The Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
Clemens Romanus (Clement of Rome)
Clement of Rome. The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 1. Lake, Kirsopp, editor. London: William Heinemann Ltd.; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912.
Let us then wait for the kingdom of God, from[*](Interpretation of a Saying of the Lord) hour to hour, in love and righteousness, seeing that we know not the day of the appearing of God.
For when the Lord himself was asked by someone when his kingdom would come, he said: When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female neither male nor female.[*](The same saying, or very nearly so, is quoted from Cassianus by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iii. 13), and the latter states that it is from the Gospel of the Egyptians. But the whole question has been complicated by the discovery of Grenfell and Hunt’s Lost Gospel (Oxyrhynchus papyri, vol. iv. pp. 22 ff.), which seems to refer to a similar saying, and the problem of the mutual relations between these documents is still unsolved.)
Now the two are one when we speak with one another in truth, and there is but one soul in two bodies without dissimulation.
And by the outside as the inside he means this, that the inside is the soul, and the outside is the body. Therefore, just as your body is visible, so let your soul be apparent in your good works.
And by the male with the female neither male nor female he means this, that when a brother sees a sister he should have no
thought of her as female, nor she of him as male.[*](Or, if αὑτοῦ be read instead of αὐτοῦ, nor have any thought of himself as male.)When you do this, he says, the kingdom of my Father will come.