A Holy and Heavenly Creature
“It seems to me that the reason that [God] formed man from dust with His own hands, gave him a second birth through water, increase through the Spirit, education by the Word, thereby guiding him surely to the adoption of sons and to salvation with holy precepts, was precisely that he might transform an earth-born man into a holy and heavenly creature by His coming, and accomplish the original divine command: ‘Let us make mankind in our image and likeness.’ It is Christ, in fact, who is, in all its perfection, what God then commanded; other men are so only by a certain image.
“As for us, O children of a good Father, flock of a good Educator, let us fulfill the will of the Father, let us obey the Word, and let us be truly molded by the saving life of the Saviour. Then, since we shall already be living the life of heaven which makes us divine, let us anoint ourselves with the never failing oil of gladness, the incorruptible oil of good odor. We possess an unmistakable model of incorruptibility in the life of the Lord and are following in the footsteps of God.”
— Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator I.12.98.
13 August 2007 |
tags: Patristics, Theological Ethics
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