Clement of Alexandria (153-217)

Fragments

Translated by William Wilson

Collection XI

Fragment 13

“And if we have known Christ after the flesh.”

And so far, he says, no one any longer lives after the flesh. For that is not life, but death. For Christ also, that He might show this, ceased to live after the flesh. How? Not by putting off the body! Far be it! For with it as His own He shall come, the Judge of all. But by divesting Himself of physical affections, such as hunger, and thirst, and sleep, and weariness. For now He has a body incapable of suffering and of injury.

As “after the flesh” in our case is being in the midst of sins, and being out of them is to be “not after the flesh”; so also after the flesh, in the case of Christ, was His subjection to natural affections, and not to be subject to them was not to be “after the flesh.” “But,” he says, “as He was released, so also are we.” Let there be no longer, he says, subjection to the influences of the flesh. Thus Clement, the fourth book of the Hypotyposes.

Collection XI Fragment 12

Collection XI Fragment 14