Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 6

We are free to set aside unnecessary defenses against those who love to find fault. We are neither children nor infants clinging to a childish, easily dismissed teaching, as those who claim superior knowledge have slandered us. On the contrary, having been reborn, we have immediately received the perfect goal toward which we press. We have been enlightened, and enlightenment is nothing other than knowing God. Therefore, the one who has known the perfect is not imperfect. Do not, however, seize on my words as a claim that I myself have fully known God. This is how the Word chose to speak—and the Word is free. Immediately upon the Lord's baptism, a voice from heaven bore witness: 'You are my beloved Son; today I have begotten you' (Matthew 3:17). Let us then learn from the wise: on the day he was reborn, was Christ already perfect, or—which is absurd—imperfect? If he were imperfect, he would need to learn something. But it is unthinkable that God would need to learn even a single thing. No one is greater than the Word, nor can anyone be a teacher of the only Teacher. Will they not therefore be forced to confess that the Word, perfect from the perfect Father, was reborn perfectly according to the divine plan? And if he was perfect, why was the perfect one baptized? 'To fulfill the human promise,' they say. Very well; then when he was baptized by John, did he become perfect? Clearly he did. So he learned nothing further? No, he did not. He is perfected by the bath alone and sanctified by the Spirit's descent. That is how it stands. The same sequence happens to us, for whom the Lord has become the guarantee: baptized, we are enlightened; enlightened, we are adopted as sons; adopted, we are perfected; perfected, we are made immortal. 'I said: You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.' This work bears many names: gift, enlightenment, perfection, bath. It is a bath because through it we wash away our sins; a gift because through it the penalties due for our sins are remitted; enlightenment because through it that holy, saving light is beheld—that is, through it we perceive the divine. Perfection, we say, is what lacks nothing. What could still be lacking to the one who has known God? It is also absurd to call God's gift imperfect; being perfect, he gives perfect gifts. Just as all things come into being the moment he commands, so when he gives, it is only necessary for him to will that the gift be fulfilled. The future is anticipated by the power of his will. And the removal of evils is the beginning of salvation. Only those who have first grasped the boundaries of life are already perfect; and we live, having already been separated from death. Salvation, therefore, is to follow Christ. 'For what has come into being in him is life.' 'Amen, amen, I say to you: whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life' (John 5:24). Thus to believe and to be reborn is perfection in life; for God is never weak. Just as his will is a work—and that work is called the world—so his will for humanity is salvation, and that salvation is called the church. He knows those he has called, and those he has called he has saved; he has called and saved at the same time. 'For you yourselves are taught by God,' the apostle says. It is not right, then, for us to suppose that what he teaches is imperfect. The lesson is eternal salvation from the eternal Savior, to whom be glory forever. Amen. And the one who has been reborn—true to the name—having been enlightened, is immediately freed from darkness and receives the light from that moment. Just as those who shake off sleep are instantly awake from within, or rather as those who try to remove the film from their eyes do not supply light from outside (for they do not possess it), but by removing the obstacle from their sight they leave the pupil free, so also the baptized, wiping away the sins that overshadowed them like a cloud by the divine Spirit, possess a free, unobstructed, radiant eye of the Spirit. By that eye alone we behold the divine, the Holy Spirit having entered us from heaven. This is the blend of eternal light, able to see the eternal light. For like is friendly to like, and the holy is friendly to the one from whom the holy comes—who is properly called Light. 'For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.' From this I conclude that man was called 'light' by the ancients.