Clement / VI. The Work of Christ / g through h

 

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/early_christian_fathers.htm#_Toc96822023

 

(g) Progress to Salvation by Faith, Fear, Love, Knowledge

 

You have, Ο men, the divine proclamation of grace; you have heard also, on the other hand, the threat of punishment. Through these the Lord saves, guiding man by fear and grace.

Ibid, χ (95, i)

 

The first inclination towards salvation is displayed to us as faith, then follows fear and hope and repentance: these, advancing with the help of discipline and endurance, lead us to love and knowledge.

Stromateis, n. vi (31, i)

 

For the man who walks by reason the first lesson is the knowledge of his ignorance. A man who is ignorant begins his search, and thereby finds the teacher. Having found him he believes, and having believed he hopes, then loves, and hence is made like to the loved one, eager to be that which he has first come to love.

Ibid. v. vii (17, i)

 

The first starting-point is learning with fear, which leads us to abstain from wickedness; the second is hope, which leads us to aim at the best, while love completes the process, as is fitting, by training us in the way of knowledge.

Ibid. rv. vii (54)

 

 

(h) Salvation by Enlightenment

 

The darkness is the ignorance which causes us to fall into sins, being blunted in our perception of the truth. Knowledge is enlightenment, which banishes our ignorance and administers a corrective. The casting away of the worse is the revelation of the better. For what ignorance had bound is released through growing knowledge. And these bonds are done away speedily by faith, on the part of man, by grace from the side of God, when our sins are forgiven by the spiritual medicine of baptism.

Paedagogus, i. vi (29)

 

When a man is reminded of the better, of necessity he repents of the worse.

Ibid. i. vi (32)

 

The ‘Gnostic’ is saved, we may suppose, owing to his apprehension of the good and the bad life, for as well in knowledge as in activity he ‘exceeds the Scribes and the Pharisees.’

Stromateis, vi. xv (115)

 

The heavenly and truly divine desire comes to men in this way, when the ideal2 is kindled in the soul itself by the divine Word and is able to shine out; and, best of all, salvation immediately attends on noble willing, will and life being, one might say, yoke-fellows.

Protrepticus, xi (117)

 

As those who have shaken off sleep are at once awake within, or rather, as those who try to remove a film from the eyes do not supply the sunlight for the eyes, which is not theirs to supply, but remove hindrances to vision and leave the eye free to see: so in baptism by the divine Spirit we get rid of the sins which dim our eyes like a mist, and leave the eye of the spirit free and unhindered and enlightened. By this eye alone we behold God, when the Holy Spirit pours into us from Heaven.

Paedagogus, i. vi (28)

 

The Lord, as God and man, gives us all kinds of profit and help. As God he forgives our sins; as man he educates us to be free from sin.

Ibid. i. iii (7)