Well, good evening. Thanks for joining again. We are now on Lecture 4 of Historical Theology, the Doctrine of God and the Doctrine of the Trinity. So before we get started, we're going to just kind of review real quick the last lecture as we get into this lecture. And so last lecture, we began our excursus of looking at the development of the Doctrine of God and the Trinity and the Apostolic Fathers. And then we started in the the Antinicing Fathers, which we will be continuing that journey in today's lecture. But we notice in the Apostolic Fathers, we saw a continuity of attributions of the Divine Essence between them and the New Testament writers. But we also started to see these terms, this employment of terms about the Divine Essence basically evidencing the emergence of a philosophical theology in the Apostolic Fathers, which we see continue to kind of grow and develop in the Anti-Nicene Fathers. I mentioned in the second lecture how the modern critics that we kind of deal with today, following in the footsteps of Adolf von Harnack, claimed that the doctrine of God and of Christ and Trinity were really speculative doctrines that took their shape from the competing philosophies of the day, Greek philosophy, Stoicism, Aristotelianism, Platonism, all those types of schools of thought, rather than an organically formed theology from the Old and New Testament. But as we are seeing, what we started with last week, and we will continue to see as we traverse through the Fathers, is a commitment to the Bible as the Word of God, which provides the doctrinal backbone to the development of theology in their time and as it continues to go on through the Christian tradition. And so as we'll see that the philosophy, it enables the fathers to devise a rigorous theology supporting the scriptural affirmations of Christ. So as we get started in this lecture, let me get my slides rolling here. We're going to be looking at Clement of Alexandria. Now I wanted to do Clement and Tertullian. Tertullian is one of the first key thinkers of the early Christian tradition. He's just short of Augustine, but really profound in his thoughts. So I was hoping to do Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, but the problems would have been about 90 minutes, maybe longer. So today's lecture is going to be specifically on Clement And then it's going to be, again, probably a 40-minute lecture, maybe less. And then next weekend or next week, Lord willing, we'll look at Tertullian. So Clement of Alexandria. was the head of the catechetical school of alexandria around one ninety and he was the teacher of another later theologian uh... origin origin a lot of people aren't fans of origin i think again as i mentioned in my earlier lectures uh... we can make sure that we are interpreting criticizing scrutinizing You know, these guys in their own context, remember they're not working with a full system of theology. They're not, basically you're not even working with a full Bible. I mean, there was still, that had to be kind of worked through. So we got to remember that. We got to be kind to them in a sense, right? So now granted, as we would see in their time, there were these doctrines that they were speculative about, sort of develop and think through, and there's definitely some influences outside the Bible. But we have to, again, just remember that context. So Clement of Alexandria lived from about 150 to 215. And he was concerned that Christianity is not seen, I'm sorry, he's concerned that Christianity is not seen as an unsophisticated religion. And so he sought to reconcile his faith with the best of Greek philosophy. Again, that was the competing school of thought, Greek philosophy. And as I've mentioned, and as we'll continue to see mentioned, The fathers appropriate that which is helpful, good, right, and true from the pagan systems of thought around them and utilized that type of structure, that type of speaking of substances and that kind of thing, and that kind of language, and applied it to the Christian tradition. So again, we can't just, you know, We can't dismiss, sorry, we can dismiss, I think, the critics today because they're not really trying to read these guys in their context and they don't really go to the texts, at least from what I've observed, and really look at the thought, look at the fidelity of the scripture behind the doctrines that they use philosophy to help support. So again, so He wanted to, again, Clement, he wanted to reconcile his faith with the best of Greek philosophy. And in our lecture today, we're going to be looking at three of his books, works, treatises, they call them treatises, and we'll just kind of review those, and then I'll post the names of them at the end for you guys to look them up. So, Clement, not to be confused with Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome was a little earlier. So Clement of Alexandria, he believed that the kernels of truth found in Plato and Greek philosophy were preparatory for the Gentiles in leading them to Christ, just as the law was a guide or guardian for the Hebrews. And Clement's esoteric exegesis and speculative theology emphasized a higher knowledge, but his knowledge was obtained only through the Logos. And again, we've already mentioned the Logos already has a mode of utilization within Greek philosophy. And so, obviously the Apostle John, when he opened his book, of the gospel, he started with the Lagos, and I think that goes to show that there was a manner of Hellenization already happening. There was, because John recognizes that that term has a very specific understanding in his context, in the culture, in the schools of thought, and so by him now opening up his gospel that way, and these scriptures being made known to the Greek philosophers of their time, Clement's whole point is that it is through the logos, the impersonal the second person of the Trinity that enfleshed himself, not this Logos as a principle of thought or principle of origination that the Greek philosophers ultimately held to. So the first work we're going to get into is exhortation to the heathen or exhortation to the Greeks. So in this work, Clement contrasts the truth of scripture and the Christian faith to that of paganism with the aim and hopes of winning pagans to Christ. So the pagan gods, Clement writes, are the images of demons, but God made the heavens and what is in heaven. So there are no other gods. there are only angels, demons, but obviously because these beings have sense of hierarchy to to humanity we tend to call them gods but there is only one true God right and that's that's Clement's point is to show that that these other ideas of deities are just demons images of demons even even worse not even truly anything of substance they're images of demons and of course he says what but God made the heavens and what is in heaven so we see him making that distinction between creatures, which demons would be, and God, who is the creator. So pagan worship is directed toward God's works, not God himself. We think of probably Romans 1. He writes, the sun, moon, and the stars were made to measure time, but pagans absurdly imagine these things as gods. These things were established by his word, quote, and all their hosts by the breath of his mouth. So once again, He's contrasting the images of creation, man's subservience to what is created, what is not truly God, and showing that, again, only God what? He created the sun. He created the moon. He created the stars. All their hosts by the breath of his mouth. So Clement understands that the work of creation is brought into being ex nihilo. Creatio ex nihilo, we've already talked about, which is creation from nothing. He writes, quote, how great is the power of God? His bare volition was the creation of the universe. For God alone made it because he alone is truly God. By the bare exercise of his volition, he creates. His mere willing was followed by the springing into being of what he willed." Now, as I mentioned before, I'm going to say it again, ex nihilo does not entail being coming from non-being. There's no existence of a non-being. That's contradictory, but the point is saying that God created through God's self. There's nothing involved, no pre-existent materials, nothing involved, but God himself from which he thought these things and he brought them into existence. And again, we don't have any kind of analog to really, to measure up what it means to create from nothing, from God's self. We don't. All we can do is work with the tools and the materials that are already before us. And so it is definitely what we would call an ineffable act. We can't even describe what it means to bring being into existence. The philosophers sometimes assert things that are truthful, a divine inspiration, but they fall short of seeing the divine being behind all of it. And so that's the whole point is we're going back to the origin of matter. Philosophers didn't always get to that point correctly. And so ultimately, again, Clement is now correcting that, excuse me, that understanding of the origin of the cosmos and everything else. So Clement writes, They confess that God is one, indestructible, unbegotten, and that somewhere above in the tracts of heaven, in his own peculiar appropriate eminence, whence he surveys all things, he has an existence true and eternal. So Clement cites various poets and philosophers giving testimony to what they see as true and wise, but ultimately unable to reach the proper height in origin of knowledge and salvation. But it doesn't get you to the origin of knowledge, the origin of what is true, ultimately salvation. Because salvation is to be in Christ. Salvation is to know the living God. And Augustine had mentioned that while Platonism took him through understanding the higher things of the world, it wasn't until he came antiquated with the scriptures and came to know Christ that he could then now have a right view of everything. While the heathens orate, now heathens again are Greeks, Greeks are heathens, now they call them heathens because it's a very pejorative term about heathens are only bent upon satisfying their own flesh, they're heathens, right? They're also not learned in a sense, so it's kind of a, definitely not the most kind term, but we'll go with it, we'll go with it. So, while the heathens orate in beautiful diction, wordiness and seduction, Clement says, the divine scriptures and institutions of wisdom form the short road to salvation. And you remember Jesus talking about those that pray out loud, those of the religious elite, they want to have this lofty prayers and say these things so that people can listen to how gifted they are in speaking or reading, as I said. And Paul, he made a point to say, I'm not gifted with my speech, but he's what? He was gifted with knowledge. So again, it was a point of pride that these guys wanted to be heard out in the public squares. So in this text, Clement begins his exposition of scripture highlighting the transcendence of God, his holy otherness from creatures, especially pagan deities. So again, he's making that distinction between God and all things in relation to God. And we open up the very first lecture that this is what this is about. That's the distinction. It's God and Himself and all things related to Him. Clement cites the prophet Jeremiah, who, unlike the heathen poets, is gifted with wisdom from the Holy Spirit. And he says, quote, Am I a God at hand? He says, And not a God far off? Shall a man do aught in secret, and I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord? Jeremiah 23, 23. And I apologize because the sources that I'm using are using King James passages here, so I should have corrected that, but hopefully you can follow with me. And then Clement, he strings together various passages from the prophet Isaiah, with a few more from Jeremiah. And he says, who shall measure heaven with a span and the whole earth with his hand? That's Isaiah 40, verse 12. Behold God's greatness and be filled with amazement. Let us worship him of whom the prophet says, before they face the hills shall melt as wax melteth before the fire. That's Isaiah 64, one and two. This says he is the God whose throne is in heaven and his footstool the earth. And if he opened heaven, quaking will seize thee Isaiah 66 1 He continues will you hear to what this prophet says of idols and they shall be made a spectacle of in the face of the Sun and Their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven and the wild beasts of the earth and they shall putrefy Before the Sun and the moon which they have loved and served in their city shall be burned down and that's Jeremiah chapter 8 to 30 verse 20 and chapter 4 verse 6. So Clement's purpose in citing these prophets is to manifest the unique distinction of God's being in wisdom from idols slash pagan gods, which the prophets were doing as well. If we go back to the Old Testament scriptures, what were the prophets doing constantly? put down those works of your own hands. The god Dagon, it was hilarious how when God, when the Ark was captured and was put next to the deity of their time, the Philistines, they would go into their place where they kept the Tabernacle, kept the Ark, excuse me, and Dagon would be knocked down. God would constantly knock it down. And what is that telling you? It's just a statue. It's just a figure. It's not anything. It's something made in the image of man. And that's the whole point here that Clement is doing is that we must turn from idols and set ourselves on the true living God. And then Clement offers a litany of passages to strengthen his point such as Exodus 3.11, Isaiah 46.9, Proverbs 8.22, Jeremiah 10.12, and Romans 1.21, 23, and 25, which are foundational passages we already talked about as far as God establishing the language of creation to be able to even speak things about God. So, but the pagan gods are an image of an image, Clement writes, which means the pagan gods are mere idols senselessly, senselessly fashioned after the image of sinful, evil, and corrupted man. But the true image of God, Clement writes, is his word, the genuine son of mind, the divine word, the archetypal light of light, and the image of the word is the true man, the mind which is in man, who is therefore said to have been made in the image and likeness of God, assimilated to the divine word in the affections of the soul, and therefore rational. But effigies sculptured in human form, the earthly image of that part of man, which is visible and earth-born, are but a perishable impress of humanity, manifestly wide of the truth." So Clement emphasizes the notion of providence in the activity of God which shows he is living and able to exercise divine power in contrast to fire, water, shooting stars, the comets, which are produced by atmospheric changes. So again, we have pagans looking at the celestial bodies and making them gods, assuming they are gods, right? So fire, water, so the elements of the earth, They say there's power in those things, shooting stars, but what are they? Those things are just part of God's creation. God put all the stars there, he created fire, he brought about water, and all those things are serving God in his ultimately glory to redeem a people for himself, to display the glorious goodness and holiness of his character. So back to Clement. And this living and powerful God, the only true God, manifested his unsurpassable benevolence, and that's a quote from Clementine. Did I say Clementine? Clement, excuse me. Accomplishing a great work and so brief of space through the Lord who was despised but became the expiator of sin. the Lord of the Universe, the Son of God, was made equal to mankind in assuming humanity and fashioning himself in the flesh in which he then enacted the drama of human salvation." Now bringing this book to a close, Clement concludes, with the graciousness of God and the power of the gospel, exhorting the heathens to leave their errors and turn to Christ in obedience. Again, the point of this work was to turn the heathens away from idols and towards Christ. God is gracious, needing nothing, and wills to bestow upon creatures the enjoyment of immortality, in which he confers upon them both the word and the knowledge of God, my complete self. not his complete self, but he's talking about the Word and the knowledge of God. The completeness of God is what God wants to share with us. He does it in Word and in knowledge. Clement urges the Greeks to see that the Father is their Creator, expressing his desire to restore them according to the original model, which is, this is a great quote, which is symphony. This is the harmony of the Father, this is the Son, this is Christ, this is the word of God, the arm of the Lord, the power of the universe, the will of the Father, end quote. So again, we see these words being used to describe God, the Son, the Spirit, And we're continuing to see this development of these terms, as the whole point is that where scripture uses language of humans, of the creaturely world, to express the uncreaturely world, we have to always know those things are purposed to share, to explain that which is incomprehensible in a way that we can grasp. All right, so the next treatise that we'll kind of skim through. Again, in the lecture, I don't give like the page numbers of where this stuff's at, but if you by chance want the outline, I can give that to you. You can just email me. Hold on a second. So the next work is The Instructor. So the instructor, or the term pedagogos, which is a manual of sorts of Christian ethics, and the aim of it was to improve the soul, to teach it, to train it up to virtuous but not intellectual life. The whole point is not intellectual acuteness, okay? It is spiritual acuteness. It's virtue. The early church fathers understood that to have a heightened understanding of God, to grow in Christ, to know the things of the spiritual world, things of God, the virtue of the soul was directly tied to that. So if your soul was not virtuous, if you were living in sin, if you're living in the flesh of the world, there's no way you could come to know and understand and enjoy God, which they're absolutely right. Again, it's not about a workspace thing, but there's a connection of what is virtuous of Christian ethics tied to us being made in God's image. And if we are To know God's image more fully, we need to act in God's image more fully, being led by the Spirit. So this work, therefore, is medicinal, in that those who are diseased in soul require a pedagogue to cure our maladies. The manner of Christ's teaching is to first exhort, then trains, and finally teaches. And therefore, this work is the last phase of instruction, according to that model, with Christ the word as the instructor, hence the title of the work. But due to the scope of this work, we find little in form of speculative doctrine or theology proper. Nevertheless, we will extract a few remarks that pertain to Clement's doctrine of God. And again, that is the purpose of what I'm going through is to extract these concepts that we see the early church fathers that are developing in their theology and their Christian doctrine. So the instructor, the son of the father, Clement writes, is God in the form of man and is devoid of passion. God and the Word both are one and God is one and beyond the one and above the monad itself. So what is monad? It's making God, there's a oneness to him that we understand in the scriptures. Again, we have exclusively understanding to who God is in God and Christ, whereas the pagan deities of this time, the pagan philosophies, the pagan forms of religion, they were polytheistic. So even though we now have God in the Word, we are monotheists. And so the early church fathers are making their point to always protect that because that is what the scriptures teach us and to always be careful with our distinctions. So he says, Christ took on the form of man to redeem it because mankind is his workmanship. So that which has been under the that's been under the curse of sin, obviously is in a state of destruction. Mankind is not operating and living as God designed him to be. Man is living after his own self, his own flesh. And so that is the point of Christ taking on flesh, is to redeem humanity. So what he takes on, he's going to heal. So Clement notes a distinction between mankind and the rest of creation in how God created both man. He framed by himself his own hand, and breathed in him what was peculiar to himself. whereas the rest of creation God made by the word of command alone." So he's making a distinction between the two. Clement remarks that God is good on his own account and alone is wise from whom comes wisdom in what seems to be an understanding of God's simple being from which his attributes originate from, not which he received. Now part of my study that we'll be going through is divine simplicity and we've already talked about that and so we see Clement still operating from that understanding that God is simple. When he says, God alone is wise and from whom comes wisdom. So God's wisdom comes from himself, nothing was given to him, he didn't receive anything, because if he receives something, then God isn't the author of knowledge, he's not perfect in himself, and there's ultimately something behind God that made God who he is. So as mentioned, just a few statements yet instructive in what we see, key elements of the classical doctrine of God and of the great tradition. That was basically it, okay. So now we're going to look at a work called the Stromata. So the Stromata is a varied work of theology, unsystematic in its expression with a key topic being the role of philosophy to theology in response to an outgrowth of Alexandrian Gnostics. Now again, Gnosticism is another heresy. There's about having a certain level of knowledge which is what Gnosticism is. So the focus is on having a knowledge that is above everybody else, above everything. And so again, that was what Clement was dealing with. So this work called the Stromata, or what they call the Miscellaneous, so it's just various short treatises of him engaging in certain works of theology. And again, like I said, at this time, there was no systematic theology. They weren't able to go to the library, and pull a full-fledged work from you name whatever theologian that has taught theology for 30 years and has provided a work that encompasses all the elements of theology. So what we have in the early church fathers is a lot of works just kind of dealing with whatever was in their path and not a whole lot given to say we're going to expound soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology. I mean, again, they wrote on those topics, but as I said, it's not a very systematic form because theirs was very practical. They weren't just theologians in the high tower teaching at a seminary university. These guys were in the weeds. They were with the church on the ground, and so their theology had to be incorporated, had to be the driving force behind their ministries. And again, they're dealing with a lot of heresies. And so that's why these works came about, because why? The whole point is that, one, the Christian tradition is not just a religion, it is a philosophy of life. It is the only true wisdom. And so we're gonna constantly, as Christians, encounter worldly wisdom and this is what obviously Clement was dealing with. But the Shramada, in his work we come across more of his speculative notions on the doctrine of God and a brief treatment on anthropomorphic language. Now, anthropomorphic language is utilizing human features to describe something divine. So when we say the right arm of God, God doesn't literally have a right arm like we do. He doesn't have nostrils, doesn't have eyes, but the scriptures utilize, employ that language to give us an understanding about what God thinks, what he's doing, in a way that we can comprehend that which is ultimately incomprehensible. But the problem is that we find interpreters of the Bible, they will take things too far and say, well, God, they will say, yes, God doesn't have body parts, but they'll say, like, God has other human features, which we call those anthropopathisms, which speaks about the emotional language, the nature of God. So when God is said to be angry, or when God grieves, or says that God, what's it called, excuse me, repents, We have certain theologians that will take those unifically. They will say that this is ultimately the same thing as creatures. Well, the problem is we can't take it that way. If God doesn't have arms, doesn't have body chemistry, doesn't have a heart, doesn't have a brain like we have, then the emotions and the feelings that creatures have, we can't say God has those unifically. They're not the same. Again, it's language being used for the creature to help the creature understanding something about the Creator. So what happens is you have theologians not retaining a consistent interpretation of the Bible or any kind of language about God and they will utilize especially emotional language about God. Getting back to this, because Clement's intentional audience are non-Christian Greeks, philosophy is the preparatory discipline to the Christian faith. As God is the cause of all good things, both the Old and New Testaments, as schoolmasters to reveal Christ to the Jews, Clement writes, Perhaps philosophy, too, was a direct gift of God to the Greeks before the Lord extended his appeal to the Greeks. For philosophy was to the Greek world what the law was to the Hebrews, a tutor escorting them to Christ." Galatians 3.24. So it's a very interesting statement he makes there. Obviously, there's cultural context. Ultimately, if Israel remained as Israel, where there was food laws, worshipping rights, worshipping laws, sacrificial laws, all these things that the Hebrews had to hold. The badge of the law, as maybe one theologian might put, they have a badge of belonging to God. And what was that? Circumcision. The Greeks didn't get circumcised, but they knew that the Jews were, so you have all these fleshly, these external characteristics that the Jews had and carried by, it was according to the law, which kept them as a people separate from the rest of the world. So you have other cultures that are growing and that the Lord in his providence gives them wisdom, right? He gives them wisdom. And so that's his point here is that both forms, the law and Greek philosophy, he thinks were like tutors, right? That God gave to ultimately point them towards Christ. And I think it's a very helpful statement. I think it's probably pretty accurate. But one of the challenges that accompanied the Hellenic mind was this gross misunderstanding of the ontological nature of deity. You see, the Greek gods were merely projections of man exhibiting passions that swayed them to unrighteous anger, wickedness, and perversion. And if you read the early Greek writers, and they speak of the gods, and again, I'm taking a group of men through Augustine's The City of God, and the first half that book It's all about Augustine confronting the pagan ideologies, the religious ideologies, the philosophical ideologies, and really showing them how inconsistent they are by having the many gods they had. In one of the studies, I asked the questions to the men, count how many deities that Augustine names in this one particular book, and it was like 54. And so Augustine was spending his time saying, why are you worshipping all these various gods? And for example, the god that he spent the most time on, that he showed how inconsistent, was the god of felicity. The god of felicity is the goddess of happiness. So Augustine's whole point was that if she's the goddess of happiness, Why would you not direct all worship to her? Because even if he needed gods for anger, for wealth, for health, for this, for that, ultimately man's desire is to be happy. So why wouldn't the god of Felicitas wouldn't she be over all those things? Because how can she really make anybody happy and be responsible for that if she has to compete with all these other gods that do things contrary to that, right? So again, his whole point was to demonstrate that. But again, those gods were basically, again, they were ones made in the image of man, but you also have these images made by the people as a way of making fun of the gods. Like today, when we look at, when we watch, you know, cartoons we're growing up, where we see this devil that has the ears and the pitchfork, we know that the devil doesn't look like that, but this is man's representation of the devil, and the whole point's to mock him. To show what is he, a little pitchfork kind of creature, runs around, standing on your shoulder? It was to mock him, and so, likewise, too, There is that element of the Greek period of this time where we had the actors that would mock their gods and the people would laugh, but everything they did was very grotesque. And again, it was grounded in the passions of those that worshiped them. And that was his point, is that the Greek gods were just these projections of mankind, not really anything that could do anything. They had creaturely forms, thus they spoke and acted in a creaturely manner, albeit much more powerful than humans. Now, ultimately, what Augustine talks about in the City of God is that really these gods are just demons. They're really, they're fallen angels. And so they definitely are obviously more powerful, and they have ability to sway and to lead man astray. But getting back to Clement, he says here, but the God of the Bible is impassable. He is not a creature. He is uncreated, thus not like Greek pagan gods who, while considered gods, were still contained within and circumscribed by the created realm. That's a real important thing is that when you look at the writings of of these philosophers that talked about these gods, they were never responsible for creating everything. They were still part of the created realm, and that's a big difference between the God of the Bible and the gods of the nations. a uh... really famous old testament scholar uh... just forgot his name his name is oswalt that's right oswalt for his first name uh... he's he basically met uh... his his whole career was dedicated to the book of isaiah and i remember reading one time in one of the books about how when he was looking at all the the the the far uh... the far east gods uh... but that ancient I'm sorry, Ancient Near East God, excuse me, the A.N.E., the A.N.E. religions, going through their manuscripts, going through their cuneiform tablets and looking at all the various writings, none of their gods were responsible or given, you know, credit for creating everything. But when you read the old manuscripts of Isaiah, when you read the old manuscripts of uh... the early church obviously as israel in the New Testament, but the early church of Israel in their writings, those writings gave credit to the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the creator God. And no other pagan nation exalted their God to be the creator of everything. And so I think it really kind of speaks a lot to the capacity of really realizing that there was a God that created what they are in. And that idea was completely foreign to all the ancient Near Eastern religions. Now, not maybe, not maybe in total, there probably was thoughts of it, but I think that was never really considered, because we can only understand that, that level of understanding that behind the scenes, if you will, are you coming out of the cave, as we read earlier, to see those things, and that was truly the, the light of God in his revelation to mankind. So, okay. So, kind of piggyback off what I just said. So Clement, therefore, he must explain to his audience how we are to understand passages that ascribe human affections or passions to God. He says, It seems that we continually think of the scriptures in worldly terms in such respects, making analogies from our own passions, wrongly accepting our understanding of the will of God, who is impassable by the analogy of the stirrings within us. If we, who have a capacity for hearing, were to imagine a similar condition in the Almighty, we should be committing a godless error. So attributing creaturely modes of understanding, of feelings, of emotions, the stirring within us, ascribing that to God would be a great error, he says. It is not possible to speak of the divine in its actual nature. But even though we were fettered to flesh, it is possible for us to hear the Lord accommodating himself to human weakness for our salvation in the words of the prophets." So again, this is what the prophets were doing, is they were using language that we could understand God by. And Calvin famously is quoted about, God communicates to us like a nursemaid communicates to a baby using lisp. using baby talk so the baby can understand. So God is speaking and using terms that we can understand. We can never take those terms and apply them to God in his essence. What is the divine essence? We don't know what that is. We can't see it. We can't touch it. It's everywhere present. It's all-powerful. So it would be a godless error to speak about God that does not perfectly represent who God is. But again, the point of God revealing himself to us in a manner that we understand is he wants us to have a knowledge of him that comes from him. And so Clement here is making that point, which the Greeks, the pagans, the heathens, if you will, they don't make that distinction. So we must not confuse the creator with the creature. Clement observes the vast distinction between God and creatures when he states that, quote, it is not possible to speak of the divine, his incomprehensible sublimity and glory in its actual nature. So if we think we can describe him as he is, the all-powerful one, we would be in great error. Therefore, because of our weak and fettered flesh, with Clement implying that even our creaturely mode of listening to the prophet's declarations is part of that weakened condition, God has accommodated himself to us in order to reveal Christ." Again, back to the purpose of what he is doing. And so, excuse me, When a sinner obeys, repents, and believes upon the Lord for salvation with great joy, the Lord has set his own seal on our joy. God receives joy without having experienced outward change because the person of his purpose has found joy in repentance. A few sentences later, Clement addresses the Gnostic thought of emanation, whereby creation is an emanation of the divine nature, like creation just extends from God's self. His point was to emphasize the distinction between God and man in that God is uncreated, thus he does not have natural relations to creatures. kind of a red flag like how does God not have relations to creatures and the whole point is that the natural relation he's talking about is that we don't have the divine essence so we would not be naturally related to God. to speak of God and Himself, what naturally relates to God? The Father, the Son, the Spirit. They share the divine essence. They're all fully God. They are all full God, God of God. We're as humans, we are creatures. So our relations to God is not a natural relation, it's what we call a dependent relation. We can only be here, we are only here because God has brought us into existence not from himself, not an emanation from us, but an act of his will, of him creating from his own mind. Clement writes, quote, it makes no difference whether we were formed from nothingness or from matter, since the former has no existence at all, and the latter is totally distinct from God, unless anyone is going to have the impertinence to say that we are a part of him and of the same substance as God, end quote. We just kind of already talked about that, right? It doesn't matter that whatever's here what's ever around us, whether it was here forever or not, there's a distinction there. It has no existence. And I don't mean to say forever, but my point is that there's a distinction there that nothing can be God. God is who he is uniquely, and so if there's materials that we see exist with, all of us, all of creation, as I said in the beginning, it's God and himself and all things in relation to God. So Clement's statement is an implicit reference to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. As you can see, Clement's ontological doctrine, excuse me, of God affirms a total distinctness from creatures, which for Clement provides the backdrop to display God's rich mercy and unsurpassing grace, and that he shows his goodness to creatures who are, quote, by nature alienated from him, having nothing to do with him, in our essential being or nature." So the point of this is that God's distinctness is the backdrop, as he said, for him to show the richness of his mercy and his grace. To show goodness to creatures. because we are by nature alienated from God, right? Our beings, our natures, our essence is a created essence. And so we cannot, because of how we are, we can never have a natural relation to God as he is in himself, but God's grace given to creatures allows creatures to share in the divine glory as much as a creature possibly could. So at the end of Book 4 of Clement's Stromata, we find a few interesting statements on God, the Son, and the Spirit. Clement tends to extend his liberties when venturing into speculative theology. While not unorthodox, it makes his style unique. So in Chapter 25 of Book 4, Excuse me. Again, we're still in this dramata. Clement explains that perfection of man comes by means of the knowledge and love of God. He writes that God in his essence cannot be a subject for demonstration. What does that mean? God in himself, his essence, we can't observe it. It cannot be shown to us. We can't see with any of our senses, taste, feel, touch. Here. I got four. There's more, right? Anyways, but God is not subject for demonstration for creatures. However, Christ, the son, is wisdom and knowledge and truth, and he is susceptible of demonstration and of description. So God taking on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, now God makes himself fully known to creatures. Now obviously God in Christ is in a limited capacity because he is now under flesh, right? He's taken on flesh. He's wedded himself to flesh, not mixing anything, right? But he has taken on a nature that when we say that Jesus Christ is God, we are saying something that's completely true. So when we say that Jesus Christ suffered, it's the same thing as saying God suffered. Just like if we say Jesus Christ forgives all sin, it's the same as saying God has forgiven all sin. And so we speak of Christ, the person of Jesus, and whatever operation he is carrying out, we apply our descriptions to the nature of who he is. Does that make sense? So the person of Jesus, if he heals somebody, that is the divine power. The person of Jesus, if he shares a meal with somebody, that is the human nature. That's the human power. So we want to make sure that we are speaking precisely in our terms and attributing what should be attributed to the son based upon whatever action he does. So the collective powers of the Spirit become one and terminate in the same point, that is, in the Son. But the Spirit cannot be declared regarding His powers. So Clement writes, And the sun is neither simply one thing as one thing, nor many things as parts, but one thing as all things. Whence also he is all things, sorry for that whence word, I don't always remember it very well, for he is the circle of all powers rolled and united into one unity. Wherefore, the word is called the alpha and the mega, of whom alone the end becomes beginning and ends again at the original beginning without any break. Wherefore, also to believe in him and by him is to become a unit, being indissolubly united in him, and to disbelieve is to be separated, disjoined, and divided, Clement concludes his chapter emphasizing God's eternal nature, being without beginning, who is being, the first principle of the department of action, of reasoning, and of judgment. So again, he is talking in a way of the divine nature and the human nature of Christ. That he has all the powers of the Spirit, but the Spirit cannot be declared regarding his powers as what we can see, but in Christ all things are rolled up into one unity as Clement says. Obviously, we maybe don't find that language to be too precise, but again, he's formulating, right? He's trying to put all this together because the scriptures that he reveres as the Word of God forces him to land on these conclusions in order for God's Word to be consistent and not to do violence to the text and to violence to God's work and redemption. In books 5-7, we piece together doctrinal statements representative of the classical doctrines of God. Clement, in an almost confession-like manner, articulates the doctrine of divine simplicity, which he grounds on the uniqueness and unity of God. So in these chapters, he starts with the passages from the prologue of John's gospel, referring to the quote, the only begotten God as the one revealing of the Father, who comes from the invisible and ineffable bosom of God. He says here. How can that be expressed which is neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor individual, nor number? Nay, more is neither an event, nor that to which an event happens. No one can rightly express Him holy, for on account of His greatness He is ranked as the All and is the Father of the universe. Nor, and I have this italicized, nor are any parts to be predicated of Him. That is a buzz phrase for divine simplicity, nor are any parts to be predicated of him. For the one is indivisible, wherefore also it is infinite, not considered with reference to inscrutability, but with reference to its being without dimensions and not having a limit, and therefore it is without form and name. Again, he's making the point, we cannot see the divine essence. There's no form to it. Now we could say, well, in Philippians 2, Jesus talks about being in the form of God, but obviously he's not taken of a physical shape, but he's speaking to his divine essence, which he has, and then he takes on human nature. Therefore, he's no longer uniquely in the divine essence. He's always united to flesh, but obviously God, the divine Godhead, cannot be split or broken apart in parts. But there's that standpoint where now the divine essence of the second person takes on human flesh. And so whatever is predicated of him, like I said, we predicate it precisely based upon his nature and whatever he acts. If he heals, it's the divine essence healing, right? Not the humanness, but it would still be proper to say Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus, has healed this man's limb. And back to this point here, no dimensions, right, not having a limit, and therefore without form and name. One of the heresies that came up later on, we'll talk about it when we get to the Cappadocians, was that you had a heretic that was saying that we could name the divine essence. So whatever name was predicated, he was saying that is the essence, that's the divine essence. And the whole arguments that came about for that that the essence, we cannot name it. We don't know what it is, right? So we can never know what it is. We can always maybe say what it's not, which is what is really kind of grounded in classical theology. It's safe for us to say what God is not than what is. The point is that there's been those that thought, well, if we use the negative theology to say what God is not, we're never actually talking about God. And that's true. And that's been sometimes the the mistake of modern classical theologians is to go heavy on the negative theology or the apophatic theologies of actually speaking about what God is because then obviously you end up just going to complete abstraction, get to the point where it's basically there is no God and it's a really, it's a wormhole you don't want to go down. All right, let me flip through here, just about done. So for Clement, nothing is antecedent to the begotten. What does antecedent mean? It is the term, it is the thing, it is whatever it is prior to what is being spoken of. So if I say that Billy went to the store, then he went to the baseball game, the pronoun he, what is the antecedent referring to? Who is the he referring to? The he is referring to Billy in the previous sentence. His point here is to say there's nothing behind or before the unbegotten that has to be referenced, right? The unbegotten, the logos made flesh as our Lord Christ, Clement writes, is the cause of all good things as the first efficient cause of motion. That which does exist would not exist at all had God not willed it. God foresees all things, possessing from eternity the idea of each thing individually taking in the whole in one view, and in one glance he views all things together and each thing by itself. So again, we're getting more to now understanding how God sees everything, his knowledge of things. Ultimately, God's knowledge comes from him. God has all causal knowledge. So what comes about would exist. If it's here, God willed it. And so, again, we can see here in Clement's thought he's really trying to expand this doctrine of God to encompass more things that pertain to the Christian tradition, pertain to real life problems, understanding God's control about things, and wanting to make sure that the one true God is not like these Stoic, these Pagan, these other foreign deities, he is not like that. So we're trying to, with the scriptures leading the direction, we're incorporating philosophical terms and concepts to help support what scripture teaches. So again, but Clement's philosophical framework understands that God does not have a physical body. Even though scripture uses those terms that denote God standing, sitting on his throne, using his right hand, right arm, or moving, we know that, and Clement knows obviously, God doesn't have those things. And so while scripture designates these terms to God, the first cause is not then in space, but above space and time and name, and conception. Again, he is inconceivable. We cannot conceive the divine essence as it is. It's incomprehensible to us. So these terms help us to understand something of who God is. Likewise, the Son of God, having the same essence as the Father, Clement writes, is never displaced, not being divided, not severed, not passing from place to place, being always everywhere and being contained nowhere, complete mind, the complete paternal light, all things, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things by his power, his scrutinizing powers." End quote. Did I not? Okay, we're good. So Clement concludes with what becomes the embodiment of Christological doctrine in the Great Tradition. He says, he is the power of God, a power incapable of being apprehended by sensation, as being the Father's most ancient word before the production of all things and his wisdom. And it is this God who gave himself in sacrifice for us from that which needs nothing to that which needs nothing, which is a passable form, that which is impassable. Sorry that's kind of clunky, but that's just kind of how it's written. So he's saying that Christ is the full essence of God, the Father, the Spirit, who has all things in himself and needs no things. And so therefore, whatever he does in the taking of flesh was for our benefit. So in conclusion, in Clement, we see a more pronounced philosophical thought begin to emerge and also in Christian theology. Again, theology develops as it brushes up against the worldly ideas, philosophies, and religious worldviews. As the Christian tradition continues to form, reform, and refine its doctrine, it grows stronger, having greater consistency, coherency, and application to whatever time it is in. And this is what we call dogmatic theology, whereby the Christian doctrine encounters the various cultural, philosophical, and religious ideologies of a certain generation. And then that theologian is tasked to engage, refute, and correct those ideologies, proving, as we see time and time again, that the Christian worldview is the only view that makes sense of all of reality, of beauty, goodness, truth, all those things, right? So that's the end of our discussion on Clement. In the next one, we will now get into the profound Latin thinker, Tertullian, who used the term trinitas as the first application of the term trinity of the divine essence. So we're going to really get to the thick of it with him. Again, thanks for attending tonight's lecture. Grace and peace to you.