Sophia Scriptura

Prophetic Extracts 20.4

Clement of Alexandria · Prophetic Extracts · ca. 200 · Alexandria · Read in context

Summary: Love rules the willing, fear the unwilling; but the fear that instructs leads to Christ and saves.

Greek text · Stählin 3:142

ἀγάπη γὰρ ἑκουσίων ἄρχει, ἀκόντων δὲ ὁ φόβος, οὗτος ὁ φαῦλος· ὃ δὲ εἰς ἀγαθὸν παιδαγωγῶν εἰς Χριστὸν ἄγει καὶ ἔστι σωτήριος.

English · Claude translation

For love rules the willing, and fear the unwilling, this being the bad kind of fear; but the fear that instructs for good leads to Christ and is saving.

About this passage

Source
Stählin 3:142 · 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).
Scripture
Topics
Ethics

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/20/4/).

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Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 20.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/20/4/).

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