Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 5.14

We must now restore what follows and demonstrate more clearly the Greek appropriation of barbarian philosophy. The Stoics claim that God is a body and spirit in essence, just as they also claim the soul is. You will find all these points plainly in the Scriptures. Do not mistake their allegorical interpretations for the truth that the gnosis now delivers, for even if they appear to show something, they actually signal something else, much like the ancient wise wrestlers. They assert that God permeates all existence, but we call Him only the Creator and the Creator by the Word. They were misled by the passage in Wisdom — 'it passes through and penetrates all things because of its purity' — since they did not understand that these words refer to the primordial Wisdom created by God. True, they reply, but the philosophers — Stoics, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle the Peripatetic alike — posit matter as a first principle, not a single one. Let them therefore acknowledge the so-called matter, described by them as unqualified and formless, and even more boldly, as non-being, according to Plato's own statement. And although he knew the most mystical truth — that there is only one truly existing principle — he speaks of it in the Timaeus in those very words. For now, let our position stand thus: the question concerning all things, whether of one principle or many or whatever they suppose about them, is not to be discussed at present, for no other reason than the difficulty of explaining what seems plausible in the present mode of exposition. Besides, that prophetic saying — 'the earth was invisible and unformed' (Genesis 1:2) — has furnished them with a starting point for material substance. In Epicurus's case, the notion of chance arose because he did not attend to the literal sense, resulting in 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' As for Aristotle, he limited providence only as far as the moon, drawing from this psalm: 'Lord, your mercy reaches to the heavens, your truth to the clouds' (Psalm 36:6). For the prophetic revelation of mysteries had not yet been unveiled before the Lord's coming. Both the punishments after death and the penal fire were borrowed from barbarian philosophy by the entire poetic tradition, and by Greek philosophy as well. Plato, in the final book of the Republic, puts it in these very words: 'Here are wild men, fiery to behold, standing by, discerning the cry; taking some aside privately, they led them away, but binding Aridaeus and the others hand and foot and head, throwing them down and flaying them, they dragged them along the road outside, beating them with thorns.' He intends the fiery wild men to represent angels who seize the wicked and punish them — 'He makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire.' It follows from this that the soul is immortal; for that which is punished or corrected, existing in sensation, continues to live, even if it is said to suffer.