Appendix 5: Clement of Alexandria Clement of Alexandria is sometimes quoted, by pro-names groups, as saying that he saw copies of the original NT written in Hebrew. Is he a credible witness?
"Titus Flavius Clemens, the illustrious head of the Catechetical School at Alexandria at the close of the second century, was originally a pagan philosopher. The date of his birth is unknown. It is also uncertain whether Alexandria or Athens was his birthplace. [ Epiph., Haer., xxxii. 6. ]"
(Source: http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-49.htm#TopOfPage).After sampling the major philosophies of Greece, the Middle-East and Egypt, he settled on "Christianity" as taught by Pantaenus in an Egyptian school of cathechism where he later became dean. He is best known for his attempts to harmonize Greek philosophy with Christianity, and for being the teacher of Origen.
Traditional "Christian" scholars say that Clement's travels were not to sample philosophy but to be taught by "Christian" teachers. They argue that he was not harmonizing pagan philosophy with Christianity, but that he showed the advantage of Christianity over pagan philosophy. What they do agree upon is that Clement helped establish what is now known as the Catholic Church. Perhaps this fact is why some argue against a pagan influence through Clement's work. Christian Realism and Christian Platonism both trace their roots to Clement."After Justin and Irenaeus, he is to be reckoned the founder of Christian literature; and
it is noteworthy how sublimely he begins to treat Paganism as a creed outworn, to be dismissed with contempt, rather than seriously wrestled with any longer.""For with a celerity unsurpassable, and a benevolence to which we have ready access," says Clement, "the Divine Power hath filled the universe with the seed of salvation." Socrates and Plato had talked sublimely four hundred years before; but Lust and Murder were yet the gods of Greece, and men and women were like what they worshiped. 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. To a pagan emperor who had outgrown the ideas of Nero's time, it was no longer Judaism; but it was not less an Oriental superstition, essentially Greek in its features and its dress. "All the churches of the West," says the historian of Latin Christianity [ Milman, vol. I. pp. 28, 29, condensed.] "were Greek religious colonies. Their language was Greek, their organization Greek, their writers Greek, their Scriptures and their ritual were Greek. Through Greek, the communications of the churches of the West were constantly kept up with the East. ... Thus the Church at Rome was but one of a confederation of Greek religious republics rounded by Christianity." Now this confederation was the Holy Catholic Church.
(Source: http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-49.htm#TopOfPage).(Emphasis ours.)"Date of birth unknown; died about the year 215. St. Clement was an early Greek theologian and head of the catechetical school of Alexandria. Athens is given as the starting-point of his journeyings, and was probably his birthplace. He . . . travelled from place to place in search of higher instruction, attaching himself successively to different masters: to a Greek of Ionia, to another of Magna Graecia, to a third of Coele-Syria, after all of whom he addressed himself in turn to an Egyptian, an Assyrian, and a converted Palestinian Jew.
At last he met Pantaenus in Alexandria, and in his teaching "found rest".
(Note: Sources disagree over his first encounter with Christianity, but it appears that he was "converted" by Pantaenus.)
The place itself was well chosen. It was natural that Christian speculation should have a home at Alexandria. This great city was at the time a centre of culture as well as of trade. A great university had grown up under the long-continued patronage of the State. The intellectual temper was broad and tolerant, as became a city where so many races mingled. The philosophers were critics or eclectics, and Plato was the most favoured of the old masters. Neo-Platonism, the philosophy of the new pagan renaissance, had a prophet at Alexandria in the person of Ammonius Saccas. The Jews, too, who were there in very large numbers breathed its liberal atmosphere, and had assimilated secular culture. They there formed the most enlightened colony of the Dispersion. Having lost the use of Hebrew, they found it necessary to translate the Scriptures into the more familiar Greek. Philo, their foremost thinker, became a sort of Jewish Plato. Alexandria was, in addition, one of the chief seats of that peculiar mixed pagan and Christian speculation known as Gnosticism. Basilides and Valentinus taught there. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, to find some of the Christians affected in turn by the scientific spirit. At an uncertain date, in the latter half of the second century, "a school of oral instruction" was founded. Lectures were given to which pagan hearers were admitted, and advanced teaching to Christians separately. It was an official institution of the Church. Pantaenus is the earliest teacher whose name has been preserved. Clement first assisted and then succeeded Pantaenus in the direction of the school, about AD 190. He was already known as a Christian writer before the days of Pope Victor (188-199).
Clement has had no notable influence on the course of theology beyond his personal influence on the young Origen."
(Source: Encarta Online.) (Emphasis ours.)
Pantaenus is a shadowy figure. He was obviously a great teacher and a magnetic personality. Of his teacher, St. Pantaenus, he states, "When I came upon the last (teacher), he was the first in power, having pursued him out concealed in Egypt, I found rest. He, the true, the Sicilian bee gathering the spoil of the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, engendered in the souls of hearers a deathless element of knowledge."
Why has St. Clement been obscured for a long time?
Perhaps for the following reasons:
1. His close relationship with his disciple Origen, who was considered a
heretic, and almost all Origen's Greek writings have been lost.2. The confusion between him and his namesake St. Clement of Rome.
3. The obscurity of the theological system of St. Clement of Alexandria.
(Source: http://www.saintmark.com/topics/patrology/schoolofalex/IV-StClement/chapter1.html)
Most of Clement's writings have been lost. One of the few works remaining is the Stromata.
The full title of the Stromata, according to Eusebius and Photius, was . . . -"Titus Flavius Clement's miscellaneous collections of speculative (gnostic) notes bearing upon the true philosophy." The aim of the work, in accordance with this title, is, in opposition to Gnosticism, to furnish the materials for the construction of a true gnosis, a Christian philosophy, on the basis of faith, and to lead on to this higher knowledge those who, by the discipline of the Paedagogus, had been trained for it. The work consisted originally of eight books. The eighth book is lost; that which appears under this name has plainly no connection with the rest of the Stromata. Various accounts have been given of the meaning of the distinctive word in the title (Strwmateu/j); but all agree in regarding it as indicating the miscellaneous character of its contents. And they are very miscellaneous. They consist of the speculations of Greek philosophers, of heretics, and of those who cultivated the true Christian gnosis, and of quotations from sacred Scripture. The latter he affirms to be the source from which the higher Christian knowledge is to be drawn; as it was that from which the germs of truth in Plato and the Hellenic philosophy were derived. He describes philosophy as a divinely ordered preparation of the Greeks for faith in Christ, as the law was for the Hebrews; and shows the necessity and value of literature and philosophic culture for the attainment of true Christian knowledge, in opposition to the numerous body among Christians who regarded learning as useless and dangerous. He proclaims himself an eclectic, believing in the existence of fragments of truth in all systems, which may be separated from error; but declaring that the truth can be found in unity and completeness only in Christ, as it was from Him that all its scattered germs originally proceeded. The Stromata are written carelessly, and even confusedly; but the work is one of prodigious learning, and supplies materials of the greatest value for understanding the various conflicting systems which Christianity had to combat.
(Source:http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-02/anf02-49.htm#TopOfPage) (Emphasis ours.)
"Wherefore the holy mysteries of the prophecies are veiled in the parables-- preserved for chosen men, selected to knowledge in consequence of their faith..." (St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 6:15).
(Source: Christian Realism, http://geocities.datacellar.net/Athens/Acropolis/5164/about.txt.Names Index / Next
