Becoming “Equal to the Angels” (Luke 20:34-36) and the “Perfect Man” (Eph 4:13)
In a chapter from his Paidagogos that offers a close parallel to Strom. 4.8, Clement suggests a further Scriptural basis for this view:
Let us recognize also that the virtue of man and woman is the same.
For if the God of both is One, and there is one Tutor (παιδαγωγό?), one church, one virtue of selfcontrol, one modesty, a common food, marriage in common.... Those who possess life in common, grace in common, and salvation in common also have virtue in common, and thus a common training as well. Scripture says, “Those who belong to this world[1263] marry and are given in marriage” - for it is only in this world that the female is distinguished from the male - “but in that world” no longer (Luke 20:34-35). There the rewards of this common, holy life of wedlock are stored up not for male or female, but for the human being (άνθρωπο?) who has been freed from the desire that divides them (Paid. 1.4.10.13).[1264]The biblical text Clement cites, a saying of Jesus recorded in Luke 20:3436, reads in full:
Those who belong to this age [world] marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age [world] and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels (ΐσάγγελοι) and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.
It is probable that Clement also has this text in mind in Stromateis 4, chapter 8, and that his comparison of the earthly and heavenly churches means that the removal of distinctions promised in Gal 3:28 and Col 3:11 will be realized in the future life, when souls living in the divine realm will be “equal to the angels” who know no sexual division.[1265]
The argument in Strom. 4.8 continues with a list of virtues quoted from Col 3:12-15, which includes a command to “put on love, the bond of perfection” (66.2-4).
Clement then sums up his interpretation of the various Pauline texts he has adduced: “From these texts it has become clear to us what is the ‘unity that comes from faith’ (η έκ πίστεω$ ενότη$), and it has been shown who is ‘the perfect one’” (67.1). This is an allusion to another Pauline text, Eph 4:13, which describes the building up of the body of Christ “until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man (εις ανδρα τέλειον), to the measure of the stature of the fullness (του πληρώματος) of Christ.” Clement is particularly fond of this verse, and he discerns more than one meaning in it. In different contexts he interprets the phrase “unity of the faith” to mean: (1) the “one ancient and universal church” in contrast to divisive groups such as Marcionites and Valentinians; (2) the unity of the two testaments; (3) the final goal of the individual Christian, which is coming close to God in the “divinity of love.”[1266] In our context he takes the phrase “unity of faith” to mean the inclusion of all Christians - wives and servants as well as husbands and masters - in the quest for perfection. “Even in face of outright opposition, and even if their husbands or masters threaten them with punishment,” he argues, “women and servants are to cultivate the philosophical life.” If it is a noble thing for a man to die for the sake of virtue, Clement goes on to say, the same is true for a woman (67.4).H.