A strange word will I say to you [says St Theognis], do not be surprised. There is a
hidden sacrament which takes place between God and the soul. This happens to those
who have reached the highest measure of perfect purity of
love and faith, when a
man, completely transformed, ceaselessly unites with God, as His own, through
prayer and contemplation
(Superconsciousness,
p. 381;
Philokalia,
vol. Ill, p. 396).
Some passages from the writings of Clement of Alexandria (second century) are
extremely interesting.
Painting appears to take in the whole field of view in the scenes represented. But it
gives a false description of the view, according to
the rules of the art, employing the
signs that result from the incidence of the lines of vision. By this means, the higher
and the lower points in the view, and those between, are preserved; and some objects
seem to appear in the foreground, and
others in the background, and others to appear
in some other way, on the smooth and level surface. So also philosophers copy truth,
after the manner of painting.*
Clement of Alexandria points here to a very important aspect of
truth,
namely, to the
impossibility of expressing it in words,
and to the
conditional
character of all
philosophical systems and formulations. His idea is that dialectically truth is
represented only in perspective, i.e.
inevitably
in a distorted form.
How much time and labour would be saved, and how much useless suffering
humanity would
be spared, if it could understand the simple fact that
truth cannot be
expressed in our language.
Then men would cease to think that they possessed truth,
would cease to force other people to accept
their truth
at any cost. They would think
then that others may approach truth
from another side,
just as they themselves
approach it from their own side. How many arguments, how many religious conflicts,
how much coercion of the thought of others would be unnecessary
and impossible if
men realized that
no one
has the truth, but that all are seeking it, each in his own way.
The ideas of Clement of Alexandria about
God
are very interesting. They are very
similar to those of the Vedânta and especially to those of Chinese philosophers.
The discourse respecting God is most difficult to handle. For, since the first principle
of everything
is difficult to find out, the absolutely first and oldest principle, which is
the cause of all other things being and having been, is difficult to exhibit. For how can
that be expressed which has neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor
individual,
nor number;
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