Sophia Scriptura

Miscellanies 6.7.55

Clement of Alexandria · Miscellanies · ca. 198–203 · Alexandria · Read in context

Summary: For Christians philosophy is love of the wisdom that is the knowledge of the Son of God; Greek philosophy is the best of the schools, much of it borrowed and only partly true.

Greek text · Stählin 2:459–460

Ταύτης οὖν τῆς σοφίας ἐπιθυμεῖ ἡ φιλοσοφία, τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τῆς ὀρθότητος τοῦ λόγου καὶ τῆς τοῦ βίου καθαρότητος, ἀγαπητικῶς καὶ φιλητικῶς διατεθεῖσα πρὸς τὴν σοφίαν καὶ πάντα πράττουσα ἕνεκα τοῦ τυχεῖν αὐτῆς. φιλόσοφοι δὲ λέγονται παρʼ ἡμῖν μὲν οἱ σοφίας ἐρῶντες τῆς τοῦ πάντων δημιουργοῦ καὶ διδασκάλου, τουτέστι γνώσεως τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ, παρʼ Ἕλλησι δὲ οἱ τῶν περὶ ἀρετῆς λόγων ἀντιλαμβανόμενοι. εἴη δʼ ἂν φιλοσοφία τὰ παρʼ ἑκάστῃ τῶν αἱρέσεων (τῶν κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν λέγω) ἀδιάβλητα δόγματα μετὰ τοῦ ὁμολογουμένου βίου εἰς μίαν ἀθροισθέντα ἐκλογήν. ἃ καὶ αὐτά, ἐκ τῆς βαρβάρου κλαπέντα θεοδωρήτου χάριτος, Ἑλληνικῷ κεκόσμηται λόγῳ· τῶν μὲν γὰρ κλέπται, ὧν δὲ καὶ παρήκουσαν· ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἃ μὲν κινούμενοι εἰρήκασιν, ἀλλʼ οὐ τελείως ἐξειργάσαντο, τὰ δὲ ἀνθρωπίνῳ στοχασμῷ τε καὶ ἐπιλογισμῷ, ἐν οἷς καὶ παραπίπτουσιν· ἐπιβάλλειν δʼ οἴονται τῇ ἀληθείᾳ οὗτοι μὲν τελείως, ὡς δʼ ἡμεῖς αὐτοὺς καταλαμβανόμεθα, μερικῶς.

English · Claude translation

This wisdom, then, is what philosophy desires, being a matter of the soul, of right reason, and of purity of life; it is disposed toward wisdom with love and affection and does everything for the sake of attaining it. Among us, philosophers are those who love the wisdom of the maker and teacher of all things, that is, the knowledge of the Son of God; among the Greeks, those who take up arguments about virtue. Philosophy would be the unobjectionable doctrines of each of the schools (I mean the philosophical schools), together with the life that agrees with them, gathered into one selection. These too, stolen from the God-given grace of the barbarians, have been adorned with Greek style. For some things they stole, others they misheard; and among the rest, some things they said under inspiration but did not work out perfectly, and others by human conjecture and reasoning, in which they also go astray. They think they attain the truth perfectly, but, as we understand them, only partially.

About this passage

Source
Stählin 2:459–460 · Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 2, Stromata Buch I–VI, GCS 15 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906); vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII, GCS 17 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909) · Greek text: Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus 2–3 (GCS 15, 17, 1906–1909), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0
Text
As printed in Stählin, GCS 15, 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 (1906–1909); made independently of existing English translations.
Compare
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (1885) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Book 3 is left partly untranslated (in Latin) there.
Topics
Christology

Notes

Notes on the original text

  • Digital text corrected (stray period in the digital text): ἃ καὶ αὐτά. ἐκ → ἃ καὶ αὐτά, ἐκ.

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.7.55 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/6/7/55/).

Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.7.55 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-stromata/6/7/55/).

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