Clement of Alexandria

**Clement** , born **Titus Flavius Clemens** , better known as **Clement of Alexandria**, was a philosopher , writer and apologist for the Christian ancient greek of the second century and one of the Great Church Fathers of the Catholic Church.

## Biography

### Studies

Titus Flavius Clemens was born to non-Christian parents, presumably, in Athens around 150. In his youth he converted to Christianity, while from Athens he inherited that keen interest in philosophy, which would have made him one of the standard bearers of the dialogue between faith and reason in the Christian tradition.

After converting he traveled from place to place in search of ever better education, linking himself from time to time to different masters: first he followed some Greeks, one Ionic, another from Magna Graecia and a third from Syria; then he turned to an Egyptian, an Assyrian and a Jewish Christian from Palestine.

### Alexandria, Egypt and the school

Later, still young, he arrived in Alexandria, Egypt, seat of the Didaskaleion and symbol-city of that fruitful cross between different cultures that characterized the Hellenistic age. Here he met the philosopher San Panteno (whom he named a Sicilian bee ) and found peace in his teachings .

In this intellectually heterogeneous metropolis, various philosophical currents existed besides the Christian one, such as critics or eclectics , and Plato was the favorite among the ancient masters: Neoplatonism, the philosophy of the new pagan rebirth, had a prophet in Alexandria in the person of Ammonius Bag .

In Alexandria then lived for centuries a large community of Jews of the Diaspora, very enlightened for having breathed and assimilated the liberal atmosphere and the liberal culture of the city . Just in the years in which Jesus lived , Philo of Alexandria had become a sort of Jewish Plato.

Alexandria was, in short, one of the principal places in which to find that particular mixture of paganism and typically Hellenistic Christian speculation known as Gnosticism : the same Basilides and Valentino taught there. The nascent Christian faith found in this culturally stimulating breeding ground to grow, confronting all the most important currents of thought of the time.

In this environment, on an uncertain date, however in the second half of the second century , an oral school of education was born , an official institution of the Church where readings were made to which even pagan listeners could attend, while advanced teaching was given separately to Christians. Pantaenus was the first teacher whose name was handed down to us. Clement first assisted and then succeeded Panteno himself in the direction of the school (around 190 ), when that was designated by the patriarch Demetrius of Alexandria as a missionary in India .

Before the pontificate of Pope Victor I (188-199), however, Clement was already known as a Christian writer. Around this period he probably composed the Exhortation to the Greeks ( Protreptikos pros Ellenas ), the Dispositions ( Hypotyposeis ), the Miscellanea ( Stromateis ) and the Pedagogue ( Paidagogos ). Under his leadership, from 190 to 202 , the Alexandrian school became very famous; here the famous theologians were formed as Origen Adamantius , who succeeded him as the leader of the same.

### Exile in Cappadocia

According to Duchesne , Clement did not end his life in Alexandria, since the fifth persecution struck Egypt in the year 202 and the catechumens were especially affected.

The catechetical school of Alexandria suffered accordingly: in the first two books of Miscellanea , written in this period, one finds more than an allusion to the crisis. Clemente was forced to flee: shortly afterwards he was in Caesarea in Cappadocia , host of his friend and ancient student, Bishop Alexander. The persecution was still cruel even in that place and Clement fulfilled a ministry of love: after Alexander was imprisoned for his faith in Christ, Clement took care of the Church of Caesarea in his place, fortified the faithful, and it was even capable of making new conversions. These events were narrated in a letter written in 211 or 212 from Alexander to congratulate the Church of Antioch for the election of Asclepiades to lead the diocese . In another letter, written around 215 to Origen, Alexander however spoke of Clement as a dead person. In recent years Clemente also took part in the Easter controversy.

## The Clementine legacy

Clement had little influence in the development of theology , if not the personal one on the young Origen. His works were copied from time to time, as did for example St. Hippolytus of Rome in his Chronicon , Arnobius and Theodoret of Cirrus .

St. Jerome admired its culture, while Pope Gelasius I , in the catalog attributed to him, mentioned his works, but added that in no case should they be accepted . Fozio I of Constantinople in the Bibliotheca blamed a series of errors deduced from his writings, but showed a benevolent inclination towards Clement, who, in history, had been reduced by the grandeur of his pupil and successor Origen.

Until the seventeenth century Clemente was venerated as a saint , his name was mentioned in martyrology , and his feast was on December 4th . But when the Roman Martyrology was reformed by Pope Clement VIII , on the advice of Cardinal Cesare Baronio , his name was removed from the calendar. Pope Benedict XIV ratified his predecessor's decision that Clement's life was little known, that he never had a public cult within the Church and that some of his doctrines were, if not incorrect, at least suspect.

In more recent times the favor towards Clemente has increased, either because of its fascinating literary style, or because of its attractive candor, or because of the courageous spirit that made him a pioneer of theology or his inclination towards philosophical speculation . His spirit was already modern; furthermore, for the time, he was unusually cultured: he had a complete knowledge of the entire biblical and Christian literature, both orthodox and heretical works; he was versed in letters and had an excellent knowledge of the pagan poets and philosophers, whom he loved to quote and of which he preserved a large number of fragments of lost works. The amount of information and quotations collected and assembled in his works is an exceptional event for antiquity, although it is not unlikely that he used florilegias (anthologies) from which he drew high quality passages.

Pope Benedict XVI , in the general audience of April 18, 2007 , made it a topic of his catechesis on the characters of the nascent church, calling him a saint and praising him.

## The doctrine

Clement's doctrine has been the subject of bitter disputes. In the first place, there is an objective technical difficulty in studying the Clementine doctrine, since he never sought an orderly exposition in his works. We therefore follow the line of the catechesis of Benedict XVI.

### The real gnosis

The Pope in his homily traces its character:

As for content, currently the prevailing view is aligned on the positions Sulpician Joseph Tixeront , according to which the rules of the faith of Clement were Orthodox; he received the authority of the traditions of the Church and, first of all, he was a Christian who accepted ecclesiastical law ; however, Clemente also tried to remain a philosopher, and brought speculation about the reason for life into religious matters . There are few , he said, those who, having made loot of the treasures of the Egyptians, make them furnishings for the Tabernacle .

He set himself, therefore, to use philosophy as a tool to transform faith into science, and revelation into theology. The Gnostics had already claimed to possess the science of faith, but were, rather, mere rationalists or pure dreamers; Clement had nothing but faith as the basis for his speculations. For this reason he cannot be accused of having voluntarily developed unorthodox positions.

He was cautious in approaching the Bible to develop his doctrine. He had read all the books of the New Testament except for the Second Letter of Peter and the Third Letter of John. Indeed , says Tixeront, his studies on the primitive form of the Apostolic scriptures are of the highest value .

However the French historian did not take into account that Clement interpreted the Holy Scriptures according to the style of Philo, ready to find allegories everywhere. The facts narrated in the Old Testament thus became purely symbolic (however, this broad freedom was not permitted with the New Testament).

The special interest that Clement cultivated led him to insist on the difference between the faith of the ordinary Christian and the science of the perfect, so much so that his teachings on this point are precisely his main characteristic.

### the Perfect Christian

Benedict XVI's catechesis continues:

The Christian who strives for perfection has a particular understanding of the great mysteries of man, of nature, of virtue, concepts that the simplest believer accepts without understanding. To some it seemed that Clement exaggerated the moral value of religious knowledge; it must however be remembered that he did not praise mere knowledge as an end in itself, but that which turns into love.

He celebrated Christian perfection: the perfect Christian , the true gnostic whom Clement loved to describe, was to lead a life of absolute devotion; love in his heart should have encouraged him to live in an ever closer union with God through prayer, to work for the conversion of souls, to love his enemies and even to endure martyrdom itself; all this in a condition of unalterable calm, a factor which very closely brings this aspect of Clement's thought into Stoicism . In this way, in fact, he did not really describe the Christian, with his feelings and desires under the due control, but the stoic ideal of ataraxia , which has suppressed feelings.

Clement was also a precursor of the Trinitarian controversy : according to his teaching in fact, in the Divinity there are three Terms , and the Second Term of the Trinity is the Word. Photius believed that Clement professed a multiplicity of Verbs whereas, in reality, Clement only sketched a distinction between the immanent attribute of the divine Father's intelligence and the Word made Person who was the Son, eternally generated and in possession of all the attributes of the Father: together they are one God.

Up to this point, in fact, this notion of unity proposed by Clemente seemed to approach Modalism , or even the opposite error of Subordinationism . However Clement should be judged not by a sentence read here or there, but by the totality of his teachings: of the Holy Spirit he did not speak much, but when he referred to the third Person of the Trinity he relied strictly on what was reported by the Bible. He was also a firm believer in the dual nature of Christ, the Man-God who benefits us both as God and as a man. Clement evidently saw Christ as a Person (the Word). Photius also accused him of Docetism.

### Christianity as a true philosophy

In the first step above, the catechesis of Benedict XVI defined the knowledge of the Truth, which is Jesus Christ the Word of God , the "true gnosis".

For these reasons Clement is considered the first Christian Gnostic . For Clemente it was an essential problem to show how Christianity is superior to any philosophy and tried to explain that in the Christian faith it is contained the best that philosophy had produced before Christ. Distinguishing between the function carried out by the philosophy before Christ and that which he should have performed after him, he emphasized how, through philosophy, it was possible to approach the truth, which however is only completed through revelation . Like St. Justin the martyr , Clement identified in all men the presence of a divine spark that allows access to faith.

Christianity is therefore not the negation, but the completion of the philosophical tradition: it does not have the sectarian character of the philosophical schools of the various Gnostic groups that have followed one another in the history of thought: for Clement the revelation is not the prerogative of a minority of pseudo-elect , but in it God calls everyone to himself without distinction.

The environment in which this philosopher grew, in many respects similar to that of contemporary Western culture, makes his thought a still current tool to convince Gnostics and free thinkers of the goodness of the message of Jesus Christ.

## External Links

* Francis Havey , Clemente de Alexandria , em Charles George Herbermann (ed.), Enciclopédia Católica , 15 volumes, Robert Appleton Company, Nova Iorque 1907 - 1914 , vol. IV, 1908 ,on-lin
* Opera omnia , Migne e Lexicon Proprium online

## Bibliography

* (EN) Peter Jeffrey, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, Yale University Press, 2007
* (FR) Louis Duchesne, Ancient History of the Church, vol. I, Ed. From Boccard, Paris, 1923, page 334 sec.

## Notes

1. ↑ Some critics doubt that Clement distinguished the Terms as People, but instead it is proved by a careful reading of his works.

## References

1. ↑ Louis Duchesne , op.cit. , pagg. 334 sec.
2. ↑ Catechesis of Pope Benedict XVI , General Audience, Wednesday 18 April 2007