CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, theologian, St. (ca. 150-ca. 215). The second head of the catechetical school of Alexandria (q.v.) who taught there from ca. 190 to 202. Clement left three major works, The Exhortation, The Pedagogue, and the Miscellanies (Stromateis), together with fragments of another known as the Excerpts from Theodotus. The influence of these works was great, indeed. To Clement has been attributed “the beginnings of Christian Hellenism.” Characterized by a remarkable openness, he embraced the late Platonist philosophy of his day, seeing in Plato (q.v.) the “Moses of the Greeks,” i.e., a providential preparation for the Christian Gospel. Similarly, he considered all religions to be divinely inspired and a preparation of different peoples for Christianity, which he spoke of as the true religion. This attitude toward non-Christian religions as positive phenomena continues in Orthodox theology to the present. (See Dual-Faith.)

Clement prepared the way for the Christian appropriation of Greek philosophy that characterized centuries of debate on the great themes of Christ and Trinity (q.v.). Of particular value for later theology was his emphasis on God’s simultaneous unknowability (apophatic theology) and gift of himself through his “powers” or “energies.” His handling of Old Testament texts, particularly in the face of the polemic against them launched by gnosticism, set the stage for Origen’s (qq.v.) vast efforts. Finally, Clement’s readiness to accept positive elements from gnosticism led to his elaboration of the portrait of the “Christian gnostic” in Book VII of the Stromateis. In this one essay he foreshadowed the figures of the ascetic holy men and women who would-and do-play an extraordinarily important role in the history and piety of the Orthodox Church. Again, his is much of the original vocabulary that later characterized Christian mystical literature in both East and West.