important dimension, but when it takes over, at the expense of everything else, then you have to learn. So, we still have that Greek inheritance in our mystical theology of philosophy. I won't go with just the Greek inheritance.

[16:04]

The thing about the intellect, perhaps, is that the interiority is very much in the system. See, it's only the preference for it. It's that kind of bias that sticks to the tradition. It's the fact that the external world, the physical world, can pretty much be left behind because of the inner spiritual communities, so that's an under-testament that Neoplatonism gives a more elaborate and logical basis for it. There's been a lot of wrestling with that in recent years, the amount of Neoplatonism that seems to be in Christianity. It's in relation to the real biblical content of the Revelation concept. So that's an important little text in there, about the son of the mind, the son of the soul, meaning the Logos. Those things are good to hang on to

[17:05]

and remind yourself of them from time to time as archetypal images in Christianity, which have a lot of power to them. You'll find they don't get old. And then he goes on about God being the measure. There's a kind of mysterious sounding phrase, but the notion comes from Plato, the notion comes from Plato's Laws, Book Four. I can read you the passage. I'm not familiar enough with Plato to be able to put it in context. Now here we are. In Javadis, page 487. This is an Athenian talking to somebody named Phineas.

[18:05]

Friends, we say to them, God, as the old tradition declares, holding in his hand the beginning, middle and end of all, that is, travels according to his nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of his end. It reminds me of anything by Isaiah 55, his word. It might have been also in Clement's mind. Remember, his words are also the psalm, the word that travels in a straight line, travels its course like a mighty warrior. But Isaiah 55, where the word goes and it does its purpose and it comes back, it doesn't get connected. It's sure. Justice always accompanies him and he's the punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To justice, he who would be happy holds fast and follows in the company of God and nobody in order. To he who is lifted up with pride and elated by wealth or rank or beauty, who is young and foolish and has his soul hot with insolence and thinks that he has no need of any guide or ruler, but is able himself to be the guide of others,

[19:07]

he, I say, is left deserted of God. And being thus deserted, he takes to him others who are like himself and dances about, throwing all things into confusion. And many think that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a penalty, which justice cannot but approve and is utterly destroyed in his family and city living. And then the measure. And what life is agreeable to God in becoming his followers? One only, expressed once and for all in the old saying, that life agrees with life, with measure it measure. The things which have no measure agree neither with themselves nor with the things which have. Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things and not man, as men come to themselves. See, that sounds very much more like the scripture than it does, like what we think of as philosophy. God ought to be to us the measure of all things and not man. When we talk about the word of God, that's what we're saying. We're saying the word of God should be the measure of all things and not the word of man. Okay, thanks.

[20:09]

Of course, we place that in the context of the historical context that we are saying that, because just as Ernest was opposed to the Vedas and Gnostics, and that's what molded the theology of Plato, and Socrates were opposed to the Sophists, and indeed, if there was a central saying that it was from the Sophists, it wasn't the same. But anyway, that man is the measure of all things. Ah, I see. And the basis of that was that there is no transcendent truth. The Sophists believe that every person has their own truth, whether what's cold for one person is hot for another, and you can't say what's absolute. And so the only thing you can rely on is each individual having their own subjective truth. There's a lot of that around right now. Right, where the secular philosophers now look with much more approval on the Sophists,

[21:11]

who they call the Enlightenment philosophers of Greece, this century Greece, you see. And so when he says man is the measure, it's both that man, not gods or transcendent truth, but also individual man, and that is a collective truth. So that was the thing that Socrates pretty much put his whole existence into gravel, because he started out as a Sophist, and Plato pretty much builds the whole philosophy on that basis. And so that's one of his last works, actually, about really systematic about setting up the whole society on the basis of that absolute divine truth, rather than man is the measure of all things. Plato also blamed the demise of Athens' power in the Greek city-states on that philosophy of the Sophistic kind of relativism, because he felt that virtue was thrown out the window.

[22:14]

I'm not saying virtue had a divine foundation, then that would be immorality. He saw it all wrong, and said that's why we're losing, that's why Alexander the Great was about to topple Macedon, and Alexander was about to take over. There's so much power in our history, at least. So God is the measure. Oh, there's a notion also of the business of the likeness of God, which is both biblical and Greek. And then the Platonic notion perhaps of participation as God is the measure. He says somewhere that... Let's not hear it somewhere else, we'll pick it up later. The things that are to be measured are contained in the measure, so the knowledge of God measures in that way is true. But it's like, if God is your measure,

[23:18]

as he measures you also, you participate in him. And to the extent that you have goodness of truth, it's because you are participating in that goodness and truth that he is. Whence, O Plato, is that hint of the truth which you give? And there's still dialogue for me. He says you got your geometry from the Egyptians, your astronomy from the Babylonians, Walter, anyone of our variants. The Assyrians have taught you it, but for the laws that are consistent with truth and your sentiments respecting God, you're indebted to the Hebrews. And I don't know where that quote comes from, it's not added since this quotient. Let it not be this one man alone, Plato, but there must be others. And so then he mentions the others who had real scraps of the knowledge of God. Antisthenes and Xenophon and so on. And the Stoics, Cleopates, in the bottom of it. And the Pythagoreans. And he gets something from the Pythagoreans,

[24:21]

it seems, according to something he brings up later on. And most of these he's pointing out the transcendence of God. And with the Pythagoreans, there's something about the imminence of God too, which may surprise us. The Stoics had a doctrine on God too, but he doesn't quote very much of it, it seems. The idea that he is not, as some suppose, outside of this frame of things, but within it. But in all the entireness of his being, he's in the whole circle of existence, surveying all nature and blending it harmoniously in the whole. While within it, he supposes, the author of all his own forces and works, the giver of light in heaven and father of all, the mind and vital power of the whole world, the mover of all things. He says these utterances were inspired by God. And then, in chapter 7, he turns to the poets. And, in order not to take too long, I'm going to skip over this, especially since I'm unfamiliar with the philosophers, even more so with the poets. But he chooses his quotations very clearly, very carefully,

[25:23]

and so there's a meaningful sequence there. It says later, At the most, the Greeks have him receive certain scintillations, certain sparks of the divine word, and give him, of course, some utterances of truth. In chapter 8, he gets to the prophets. Note the relationship. You've got philosophers. You've got poets. And what's the relationship between the two? It's sort of the two sides of the mind, as it were. The reason, and the intuition, which is connected to the field. It's like the masculine and the feminine, of course. And then you've got another kind of knowledge, which he would attribute to the mystics, to recognize their power. And remember that we've talked about rational theology, symbolic theology, and apophatic theology, and mystical theology. There's a kind of triangle there.

[26:24]

And I think that he would act as a prophet to the mystics, because they've got the word straight from the Bible. The word which is the self-knowledge of that experience. Of course, also they have a mission, to speak the word. And surprisingly, first, he doesn't turn to one of the prophets that we would expect, but the Sybil. Now, I looked up the Sybilian article, if you know anything about it. And that was something that existed in the Greek tradition, and had a lot of authority. And there were several Sybils. Evidently, the first one was in Asia Minor. The Sybil were the prophetess, and he'd go to her, just as he'd go to the prophet in the Old Testament, to get the word of the future, destiny. The most famous were the Sybils of Delphi and Pumae, but there was a whole class of them, evidently, throughout history. Then, there were certain books in the Jewish tradition,

[27:26]

which were called the Sybilian oracles. So, these are not evidently the Greek Sybilian oracles, but the Judeo-Christian tradition, a couple hundred years before Christ, the second half of the second century B.C. And so, what we read there, of course, in this oracle, is not quite so surprising as if it came from a single pagan source. Isaiah's wife was supposed to be a prophetess. I wonder if that was really not the case. Yeah. You had some prophetesses in the New Testament, too, in the Acts of the Apostles. Somebody had several daughters who were prophetesses. Yeah. And then there was a sect, the Martians, right? The Martians, right? The Martinists. Where the prophetess was extremely important. She was supposed to be almost the presiding vocation of the Holy Spirit. When you put that out there, do you have that kind of identity of the Holy Spirit? Yes.

[28:27]

In the sense that here we have the philosophers on the side of the Word, on the side of truth, and here we have the poets on the side of beauty, and freedom, and behemoth, and the Holy Spirit. As it were, the masculine and feminine of our conversation with God. And here the apophatic, beyond any image or beyond the arms or hands of God, is the dramatic state of the prophecies, and some of the integral experiences. And that's quite a funny, because there's always another quote back here, which is something that's been tied up on the book. But we're talking about prophets, and we're talking about prophets who are also in action, who act in the world, and influence. There's also a vectoring on that. Because that Word of God is something that comes into the world and does something. And it's not only a concomitant experience. Okay? Let me give you some of my favorite geometry there. That Quaternary which comes up again and again and again.

[29:29]

It's a Trinitarian scheme plus the creation. And Irenaeus had it explicitly in Clement, it's quite so obvious. Okay, then he goes... That's a marvelous quote from the Sybil. I didn't look at the original to see where its credentials are. So, he is all sure and unerring. Come, follow no longer darkness and gloom. See the sun's sweet glancing light. That's pure Clement, that notion. He picks it up later on. He loves that language. What about the sweetness of the light of the sun? Which is, for him, the love of Christ, the Word. Know and lay up wisdom in your hearts. There is one God, the sun's glancing light. He reigns over heaven, he rules earth, he truly is. It sounds like Moses. She compares delusion to darkness and the knowledge of God to the sun and light. And so she takes heart, Marx wrote Clement. And then he starts on the prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah. And notice how often the image of the sun, or an image that's close to that of the sun, comes out.

[30:30]

He loves the notion of this lightsome power of God. To Moses, behold, behold that I am, and there is no other God beside me. And then he quotes some of the powerful utterances of God and Isaiah. You've mentioned that the real prophets will combine those two things sometimes. They're not just... Yeah, yeah. That's right, that's right. They go a little bit from side to side. But rarely do they get into the purely speculative area, you know. But that's right by that. But it's truth and it's very often in poetic form. And very often early towards action. Then later on, on the bottom of the right hand column there. Why repeat you the mysteries of wisdom, sayings from the writings of the son of the Hebrews, the master of wisdom. That's Solomon. And he quotes from the wisdom books. And he's got a marvelous passage up on the top left of the next page. Oh, it's in your new...

[31:37]

Isn't it? Then it's in your old one. Look in your old notes. Page 195. The ones that you were doing before. This is where the new ones fit into the old ones. 195. Upper left, okay. It's an exhortation to wake up to the light, wake up to wisdom. But if you show yourself no sluggard as a fountain your harvest shall come. Mixing of images there. The word of the father, the fountain of wisdom. The benign light, the lord that brings light, faith through all and salvation. For the lord who created the earth by his power has raised up the world by his wisdom. For wisdom which is his word raises us up to the truth of a fallen prostrate before idols and is itself the first resurrection. Marvelous. Wisdom is the first resurrection. Now some people would say it's faith. The promise of wisdom. Or some people would say, I don't know, the experience of God. Some people would say the illumination of baptism. And he will later because I think that's what he means by this. But for him it's knowledge.

[32:38]

And then he gets to David. See the song of salvation which echoes that new song in chapter one. He comes back to that at the end. He's a literary man so he puts symmetries and allusions into his writing. And then down to the bottom of that chapter. The sun shall suffer eclipse and the heaven be darkened but the almighty shall shine forever. He presents God, or the word, as kind of a super sun. Kind of a mega sun. And the earth shall flee away before the face of the Lord. You see the face of the Lord is shining in his power. Chapter nine. Don't pay too much attention to the title there. The title in source book GM is a little more attractive. God calls us to him by his love of us. Whereas our translator is kind of hideous, forbidden. Okay, now we've got to kind of race if we want to get anywhere near the end.

[33:47]

So this is the call of the logos. And it's Clement, sweetly calling for the word. Notice he calls children. And Clement is very deep, actually, here theologically. It may seem just like kind of pastoral poetry, but it's not. When he talks about children, that's because of our rebirth in the sun, in the word. And in the Pedagogos, I think it's in chapter six, he goes into that at great length. And what it does is to balance his intellectualism, you see. Because he knows that he's in danger with that Greek intellectual bias. I'm talking about the Gnostic, you know, the perfect man, the superior character. But he's in danger of getting out of balance there. And so he puts great stress on this notion of being children. He goes on and on and on about it, about the milk and so on, in the other book, in the Pedagogos. And here he reproduces it. And he's right on, theoretically, because it's fundamental, it's central in Christianity.

[34:50]

In fact, it somehow expresses it all, as we've heard. The fact that we are children, we're begotten children, we remain children, and we remain sort of children ever born in the newness, the perpetual newness. And he goes on about that in the other book. Come, come, all my young people, for if you become not again as little children and be born again, as the scripture says, you shall not receive the truly existent Father. Now, remember when Jesus says, you have to be children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, he doesn't make that connection. He says, if you don't become a child, you won't receive the Father, does he? He leaves that to us. But Clement makes it explicit. And notice two things here. The manner of being like a child is one thing, the manner of listening. And the manner of being born in baptism is another thing. But he's speaking from the intersection of those two things. The firstborn church, we too are firstborn sons, friends of the firstborn, who first of all other men attain to the knowledge of God. And that means us, not him. Because he is in the knowledge of God.

[35:51]

This is, let's say, a sermon, an exhortation on the way. Then up on the top of 196, at the left-hand side, this is Clement with a powerful luminous talk again. He awakes from the sleep of darkness and raises up those who have wandered in error. Awake, he says, you who sleep and arise from the dead and Christ will give you life. That's an early hymn which we find in St. Paul. I think it pre-existed, Paul's putting it in Ephesians. Christ, the son of the resurrection, he who was born before the morning star and with his beings bestowed life. And then we call him the son of health or the son of healing before. Let no one then despise the word lest he unwittingly despise himself. That's marvelous. The son of the resurrection. Nobody's putting it together there. He talked about us as children before, as being born in the word who comes. Being born in the son of God. It's like the son of God, the lovers, the word, Christ, is a perpetual birth. He's an unceasing birth.

[36:52]

So he's always young as a birth. He is that point of newness. Which comes into the world, dies, and then in the resurrection it's raised into the skies. Raised into glory to become a perpetual newness for us. That is a perpetual birth. So the resurrection, the birth from the dead. Remember Paul, he's the firstborn of the dead. The birth from the dead, in power, in glory, becomes as it were a perpetual birth in light and power for those who associate themselves with the word. For those who get into the word somehow. Let no one then despise it. If the word shines on you, you see, the son of the word shines on you then that's what happens to you. Birth falls on you. Let no one then despise the word lest he unwittingly despise himself. Insofar as you despise the word, it's as if you're despising your life. Remember, the people who talk about the true self, they're putting it in another language. But they're saying the same thing.

[37:54]

There's something I've read in a book I read recently. Yeah, exactly. Okay, now a little further down. Receive the word with open ears and entertain God as a guest in pure spirits. I didn't look up spirit to see what it is, whether it's news for its intellect or not. But notice that interiority once again. The idea of indwelling, which you hardly find in Irenaeus and which is very dear to Clement. The indwelling of God, the indwelling of the word. For great is the grace of his promise, if today you hear his voice. Now, here we get into that passage that Regan in his book on Sunday takes up. It's one of the most beautiful passages of Clement on the sun. Christ to love us as the sun. I'll see if I can find it to read a bit to you. On page 54 in that book by Regan, which I think is over there on the shelf, I just have a couple of pages here copied from it. In the writings of Clement of Alexandria,

[38:56]

one is able to glimpse a continuation of the firmly established symbolism of Christ as the true sun, and also the beginning of the apologetic application of doctrinal belief to the vast missionary task which confronted the infant church. He writes in kind of a dry white. Drawing his inspiration from Psalm 95, a famous psalm by today, if you hear his voice from heart to heart, that much as he never had one, was the beginning of our office. And he picks that up also as somehow pointing to the new sun. Heikl and Cyprian, he writes, and that today, and this is what you have, it's just a different translation. That today is lengthened out day by day, yet it is still called today. Forever will the today in the instruction continue. Notice the connection between today and instruction, the light of the instruction, the light that shines from the sun, which is the Logos. And this is the true today, the never-ending day of God which reaches over into eternity. Let us obey always the voice of the divine Logos.

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Notice we've got the sound and the light again. You see, the Logos is the light of man. The Logos is also the word. The Logos is also the song. Kant plays with the whole spectrum of that language of the senses, that cosmic language. It's a human cosmic language, of the senses and the light and the sound. Let us obey always the voice of the divine Logos, for the today signifies eternity. The Logos, just like it's all knowledge, all meaning, all truth, is also all time in itself. It's eternity shining into this world. And this day is a symbol of light, and the light for man is the Logos by whom he beholds God. This is the resurrection, the sun of the resurrection, is the emergence beyond time and death, but appearing in time. So it's this deathlessness in the world of death, timelessness and beyond time, contained in the world of time. Christ the Logos is indeed the sun of righteousness, and that's in another place, and stands as the center and foundation of Kant's personal spiritual life, as we see from this intimate prayer which he has composed.

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Then he puts in that hymn, Hail, O Light, which we get to later in Chapter 11. I'll leave it to our time. The good things from meditation are that the meaning of that today, that's quoted also in the letter of the Hebrews, earlier on, remember? All about entering into the rest. And in today it's still there, he says. The rest is still there. The Lord, in his love to man, invites all men to the knowledge of the truth, and to this end sends the paraclete. What then is this knowledge? Okay, I'm skipping through kind of quickly. In the next column, right inside of 196, he mentions Tiresias again. Is that how you pronounce it? The old man of Ithaca. Tiresias. He was in the Odyssey. In fact, there's a long stretch in there. I didn't bring the log. The references are in Scripture 10, if anybody wants them. Then he turns up again.

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See, he was early in the book of Cronin. He's here, and he turns up again in the last chapter, along with Odysseus himself. Those two figures are important for Cronin. The blind man and the sailor, which he was wandering. And Christ turns out to be the staff for the blind man. He turns out to be the master, to which Odysseus is tied, as he sails by the island of Cyprus. So he's really weaving. The cross. Yeah, the cross. Excuse me, I said Christ is the cross. But godliness that makes man as far as can be like God designates God as our suitable teacher who alone can worthily assimilate man to God. The only teacher who can assimilate man to God and to likeness to God. Okay. Down towards the bottom, there's a surprising line. Taste and see that Christ is God. That seems to have been, must have been in some manuscripts. But source criterion has restored it to the more tame line. Taste and see that God is good.

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Because Christos and Christos in Greek are close. Or Christos. Isn't it the Greek? Yeah. You can translate it in various orders of the word. It's the Lord or God is good. It's probably a wrong translation. It's probably taste and see that God is good. It's a kind of, what do you call it, a tendentious translation. Come hither, O children, listen to me and I will teach you the voice of wisdom. Now, there's a very pregnant text at the top left hand of the next page. The end of chapter nine. Hear you,

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then you who are far off. Hear you who are near. You who are near. The word has not been hidden from any. Light is common. It shines on all men. You get the, the sun, the moon, the sky, shine on everybody. There are no Cimmerians in respect to the word. The Cimmerians were people in the Odyssey who lived in perpetual shadow, lived in perpetual darkness. They inhabited a place always plunged into darkness. Let us haste to salvation, to regeneration. That means baptism, the baptismal rebirth. Let us who are many, haste that we may be brought together into one love. Remind you of John 17. According to the union of the essential unity. Now, that's philosophical, and we hear that when we read it at the Dreams of Val. And it's said by our editor in First Christian, that that comes from the Pythagorean tradition, the notion of the monad, especially when it's been outplayed a lot, and also the notion of music,

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the union, seeking after the good monad. That's the philosophical language that surprises us once again. The union of many in one. It's John and it's Pythagorean tradition at the same time. Issuing in the production of divine harmony out of a medley of sounds and division. Notice, he started out with the image of the sun, the light that shines on all. And here we get back to the song, and here he's deliberately fusing those two images. The sun, which somehow creates not only light, but harmony. Out of a medley of sounds and division becomes one symphony, following one choir leader and teacher, the logos. Reaching and resting in the same truth and crying out with father. Those of you who have read Cassian may be reminded of something like that. Remember that conference on prayer, where he quotes John 17? It's in Conference 10, Chapter 7. Very much like this. You may have read that. John 17. This, the true utterance of his children,

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God accepts with gracious welcome the first fruits he receives from them. There's a lot in there. Okay, Chapter 10. Now, Chapter 10 is a little dry. The argument is that you claim that you can't desert the traditions of your fathers in order to believe in Christ. The customs and the ways of thinking that you have. And he says, well, that's not logical at all. When you gave up being a child, you gave up milk and so on. It sounds a little like St. Paul when he was a child. He took the things of a child. We're going to skip over quite a bit here. It's very relevant to that. I consider John to be custom because he had an inaugurated farm and worked with them and it helps us to see the dynamism of the first burst of Christianity when they say, those habits that we're stuck into, the light is shining.

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And unfortunately for us, the Christianity, the light itself has turned into habit. So we have to break the crest again. Over in 198. Let us not then be enslaved or become swinish, but as true children of the light, let us raise our eyes and look on the light lest the Lord discover us to be spurious as the sun does the eagles. There's some kind of a legend that the eagle would test its children by having them look at the sun. I forget what happens when they call upon the stars to imagine eagles, but they don't make it. And that's where he seems to see God as inhabitant and the Word as dwelling. The image of the Word is the true man, the mind, the noose, which is in man, who is therefore said to have been made in the image and likeness of God, assimilated to the divine Word in the affections of, not the soul, but the heart, in the affections of the heart, and therefore rational.

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And then he goes on knocking the images. Now here you have a convergence once again of the Greek and Hebrew. The Hebrew notion of man is the image of God, the only image of God, and the Platonic notion, especially when you stress on the intellect, and how that is what reflects God, that's what knows God, that's where God belongs. And a little later on, receive then the water of the Word, not the water of the Word, wash you polluted minds, purify yourselves from custom by sprinkling yourselves with the drops of truth, which is the symbolism of truth, maximum. The pure must ascend to heaven. You are a man, look to that which is common to you, and to others. Seek Him, the Creator, the universe's Son. Excuse me for skipping so fast through this, but we can't go on until we sit by this part. Now, 200. There's a nice little statement

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up at the top. A straight way, but leading from heaven. I didn't look up to see what the original would say, it's a little confusing. Straight in truth, but leading back to heaven. Straight, despised on earth, broad, adored in heaven. Marvelous, huh? The word is narrow on earth, is despicable in some way. Also, it's a rule, it's a rod, it's a law in the way on earth. When Jesus goes into hell, it's broad and adored in heaven. Remember the rules of men, where the geek can't help with the narrow, that's it. But the broadness is your heart. For man has been otherwise constituted by nature, so it's a fellowship with God. So man is made to have fellowship with God, and that fellowship starts with the knowledge of God. Placing our finger on what is man's peculiar and distinguishing characteristic of being as he is, a truly heavenly plant for the knowledge of God, which is in the Lord.

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So it's clear enough how he sees man, and how, for instance, this would differ from a purely biblical picture or a human act. You see both the brilliance of it and then the possible ways in which it could become distorted. I'm in the bottom of 201. A noble hymn of God is an immortal man. Remember Christ is in this song. Established in righteousness, in whom the oracles of truth are engraved. For where but in a soul that is wise can you write truth, where love, where reverence, where meekness, and also evidently where would you find God as a guest? And then right at the end of that chapter, in 202, I'm going to write him a poem. He was a true champion, a fellow champion of the creature. I don't know if he's thinking

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of a particular hero or not. Being communicated most speedily to men, having dawned from his father's counsel quicker than the sun, as it were, the hidden counsel, the mystery hidden in God, quicker than the sun in the darkness. He's got images in his mind, it's a visual. Once he was, and what he was, he showed by what he taught and exhibited, manifesting himself as the herald of the covenant, the reconciler, our savior, the word, the fount of life, the giver of peace, diffused over the whole face of the earth. By whom, so to speak, the universe has already become an ocean of blessing. That's in the 2nd century. The editor, in retrospect, stops just before the start of chapter 10 in order to say something about those last two chapters. He calls them,

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and he's not exactly a sentimentalist to say that, but he calls these two last chapters a magnificent conclusion to the book. And then he talks about the density that's in them. In concluding, he says, before leaving the reader alone with Carmen, I'd like to underline the density of these last chapters, where there are abounding views on the most beautiful aspects of the Christian doctrine. Some look so fugitive and so raptive that only meditation or reflective reading is able to see all of their implications, and still more to prolong beyond them this which their author has had to or wished to enclose in just a few words. One would deceive oneself in taking these illusions, these intuitions, for just more or less

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superficial illusions. They're often a rapid and synthetic expression of a profound intuition that Clement does not seek to explain or to analyze, and that maybe he can't analyze or develop because Christian theology is still in its beginnings. So he's got a kind of global intuition which later, almost a solid or a chunk of intuition which later can be rather synthetic. In every case, these views are of a soul which is profoundly Christian, hardened in his own fashion and really mystic and totally incriminated with the Bible. Unfortunately, much of it perhaps together with chapter one, the most powerful part of the book, he's asked that the imagery of the light and of the sun is continually coming through there.

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And I think, see, the reading of this is not just a matter of learning something, it's a matter of engraving a kind of imagery into your own mind. It's a matter of installing in yourself a certain treasury of powerful symbols which then later will awaken and shine when you read the scriptures, you know? It's a permanent kind of enrichment of the Christian tradition which is meant to be our own spiritual furniture. To put it clearly, In chapter ten, he talks again about how the Greek philosopher had glimpses of wisdom of tea. The real and total thing comes in the word, comes in Christ, the lover. Compares philosophy with the commandment of the Lord, the word really, which is far-shining, lightning in the eyes. Receive Christ, receive sight, receive your light. Sweet is the word that gives us light, for how can it be

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together and desirable since it is filled with light the mind which had been buried in darkness and given keenness to the light-bringing eyes of the soul. I don't know whether that's noose or solar. For just as if had the sun not been in existence, night would have brooded over the universe, notwithstanding the other luminaries, the stars and moon. So had we not known the word and been illuminated by it, regardless of the poets and the philosophy, we should have been no wise different from fowls that are being fed, fattened in darkness and nourished for death. It's a powerful image. Let us then admit the light that we may admit God. Let us admit the light and become disciples of the Lord. Now, down a little further he's got that hymn, which Reagan has translated himself in his chapter on Clement and the Day of the Sun. So I'll read his translation. Where he starts, Halo light, let in the middle of the lightning Halo light,

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which we call, of course, the Vespers hymn. There may have been even pre-Christian hymns, I suppose, to the light of the Holy Spirit. For in us who lie buried in the darkness and imprisoned in the shadow of death, light has come forth from heaven, purer than that of the sun, sweeter than life dear to all. That light is eternal life for all those who share in it. But the night fears the light, and hiding itself in terror, it makes way for the day of the Lord. Just the idea of the darkness crouching over and cringing away from the light and just flitting off into non-being. This is the light that never sleeps, the light that hovers over all, and the West has come around to the East. It's a little different in the translation than I have, that is, the West has yielded to the East or something. The West has given credence to the East. It's that the West has come around to the East. You can think about

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what that might mean. It means that the nations of the West which were in darkness have come around to the light. Also, perhaps, that the West has returned to the East. This light is Christ, the Son of Righteousness. That comes from Prophet Malachi. It's often quoted in the Testament. And then our translation goes on. I think so. I think that's exactly the idea of where the sun set and sort of the discouragement of that darkness in the West, as it were. In some way, it's become the place where the sun lies. Geographically, I don't know exactly what that means, but I think that's

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in Hebrew. But it's that part on the left-hand column of 203 where he says in the translation that he copied to us in Hebrew, he says, And the whole world which Athens and Greece has already become the domain of the word. Do you have a question? Where is it? Towards the middle? It's about the middle, certainly about the middle of the left-hand column. Okay, I see. The whole world with Athens and Greece has already become the domain of the word. And in the translation that Merton has, it's a it's a it's related by different different sets

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and kind of He says oh, yeah it's page 23 of the one he gave Yes. Yes. Okay, let's see what we have in the original French translation. Huh? It's closer to Merton I think, okay? This is the French translation which is bound to be literal Let's see. By the creation and salvation and by the laws and prophecies and the teachings this master, this teacher now teaches us everything and by the logos the whole world has become now an Athens and a Greece. Uh-huh. That's the French translation which much much bigger than Greece. Yeah, I think so. That's the I've heard the Merton

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translation not knowing what the original is, but the sense of the original is so much more potent because in a way he's saying Athens and Greece have you know that were the epitome of classical wisdom and now because of the logos it's a universalized wisdom. if you take the translation from the 1915 father's translation it's much more much weaker it's much more pedestrian Athens and Greece don't add anything but the Merton and the whole power of it. That's right. And I think he says the same thing somewhere else. It seems to be something like it. I think it's parallel by another statement David said. It's got good very good claim for being the right thing. In the Greek it's ky-to-pan a-day a thing like I always gave them the logo. Maybe it could be an ambiguity. I don't know. It sounds a lot like what Mark was talking about. We'll never arrange this month. I guess we better

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quit for today. Next time it's a shame to pass over the rest of this which is the kind of the meat of the book. So we'll spend a little time on this and then go along to the pedigree. The next book you'll have some parts of that. You'll find that in that pedigree there's some very rich parts. The part on baptism and part of the chapter on childhood as well. And then there's some dry stretches and some a lot of kind of fooling around. And I'll try to get something from this that's for you. It's such a big thing. I haven't got too much. But that's where the teaching on Gnosis is mostly at. It's in the structure. Let's see. The notes that you have for the pedigree you do, don't you, for the instructor there? Yes. Let's take a look and see how much there is to it. The instructor

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which starts on page 209. You want to do chapters one, two, three, four, five, six. So I think that would be enough for next week probably. I see you're trying to go through the whole thing but you know it usually happens that way. If we figure that we've done chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, one through six for next time that would be enough for this course. And the following time we'll try to finish up the other two chapters at the end. You'll find that some passages will really grab you probably and then there'll be some pretty long stretches where it fails to interest you perhaps, like in those chapters five and six. The cordon of baptism is marvelous and the cordon of the children. Glory

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be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless. Amen. Amen. Amen. God bless. here's message says

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