Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XV/Chapter 5

by Anonymous

Chapter V.—Difference Between the True Religion and Philosophy.

And our father began to say:  “Do not suppose, my dearest Peter, that I am not thinking of the doctrines preached by you.  I was thinking of them.  But during the past night, when Clement urged me earnestly to give in my adhesion to the truth preached by you, I at last answered, ‘Why should I? for what new commandment can any one give more than what the ancients urged us to obey?’  And he, with a gentle smile, said, ‘There is a great difference, father, between the doctrines of the true religion and those of philosophy;^[1] for the true religion receives its proof from prophecy, while philosophy, furnishing us with beautiful sentences, seems to present its proofs from conjecture.’  On saying this, he took an instance, and set before us the doctrine of philanthropy,^[2] which you had explained to him,^[3] which rather appeared to me to be very unjust, and I shall tell you how.  He alleged that it was right to present to him who strikes you on the one cheek the other^[4] also, and to give to him who takes away your cloak your tunic also, and to go two miles with him who compels you to go one, and such like.”^[5]

Footnotes

1. [Compare the fuller statement in Recognitions, viii. 61; also Recognitions, x. 48–51.—R.]
2. Or “love of man” in all its phases—kindliness, gentleness, humanity, etc.
3. Hom. XII. 25 ff.
4. Matt. v. 39–41; Luke vi. 29.  The writer of the Homilies changes the word χιτῶνα, “tunic,” of the New Testament into μαφόριον, which Suicer describes “a covering for the head, neck, and shoulders, used by women.”  Wieseler is in doubt whether the writer of the Homilies uses μαφόριον as equivalent to χιτῶνα, or whether he intentionally changed the word, for the person who lost both cloak and tunic would be naked altogether; and this, the writer may have imagined, Christ would not have commanded.
5. [The larger part of the discussion in chaps. 5–11 is peculiar to the Homilies.  There is little matter in it found in the longer arguments of Recognitions.—R.]