Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 11

The sacrifice acceptable to God is the separation of the body and its passions without regret, and this is true reverence for the living God. It is not without reason that Socrates calls philosophy a study of death; for the person who neither relies on sight in thinking nor is drawn by any of the other senses, but encounters reality with a pure mind, shares in true philosophy. This is also what Pythagoras intends by the five‑year silence that he prescribes for his followers, so that, turning away from sensible things, they may contemplate the divine with a pure mind. The leading Greek thinkers who philosophized in this way were following Moses. For Moses commands that whole burnt offerings be flayed and divided into parts, since the cognitive soul, once it has been stripped of its material covering and has shed bodily chatter and all the passions that empty, false assumptions generate, and has put off fleshly desires, must be consecrated to the light. Most people, however, clothe themselves in mortality like snails, and curl up around their own excesses like hedgehogs; they conceive of the blessed, immortal God in the same way they think of themselves. It has escaped their notice—even if they live close to us—that God has given us countless gifts of which He Himself has no share: being unbegotten, He has no birth; needing nothing, He requires no nourishment; abiding in equality, He knows no growth; being immortal and ageless, He enjoys a good old age and a good death. Therefore no one should suppose that hands, feet, mouth, eyes, entrances, exits, organs, or threats are passions of God, as they are spoken of among the Hebrews; by no means. It is more proper to allegorize some of these names, which we will clarify in due course as our discussion proceeds.

"Wisdom is the panacea for all things," Callimachus writes in his epigrams; "one wise man springs from another, both in the past and in the present," says Bacchylides in his Paeans, for it is not easy to find the gates of unspoken words. Isocrates, in his Panathenaic Oration, asks what kind of people he calls well‑educated, and he answers: first, those who deal well with the circumstances that confront them each day and possess a good reputation in their times, able to aim for the most part at what is advantageous; then, those who always converse properly and justly with those who approach them, and who bear the unpleasantness and heaviness of others easily and readily, while presenting themselves to their companions as light and moderate as possible; also, those who master their pleasures and are not overly defeated by misfortunes, but conduct themselves bravely in them, proving worthy of the nature in which we share; and fourth, which is most important, those who are not corrupted by good fortune, nor become arrogant, but remain in the order of those who think rightly. He then adds the conclusion of his speech: those who possess a disposition of soul well‑suited not to only one of these things but to all of them—I call these people wise, perfect men, and possessors of every virtue. Do you see how the Greeks, even though they do not know how to know, extol the cognitive life? They do not even dream of what knowledge is. If, then, it has been agreed that knowledge is our rational food, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for truth, for they will be filled with eternal food (Matthew 5:6). The philosopher Euripides, on the stage, is found to harmonize with what has been said, not knowing how to indicate the Father and the Son simultaneously: "To you who care for all things I bring a drink‑offering and a mixing bowl, Zeus—whether you are called Hades or by another name—you who accept a bloodless sacrifice, full of all fruitfulness." For Christ is a bloodless, whole sacrifice for us. And that he speaks without knowing the Savior, he will make clear by adding: "For you wield the scepter of Zeus among the heavenly gods, and you share the rule of Hades among the earthly ones." Then he says outright: "Send the souls of the dead to the light, so that those who wish to learn may know from what source they sprang, what is the root of evils, and what they must seek, having sacrificed, to find rest from their labors." It is not without reason, then, that purifications are the beginning of the mysteries among the Greeks, just as the bath is among the barbarians.