Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XVII/Chapter 18

by Anonymous

Chapter XVIII.—The Nature of Revelation.

“Thus to me also was the Son revealed by the Father.  Wherefore I know what is the meaning of revelation, having learned it in my own case.  For at the very time when the Lord said, ‘Who do they say that I am?’^[1] and when I heard one saying one thing of Him, and another another, it came into my heart to say (and I know not, therefore, how I said it), ‘Thou art the Son of the living God.’^[2]  But He, pronouncing me blessed, pointed out to me that it was the Father who had revealed it to me; and from this time I learned that revelation is knowledge gained without instruction, and without apparition and dreams.  And this is indeed the case.  For in the soul^[3] which has been placed in us by^[4] God, there is all the truth; but it is covered and revealed by the hand of God, who works so far as each one through his knowledge deserves.^[5]  But the declaration of anything by means of apparitions and dreams from without is a proof, not that it comes from revelation, but from wrath.  Finally, then, it is written in the law, that God, being angry, said to Aaron and Miriam,^[6] ‘If a prophet arise from amongst you, I shall make myself known to him through visions and dreams, but not so as to my servant Moses; because I shall speak to him in an outward appearance, and not through dreams, just as one will speak to his own friend.’  You see how the statements of wrath are made through visions and dreams, but the statements to a friend are made face to face, in outward appearance, and not through riddles and visions and dreams, as to an enemy.

Footnotes

1. Matt. xvi. 13.
2. Matt. xvi. 16.
3. This word is not in the text.  Schliemann proposed the word “heart.”  Possibly “breath” or “spirit” may be the lost word.  See above.
4. “By” should properly be “from.”
5. Lit., “who produces according to the merit of each one knowing.”  Cotelerius translated, “who, knowing the merit of each man, does to him according to it.”  The idea seems to be, that God uncovers the truth hidden in the soul to each man according to his deserts.
6. Num. xii. 6, 7; Ex. xxxiii. 11.