Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 1

It seems that the greatest of all lessons is to know oneself; for if someone comes to know himself, he will also know God, and knowing God, he will be made like God—not by wearing gold or walking in fancy shoes, but by doing good and needing the very least, since only God is without need. He delights most of all when He sees us being purified in the adornment of the mind, and then also in the body, clothed with the pure garment of self-control and modesty. Because the soul has a threefold nature, the rational part—what we call the logical faculty—is the inner man, the ruler of this visible man, and this inner man is guided by another: God. The passionate part, being beast-like, dwells near madness. The desiring part is multiform, more varied than the sea-demon Proteus, shifting into one shape after another, drawn toward adulteries, lusts, and corruptions. At one moment it becomes a noble lion, still wearing its beauty, its mane proclaiming its kind; then it becomes a dragon or a leopard or a great boar; love of beauty has fallen into shamelessness. The man no longer appears as a strong beast, but turns into liquid water and a tall tree; passions pour out, pleasures spill, beauty withers, and it drops from its petal to the ground more quickly than a flower when the erotic blasts of insolence blow upon it, withering in corruption before the afternoon arrives. For desire does and shapes and pretends all things, so that it may hide the true man. But the man who has the Word dwelling with him does not change; he is not reshaped; he bears the form of the Word, is made like God, is beautiful—not adorned with beauty. Beauty is the true reality, for God is that reality; and that man becomes God because he wills what God wills. Heraclitus spoke rightly: 'Men are gods, gods are men,' a revealed mystery: God in man, and man God, and the will of the Father carried out by the Mediator; for the Word is the common Mediator of both, Son of God and Savior of men, servant of God and Pedagogue of men (John 1:14; 1 Timothy 2:5).

Since the flesh is a slave, as Paul also testifies, how can anyone reasonably adorn the servant like a leader? For the apostle says that the fleshly nature is the form of a slave, speaking of the Lord: 'He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave' (Philippians 2:7)—he calls the outer man a slave before the Lord became a slave and bore flesh. But the sympathetic God Himself freed the flesh from corruption and from the bitter, death-bearing slavery, and having removed corruption, He clothed it with incorruptibility, the adornment of immortality, making this flesh holy and placing upon it the ornament of eternity. There is also another beauty of human beings: love. 'For love,' according to the apostle, 'is patient, is kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not puffed up' (1 Corinthians 13:4). Boasting is the adornment of excess and uselessness, carrying that emphasis. Therefore he adds, 'it does not behave shamefully' (1 Corinthians 13:5); for what is foreign and contrary to nature is shameful. The artificial is foreign, which he explains clearly by saying, 'it does not seek what is not its own' (1 Corinthians 13:5); for truth calls its own what belongs to it, but love of beauty seeks what is foreign, existing outside God and the Word and love. And the Spirit testifies through Isaiah that the Lord Himself became unattractive in appearance: 'We saw Him, and He had no form or beauty, but His appearance was without honor, despised by men' (Isaiah 53:2-3). And who is better than the Lord? Yet it was not the imaginary beauty of the flesh, but the true beauty of both soul and body that He displayed—the beneficial beauty of the soul and the immortal beauty of the flesh.