Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 11

The sacrifice that God accepts is separation from the body and its passions without regret; this is true reverence for the living God. It is no coincidence that Socrates calls philosophy a study of death: one who neither brings sight into his thinking nor lets any other sense draw him away, but meets reality with a pure mind, attains true philosophy. Pythagoras aims at the same end with the five-year silence he prescribes for his disciples, so that, turning from sensory things, they may contemplate the divine with a bare mind. The greatest Greek thinkers have philosophized in this way, following Moses. He commands that whole burnt offerings be flayed and divided into parts, because the knowing soul, stripped of its material skin, must put off bodily chatter and all the passions that empty, false assumptions produce, strip away fleshly desires, and be consecrated to the light. Most people, however, clothe themselves in mortality like snails and curl around their own excesses like hedgehogs; they think of the blessed, immortal God exactly as they think of themselves. They fail to notice, even when they are near us, how many gifts God has given us — gifts of which He Himself has no share, since He is unborn, needs no nourishment, remains equal in growth, enjoys a good old age and a good death, and is immortal and ageless. Therefore no one should suppose that hands, feet, mouth, eyes, entrances, exits, organs, or threats are passions of God, as is said among the Hebrews; rather, it is more proper to allegorize some of these names, which we will clarify in due course as the discussion proceeds.

"Wisdom is the panacea for all things," Callimachus writes in his epigrams; "One wise man comes from another, both in the past and in the present," says Bacchylides in his Paeans, for the gates of unutterable words are not easily found. Isocrates speaks well in his Panathenaic Oration: "What kind of men, then, do I call educated?" He answers: first, those who use well the things that confront them each day, who have a good reputation in their times and can for the most part discern what is advantageous; second, those who converse properly and justly with those who approach them, who bear the unpleasantness and heaviness of others easily and lightly while presenting themselves as light and moderate as possible to their companions; third, those who master their pleasures and are not overly defeated by misfortunes, but live bravely in them and worthily of the nature we share; and fourth, which is greatest, those who are not corrupted by good fortune nor become arrogant, but remain in the order of those who think well. Then he adds the conclusion: "But I say that those who have a disposition of soul well-fitted not for just one of these things, but for all of them, are wise and perfect men and possess all the virtues." Do you see how the Greeks, though they do not know how to know, praise the knowing life? They do not even dream what knowledge is. If, then, it is agreed that knowledge is our rational food, blessed indeed are those who hunger and thirst for truth, for they will be filled with eternal food.

The philosopher Euripides, on the stage, is found to harmonize with what has been said, though he does not know how to praise Father and Son together: "I bring you a bowl and a cup, Zeus, whether you are called Hades or not; accept from me a sacrifice of full and complete abundance, without fire." For Christ is a whole burnt offering, a sacrifice without fire, on our behalf. That he speaks of the Savior without knowing it, he will make clear by adding: "For you wield the scepter of Zeus among the heavenly gods and share the rule of Hades among the earthly gods." Then he says plainly: "Send into the light the souls of those who wish to learn the contests, from what source I sprang, what is the root of evils, what kind of blessed things one must seek, having sacrificed and found rest from labors." It is not without reason, then, that the Greek mysteries also begin with purifications, just as the bath does among the barbarians. After these come the minor mysteries, which contain some teaching and preparation for what is to come; the greater mysteries concern all things, where nothing more remains to be learned, but only to contemplate and think through nature and reality.