Clement of Alexandria

“ Clement had been their disciple; but now, as the disciple of Christ, he was to exert a power over men and manners, of which they never dreamed.
Alexandria becomes the brain of Christendom: its heart was yet beating at Antioch, but the West was still receptive only, its hands and arms stretched forth towards the sunrise for further enlightenment. From the East it had obtained the Scriptures and their authentication, and from the same source was deriving the canons, the liturgies, and the creed of Christendom. The universal language of Christians is Greek. ”

“ The latest date to which he brings down his chronology in the first book is the death of Commodus, which happened in A.D. 192; from which Eusebius [6] concludes that he wrote this work during the reign of Severus, who ascended the imperial throne in A.D. 193, and reigned till A.D. 211. It is likely that the whole was composed ere Clement quitted Alexandria in A.D. 202. The publication of the Pædagogus preceded by a short time that of the Stromata; and the Cohortatio was written a short time before the Pædagogus, as is clear from statements made by Clement himself. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria was contemporary with Tertullian. Like him, he was a Gentile by birth; but we know nothing of the circumstances connected with his conversion. In early times Alexandria was one of the great marts of literature and science; its citizens were noted for their intellectual culture; and, when a Church was formed there, learned men began to pass over to the new religion in considerable numbers. ”

“ But it is quite plain that, in such a state of society, there would not be wanting many of his class and temperament who, in Clement's time, as well as fifty years before, were in search of the true philosophy. And we must not forget that in Alexandria there were actually thousands of well-born, intellectual young men from every part of the Roman empire. ”

“ It was a question that was being debated and settled at Antioch, at Rome, and at Athens, no less than at Alexandria; but at Alexandria it was Clement who answered it. "We believe your good tidings," they said; "but tell us, must we change our lives wholly and entirely? Is everything that we have been doing so far, and our fathers have been doing before us, miserably and radically wrong?" ”

“ John xi. 23.
[166] Bishop Kaye (Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alexandria, p. 48) translates, “receiving from man that which made man (that on account of which man was made) .” But it seems more likely that Clement refers to the ideal man in the divine mind, whom he identifies elsewhere with the Logos, the ἅνθρωπος ὰπαθής, of whom man was the image. The reader will notice that Clement speaks of man as existing in the divine mind before his creation, and creation is represented by God’s seeing what He had previously within Him merely as a hidden power. ”

“ On this subject there is an admirable sentiment in Clement of Alexandria, who, in speaking of a good man, says that "he will do many things for the benefit of his neighbour alone, which he would not otherwise have undertaken." ”

“ It sounds like the commencement of a children's retreat in one of our modern cities to hear Clement proclaim so anxiously that the teacher and model of men is no other than Jesus, and that we must all become children, and go and listen to him and study him; yet it is a sentence that must have spoken to the very inmost hearts of all who had a thought or care for their souls in Alexandria; and one can perceive, in the terms used in the original Greek, a conscious adaptation of epithets to meet more than one Platonic difficulty. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto, were teachers in those schools, and the Acts of the Martyrs tell us that Catharine, the learned virgin-martyr, was an Alexandrian. Hippolytus was a famous astronomer and arithmetician. Clement used poetry, philosophy, science, eloquence, and even satire, in the interests of religion. Origen became the master of S. Gregory Thaumaturgus and his brother [pg 081] Athenodorus. “It was now recognized that Christians were men who could think and reason with other men, ... and of whom a university city need not be ashamed. ”

“ It too evolved a system which, though not logical, paid the lip service to logic that a great city demands, and interspersed bridges of argument among the flights of faith. All Greek thinkers, except Socrates, had done the same, so that, on its intellectual side, the new religion did not break with the past; it consisted of an assertion in a philosophic dress, and Clement of Alexandria, its first theologian, used methods that were familiar to Philo two hundred years before. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria.656
"The work of Irenæus still leaves it undecided whether the form of the world's literature, as found in the Christian Church, [pg 320] is destined only to remain a weapon to combat its enemies, or is to become an instrument of peaceful labour within its own territory." With these words Overbeck has introduced his examination of Clement of Alexandria's great masterpiece from the standpoint of the historian of literature. They may be also applied to the history of theology. ”

“ The early Christian writers copied each other to an extent that we should hardly be prepared for. Thus, for instance, there is a string of quotations in the first Epistle of Clement of Rome (cc. xiv, xv) —Ps. xxxvii. 36-38; Is. xxix. 13; Ps. lxii. 4, lxxviii. 36, 37, xxxi, 19, xii. 3-6; and these very quotations in the same order reappear in the Alexandrine Clement (Strom. iv. 6) . Clement of Alexandria is indeed fond of copying his Roman namesake, and does so without acknowledgment. Tertullian and Epiphanius in like manner drew largely from the works of Irenaeus. ”

“ It must not, however, be supposed that the Christian school of Alexandria was wholly, or even chiefly, employed in controversy with the schools of the heathen. The first care of the Church was, as at all times, the household of the faith: a care, however, in the fulfilment of which there is less that strikes as novel or interesting at first sight than in that remarkable aggressive movement of which it has been our object to give some idea. But even in the Church's household working there is much that is both instructive and interesting, as we get a glimpse of it in Clement of Alexandria. ”

“ He then remarks that one tradition assigned it to Clement of Rome, another to Luke. Eusebius himself, in agreement with the Alexandrians (who, with the exception of Origen, unanimously accept the Pauline authorship) , looks upon it as a work of Paul, but accepts Clement of Alexandria’s theory that it was written in Hebrew, and thinks it probable that Clement of Rome was its translator (see chap. 38, below) . In the Western Church, where the epistle was known very early (e.g. Clement of Rome uses it freely) , it is not connected with Paul until the fourth century. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria (fl. c. 200 a.d.) in his Hypotoposes, according to the testimony of Eusebius, H. E., vi., 14, gave “abridged accounts of all the canonical Scriptures, not even omitting those that are disputed, I mean the book of Jude and the other general epistles. ”

“ The early Church has left us a treatise showing how thoroughly it recognised its duty in this respect. The "Pædagogue" or the "Instructor" of Clement of Alexandria is a handbook of the social life of the early Christians, teaching them what to do and wear and say under every conceivable circumstance. Clement thinks nothing too trivial for the rule of Christian principle, prescribing the kind of clothes, shoes, and beds which should be used. He may seem at times to border on the ludicrous in his minuteness; but then we cannot realise how profoundly paganism had corrupted human life and manners. ”

“ It was joined by the parallel tendency among professors of philosophy. It soon took a new form. Hitherto those who followed counsels of perfection lived in ordinary society, undistinguished except by their conduct from their fellow-men. The ideal “Gnostic” of Clement of Alexandria takes his part in ordinary human affairs, “acting the drama of life which God has given him to play, knowing both what is to be done and what is to be endured.” ”

“ The only possible sources of evidence, apart from the discovery of fresh MSS., are the versions, and they do not point to existence in the 2nd or 3rd century of texts agreeing with the great uncials. It is also possible to argue, as WH did, on the same side, that the purest form of text was preserved in Alexandria, from which the oldest uncials are directly or indirectly derived, but this argument has been weakened if not finally disposed of by the evidence of Clement of Alexandria. ”

“ The subject chosen for the concursus of 1854, by the Leipsic Faculty of Theology, was the exposition of the doctrine of Clement of Alexandria on the Word. This theme made upon me a most vivid impression. At once, and with great joy, I resolved to become a candidate. I will now state the motives of this resolve. The conflicting theological systems which I had observed, both in books and in oral instructions, occasioned me extreme torture. I was too independent to follow the example of so many others by attaching myself blindly to a party ”

“ About himself, too, where, pluming himself on his erudition, he says, “I have roamed over the most ground of any man of my time, investigating the most remote parts. I have seen the most skies and lands, and I have heard of learned men in very great numbers. And in composition no one has surpassed me; in demonstration, not even those among the Egyptians who are called Arpenodaptæ, with all of whom I lived in exile up to eighty years.” For he went to Babylon, and Persis, and Egypt, to learn from the Magi and the priests. ”

“ Economizing Clement of Alexandria, he advances to an assured position and form of assault. He persistently impeaches Jove himself in a daring confidence that men will feel his terrible charges to be true, and that the victory over heathenism is more than half gained already. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria is the next writer who claims our attention (fl. 194) . Though his works abound with citations from Scripture, on the whole not too carefully made (“in adducendis N. T. locis creber est et castus,” is rather too high praise, Mill, Proleg. § 627) , the most has not yet been made of the information he supplies. He too complains of those who tamper with (or metaphrase) the Gospels for their own sinister ends, and affords us one specimen of their evil diligence275. His pupil Origen's [185-253] is the highest name among the critics and expositors of the early Church ”

“ Therefore we can, as the Christian philosophers of Alexandria did, rejoice over every truth which their heathen adversaries beheld, and attribute them, as Clement does, to the highest source, to the inspiration of the one and universal Logos. With Clement, philosophy is only hurtful when it is untrue to itself, and philosophy falsely so called; true philosophy is an image of the truth, a divine gift bestowed on the Greeks. ”

“ He continued to teach with great distinction till A.D. 202, when the persecution under Severus compelled him to retire from Alexandria. In the beginning of the reign of Caracalla we find him at Jerusalem, even then a great resort of Christian, and especially clerical, pilgrims. We also hear of him travelling to Antioch, furnished with a letter of recommendation by Alexander bishop of Jerusalem. The close of his career [12] is covered with obscurity. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria, and many other learned men, and succeeded to him, as Catechist or teacher, in the celebrated school of that city. Few men, from a variety of causes, have left behind them a greater name, applauded and opposed, admired and persecuted. His works, as we have them, are imperfect; as written, they were almost without number. Origen died about the year 254. ↑ Except a few fragments of the original Greek, only a Latin translation of these works of Origen remains. ↑ He was bishop of Carthage, and died a martyr in the year 258. ”

“ He is named an apostle and his work was reckoned as canonical by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 17. 105) , and as late as the time of Eusebius (H.E. iii. 16) it was still read in some of the churches. Critical editions have been published by Gebhardt and Harnack, Patr. Apost. Op., 1876, and in the smaller form in 1900, Lightfoot2, 1890, Funk2, 1901. The Syriac version has been edited by Kennet, Epp. of St Clement to the Corinthians in Syriac, 1899, and the Old Latin version by Morin, S. Clementis Romani ad Corinthios epistulae versio Latina antiquissima, 1894. ”

“ From Clement the Presbyter of Alexandria’s Book Against Judaizers.
Solomon the son of David, in the books styled “The Reigns of the Kings,” comprehending not only that the structure of the true temple was celestial and spiritual, but had also a reference to the flesh, which He who was both the son and Lord of David was to build up, both for His own presence, where, as a living image, He resolved to make His shrine, and for the church that was to rise up through the union of faith, says expressly, “Will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth?” ”

“ He spent a long time at Alexandria, just before Clement became famous, studying under Heraclian, consulting the immortal Hippocrates, and profiting by the celebrated dissecting-rooms of the Museum, in which, unless they are belied, the interests of science were so paramount that they used to dissect—not live horses; but living slaves. ”