Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 5.14

We must address what follows and demonstrate more clearly the Greek theft from barbarian philosophy. For the Stoics say that God is a body and a spirit in essence, just as they also say the soul is. You will find all these things plainly in the scriptures. Do not imagine that their allegories now convey truth as the gnosis teaches it, if they show one thing while signaling another, just as ancient wrestlers do. But while they say that God passes through and penetrates all things, we call him only the Creator, and the Creator by his Word. The statement in Wisdom — 'he passes through and penetrates all things because of his purity' (Wisdom 7:27) — led them astray, since they did not understand that these words are spoken of the primal wisdom created by God. Yes, they say, but the philosophers posit matter among their first principles — the Stoics, Plato, Pythagoras, and Aristotle the Peripatetic as well — not a single principle. Let them acknowledge, then, the so-called matter, called uncreated and unformed by them, and even more boldly said not to exist by Plato. And does he not say in the Timaeus, knowing the one truly existing principle, in these very words? Now, therefore, let our discussion stand thus: the question concerning all things, whether principle or principles or whatever one thinks of them, is not to be spoken of now, for no other reason than because it is difficult to explain the things that seem plausible in the present manner. Besides, the prophetic word, 'the earth was invisible and unformed' (Genesis 1:2), provided them with a starting point for material substance.

For Epicurus, the intrusion of chance did not follow from what was said; hence, 'vanity of vanities, all is vanity.' And Aristotle dragged providence down to the moon from this psalm: 'Lord, your mercy is in heaven, and your truth reaches to the clouds' (Psalm 36:5). For the revelation of prophetic mysteries had not yet been disclosed before the coming of the Lord. The punishments after death and the punishment by fire were owed to barbarian philosophy by the whole poetic muse, and by Greek philosophy as well. For Plato, in the last book of the Republic, says in these very words: 'Here indeed wild men, fiery to behold, standing by, perceiving the cry, taking some privately, led them away; but binding the hands and feet and head of Aridaeus and the others, throwing them down and flaying them, they dragged them along the road outside, beating them with thorn-bushes.' The fiery men, he means, represent angels who seize the unjust and punish them — 'who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.' It follows that the soul is immortal. For what is punished or educated, being in sensation, lives, even if it is said to suffer. What? Does Plato not know of rivers of fire and the depths of the earth, poetically naming the Tartarus of the barbarians, and introducing as correctional punishments for education Cocytus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and such things? And concerning the small and least things according to scripture — the angels who see God, and also the oversight that comes to us through the attending angels — he does not hesitate to write: since all souls have chosen their lives, as it were by lot, they come in order to Lachesis, and she sends to each the demon they chose as a guardian of their life and a fulfiller of their choices.