4
There is then in philosophy, though stolen as the fire by Prometheus, a slender spark, capable of being fanned into flame, a trace of wisdom and an impulse from God.149
In Christianity, opinion, while a raw material, is called philosophy of scholasticism; when a rejected refuse, it is called heresy.150
The question of how to use the philosophical, scientific, and literary tradition of the ancient world is not an exclusively Christian problem. It is a question within ancient philosophy itself of choosing the necessary or useful instruments for attaining the main goal of happiness and perfection. The various models of philosophical paideia developed from judgments about the many branches of knowledge and the arts, more specifically, from judgments about their usefulness for spiritual development. The emblematic example is Plato’s revulsion toward poetry, which he not only saw as useless, but also harmful to spiritual development.151 Different visions of human nature, its highest good, and the happiness that flows from it (we should not forget the diagnoses of the greatest causes of human sufferings, fears, humiliations, and discord) stood behind the specific criteria of selection. The task of all philosophy, including Christian philosophy, is the therapy of souls who have been led astray by the demands of the passions and false pictures of happiness. By differing in their opinions about starting points, and their visions of philosophy’s goals, the philosophical schools also differed in their choices of therapy, their sets of exercises for enabling the soul to realize its natural perfection. The doubts of the Christians when it comes to this selection process in no way differs from those of the Platonists, Peripatetics, Epicureans, or Stoics as they pertain to evaluating the usefulness of particular fields of philosophy or, more widely, the value of the cultural heritage of antiquity. The goal (telos) and perfection (teleiosis) constitute the vistas of Greek philosophy and are the most substantial criteria of selection. When the Christians rejected pagan philosophy as an alternative way of life, it could no longer be an object of interest in itself. The consequence of ignoring what I have outlined is not only the abandoning of the doctrinal frames of Christianity, but also the actual embrace of another way of life, that is, of a goal entirely different than the one proposed by Christianity. It seems to me this is how we should understand the utterance in the famous dream of a great enthusiast of Cicero, Saint Jerome, who heard the following bitter words pronounced from the throne of God: Ciceronianus es, non Christianus [Cicero, not a Christian].152
The functional character of philosophy decided its attractiveness. Independently of the differences in opinion about human nature, of the highest good and the highest goal, Christians could not overlook the actual consensus sapientium in essential questions such as, for example, battling with the passions, which the philosophers saw as the foundation of spiritual transformation. The ancient spiritual exercises offer an immensely rich repertoire of means potentially useful on the way to sanctity and salvation. It is a given that no range of adaptation negated the clear conviction that revelation is the sole means to salvation. The unanimous consensus is: salvation suffices! What then, ask the radicals, is the use of reading astronomy, logic, and practicing Stoic meditation techniques if revelation is the fullness of knowledge and does not need to be supplemented by anything? This is how the question of the value of antiquity’s culture opens the doors to the Christian life. We will examine certain aspects of the mechanisms that eventually resulted in some ancient Christians being incapable of imagining authentic sanctity without the ancient pagan philosophical exercises. In addition, in some instances the life of a simple Christian seemed decidedly inferior to them in comparison with the both the perfection of a Christian hermit practicing Stoic-inspired ascesis and the perfection of a monk-intellectual who was using dialectics.
In the fourth century the principle of selection found its intellectual outlet in the writings of Saints Augustine and Jerome.153 Yet, even before Augustine formulated his mature doctrine of adaptation and selection in his dialogue On Order154 and in his treatise On Christian Teaching, Christians already applied it in practice. This is obvious. Just to take one of many such exemplary thinkers: in the Apology Aristides unequivocally established the criteria for knowledge of what is necessary for salvation. He argued that it was useful for a believer to know, for example, about the absurdities of barbarian and pagan theologies.155 Continual adaptation and selection were daily necessities for Christians who all lived in a pagan environment. All of the following factors required intelligible and unequivocal ways of judging their value: the luster of ancient culture, contacts with pagans, the baggage of habits carried over by converts, the Bible’s lack of clarity, the explosion of philosophical Gnosticism, intellectual curiosity, and the problem of defining a Christian upbringing.
Two Variants of the Exercises
Revelation ultimately resolves the issue of the final goal of human life, but it does not discuss many specific questions pertaining to human nature. Chadwick summarizes it thus, “The New Testament writers do not philosophize and we may think this a fact of providential importance since in consequence the gospel is not inextricably associated with a first-century metaphysical structure. Its relationship to philosophy has therefore detachment which is to the clear advantage of both sides.”156 Christianity might owe its variety of legitimate paths, or as Clement of Alexandria puts it, streams that feed the current of a river, to this very detachment from any particular philosophy.157 This variety would have been unthinkable had Constantine chosen to impose the Stoic, Epicurean, or Platonic ways of life, and their attendant restrictions, upon his empire after the Battle of Milvian Bridge. And so it is not just a matter of what would have been the official philosophy of the empire, but also what elements of the pagan heritage would have been decisively excluded. It is possible that dialectic (Cynics) would have been excluded, or poetry (Plato), while everyone, without exception, including the butcher and tailor, would have been required to learn astronomy, geometry, or music. The varieties of Christianity, incomprehensible to the Greek spirit, point toward a certain non-rigorous optimism, which gives expression to the belief that the world is essentially good and so the greatest works of humanity could not have come into being without God’s will and God’s inspiration.
Early Christians put different emphases upon the proportions in which praxis and theory should coexist in human nature and its perfection by taking advantage of the realm of freedom given to them. The ancient philosophers were generally the ultimate guides in making these choices, even though their presence was discrete and nearly imperceptible. We should take a look at two substantial currents of Christian inquiries. The first, influenced by a Platonism filtered through Stoicism, considered the highest function of human nature to be the divinization of humanity, which realized itself in the act of intellectual contemplation. The second, inspired by the Roman Stoics, saw the pinnacle of human life, and its form of divinization, in the long path toward God in a disciplined and reasonable life wholly devoted to the guidance of virtue. Each one of these schools obviously chose different paths of selecting useful exercises for realizing their respective ideals. Each one claimed priority for itself, not without suspiciously eyeing its competitor. Yet, both options clearly fit within the confines of the church.
Justin Martyr: The Greek Variety
Justin Martyr, who earned two titles for himself, those of Philosopher and Martyr, was the patron of the first option. It was his conviction that the good of philosophy consisted in its function as a guide toward God: “philosophy is, in fact, the greatest possession, and most honourable before God, to whom it leads us and alone commends us; and these are truly holy men who have bestowed attention on philosophy.”158 This was a declaration that could have been made by the students of any pagan philosophical school toward the middle of the second century. We know that in truth, according to Justin, Christianity is the only certain and useful philosophy.159 Now it will be our task to establish just what constituted the perfection/holiness of the people that were led toward God by Christian philosophy.
Justin joined the church after a period when he was strongly engaged in Platonism.160 Before this period, as he admits, he encountered the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Pythagoreans. The spiritual autobiography he nestled within the Dialogue with Trypho demonstrates how well Christianity realized the hopes and wants awakened by philosophy.161 Justin confesses he converted because he witnessed the unyielding courage of Christians facing martyrdom, meaning, he was influenced by a proof of the authenticity of Christian teaching that could easily be expressed by a philosophical vocabulary used at the time by both the Stoics and the Platonists.162 “For I myself, too, when I was delighting in the doctrines of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, and saw them fearless of death, and of all other-things which are counted fearful, perceived that it was impossible that they could be living in wickedness and pleasure.”163 The attitude he noticed in the simple disciples of Christ corresponded to one of the most important characteristics of the sage in nearly all the philosophical schools of antiquity. We must not forget how this corresponds to an extremely elite philosophical ideal, thought to be in principle unattainable for ordinary adepts of philosophy, and only then will we understand Justin’s reaction to the witness of the most ordinary members of the Christian community.
Therefore, Justin’s attitudes toward philosophy are clearly influenced by the sense of the spiritual continuity with his own path, by the family resemblance between philosophical questions and the language of faith, that is, a language in which the author of the Apology received a satisfactory answer and a conviction about the substantial philosophical reasons behind his inner transformation. Justin would surely agree with Saint Paul who in his speech assured the Athenian philosophers they worship what they do not know and that it is the same thing the Christians are preaching to them (Acts 17:23). Justin said, “For I myself, when I discovered the wicked disguise which the evil spirits had thrown around the divine doctrines of the Christians, to turn aside others from joining them, laughed both at those who framed these falsehoods, and at the disguise itself and at popular opinion and I confess that I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians.”164 It is impossible to doubt that the philosophical experiences not only predated but also conditioned his conversion. Therefore, even if Justin sins a bit through his lack of clarity when it comes distinguishing between the popular philosophy of his time and Christianity, then he himself is a living proof that Greek philosophy can be conceived as both praeparatio evangelica [preparation for the gospel], and as a spiritual aid for the deepening of the Christian faith.165 Whenever Greek philosophy is put on trial Justin Martyr’s personal history is the best witness for the defense of philosophy for one more reason: Justin himself died as a martyr and thereby proved the completeness of his conversion both in the categories of Greek philosophy and the gospel.
It is not a coincidence that Justin penned his tract on the adaptability of the popular Platonism of his time in the form of a philosophical dialogue.166 The meeting with the elderly man described in the Dialogue, which aims to point out the main similarities and differences, is an important lesson in the spiritual unity of the world in which the ancient church matured. The process of adoption here is something like the critical selection of the dowry that a former student of Plato brings to the church through his conversion. And so the elderly man does not find too many opportunities to disagree with Justin. During the philosopher’s long lecture his interlocutor only protests twice: the first time when not enough due is given to grace in the process of coming to know God,167 and the second time in a reaction against the doctrine of the preexistence and migration of souls, which is attacked more methodically.168 Both of these theses were rejected on the basis of philosophical arguments (i.e., the moral absurdity of the teaching of reincarnation, or the inadequacy of human knowledge), and not on the basis of scripture.
The philosophical dowry of Justin consists of an immense number of indisputable theological theses. In theology this heritage consists in the agreement to call God the cause of all things (3.5), the belief in his transcendence (he remains beyond being, is unknowable through the senses, and is ineffable), and the belief in his eternity and immutability. It is indubitable that God is both beauty and the good (4.1). The role of reason, which rules over everything, is especially unchallenged, in addition, neither is the goal of humanity to strive toward morally perfected knowledge about the essence of things, meaning, toward wisdom understood as a knowledge of the truth that leads to true happiness (3.4).169
The epistemological presuppositions are especially interesting from our own perspective.170 Both interlocutors agree knowledge is a name common to many things. Knowledge of divine and human things differs and outranks knowledge such as the knowledge of music, arithmetic, or astronomy. If we gain this ordinary knowledge through study and certain forms of intellectual exercise, then we can attain God in one of two ways, of which only the first has the luster of true philosophical knowledge. That is, we can come to know God either intuitively, directly, through an act of intellectual seeing (by relying upon the eye of the soul, as Justin puts it, following Plato), or also ex auditu, meaning, through the mediation of those who have this direct knowledge (3.6—4.1).
The discussion concludes with a demonstration of how inconsequential and weak the Platonic teaching about the soul really is, since it only confirms that the knowledge philosophers have of things human and divine should not be trusted. Justin is convinced that philosophy does not rest upon certain knowledge ex visione, nor even upon reliable secondhand knowledge, and so he asks the elderly gentleman for help.171 What to do? Where to start? Whom to lean on when even the philosophers cannot be trusted? The elderly man leans upon the witness of prophets, who have seen the truth and have revealed it to others. His answer combines unmediated witness with the concept of grace. The prophets only spoke, “those things alone which they saw and which they heard, being filled with the Holy Spirit.”172 Their writings constitute a reliable source of knowledge about all things that might preoccupy a philosopher.173
As we can see the most important element in Justin’s stance is his meta-philosophical approach. The interlocutors both agree that the most substantial goal of human life is the complete metamorphosis of being and knowledge, which is crowned by a direct “seeing” of God. The adaptation completes itself with an overcoming of philosophy, in effect, with a decision to fight the enemy with their weapons and on their soil. The pagan masters of Justin are discredited with the help of a philosophical ideal that they cannot attain. The acknowledgment of this ideal as the form of Christian perfection is the consequence of the victory. In this way the Platonic path from opinions to epistēmē comes to serve the description of a Christian path to salvation. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this decision.
As we have pointed out earlier, in the many philosophical schools Justin encountered, the starting point for spiritual work (philosophizing) was a faith in the authority of the writings and sayings of a given school’s founder. The ancients, especially after the lesson the skeptics taught them, had serious reservations about any Cartesian methods of spiritual transformation, that is, ones marked by obviousness and certainty at every step.174 This clearly does not mean that successive stages of spiritual transformation are totally incomprehensible or irrational to an adept. However, only a full conversion will give them a direct, and seemingly unmediated, knowledge that will confirm the chosen path. For all the philosophical schools the fullness of knowledge, truth, and certainty was attainable only at the end of the spiritual exercises, independently of how the various schools conceived the obviousness and inter-subjective accountability of successive steps of epistemological and moral development. It seems to me this pattern holds the answer to the question of how Justin conceived the difference between the starting and end points of the Christian path, between knowledge and faith, between the Bible as a path for contemplating God and the Bible as the rule of a just life—it is a very important question from the perspective of the logic of adopting the ancient philosophical exercises.
One can say knowledge differs from faith not through its content, but through a person. The ancients used a subjective, or existential, concept of knowledge, which is an obvious consequence of philosophy understood as both a moral and epistemological transformation. If epistemology utilizes the analogy between intellectual knowledge and seeing, then, as a consequence, knowledge is not only, or even not above all, a system of objectified truths (that can be passed on or heard), instead it is the state of a mind seeing the truth. This is how a sage differs from an ignoramus: by what he is, rather than by what he knows. When the sage possesses the truth he becomes its personification and his life is both an effect of this process and proves the authenticity of the pointers toward perfection, “For they did not use demonstration in their treatises, seeing that they were witnesses to the truth above all demonstration, and worthy of belief . . . .”175 The content of the scriptures is therefore objectively real and it is the very same content for both the person who believes and for the one who knows God through intellectual seeing. The writings of the prophets “are still extant, and he who has read them is very much helped in his knowledge of the beginning and end of things, and of those matters which the philosopher ought to know.”176 The content of the scriptures for those who are not sages, can only be the object of faith, because it is deprived of the certainty gained through direct knowledge. This obviously does not mean such faith is irrational. It can be accepted because of the witness of the saints, the credibility of the prophets, and cosmological arguments.177 Faith is not so much unintelligible, but instead none of the arguments in its favor have the same intellectual obviousness, which is only available through direct knowledge of God. Faith can be treated as a lower ranking knowledge, which is not yet a lasting state of seeing the object of knowledge. Faith is the knowledge of a man who finds himself at the starting blocks of spiritual change, a man upon the first stage of succeeding approximations whose objective value can only be properly evaluated through the perspective of a completed journey toward the full truth.
Even before his conversion Justin says,
But without philosophy and right reason, prudence would not be present to any man. Wherefore it is necessary for every man to philosophize, and to esteem this the greatest and most honourable work; but other things only of second-rate or third-rate importance, though, indeed, if they be made to depend on philosophy, they are of moderate value, and worthy of acceptance; but deprived of it, and not accompanying it, they are vulgar and coarse to those who pursue them.178
It appears this opinion did not lose any of its force after his conversion. Despite such declarations Justin himself remained somewhat restrained about including the ancient philosophical exercises in the armory of Christian contemplation. We can conclude from his pre-Christian experiences that he unwillingly reached for the conclusion that extensive intellectual exercises are a necessary precondition for the contemplation of God. In the Dialogue he recalls how a Pythagorean he studied under recommended Justin take up the study of music, astronomy, and geometry. This Pythagorean asked rhetorically, “Do you expect to perceive any of those things which conduce to a happy life, if you have not been first informed on those points which wean the soul from sensible objects, and render it fitted for objects which appertain to the mind, so that it can contemplate that which is honourable in its essence and that which is good in its essence?”179 The impatient Justin considered all this an unnecessary delay. But already for Clement of Alexandria Justin’s ambition to “become acquainted with the Christ of God, and, after being initiated, live a happy life,” would be very difficult to realize without this preparatory phase.180
Perfection according to Clement
The assertion that Platonic philosophy provides the proper background for the Pauline division between spiritual infants (nēpioi) and those who stand higher in Christian development creates a climate in which the adaptation of philosophical spiritual exercises seems like something entirely natural.181 However, the use of philosophy in the work of salvation can introduce some dangerous divisions within the church. The first difficulty surfaces from the clash between the elite nature of philosophical culture and the universality of the Christian promise of salvation directed at everyone independently of their education or intellectual talents. Second, it creates dangerous and wholly unacceptable analogies with gnostic divisions between the mere psychics, who were unworthy of salvation, and the pneumatics who were not subject to sin because they were saved already in this life by knowledge unavailable to the profane.
Clement understood how intellectual elitism posed a mortal threat to the gospel, both in its milder professorial-snobbish version and in its more acute form of the gnostic promise of self-salvation for those who possess esoteric knowledge. But Clement, a scholar of the Alexandrian catechetical school, noted one more danger.182 It comes from the arrogant conviction that the grace of faith frees one from the difficulty of spiritual work. Clement’s adaptation of philosophy combines these two observations. They are not debatable, because faith is sufficient for salvation and human weakness also means nothing is ever given forever—one must continually work in order to cultivate and develop a treasure that can be easily lost.183
But is philosophy still really needed? Or has revelation suspended it? What use is there for partial truth when the whole truth is given by Christ?184 Even if we acknowledge the great contributions of philosophy, admitting it was a type of preparatory knowledge (propaideia),185 meaning that philosophy was a way for God to prepare the Greeks to accept the gospel, can we reasonably argue that a grown person should return to the kindergarten of faith? This is a very difficult question, especially since we would also have to accept, as Clement sees it, all the errors and contradictions the pride of philosophers injected into a teaching the Greeks did not invent themselves, because they either received this teaching through a special revelation passed on to the chosen or they stole it from the prophets.186 And yet is it possible to be a Christian without philosophy? Can we really say all of it is of no value?
On the Utility of Pagan Philosophy
Clement says with some bite, “Some, who think themselves naturally gifted, do not wish to touch either philosophy or logic; nay more, they do not wish to learn natural science. They demand bare faith alone, as if they wished, without bestowing any care on the vine, straightway to gather clusters from the first.”187 The truth, that is, the teaching of the Savior is indubitably “complete in itself without defect.”188 This is not debatable. Faith is sufficient for salvation. The question is whether we can last in it without any philosophical support. The inaccessibility of the truth is no longer a problem after the revelation of God. The problem now is ordering our lives, desires, habits, and limitations so that the act of conversion will last, that is, whether it will become a stable disposition of our body and spirit. This opens up a space for philosophical skills and exercises. Philosophy, the mistress of moral and intellectual training, becomes useful when it protects, strengthens, and develops the graces of faith. Therefore, Clement proposes a program of Christian eclecticism so the baby does not get thrown out with the bathwater. Should we not use every form of teaching to unearth elements that are useful for the faith?189 Perhaps philosophy should be treated instrumentally, plundered for whatever might be helpful along the way toward salvation? Clement says, “[By] philosophy—I do not mean the Stoic, or the Platonic, or the Epicurean, or the Aristotelian, but whatever has been well said by each of those sects, which teach righteousness along with a science pervaded by piety,—this eclectic whole I call philosophy.”190 If we act in the following way, “For the teaching which is agreeable to Christ deifies the Creator, and traces providence in particular events, and knows the nature of the elements to be capable of change and production, and teaches that we ought to aim at rising up to the power which assimilates to God [as in Plato’s Theaetetus 176b], and to prefer the dispensation as holding the first rank and superior to all training,” then the danger of false selections seems to disappear.191
In his discussions with the Christian opponents of using philosophy Clement does not abstract from the living realities of a church submerged in an unfavorably disposed pagan world. The main value of a well-grounded education is the help it can give in the defense of the faith. Should we not bring any implements to cultivate the vineyard? Do we not discount the athlete who comes unprepared?192 Clement snarls, seeing how the positions of some Christians gave opponents of the church a monopoly on using philosophy. The faith cannot be defended by plugging up one’s ears at the sound of a Siren song.193 After all, what good is a faith its opponents can turn to dust?194 Philosophy becomes useful even when we can explain its uselessness as Clement points out (borrowing from Aristotle’s Protrepticus). However, we need to deeply engage philosophy before we can make such an argument. Only then will we be able to take advantage of what in it is “a divine gift to the Greeks,” and learn to avoid all the dangerous traps.195
The realities of evangelization also come into play here. Even if the study of philosophy is not necessary to reach the ultimate goal, then it can help the ascent toward the goal by criticizing pagan culture. The work of teaching is one simple example, “And otherwise erudition commends him, who sets forth the most essential doctrines so as to produce persuasion in his hearers, engendering admiration in those who are taught, and leads them to the truth.”196
Philosophy not only defends one from external enemies, but from internal ones as well. Only a thorough education can be a benchmark for distinguishing sophistry from philosophy, rhetoric from dialectic, and authentic Christianity from heresy. And how is it possible to deal with troubling biblical passages without the aid of philosophy?197 Of course it is true that the apostles and prophets did not know philosophy, but as pupils of the Spirit they were able to grasp the meaning of the faith directly. Unfortunately, this would be much more difficult for Clement’s contemporaries if they do not have the proper philosophical training. After all, not everyone is able to consciously receive the Lord’s teaching without the help of expert explanations.198
Faith, Gnōsis, Love
These are the starting points for outlining a portrait of Clement’s ideal of a Christian gnostic: a follower of Jesus who through intellectual exercises, with the help of God, can achieve the fullness of perfection available to man. The ability to defend the faith and avoid evil are only the beginning. The gnostic is not satisfied with doing the good out of fear or in the hope of a reward. The gnostic does the good through love with regard only for the moral good.199 Rewards are not the goal, but gnōsis in itself.200 When underscoring disinterestedness Clement does not shrink from formulating a paradox that sounds shocking coming from a Christian. If we hypothetically assume that knowledge of God, meaning gnōsis, and the salvation of the soul do not constitute an indivisible whole then the gnostic would choose the truth instead of salvation.201 This kind of knowledge is one of the central elements of transforming one’s being. The gnostic strives to make awareness of God a constant state, an eternal contemplation of God, something belonging to the very core of his being.202 Similarly, the doing of the good should become a lasting disposition (hexis) of his nature.203 “As is right, then, knowledge itself loves and teaches the ignorant, and instructs the whole creation to honour God Almighty. And if such an one teaches to love God, he will not hold virtue as a thing to be lost in any case, either awake or in a dream, or in any vision; since the habit never goes out of itself by falling from being a habit.”204 Knowledge (gnōsis) is the process of man perfecting himself through knowledge of divine things, a process that manifests itself in his whole disposition, thinking, and way of life. A person, who comes to the end of this process, reaches a point of perfect inner harmony, which is a harmony with the Word of God.205 It is the highest degree of assimilating oneself to God available to man.206 The Platonic ideal of divinization gains concrete and real qualities through its encounter with Christianity. For Clement, the ideal of the gnostic, which fully actualizes the ancient ideal of the sage, is Christ.207
The relationship of such an understanding of gnōsis to simple faith is such that through knowledge (gnōsis) the believer becomes a fully actualized person.208 Faith is a simple act of knowledge, thanks to which, independently of all research, we come to know and acknowledge God, loving him as a present reality.209 Faith is an indispensable condition for both salvation and knowledge: “In the first place, it is a choice between death and life, between sin and salvation. . . . In the second place the decision of faith is a choice between perpetual ignorance and the possibility of knowledge.”210 Conversion constitutes the subjective condition for knowledge, it equips the believer with new ears and eyes with which he can come to know God. Through accepting the Greek epistemological principle that the like can only be known by the like, Clement identifies faith as the precondition for the possibility of any knowledge, because faith is the first step of a process that likens man to God.211 “Thus, the truth is given within faith, and this truth is Christ. . . . But there is the task of understanding the truth which is already known.”212 This is why faith ought to be recognized as the starting point, as it is a type of an elementary coming to know God, which, with the help of grace, can be taken to a higher level, to gnōsis understood as a divinizing contemplation of God. What is interesting is that, for Clement, faith is also a starting point for knowledge as a systematic collection of judgments linked through the principles of logic. We could say that the first conversion is a conversion from paganism to faith, while the second conversion is from faith to knowledge.213 It is interesting that in the order of logic (it is inseparable from spirituality in the life of a gnostic) faith is an axiom that cannot be reduced to more fundamental presuppositions and it lies at the foundations of systematic knowledge about the divine.214 Granted, the truth of this axiom is only confirmed through the effects of accepting the initial axiomatic certainty. As Eric Osborn puts it, “The demonstration follows after faith, not faith after the demonstration.”215 The fullness of knowledge and the certainty that accompanies it comes only at the end of the road. We should point out that faith as an initial orientation also distinguishes gnōsis from the knowledge one can acquire in school. Gnōsis does contain some elements of academic knowledge, but it is obviously not identical with it. Whoever does not accept the gift of faith, even if extraordinarily learned, thereby blocks the door to perfection. Love is the goal of this path and that also cannot be taught in a classroom. Therefore, both the beginning and the end of spiritual development, being a gift of God, pass through the fingers of teaching methods. Christ is the beginning and the end, “And the extreme points, the beginning and the end—I mean faith and love—are not taught.”216
Spiritual Exercises
Where there is God we are able to elevate ourselves through faith, gnōsis, and love. Gnōsis, always with the aid of grace, is only transmitted to a select few students who are ready for it. It requires special provisions and spiritual exercises, “on account of the necessity for very great preparation and previous training in order both to hear what is said, and for the composure of life, and for advancing intelligently to a point beyond the righteousness of the law.”217 All of this hinges upon humanity being created not as perfect, but as possessing the potential for virtue and knowledge.218 Even though moral and intellectual developments of a gnostic must be equal, they are facilitated by totally different sets of exercises.
“All, then, as I said, are naturally constituted for the acquisition of virtue. But one man applies less, one more, to learning and training.”219 The Greeks, and Clement follows them, understand virtue (both intellectual and moral) as a certain skill or ability (dynamis). Ancient philosophy remains in the shadow of an immense discovery, which unveiled the role that habit plays in our spiritual life, that is, the stable predisposition, which, as Democritus said, is capable of becoming a second nature to man. The whole understanding of virtues and vices is essentially a conceptualization of the habits that we gain through frequent repetitions. Is it any wonder that the philosophy which leads to perfection is full of martial and athletic metaphors, and philosophy itself can be understood as a set of exercises (Greek: askēsis) that make the spirit more capable? We should remember that these exercises are mutually reinforcing. The development of moral virtues is a condition for deepening spiritual knowledge and vice-versa. The ideal is a state of totally sovereignty of mind, that is, the highest degree of freedom available to humanity from the limitations imposed by the body, “But we must, by acquiring superiority in the rational part, show ourselves masters of the inferior creation in us.”220
Clement uses two Platonic definitions of philosophy to describe this ideal. The first comes from the Phaedo, and describes the goal negatively, meaning, it describes what a person must liberate himself from in order to achieve perfection: “suppose [the soul] is separated in purity, while trailing nothing of the body with it, since it had no avoidable commerce with it during life, but shunned it; suppose too that it has been gathered together alone into itself, since it always cultivated this—nothing else but the right practice of philosophy, in fact, the cultivation of dying without complaint—would not that be the cultivation of death?”221 The positive definition borrows from the Theaetetus the ideal of likening oneself to God, a God who attracts the initiate with the hope of putting behind the world of change, uncertainty, constant becoming, and perishing for the divine impassibility and self-sufficiency of a sage who is like God.222
The Battle with the Passions
When it comes to the passions Clement is faithful to Saint Paul, but also to Plato and the Stoics. He sees the path to knowing as reducing the range of what escapes the control of reason. This is why the initial exercises in the gnostic way of life are, above all, exercises that aim to lastingly overcome the passions. These exercises, much like in the whole Greek tradition, depend upon limiting pleasures associated with bed and table, upon renouncing luxuries, upon fasts and vigils, which were supposed to train the soul in control, endurance, and detachment, thereby freeing her from being embarrassingly mastered by bodily needs.223 The asceticism of Clement grows out of the Stoic tradition. Complete detachment from affect is this tradition’s goal, and so Clement emphasizes, “And the complete eradication of desire reaps as its fruit impassibility.”224 The Alexandrian not only denies the lower desires any right to exist in the soul, but also sadness, happiness, and anger.225 It is easy to spot how many great ancient witnesses—from Euripides to Antisthenes and from Xenophanes to Plato—support the Christian theologian in his striving toward a salvation by way of many helpful maxims, upbuilding examples, weighty arguments and exercises.226
As Pierre Hadot puts it, spiritual exercises almost always required “attention to one’s self . . . [which was the] very definition of the monastic attitude.”227 Constant spiritual vigilance is the responsibility of someone who practices ascēsis; it is reminiscent of the Stoic practice of paying attention to the soul (prosochē).228 Clement follows Saint Paul (1 Thess 5:6–8) in admonishing the gnostic to not sleep as the others do.229 The uninterrupted vigilance of reason and perseverance in fighting the passions eventually transform themselves into self-control as a constant disposition of the gnostic’s soul.230 “Wherefore the divine law,” writes Clement, “appears to me necessarily to menace with fear (eulabeia), that, by caution and attention (prosochē), the philosopher may acquire and retain absence of anxiety (amerimnia), continuing without fall and without sin in all things.”231 “This passage implies,” says Pierre Hadot, “the whole thought-world of ancient philosophy. The divine law is both the logos of the philosophers and the Christian Logos. It inspires circumspection in action, prudence, and attention to oneself—that is to say, the fundamental Stoic attitude. These in turn procure peace of mind, an inner disposition sought by all the schools.”232
Exercises of Reason
The faculty of knowledge, which is tied to reason and its control over the passions, like the reason it depends upon, is not automatically given to humans. “And as knowledge (gnōsis) is not born with men, but is acquired, and the acquiring of it in its elements demands application, and training, and progress; and then from incessant practice it passes into a habit . . . .”233 The contemplation of God is obviously the ultimate goal, which is the highest function of the soul. The sciences play an important role in the perfecting of the functions of the soul related to knowledge. There are no grapes without work in the vineyard, nor good results without a solid education, “[He] has learned to purpose, who has practiced the various lessons, so as to be able to cultivate and to heal. So also here, I call him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth; so that, from geometry, and music, and grammar, and philosophy itself, culling what is useful, he guards the faith against assault.”234 Clement devotes a lot of space to dialectic, which he places at the forefront of all these skills. He is also quite aware of the black legend with which the epoch of practical philosophy (wary as it was of speculation) surrounded dialectic. Clement defended dialectic with great determination, because he was aware of the value of dependable thinking for the emerging church. Even the episode where Jesus outsmarts the devil in the desert by pointing out the ambiguities of scripture provides an argument against those who think Satan is the creator of philosophy and dialectic.235 Clement considers the use of dialectic in the interpretation of the scriptures as fulfillment of “seek and you will find” (Matt 7:7). “Accordingly, by investigation, the point proposed for inquiry and answer knocks at the door of truth, according to what appears. And on an opening being made through the obstacle in the process of investigation, there results scientific contemplation.”236 The whole of Book VIII of the Stromata is devoted to logical puzzles, matters of proof (apodeiksis), syllogisms, distinctions, definitions, ambiguities, etc., which all turn out to be very important tools for the garden of faith.237 After all, “authentic dialectic” is something more substantial than mere exercises for the mind, it is a path one climbs to reach toward God.238
While covering this path the gnostic extracts from each of these disciplines whatever will aid the proper functioning of reason. The unity of human nature means that it is not easy to separate the purely intellectual aspect of the exercises from their moral aspects. What is more, philosophical study helps in the study of the scriptures.239 Music demonstrates the relations of harmonized sounds; arithmetic discovers numbers and their relations; geometry, while perfecting reason also helps it to tear itself away from the body, and it accommodates the intellectual grasping of the essence of immutable being; astronomy teaches how to go beyond the Earth; while dialectic distinguishes between beings and grasps first causes.240 Clement’s approach to the sciences does not differ from the approach of the philosophical schools. On the path to happiness nobody becomes totally absorbed by physics or astronomy in themselves. It is enough to recall Plato’s Timaeus. The contemplation of harmony that reveals itself in the world of the senses thanks to astronomy or music should serve as an exercise in reaching inner harmony. Nothing is more foreign to the spirit of ancient philosophy than the notion of autonomous sciences and ethics. And so “it is necessary to avoid the great futility which occupies itself in irrelevant matters . . . .”241 This is the reason why the gnostic should be on guard against confusing the passion for knowledge with spiritual exercises that lead to gnōsis, which is the fruit of a long and many-sided spiritual practice and God’s grace.242 Only gnōsis leads to the desired contemplation of the Lord, step by step, until the highest perfection that can be attained in this bodily life, to a love that makes humanity a likeness of God.243
Faith is a germ of gnōsis, which consists of only the most essential news. Clement calls it, “a comprehensive knowledge of the essentials.”244 On the other hand, gnōsis is the certain, full, and indubitable knowledge of the presuppositions accepted by faith. The gnōsis built upon faith in the Lord’s teaching, along with help from philosophy, conveys the soul “on to infallibility, science, and comprehension.”245 Let us not lose sight of the relationship this distinction has with the subjective understanding of knowledge about the most important things in life. On the purely objective side of things faith is not objectively any less true than gnōsis. The difference lies in faith being the state of mind of a person who is at the starting point of spiritual transformation. Faith is like an only partially proven hypothesis whose confirmation is reached at the end of moral and epistemological transformation, when, at its highest point, gnōsis transforms itself in to love. It is difficult to deny that in this way, “The philosophical notion of spiritual progress constitutes the very backbone of Christian education and teaching. As ancient philosophical discourse was for the philosophical way of life, so Christian philosophical discourse was a means of realizing the Christian way of life.”246
Tertullian and the Roman Version of the Exercises
The argument that what Tertullian adopted for the needs of Christianity has many more elements of ancient philosophy than say, Justin Martyr, seems like it can be easily criticized, especially in light of the commonplace picture of Tertullian. We will attempt to defend precisely this argument while modifying the somewhat journalistic character of the judgment (what measure should we use to quantify the number of these elements?). What Tertullian took over from philosophy with the help of his immense intellectual talents and injected into the mainstream of Christian spirituality became so integrated with Christianity that it does not awaken suspicion even in the most suspicious despisers of un-Christian contamination.
The supposed absurdity of my argument can be mainly supported by the Carthaginian’s well-known repulsion toward all forms of philosophical speculation, “We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.”247 Attempts to justify speculation cannot lean upon Christ’s words, “Seek and you will find” (Matt 7:7). These words, according to Tertullian, were directed to the Jews and pagans by God before the fullness of the truth was revealed, and so they find no application in reference to Christians.248 Faith in Christ is the end of the searching, so it is impossible to search further without denying the faith through further searches.249 There is no truth beyond God,250 and it is even safer not to know than to transgress the boundaries of revelation in one’s searches.251 “Our instruction comes from ‘the porch of Solomon,’ who had himself taught that ‘the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.’ Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition!”252
These uncompromising statements change their meaning somewhat when they are placed within the philosophical tradition from which they emerged and within the context where they were enunciated. When talking about these sources I would like to explain the process of adaptation of Greek philosophy by the Romans, a process that had its dramatic moments. On the other hand, we cannot overlook the context of Tertullian’s polemic with the heterodox gnōsis that infiltrated Christianity.
The Romans and Philosophy
Quite a few things suggest Tertullian (a Latin) imposed the antinomy between faith and philosophical speculation upon the antinomy of Rome and Greece, and that the division between Jerusalem and Athens is undergrid by the division between the Empire and Athens. And so Tertullian inherits all the prejudices of brave soldiers, lawyers, and statesmen whose heads were all turned by philosophy.253 The ambivalent relationship of the Romans to philosophy, which combined an extreme revulsion and contempt (philosophy as a Hellenistic disease) with wonderment and adoration, can best serve as a reference point for understanding not only Tertullian’s stance, but also the stances of many other Christians. This situation can be symbolized by the extravagantly eloquent scenery in Cicero’s dialogue On Moral Ends, which presents the Latin reader with the central concepts of Greek philosophy. The philosophical discussion of Roman brilliance is staged within the Grove of Akademos. In order to understand the artistic power of Cicero’s decision we must remember that just a few year earlier Sulla cut down trees from the grove for siege machines, which helped to defeat Athens.254 Horace’s claim that the military victors surrendered to the culture of the defeated Greeks was not an exaggeration.255
There are many different reasons why, in the Roman imagination, Greek philosophy usually occupies the same position traditionally reserved for sophistry. The roots of this idiosyncrasy can be gleaned in the shock registered in 154 BCE by the Romans after Carneades’s envoy following Athenian aggression toward Oropus (an ally of Rome).
In two successive speeches Carneades amazed those gathered by first proving the reasonable (without exception) character of justice, only to later argue (not any less convincingly) for the kinship between justice and stupidity.256 The most outstanding citizens of Rome, worried about the morale of the city’s youth, forbade philosophy as a subject of study for several years after the infamous envoy.257 Philosophy’s later successes were always accompanied by suspicions of relativism, while careful Romans kept worrying whether the rhetorical and logical exercises recommended by philosophy did not lose sight of the ultimate goals, that is, virtue and perfection.
Many of the questions about the role of philosophy in the lives of Roman citizens are similar to the ones asked by Christians.258 Many of the stories told by Romans are reminiscent of those told by Christians. This even extends to the idea of Christianity as the realization of philosophy, since Cicero was convinced that only the Roman Empire realized the philosophical dreams of the Greeks.259 The Romans would acknowledge philosophy as theirs in the sense that it found its crowning only, as they see it, in the perfection of Rome and the virtues of its heroes. Only in Rome did people finally become truly virtuous, only they knew the proper (effective) proportion of theory to practice, only in Rome did the harmony described by the Greeks reign, as was indirectly attested by the might of the Roman Empire, which was an earthly reflection of the cosmic order. In other words, Rome was the single greatest work of the mind.260
By the way, the identification of historical Rome with the realization of nature’s perfection fell apart because of its restricted concept of humanitas, which uniformly labeled cultural phenomena not in agreement with those prevailing in Rome as against nature.261 Furthermore, the Romans thought that the ideal of the citizen, when expressed in philosophical language, also makes the Roman the most proper way of life. Christians recognized the power of this way of thinking, this unique metaphysics of the Empire, when its prosecutors dragged them into the hands of executioners. This also explains why their apologies devoted so much attention to refuting this metaphysic by proving the immorality and injustice, that is, the unnaturalness of Rome.262
But we should not forget when Tertullian speaks about philosophy, he not only speaks as a Christian purist, but also as a Roman citizen, suspicious of Greek tricks, which cannot but “produce no other effect than help to upset either the stomach or the brain.”263 Tertullian’s critique of speculation exhibits ways of parodying the Greeks typical for the Romans, that is, by presenting philosophy as a pathologically pure form and, let us add, an inconclusive speculation. We should remember that we are looking at an epoch incapable of wresting itself from the choke-hold of skepticism, one that reduced philosophy to the contemplation of one’s weaknesses. In response there was a call to substitute peripatetic living and paying lip-service to speculation with deeds in the writings of Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, and many others who saw in inconclusive controversies the decadence of a philosophy that abdicates its role as a teacher of life.264
In the first book of On the Commonwealth Cicero presents the difference between philosophy and politics (that is, Roman philosophy) precisely as the difference between pure contemplation and the active life, which is a harmonious combination of knowledge and right conduct. Philosophers are represented by Thales who never “looks at what’s in front of his feet,” yet, “they scan the tracts of the sky,” while Scipio represents politics and combines cosmological knowledge with an impressive record of serving the state.265 The Romans intended to use this argument, adopted by Tertullian, to point out the total divorce from real life of Greek thought, even though it claimed to be practical and a guide to life. Let us see what Tertullian said about Thales:
Now, pray tell me, what wisdom is there in this hankering after conjectural speculations? What proof is afforded to us, notwithstanding the strong confidence of its assertions, by the useless affectation of a scrupulous curiosity, which is tricked out with an artful show of language? It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right, when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, “Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at, that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?” His fall, therefore, is a figurative picture of the philosophers; of those, I mean, who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose, since they indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects, which they ought rather (intelligently to direct) to their Creator and Governor.266
It is important to remember that Tertullian stigmatizes useless precision and vain curiosity. Neither Tertullian nor the Romans reject reason. No, according to them, there is no more reasonable life than, respectively, either the Christian life, or that of a citizen of the Empire. In the work On Penitence Tertullian clearly underscores the tie between reason and God and the fact that only Christian knowledge about God allows one to live in harmony with the main driving force of reason, and therefore the actual order of a world that is ruled and pervaded by reason.267 What is at stake is not reason in general, but reason in its proper function and the appropriate proportion between knowledge and action. We should not forget that what constitutes the appropriate proportions is determined by benefit, that is, effectiveness in putting one on the path toward salvation. What is authentically useful for man is at the same time good and in accordance with the will of God.268 What Tertullian says in the The Shows can serve as a general principle; it is true that the world was created by God and it is good that God gave man dominion over it, but that does not mean that every manner of using the world is good. Natural knowledge about God’s existence is not a sufficiently precise knowledge. But the pagans, “having no intimate acquaintance with the Highest, knowing Him only by natural revelation, and not as His ‘friends’—afar off, and not as those who have been brought nigh to Him—men cannot but be in ignorance alike of what He enjoins and what He forbids in regard to the administration of His world.”269 The chasm between knowledge of the ius naturale and ius familiare is further conditioned by the deeds of Satan, the great parodist of God’s intentions, who falsifies knowledge about the proper use of the created good.270
Only accurate knowledge about God permits one to properly understand the goal, function, and also the nature of the world, through the indirect help of philosophy. The overuse of reason is considered to be harmful, because it is unnatural and without purpose. When the gnostic of Clement of Alexandria, even though he is convinced of the factual inseparability of knowledge and utility (the good), chooses the good, Tertullian’s Christian chooses obedience to God over utility. Tertullian even goes this far, “I hold it audacity to dispute about the ‘good’ of a divine precept; for, indeed, it is not the fact that it is good which binds us to obey, but the fact that God has enjoined it.”271 Reason has its limits and fully realizes its functions only by following the rule of faith. Its further progress, if it is at all possible and make sense, is closely tied to development through spiritual penalties and discipline, which solidify and develop both virtue and knowledge. The rule of faith, the Christian credo, which Tertullian brings up in the Prescrption Against the Heretics, is a sufficient depository of knowledge that is indispensable to a perfect and reasonable life.272
Actually, by sticking to this rule one can go further in one’s research, in searching, in satisfying one’s curiosity, in puzzling out unclear passages of the Bible; however, to put it indelicately, none of this is necessary. “You have acquired the knowledge of what you ought to know. ‘Thy faith,’ He says, ‘hath saved thee’; not—observe—your skill in the Scriptures. Now, faith has been deposited in the rule; it has a law, and (in the observance thereof) salvation. Skill, however, consists in curious art, having for its glory simply the readiness that comes from knack. Let such curious art give place to faith; let such glory yield to salvation. At any rate, let them either relinquish their noisiness, or else be quiet. To know nothing in opposition to the rule (of faith), is to know all things (Adversus regulam nihil scire omnia scire est).”273
Heresy and the Treatment of Hellenic Illnesses
We would be committing an inexcusable mistake thinking that the passages we quoted above discredit the need to use any philosophy at all. Pierre Hadot points out that the majority, if not all, of the ancient philosophical texts refer to the concrete spiritual condition of their readers, to a human being upon a specific stage of spiritual development, oftentimes they help him to overcome a particular type of spiritual illness. Since there is no universal cure for each and every ailment of the soul then one should not approach ancient texts, without the risk of uncovering only apparent contradictions, by taking them out of their immediate context of addressing a specific illness.274 This applies to Tertullian more than to any other thinker. Of course, just like every physician, he did have his own definition of health, however, every instance of spiritual illness is a separate mystery for him. We will return to his ideal of perfection and demonstrate how many different philosophical exercises he considered to be applicable on the philosophical way. For now we will turn our attention toward the situation that brought about the Prescription Against the Heretics.
Much like the majority of ancient philosophers, Tertullian does not devise a doctrine, instead he fosters a spiritual transformation without losing time preaching to the choir. Like the Platonic Socrates, who addresses Calicles differently than he does Euthyphro, and Parmenides altogether differently, Tertullian adjusts his own discourse to the personal needs of his hearer. He does not speak to the alcoholic about the benefits of alcohol, nor does he tell the coward about caution. Saint Jerome agrees with this universal precept about the nature of a moral education: “there is no greater folly than to teach a pupil what he knows already.”275 In a Prescription addressed to Christians tempted by heresy there is no reason to prove the philosophical nature of revelation because the audience of the treatise most likely does not suffer from a deficit of enthusiasm for speculation. The problem, as Tertullian sees it, has to do with the integral nature of revelation and the dangers posed to it by Hellenic wisdom.276 The gnostic interpretations of Christianity, with their heavy reliance upon the philosophical-religious culture of Hellenism, are enough to question the value of philosophy.277 The fathers accused philosophy of being the mother of all heresies, because they were worried about unity of doctrine, which was being blown up by gnostic criticisms of the Bible, and gnostic syncretism and theological speculations.278 What was at stake is how heterodox gnōsis willingly uses philosophy and revelation as the basis for its abstruse and fairy-tale theogonies.279 The philosophical aspirations of some gnostics (independently of their quality) are reminiscent of the transformation of the multiplicity of philosophical schools into a multiplicity of sects falsifying the deposit of faith. According to Tertullian, the Platonist Valentinus derived his teaching on aeōns from philosophy, and the Stoic-inspired Marcion got his teaching about two gods from the same source. While those who believe the soul is mortal follow Epicurus and those who imagine God as a fire follow Heraclitus. Those who deny the resurrection of the body merely rehash the arguments of all previous philosophical schools.280 For example, Aristotelian dialectic is especially dangerous, “Unhappy Aristotle! who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh in its arguments, so productive of contentions—embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing!”281
It is easy to understanding how this was a context where the praise of speculation did not seem like the most pressing matter. Gnōsis constitutes for Tertullian an example of an activity of the intellect that is given over to the passions of pride, curiosity, and the lust for fame; it has become independent of the real needs of humanity. Pride leads people astray and tends to lead to the worship of false gods. Apostasy, like false philosophy, is therefore the work and worship of Satan.282 Heresy becomes a carnal sin,283 because living in a lie must lead to immorality.284 The situation is further intensified by the fact that some of the gnostic sects, as if they were embodying the Roman caricatures of philosophy, actually did limit themselves to theory or knowledge exclusively (gnōsis), while totally ignoring the demands of a moral life.285 Even though this immoral variation on salvation (through gnōsis alone) was not very common it only furthers the impulse to suspect various forms of speculation. When we talk about Tertullian it helps to remember the bitter critique of gnōsis we find in Plotinus. A reading of the Enneads is the best proof that the gnostic indifference toward ethical questions repulsed more than just Roman Christians who were overly cautious about excessive flights of the spirit.286
The Adaptation of Spiritual Exercises
Tertullian was ruthless toward philosophy wherever it misappropriated the deposit of faith, but he also willingly resorted to it wherever useful. Let us stress that this is not a problem of a lack of consequence, or a lack of understanding, but a problem of finding the right procedures for addressing specific situations. It is not that the end sanctifies the means, it is that there are no useless remedies if we know their ends and are able to apply them in the right situation, dose, and time. When addressing zealous intellectuals, who cannot see the possibility of salvation without dialectic, Tertullian says mischievously that Christ probably made a mistake sending simple fishermen to teach the gospel, not sophists; he obviously does not mean that all Christians are fishermen.287 This then is the reason why (not out of inconsequentiality) the famed anti-rationalist does not shy away from employing philosophy for the work of salvation, in practice agreeing with the Romans that it is possible to philosophize, so long as one does it in the proper measure.288
Tertullian’s picture of this proper measure owes a lot to Roman Stoicism and Academicism and their pictures of humanity’s perfection. Just like in Clement it is connected to the picture of the inner harmony of God’s image, which is given to humanity, thereby regaining the state of nature destroyed by the Tempter.289 Much like in all of ancient philosophy, the complete spiritual-bodily transformation is simultaneously a rejection and a return. However, the role reason plays is different than in Clement. It finds its limits not in contemplating God, but in a specific self-limitation of the intellectual passions which Tertullian sees as the spiritual equivalent of the body’s passions.290 Anyway, the deeds of the spirit and the body cannot be separated at all, because “it is not the fact that body and spirit are two things that constitute the sins mutually different—otherwise they are on this account rather equal, because the two make up one. . . . The guilt of both is common; common, too, is the Judge—God to wit; common, therefore, is withal the healing medicine of repentance.”291 The Christian situation is unique because Christians have received the whole truth from God. This does not mean, of course, that anyone who has read the Bible is already perfect. The development of knowledge is accompanied by a spiritual transformation and is expressed in the development of virtue that manifests itself in progress in spiritual discipline.292 Its peak is intimate knowledge of God, which is a type of likeness to God.293
The succeeding stages of spiritual progress demand a series of exercises with a decidedly spiritual provenance. Tertullian did not write a systematic work covering all the useful spiritual exercises, however, his timely interventions allow us to create a clear picture of this matter. A part of his intellectual exercises is connected with, it seems, mostly the introductory stages of the spiritual path and finds its application among people who have something like a philosophical formation. On the one hand, they teach what place the testimony of the soul or the cosmological argument have in revealing the rational character of revelation. On the other hand, as we saw in Tertullian’s attack upon dialectic,294 or in his critique of pagan theology,295 the aim of some of the exercises is to demonstrate and consolidate a conviction about the ineffectiveness of reason alone, an ineffectiveness that expresses itself in the contradictions of philosophy that cannot be resolved through rational philosophical judgments. While Tertullian leans upon Stoic experience to deal with the first set of problems, in his response to the second he is indebted to skeptical attacks upon dogmatic philosophy—as demonstrated in the speech of Carneades, and part of standard academic exercises, namely, the proofs of the isosthenia of philosophical judgments.
When we free ourselves from thinking about ancient philosophy in purely doctrinal categories (which can only point us to Tertullian’s debt to Stoic materialism, or, for example, toward the concept of the law) we discover a series of techniques of spiritual conversion, which Tertullian (like Clement) permanently introduced into Christianity. In Tertullian we can find all the Stoic-Platonic exercises mentioned by Philo of Alexandria. For example: study, meditation (meletai), cures for the passions (therapeiai), recalling the beautiful, self-control, doing one’s duties,296 or others, such as: listening with a constant attention that is turned upon oneself (prosochē)297 and indifference toward indifferent things. There was no lack of typical Cynical exercises to combat the passions through bodily mortification. These exercises became so rooted in Christian spirituality that our contemporaries are surprised to discover the ancient philosophical roots of Tertullian’s advice to meditate upon the Lord’s Prayer by first purifying oneself of anger or an unquiet heart.298 One can confidently say that for Tertullian constant spiritual exercises constitute the content of daily life for members of Christ’s church. Tertullian underscores this fact in his description of the Christian life by willingly and frequently resorting to military-athletic metaphors that were also favorites of the philosophers. The sustained fight with the passions Satan fuels, a constant readiness to battle, concentration of thoughts upon fighting the enemy, working upon spiritual and bodily conditioning, the stubborn taking up anew of the difficulties of the exercises, and severe penalties are the content of many memorable and striking examples for readers.299
The unity of the bodily-spiritual human nature means that it is difficult to divide up the exercises into the spiritual and the moral. It is evident that all of them aim at sustaining a complete spiritual conversion. The exercises already begin before baptism. Tertullian chastises the catechumens who do not pursue an appropriate spiritual disposition that is reinforced by penance.
“Not that I deny that the divine benefit,” says Tertullian, “—the putting away of sins, I mean—is in every way sure to such as are on the point of entering the (baptismal) water; but what we have to labour for it, that it may be granted us to attain that blessing.”300 The consolidation of a spiritual disposition is the meaning of all the spiritual exercises, and as this gives priority to God who becomes known in the process, it also completely restructures the believer’s life around him.301 Tertullian’s Christian constantly thinks about God, recalling the sayings of the prophets, or deepening his understanding of the Psalms, much like members of philosophical schools of the time whose spiritual work, above all, revolved around the study of foundational texts.302 Daily prayer was for him an opportunity for moral self-knowledge (gnōthi seauton!): “A petition for pardon is a full confession; because he who begs for pardon fully admits his guilt.”303 The transformation engages the whole person, not only the reason and the will, but also the imagination. This is also why in the fight against the passions Tertullian, like the ancients, engages the full arsenal of means. For example, rhetorical amplifications play a significant role. There is the Stoic premeditatio malorum (meditation upon unavoidable misfortunes, which in the end are insignificant for the philosopher) that is supposed to help against the fluctuations of fate, just as meditating upon oppressive images of remaining in the clutches of the passions and their dark eschatological consequences help to subjugate the passions.304 Some spiritual exercises need to be practiced alone, whereas others require the supervision of an expert.305 Thus, a teacher who has the grace of biblical knowledge should help in the study of the Bible.306 As an expert in the spiritual exercises Tertullian cares about equipping Christians in clear and simple formulas helpful in any situation. This is the source of the Carthaginian’s aphoristic style, the quotable sentences and concise formulations, and it is also why he uses the rule of faith in much the same way as the Stoics or Epicureans used simple dogmatic formulas in their teaching.307 Tertullian’s treatise On Patience, by its very name, is connected with the Stoic tradition of treatise-long exercises, such as: On Anger, On Curiosity, or On Overcoming the Passions, which issued from the pens of Seneca or Plutarch.
However, transformation does not automatically sustain itself, only death definitively closes the period of earthly travail. This is why even a free man cannot discontinue the exercises. It is also the reason why even people close to perfection succumb to the passions, overcome by human traditions they abandon the rule of faith,308 they abandon themselves to earthly temptations, and surrender their spirit to the reign of bodily lusts.309 In the so-called “second repentance” permitted by Tertullian we see a synthetic image of the return to God and escape from these passions. Confession,310 the acknowledgment of faults, which teaches about moral weakness and the goodness of God; bodily mortification, which are a form of a radical curtailing of the passions; meditation upon the wickedness of committed sins, which sustains conviction about proper order, and prayer311 are all bodily and spiritual medicines, which should not be recommended only to backsliders.312
As we can see, for Tertullian the degree of one’s spiritual development is also dependent upon exercises whose philosophical origins do not change the fact that the Carthaginian considers them an integral component of Christian life. Both his Roman formation and fear of heresy meant that Tertullian not only less willingly acknowledged his debts (than, for example, Clement), he also called Christianity a philosophy much less frequently than his Greek contemporaries. Like the heroes of Cicero, who prefer talking about Roman politics to talking about philosophy, Tertullian, agrees to the obvious similarities, but he emphasizes the superiority of God’s work over human philosophy.313 However, when Tertullian takes Plato down a notch for thinking that God is difficult to find, and proposes any old Christian artisan who already has found God and proves his knowledge through his deeds, we know that the life of this artisan is filled with exercises well-known to the philosophers condemned by the Carthaginian.314
149. Clem. Al., Str. I.XVII.87.1, ANF 2, 320.
150. Newman, On the Development of Christian Doctrine, 132.
151. To illustrate this point I will cite an extended passage from Cicero. Its immediate topic is the model of selection in the Epicurean school: “He seems to you to lack education: the reason is that he thought all education worthless which did not foster our learning to live happily. Should he have spent his time reading poetry . . . in which there is nothing of real use to be found but only childish amusement? Should he, like Plato, have wasted his days studying music, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy? . . . And even if they were true, they have no bearing on whether we live more pleasantly, that is, better. Should he really have pursued those arts, and neglected the greatest and most difficult, and thereby the most fruitful art of all, the art of life? It is not Epicurus who is uneducated, but those who think that topics fit for a child to have learned should be studied until old age.” Cic., Fin. I.27.71–72, 25.
152. See: Hier., Epist. XXII.30.
153. Domański, “Patrystyczne postawy wobec dziedzictwa antycznego”[Patristic Stands toward the Heritage of Antiquity], 16–18.
154. This small treatise can be seen as a program for educating a Christian sage. In it Augustine recommends the study of music, geometry, astronomy, and mathematics, all helpful in the discovery and contemplation of the divine order of the world.
155. See: Arist., Apol. 1–3; 8.
156. Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition, 4–5.
157. See: Clem. Al., Str. I.V.29.3. The Bible, Clement argues, speaks of “several ways of salvation” in Clem., Str. I.V.29.3, ANF 2, 304.
158. Iust., Dial. 2.1, ANF 1, 195.
159. Ibid. 8.1.
160. For the consequences of this move see: Edwards, “On the Platonic Schooling of Justin Martyr,” 17–34.
161. Iust., Dial. 2.1–8.2. See also: Chadwick, History and Thought of the Early Church, 161, 277.
162. See: Osborn, Justin Martyr, 81–82 and Nock, Conversion, 107–8, 254–55.
163. Iust., Apol. II.12.1–3, ANF 1, 192.
164. Ibid. II.12.1–3, ANF 1, 192–93.
165. As Clement said, “But if the Hellenic philosophy comprehends not the whole extent of the truth, and besides is destitute of strength to perform the commandments of the Lord, yet it prepares the way for the truly royal teaching; training in some way or other, and moulding the character, and fitting him who believes in Providence for the reception of the truth.” Clem. Al., Str. I.XVI.80.6, ANF 2, 318.
166. “There is too much dramatic and literary finesse for the conversation to be merely the result of a good memory, one thing which we know that Justin did not possess,” says Osborn, Justin Martyr, 7.
167. Iust., Dial. 4.1–4.
168. Ibid. 4.5—5.2.
169. “[T]he majority of men will not, saving such as shall live justly, purified by righteousness, and by every other virtue.” Actually, even though Justin’s interlocutor probably had the problem of grace in mind, as he exhibits doubts about the conclusion that reason and virtue are a sufficient conditions for knowing God (ibid. 4.2–4), there is no doubt that he considers them necessary conditions: “‘Is there then,’ says he, ‘such and so great power in our mind? Or can a man not perceive by sense sooner? Will the mind of man see God at any time, if it is uninstructed by the Holy Spirit?’” Ibid. 4.1, ANF 1, 196.
170. See: Osborn, Justin Martyr, 66–76.
171. “‘How then,’ he said, ‘should the philosophers judge correctly about God, or speak any truth, when they have no knowledge of Him, having neither seen Him at any time, nor heard Him?’” Iust., Dial. 3.7, ANF 1, 196.
172. Ibid. 7.1–2, 198.
173. When Justin asks the elderly man to reveal the source of his teaching, the elderly man does not rely upon his own intellectual witness, he instead opts for the authority of the prophets and their scriptures. We can understand this as meaning the scriptures constitute the path toward perfection that realizes itself in contemplation of God, or we can also understand it as meaning that intellectual seeing was only given to the prophets while the perfection of a Christian expresses itself in the observation of the teachings they have left behind in the scriptures. Most likely Justin combines both these possibilities by treating the scriptures as a vehicle that can bring the chosen to perfection crowned by the contemplation of God.
174. Nock, Conversion, 181 stressed the role trust in masters and loyalty toward a school’s tradition played in ancient philosophy: “The philosopher commonly said not ‘Follow my arguments one by one: check and control them to the best of your ability: truth should be dearer than Plato to you,’ but ‘Look at this picture which I paint \, and can you resist its attractions?’”
175. Iust., Dial. 7.2, ANF 1, 198.
176. Ibid. 7.2, ANF 1, 198.
177. See: Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 211–20; Chadwick, History and Thought of the Early Church, 288–89; Skarsaune, The Proof from Prophecy.
178. Iust., Dial. 3.3, ANF 1, 196.
179. Ibid. 2.4, ANF 1, 195.
180. Ibid. 8.2, ANF 1, 198.
181. See: 1 Cor 3:2 and Heb 5:12—6:1; Clem. Al., Str. I.XXVII.179.2.
182. Michalski, Antologia Literatury Patrystycznej [Anthology of Patristic Literature], Vol. 1, 332, mentions the similarity of this first Christian theological academy to ancient philosophical schools. Anyone can confirm this by reading Gregory Thaumaturgus’s In Praise of Origen (ANF 6). See: Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 163–64.
183. See: Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition, 47–49.
184. Clem. Al., Str. VI.X.83.1.
185. Ibid. VI.VII.62.1.
186. See: ibid. I.XVIII.94.1–4.
187. Ibid. I.IX.43.1, ANF 2, 309.
188. Ibid. I.XX.100.1, ANF 2, 323.
189. Ibid. VI.X.80.1.
190. Ibid. I.VII.37.6, ANF 2, 308. See also: Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 309. The justification for this move comes from how such a sifting allows the believer to see the whole lost by the adulterations of Greek philosophers. “Since, therefore, truth is one (for falsehood has ten thousand by-paths); just as the Bacchantes tore asunder the limbs of Pentheus, so the sects both of barbarian and Hellenic philosophy have done with truth, and each vaunts as the whole truth the portion which has fallen to its lot. But all, in my opinion, are illuminated by the dawn of Light. Let all, therefore, both Greeks and barbarians, who have aspired after the truth,—both those who possess not a little, and those who have any portion,—produce whatever they have of the word of truth.” Clem. Al., Str. I.XIII.57.6, ANF 2, 313.
191. Ibid. I.XI.52.3–4, 312.
192. Ibid. I.IX.43.4.
193. Ibid. VI.XI.89.1.
194. Ibid. VI.X.80.1.
195. Ibid. I.II.20.2, 303. Like Clement, Justin Martyr also ponders why philosophy was sent down to men in Dial. 2.1, “What philosophy is, however, and the reason why it has been sent down to men, have escaped the observation of most; for there would be neither Platonists, nor Stoics, nor Peripatetics, nor Theoretics, nor Pythagoreans, this knowledge being one.” Iust., Dial. 2.1, ANF 1, 195.
196. Clem. Al., Str. I.II.19.4, ANF 2, 30.
197. Ibid. I.IX.44.1–4.
198. Clement says, “And if the prophets and apostles knew not the arts by which the exercises of philosophy are exhibited, yet the mind of the prophetic and instructive spirit, uttered secretly, because all have not an intelligent ear, demands skillful modes of teaching in order to clear exposition.” Ibid. I.IX.45.1, ANF 2, 310.
199. Ibid. IV.XXII.135.1–4.
200. The meaning of the term gnōsis in Clement is discussed by Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 142–89.
201. Clem. Al., Str. IV.XXII.136.1–5.
202. Ibid. IV.XXII.136.4.
203. Ibid. IV.XXII.138.3–4.
204. Ibid. IV.XXII.139.203, ANF 2, 435.
205. Ibid. VII.X.55.1.
206. See: Butterworth, “The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria,” 157–69.
207. Clem. Al., Str. I.V.21.1.
208. Ibid. VII.X.55.2.
209. Ibid. VII.X.55.2.
210. Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, 127–28.
211. Ibid., 128–31. Osborn considers this to be an original interpretation of the widely accepted principle that presupposed virtue as the necessary precondition for intellectual knowledge. Osborn points out analogies with Phaedo 64c-65a; Rep. 402; 500; 518; 533; Theaet. 176c.
212. Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 312.
213. Clem. Al., Str. VII.X.57.4.
214. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 119. For a discussion of the concept pistis (faith) look in the same volume 118–42 and Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 310–20; Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Thought, 262–65. I follow Osborn, who distinguishes the moral-spiritual and logical meaning of pistis in Clement. He says the following about the latter, “Faith is the logical foundation of all knowledge. There can be no knowledge which is not based on faith. The first principles of knowledge cannot themselves be rationally demonstrated. Until they are somehow accepted there can be no knowledge. The acceptance of them is called faith. . . . One point to be noted is that Clement does not claim that the basic elements of Christian truth can be proved by the light of natural reason. He claims it is logically necessary that they cannot be proved (or disproved) by the light of natural reason. Knowledge must depend on something other than knowledge.” See: Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, 131 (For Osborn’s whole argument see: ibid., 127–45).
215. Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, 141.
216. Clem. Al., Str. VII.X.55.6, ANF 2, 538.
217. Ibid. VII.X.56.1–2, ANF 2, 539.
218. Eric Osborn, in The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, 146–54, as he does in the case of pistis, also divides gnostic knowledge into spiritual-moral and logical. The effects of the first are the development of the spiritual life and an increase in virtue; they are crowned by moral perfection and contemplation of God (Clem. Al., Str. VI.I.2.4). The second, which emerges from the axioms of faith, when ordered by logical discipline, leads to a systematized knowledge of God (ibid. VI.I.3.2).
219. Clem. Al., Str. VI.XII.96.3, ANF 2, 502.
220. Ibid. II.XX.114.1, ANF 2, 372.
221. Pl., Phaedo 80e-81a; see also: ibid. 67d–e.
222. See: Pl., Tht. 176b; Pl., R. 613a–b.
223. See: the intermittent discussions of ascēsis in the chapter “Christianity as Revealed Philosophy” in Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, 237–52.
224. Clem. Al., Str. VI.IX.74.2, ANF 2, 497.
225. Ibid. VI.IX.71.1–77.
226. See: ibid. II.XX.103–126.4.
227. Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, 242.
228. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 84–85.
229. Clem. Al., Str. IV.XXII.140.3.
230. Ibid. VI.IX.74.1.
231. Ibid. II.XX.120.1, ANF 2, 373.
232. Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, 241.
233. Clem. Al., Str. VI.IX.43.2–4, ANF 2, 498.
234. Ibid. I.IX.43.2–4, ANF 2, 309–10.
235. Ibid. I.IX.44.4.
236. Ibid. VIII.I.1.3, ANF 2, 558.
237. Osborn considers this book to be an accidental insertion into the Miscellanies of a notebook from Clement’s methodological readings. See: Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria, 149.
238. Clem. Al., Str. I.XXVIII.177.1—178.1.
239. Ibid. VII.XVI.95.9.
240. Ibid. VI.X.80.1–5.
241. Ibid. VI.X.82.4, ANF 2, 499.
242. Ibid. VI.X.82.1.
243. Ibid. VII.X.57.2.
244. Ibid. VII.X.57.3, ANF 2, 539.
245. Ibid.
246. Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, 240.
247. Tert., Praescr. 7, ANF 3, 246.
248. Ibid. 8.
249. Ibid. 9–12.
250. Tert., An. 1.4.
251. Ibid. 1.6.
252. Tert., Praescr. 7, ANF 3, 246.
253. Timothy David Barnes undermined the commonplace that Tertullian was educated in law in the book Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study.
254. See: Kumaniecki, Cyceron i jego wspolczesni [Cicero and His Contemporaries], 83.
255. “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio.” Hor., Ep. II.1.156.
256. See: Cic., Rep. III; Lact., Instit. V.14.
257. See: Plin., Hist. nat. VII.30.112. While relating this episode Plutarch notes that Cato acknowledged there is a need to get rid of, “men who could easily convince them of anything they wanted. . . . This action was not motivated by dislike of Carneades, as some people believe, but by a general disapproval of philosophy and a desire to denigrate Greek culture and learning as a whole. After all, this is the man [Cato] who goes so far as to say that Socrates was a babbling bully who tried his utmost to set himself up as a tyrant . . . .” Plut., Cat. Ma. 22–23 [English translation: Roman Lives, 22–23, trans. Robin Waterfield, 30–31]. Earlier, in 173 BC, the senate expelled two Epicurean philosophers, Alkaios and Philiskos, and in 161 BC a measure was passed to ban all rhetoricians and philosophers. It speaks volumes that the same Cato, a politician and defender of the traditional morality under attack by the Greeks, known for his suspicion of everything that came from the nation of babblers, who saw Hellenization as an omen of his ruin, himself began to study Greek in his old age. See: Marrou, Education in Antiquity, 245–46.
258. In the introduction to On Moral Ends Cicero writes: “Some people, by no means uneducated, altogether disapprove of philosophizing. Others do not criticize it so long as it is done in an easygoing manner, but consider that one should not devote so much of one’s enthusiasm and attention to it.” Cic., Fin. I.1.1. [English translation: Cicero, On Moral Ends, 3].
259. Cic., Rep. I.2.3.
260. Ibid. III.4.7. This was not only the opinion of the Empire’s proponents. It is difficult to deny the tie between this ontology and the idea of the emperor’s deification during the Principate. See: the very interesting observations on the theme of the Vergilian Pax Augusta as “the culmination of effort extending from the dawn of culture on the shores of the Mediterranean.” Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture, 27.
261. Daniélou says the following about the misanthropy directed toward the Christians: “it expressed the fact that a community was suspect by reason of its peculiar customs. It was an easy jump from the idea of different customs to that of inhuman customs, since the Graeco-Roman civilisation was considered as the norm of philanthropia, of humanism.” Daniélou and Marrou, The First Six Hundred Years, 82.
262. See: Min. Fel., Oct. 25.2–12; Tert., Nat. II.17.
263. Tert., Praescr. 13, ANF 3, 251.
264. The most interesting attempt to break through this impasse is the concept of witness worked out simultaneously by the Christians and pagans.
265. Cic., Rep. I.18.30 [English translation: On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, trans. James E. G. Zetzel, 14].
266. Tert., Nat. II.4, ANF 3, 133.
267. Tert., Paen. 1.
268. Tert., Ex. 8.
269. Tert., Spect. 2, ANF 3, 80.
270. Ibid.
271. Tert., Paen. 4, ANF 3, 660.
272. Tert., Praescr. 13.
273. Ibid. 14, ANF 3, 250 (with some modifications).
274. “Whether we have to do with dialogues as in the case of Plato, class notes as in the case of Aristotle, treatises like those of Plotinus, or commentaries like those of Proclus, a philosopher’s work cannot be interpreted without taking into consideration the concrete situation which gave birth to them. They are the products of a philosophical school, in the most concrete sense of the term, in which a master forms his disciples, trying to guide them to self-transformation and realization. Thus, the written work is a reflection of pedagogical, psychagogic, and methodological preoccupations. Although every written work is a monologue, the philosophical work is always implicitly a dialogue. The dimension of the possible interlocutor is always present within it. This explains the incoherencies and contradictions which modern historians discover with astonishment in the works of ancient philosophers. In philosophical works such as these, thought cannot be expressed according to the pure, absolute necessity of a systematic order. Rather, it must take into account the level of the interlocutor, and the concrete tempo of the logos in which it is expressed.” Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 104–5.
275. Hier., Epist. 22.27, NPNF 2, 33.
276. Worries about the influence of this type of religiosity are not reserved solely for Christians. There is also an analogy with the worries of some Romans. Cochrane says in Christianity and Classical Culture, 2–3, “The Pantheon was crowded to the point of suffocation by a host of extraneous deities. Powerful court circles listened with attention to the ravings of Asiatic theosophists. The vogue of astrology was such as to draw forth the condemnation of successive emperors, culminating in the fiery denunciation of Diocletian, ‘the whole damnable art of the mathematici is forbidden’ (tota damnabilis ars mathematica interdicta est).”
277. Above all, we must always remember that even here we are dealing with an instance of opposition to philosophy, not an opposition to reason. Henry Chadwick writes, “So, although the short-term effect of gnostic propaganda was to make many believers fearful of philosophical speculations, it remains true to say that the Church rejected the Gnostics because they used reason too little rather than because they used it too much. For in rejecting the gnostic way the Christians thereby rejected as an inauthentic adulteration and corruption any theology of pure revelation teaching salvation by an arbitrary predestination of the elect and the total depravity of the lost, and possessing no criteria of rational judgment. In any event, the Church could not escape reasoned argument if it was ever to explain itself and so extend its missions to world.” Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition, 9.
278. See: Tert., Prescr. 7; Ap. 47.9. None of this has to be associated with completely ruling out the value of philosophy. For example, Hippolytus stresses how philosophy stands higher than its gnostic parodies: “We must not overlook any figment devised by those denominated philosophers among the Greeks. For even their incoherent tenets must be received as worthy of credit, on account of the excessive madness of the heretics; who, from the observance of silence, and from concealing their own ineffable mysteries, have by many been supposed worshipers of God” (Ref. 1, ANF 5, 9).
279. For ancient Gnosticism, see: Daniélou and Marrou, The First Six Hundred Years, 55–61; Quispel, Gnostica, Judaica, and Catholica; Jonas, The Gnostic Religion; Michalski, Antologia Literatury Patrystycznej, 145–51; Myszor, “Introduction” to Teksty z Nag-Hammadi [Texts from Nag-Hammadi], 11–100, which is devoted to the Valentinians and the library in Nag-Hammadi.
280. Tert., Praescr. 7.
281. Ibid. 7, ANF 3, 246.
282. Ibid. 40.
283. Ibid. 6.
284. Ibid. 41.
285. On gnostic nihilism or libertinism see: Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 320–41; Daniélou and Marrou, The First Six Hundred Years, 59–61.
286. See: Hadot, Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision, 66–67. See: the ironic observations of Clement of Alexandria about a gnostic immoralist who attempted to overcome pleasures by practicing them, or the debauchery of the Nicolaitians in Str. II.XX.117.4—118.6; III.IV.25.7—29.1; on the libertinism of the followers of Prodicos (a sect of antinomians) see: Ibid. III.IV.30.1–3.
287. Tert., An. 3.3.
288. See: Cic., Rep. I.18.30.
289. Tert., Spect. 2.
290. But this does not mean contemplation is totally exiled from Tertullian’s world. See: Tert., Mart. 2.
291. Tert., Paen. 3, ANF 3, 658–59.
292. Tert., Praescr. 43–44.
293. Tert., Spect. 2.
294. Tert., Praescr. 7.
295. Tert., Nat. II.2–17.
296. Phil. Al., Leg. alleg. III.18.
297. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 82–89.
298. Tert., Or. 11–12.
299. See: The suggestive metaphor of believers as militia Christi in Tert., Mart. 3.
300. Tert., Paen. 6, ANF 3, 661.
301. Ibid. 5.
302. See: Tert., Spect. 25; Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, 239.
303. Tert., Or. 7, ANF 3, 684.
304. Tert., Spect. 30.
305. Tert., Or. 1.
306. Tert., Praescr. 14.
307. See: Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 82–89.
308. Tert., Praescr. 3.
309. Tert., Paen. 8.
310. The examination of conscience belongs to exercises recommended by the Pythagorean school (See: DL VIII.22), much like the practice of poverty, silence, which was so admired by Clement (Str. V.XI.67.3), and moderation (DL VIII.10).
311. Tert., Paen. 9.
312. Ibid. 12.
313. Tert., Ap. XLVI.2–3.
314. Ibid. XLVI.9; See: Iust., Apol. II.10.8; Min. Fel., Oct. 16.6.