Prophetic Extracts 16.3 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: God is all-powerful, yet he chooses to beget and teach us through human beings.

Greek text · Stählin 3:141

οὕτως θεὸς διʼ ἀνθρώπων εὐεργετεῖ· οὐχὶ γὰρ τὰ μὲν δύναται, τὰ δὲ οὐ δύναται ὁ θεός, οὐδὲ ἀσθενεῖ ποτε ἐν οὐδενί, ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ τὰ μὲν ἑκόντος, τὰ δὲ ἄκοντος αὐτοῦ γίνεται, καὶ τὰ μὲν ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ ὑφʼ ἑτέρου, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐγέννησεν διʼ ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἐπαίδευσεν διʼ ἀνθρώπων.

English · Claude translation

So God does good through human beings; for it is not that God can do some things and cannot do others, nor is he ever weak in anything, nor do some things happen with his will and others against it, some by him and others by another; but he has both begotten us through human beings and instructed us through human beings.

About this passage

Source

Stählin 3:141 · Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, Quis dives salvetur, Fragmente, GCS 17 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909) · Greek text: Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus 3 (GCS 17, 1909), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Stählin, GCS 17. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Stählin (1909); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Printed there under the wrong title “Excerpts of Theodotus”, and incomplete (it breaks off in ch. 63).

Topics

Church office

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 16.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/16/3/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 16.3 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/16/3/).