For I want, I want to impart to you this grace, bestowing on you the perfect boon of immortality; and I confer on you both the Word and the knowledge of God, My complete self. This am I, this God wills, this is symphony, this the harmony of the Father, this is the Son, this is Christ, this the Word of God, the arm of the Lord, the power of the universe, the will of the Father; of which things there were images of old, but not all adequate. I desire to restore you according to the original model, that ye may become also like Me. I anoint you with the ungent of faith, by which you throw off corruption, and show you the naked form of righteousness (καὶ γυμνὸν δικαιοσύνης) by which you ascend to God. [Exhort. 121]
While there is no specific reference to the initiate also being naked, the context is clearly baptism and the early Christian rite was certainly performed with the participants naked.
We have already seen in our study of the nudus, nudum concept in Jerome and the monastic tradition in the West that motto is rooted in a restoration of Eden. This idea is also clearly present here in the concluding words of the Exhortation and one can make a very persuasive case that Clement is Jerome's ultimate source for the conception, perhaps by way of the 'naked Logos' of Origen.
In short, what Clement is really saying when you think about it, is that baptism restores the state of grace lost with Adam's fall. This is clearly achieved by Jesus (or his ecclesiastic representative) exposing his nakedness while the already naked initiate enters the water. There is an underlying mystic concept here that we haven't fully delineated yet but this is coming. We can be certain that it explains why Jesus wasn't naked when he was walking around on the earth the rest of the time of his ministry.
It is enough however to also demonstrate to our readership that if we look carefully at what follows in the Exhortation that it is impossible not to also be aware of the 'loving God' metaphor of LGM 1 and the underlying context of Mark 10:17 - 31 as with the Latin preservation of the nudus, nudum concept:
Let us haste, let us run, my fellowmen--us, who are God-loving and God-like images of the Word. Let us haste, let us run, let us take His yoke, let us receive, to conduct us to immortality, the good charioteer of men. Let us love Christ ... Let us aspire, then, after what is good; let us become God-loving men, and obtain the greatest of all things which are incapable of being harmed--God and life. Our helper is the Word; let us put confidence in Him; and never let us be visited with such a craving for silver and gold, and glory, as for the Word of truth Himself. For it will not, it will not be pleasing to God Himself if we value least those things which are worth most, and hold in the highest estimation the manifest enormities and the utter impiety of folly, and ignorance, and thoughtlessness, and idolatry ... we must with all our might follow God, and in the exercise of wisdom regard all things to be, as they are, His; and besides, having learned that we are the most excellent of His possessions, let us commit ourselves to God, loving the Lord God, and regarding this as our business all our life long. And if what belongs to friends be reckoned common property, and man be the friend of God-for through the mediation of the Word has he been made the friend of God--then accordingly all things become man's, because all things are God's, and the common property of both the friends, God and man. [Exhort. 122]
I think that it is safe to say that there is enough here to argue that Clement is the ultimate source of the nudus, nudum material. Of course, this understanding would have been impossible to untangle if Morton Smith hadn't found the Mar Saba document. The references are deliberately obscure on Clement's part ...
