And one there is who is good! His free act of speaking is the manifestation of the son. And through him alone can a heart become pure, when every evil spirit has been put out of the heart. For the many spirits dwelling in the heart do not permit it to become pure: rather, each of them performs its own acts, violating it in various ways with improper desires. And in my opinion the heart experiences something like what happens in a caravansary. For the latter is full of holes and dug up and often filled with dung, because while they are there, people live in an utterly vulgar way and take no forethought for the property since it belongs to someone else. Just so, a heart too is impure by being the habitation of many demons, until it experiences forethought. But when the father, who alone is good, visits the heart, he makes it holy and fills it with light. And so a person who has such a heart is called blessed, for that person will see god.
Excerpted from Bentley Layton in The Gnostic Scriptures (Doubleday 1987), p. 245. The text comes from Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.114.3-6.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Anonymous comments or comments containaing racist, homophobic, misogynistic or ad hominem language will not be published.