Exhortation to the Greeks

Contents

1. 1.1Clement opens with the Greek myths of singers who charmed beasts, stones, and trees, such as Orpheus and Eunomus and the cicada.
2. 1.2Leave the mountains of the pagan mysteries for Zion: the Word of God sings a new song that heals grief.
3. 1.3The mythical singers led humanity into idolatry and slavery to demons; Clement's singer, the Word, frees people and calls them back to heaven.
4. 1.4The Word has tamed human “beasts” and turned stony hearts into children of Abraham, as Scripture says.
5. 1.5The Word of God, who ordered the universe like a harmony, makes music to God on the instrument of the human being, soul and body.
6. 1.6The Word, the new song, heals and saves; though it seems new, it is older than all things, for “in the beginning was the Word.”
7. 1.7The Word, God and man, who gave us being, has now appeared as teacher to give eternal life and to rescue us from the serpent, who binds people to lifeless idols.
8. 1.8The Lord has always called humanity to salvation in many ways, through signs, the prophets, and at last by becoming a human being himself.
9. 1.9John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness, and the angel who announced his birth to barren Elizabeth, foreshadow the fruitfulness the Word brings to the barren nations.
10. 1.10Zechariah's silence ended with John's birth, as the prophets' riddles end in the Gospel; Christ is the door through which alone God is known.
11. 2.11The famous oracles (Delphi, Dodona, Ammon, and others) have fallen silent; all divination is madness and deceit.
12. 2.12Clement exposes the mysteries: the Bacchic rites with their raw flesh and serpents, and the Eleusinian drama of Demeter and Kore.
13. 2.13Clement derives “orgies” and “mysteries” from wrath and pollution, and curses the founders of the mystery cults.
14. 2.14The rites of Aphrodite, born from the severed genitals of Uranus, give initiates salt and a phallus and take their money like a courtesan.
15. 2.15The mysteries of Demeter and of Cybele celebrate incest, bloodshed, and obscenity, as their own secret formulas show.
16. 2.16The myths behind the mysteries tell of Zeus's incest with Demeter and Persephone in the form of a serpent, recalled in the Sabazian rites.
17. 2.17The Eleusinian festivals re-enact the abduction of Persephone; the Dionysian mysteries recall the infant Dionysus torn apart by the Titans.
18. 2.18The tokens of the Dionysian rite recall how the Titans boiled and roasted the infant god, and how Zeus had Apollo bury his remains.
19. 2.19The Corybantic and Cabiric mysteries commemorate a fratricide and the worship of Dionysus's severed genitals.
20. 2.20The Eleusinian myth tells how the grieving Demeter was received at Eleusis and cheered by Baubo's obscene gesture.
21. 2.21Orpheus's own verses and the Eleusinian password bear witness to the obscenity of the Athenian mysteries.
22. 2.22Heraclitus threatened the initiates with fire; the contents of the mystic chests and the torch-lit night rites show their shamelessness.
23. 2.23Those who worship such gods are doubly godless: they do not know the true God and they worship beings that do not exist.
24. 2.24The so-called atheists of Greece, like Diagoras, at least saw through the error of the pagan gods, a first spark of wisdom.
25. 2.25Atheism and superstition are both ignorance; yet an innate kinship with heaven breaks through in some of the poets.
26. 2.26Clement lists seven ways in which the gods were invented: from the stars, crops, punishments, passions, abstractions, the poets' genealogies, and benefactors.
27. 2.27Once children of wrath, Christians have become children of God; the pagan gods, stripped of their masks, turn out to be myths or men.
28. 2.28The mythographers count several Zeuses, Athenas, and Apollos, which shows they were many different men.
29. 2.29The gods' native lands, crafts, lives, and tombs show that they were human; Ares was even imprisoned in a jar.
30. 2.30Hephaestus, Asclepius, the Dioscuri, and Heracles were mortals; even the poets say so, and their tombs and appearance are recorded.
31. 2.31The Muses, Clement says, were in origin Mysian slave girls who sang to calm the king of Lesbos.
32. 2.32The gods' love affairs: Poseidon's many conquests, Apollo's seductions, and Zeus's insatiable lust.
33. 2.33Homer's majestic Zeus was an adulterer, Heracles a seducer, and the goddesses too were adulteresses; such gods make immorality a model.
34. 2.34The great Greek games are funeral rites for dead men and a serpent, and the phallic processions of Dionysus commemorate an obscene myth.
35. 2.35The gods of myth served men as slaves and servants, even as go-betweens in adultery.
36. 2.36The gods of the poets are wounded, bleed, eat, sleep, and beget children, which shows they are human.
37. 2.37Zeus, once a lover in many disguises, no longer acts at all; he is dead, and the Cretans show his tomb.
38. 2.38The pagans' own cult titles betray the human and ridiculous origin of their gods: a Zeus Agamemnon, a “Strangled” Artemis, a “Gaping” Apollo.
39. 2.39Greek cult titles are obscene or absurd, and the Greeks who mock Egyptian animal worship honor storks, weasels, ants, mice, and flies themselves.
40. 2.40If the pagan gods are not gods, perhaps they are daemons; but then they are greedy and foul, and many are simply local heroes.
41. 2.41Hesiod's “guardian daemons” are the Greek gods themselves, who by their own admission are greedy for the smoke of sacrifice.
42. 3.42The gods are man-hating daemons who delight in bloodshed; Clement lists the human sacrifices offered to them across the Greek and Roman world.
43. 3.43Human sacrifice is murder; human beings like Solon and Cyrus were better than Apollo, whose oracle led Croesus to the pyre.
44. 3.44Superstition began with a few men and grew into the worship of many daemons; even Eros and Pan are late inventions, and the temples are really tombs.
45. 3.45Famous Greek temples contain the tombs of mortal men and women; those who worship there have trusted in the dead.
46. 4.46The first idols were plain wood and stone; only later were they shaped like human beings.
47. 4.47The most famous statues of the gods have known makers and materials; even the “heaven-fallen” Palladium was made from bones.
48. 4.48The great Egyptian god Sarapis, called “not made by hands,” was a statue with a known history, made of ground metals and stones.
49. 4.49Hadrian made a god of his beloved Antinous; true beauty is kept pure, not violated.
50. 4.50Temples are tombs; the Sibyl foretold the ruin of the temples of Artemis and Sarapis, and Heraclitus mocked prayer to statues.
51. 4.51Statues have less sense than the lowest animals; they are dead matter shaped by craftsmen, while the true God is known by the mind.
52. 4.52Tyrants who robbed their gods of gold, and birds that foul the statues, show that the images have no sense.
53. 4.53Fire has destroyed famous temples, a foretaste of judgment; and the sculptors modeled their gods on their lovers and on courtesans.
54. 4.54Kings and even private men declared themselves gods; the Athenians worshiped Philip and Demetrius, who defiled Athena's temple with a courtesan.
55. 4.55The gods were once men honored after death, as Hippo's epitaph shows; Homer's weeping Zeus and his calling the gods “daemons” betray them.
56. 4.56Idols and daemons are earthbound spirits; statues are only earth given shape, and the soul's hopes must not rest on lifeless things.
57. 4.57The statues display the gods' disgraceful characters, and art has even led men to fall in love with stone; admire the art, but do not mistake it for truth.
58. 4.58Art has deceived even animals; the poets and craftsmen have filled the world with gods and made heaven a stage for comedy.
59. 4.59Christians refuse even to hear songs of the gods' adultery, for they carry God's image in themselves and are God's chosen people.
60. 4.60Many decorate their bedrooms and signet rings with pictures of the gods' sexual escapades.
61. 4.61Lewd images are the theology of the pagans; Christians renounce even seeing and hearing such things, for the eyes and ears can commit adultery.
62. 4.62The Sibyl calls blessed those who reject temples and idols; the law forbids images, and the prophet calls the gods of the nations images of daemons.
63. 4.63Sun, moon, and stars are God's works made for human beings; worship their maker, and find refuge in divine wisdom.
64. 5.64The early philosophers made gods of the elements, which is still the worship of matter.
65. 5.65Fire and water, worshiped by the Persians and the philosophers, are only the “weak and beggarly elements” made to serve humankind.
66. 5.66Other philosophers made gods of the infinite, the stars, or the world-soul; the Stoics put God in all matter, Aristotle limited providence, and Epicurus denied it.
67. 6.67Clement rejects the philosophers' theories of chance and of divine elements and planets as old wives' tales.
68. 6.68Seeking God, not his works, Clement turns to Plato, who admits God is hard to find and beyond words; the Word, the sun of the soul, alone reveals him.
69. 6.69Plato calls God the king and cause of all good things; Moses's law of just weights shows God as the true measure of all.
70. 6.70Plato's sayings about God and justice were learned from the Hebrews, as the Sibyl describes them: people who worship only the immortal God.
71. 6.71Antisthenes and Xenophon, pupils of Socrates, glimpsed that God is invisible and unlike anything; Xenophon learned it from the Sibyl.
72. 6.72Cleanthes the Stoic and the Pythagoreans describe God as the one good and the mind and father of all.
73. 7.73Poets too bear witness: Aratus and Hesiod speak of one Father and king of all.
74. 7.74The tragedians and even Orpheus, in his late recantation, confess that there is one God who made all things.
75. 7.75The Greeks caught only sparks of the Word; even the comic poets mock the begging priests and their gods.
76. 7.76Homer and Euripides ridicule the gods: Athena, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Apollo, and Heracles are shown as base or mad.
77. 8.77Clement turns to the prophetic writings, simple and unadorned but saving; the Sibyl calls people from darkness to the light of the one God.
78. 8.78Jeremiah and Isaiah show the greatness of God, who fills heaven and earth, and foretell the shameful end of idols.
79. 8.79The prophets proclaim that the world will pass away but the one God, the only savior, remains; idols and their worshipers will howl.
80. 8.80The wisdom of Solomon and the words of Jeremiah and Moses call people back from idols to the one God, whose Wisdom is his Word.
81. 8.81The Psalms and Paul expose the vanity of worshiping creation instead of the Creator; the prophets foretell that heaven itself will pass away.
82. 9.82God admonishes as a gentle father; those who become like children and are born again enter the kingdom as his firstborn church.
83. 9.83God wants to make slaves into sons, but many prefer slavery and death; Paul warns against the darkened mind of the Gentiles.
84. 9.84The Lord keeps calling sleepers to wake; the Scripture's “today” of grace lasts until the end, so no one should harden his heart.
85. 9.85The “today” of the divine call is an image of eternity; those who disbelieve, like the Israelites in the desert, miss the rest, while godliness holds promise for this life and the next.
86. 9.86Salvation cannot be bought with gold but only with love and faith; godliness makes the human being like God.
87. 9.87The inspired Scriptures make one wise for salvation; the Lord and Paul both proclaim that the kingdom is at hand.
88. 9.88Taste and see that God is good: the Word shines on all, and those saved become one chorus crying “Abba, Father.”
89. 10.89Ancestral custom is no reason to reject the truth; we outgrow childish habits, and should outgrow godless custom too.
90. 10.90Rejecting the Word brings its own reward: the good will be rewarded, the wicked and the devil punished; God gives life, while custom leads to useless regret.
91. 10.91The wretched priests of the idols deserve pity; God, like a mother bird, rescues the human being who has fallen from the nest.
92. 10.92Even animals return to their masters, yet humans, God's own creatures, serve another master; let us look up to the light as true children.
93. 10.93Let us repent and desert to God; the inheritance of those who serve the Lord is a treasure no moth or thief can touch.
94. 10.94The loving Father calls all to the washing of baptism and offers the whole creation freely to his true children.
95. 10.95God sets life and death before us; faith in the Good should choose life at once, instead of deliberating only about godliness.
96. 10.96Clement urges his hearers not to be ashamed of the Christian name but to contend for the prize of immortality, ignoring those who deify men like Alexander.
97. 10.97Alexander, deified in life, died at Babylon; God is perfectly just, and nothing is more like him than a just person.
98. 10.98No sculptor can make a living being; God alone formed the human being as his living image, since the Word is God's image and the human mind the image of the Word.
99. 10.99Ignorance breeds idolatry; wash in the water of the Word, recognize your Father, and like the Ninevites repent and be saved.
100. 10.100The Lord is the narrow way to heaven; those who have heard the Word have no excuse, since the human being is made by nature for the knowledge of God.
101. 10.101Whatever one's work, one should know God in it; people waste their lives on stones and custom, loving darkness rather than light.
102. 10.102Stones, natural phenomena, abstractions, and passions are not gods; to worship them is absurd.
103. 10.103Only the true God exists and provides for us; the earth is the Lord's, and those who enjoy it while ignoring him are turning to stone like Lot's wife.
104. 10.104Human beings, not stones or birds, are sacred; yet people honor ravens as God's messengers while persecuting the Christian who speaks for God.
105. 10.105The blind and deaf in spirit do not grieve over their state; nothing prevents anyone from coming to God, but many stop their ears like deaf snakes.
106. 10.106Clement urges his hearers to cast off their serpent-like enmity, repent with the whole heart, and believe in Christ, who is man and God, who suffered and is worshiped.
107. 10.107Whoever seeks God finds life; the human being in whom the virtues are written is God's hymn, and wisdom makes good fathers, sons, husbands, and masters.
108. 10.108Even the old should turn to God and become like children; the citizen of heaven follows God's laws, written in the commandments and on the heart.
109. 10.109Truth is harsh medicine but heals; it is near us, in hands, mouth, and heart, and we will outgrow custom as children outgrow toys.
110. 10.110The divine Word, equal to the Father, took flesh and in a short time filled the world with salvation, becoming a sea of good things.
111. 11.110Clement begins to recount God's benefits from the beginning.
112. 11.111Adam, a free child of God, was enslaved by pleasure; the Lord, taking flesh and stretching out his hands on the cross, set humanity free from the serpent and death.
113. 11.112Since the Word has come from heaven, there is no need of Greek schools; Christ's disciples have the wisdom the philosophers only hinted at, and in Christ all divisions are overcome.
114. 11.113Godliness is the one exhortation for all of life; the Word enlightens the soul's eyes, and through him we find the Father and become fellow heirs.
115. 11.114Christ, the Sun of righteousness, has turned night into day and death into life, lifting humanity to heaven and writing God's laws on the heart.
116. 11.115God asks only a little faith in return for the whole creation and heaven; let the Word, not amulets, be bound on us, and let the light shine in the heart.
117. 11.116Christ the Good Shepherd has sounded the trumpet of the gospel and gathered a peaceful army, armed with the spiritual armor Paul describes.
118. 11.117The Word, who regenerates human beings and makes them God's temple, calls them to purify that temple and offer themselves to God.
119. 12.118Flee custom and pleasure like Odysseus sailing past the Sirens; bound to the wood of the cross, the Christian passes safely to the harbor of heaven.
120. 12.119Clement turns the imagery of Euripides's Bacchae to Christ: on God's mountain the righteous form a sober chorus, and the blind Tiresias is invited to lean on the cross and see.
121. 12.120The true mysteries: the Lord initiates, illumines, and seals the believer; Jesus, the eternal High Priest, calls all humankind to incorruption and to his easy yoke.
122. 12.121Let us take Christ's yoke and follow him, the charioteer who, as he once entered Jerusalem, now leads humanity into heaven.
123. 12.122Following God with all our strength, we are his friends, and since friends share all things, all things belong to the godly person, who becomes an image of God.
124. 12.123God adopts believers as sons and calls them “gods”; the Christian's intentions, words, deeds, and life agree. Clement ends by setting before his hearers the choice between judgment and grace.