PART III

CHAPTER I

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE ‘ STROMATEIS’

 

In his Stromateis or Miscellaneous Notes, the work by which our author is best known, and which has given him the title of “the Stromatist,” Clement describes at great length the nature of the true gnosis, and the education of the genuine Gnostic, who, in his phraseology, is one who has a sincere faith based upon a sound knowledge of the principles of his belief.

But before we enter upon the details of that truly comprehensive work, we may here explain that the relation of faith to knowledge in Clement’s system is not clearly drawn. For at one time our author states that faith is the basis of knowledge, because it imparts the divine life which penetrates and cleanses the soul, and gives a new faculty for discerning divine things. While on another occasion he seems to understand by “pistis” faith, a carnal faith which adheres to the letter of authority. This apparent contradiction may be got over by the careful student. For when Clement uses the term “faith” in the former sense, he is generally speaking of the proper, the rational, and the spiritual faith. And when he uses the word in the latter sense, he is clearly using the word in its ordinary acceptation.

In a succeeding chapter we shall enter more fully into the subject, but this much by way of preamble must suffice for the present.

The usefulness of Philosophy in preparing the heathen for the reception of Christianity is the noble burden of the first book of these notes. This line of reasoning, very interesting and instructive in itself, is rather spoiled by Clement’s very peculiar idea, that all the good of pagan philosophy was derived from Hebrew influence.

The first lecture of this work begins with a defence of the written composition. Clement had evidently delivered his lectures before his divinity class from notes which he afterwards revised and elaborated for publication and transmission to posterity.

“If heathen and atheistical writers, such as Epicurus, who founded the famous sect of the Epicureans; Hipponax, who invented the Ionic verse; and Archilochus, whose page worked itself out in iambic measures, were Allowed to write their compositions, why,” he asks, “should any one object to the publication of a Christian writer?”

“There seem to be two ways of proclaiming the truth,” he goes on to say; “the one by the spoken; the other by the written word. And each soul has its own proper food. Some thrive on erudition and science, while others feed on the Greek philosophy, the kernel of which alone is eatable.”

The word of life, however, is not to be entrusted, according to him, to those whose minds are already occupied with the methods of the various schools. For such are not yet open to the truth. We must first acquire faith, which is here defined as a power of judging according to reason. For it is only then that we can receive divine words. And this, says Clement, is the meaning of the saying: “If ye believe not, neither shall ye understand”. He then exhorts his readers to study the Word of God, which “kindles the living spark of the soul, and elevates the mind.” 

But yet our author will not shrink, as he informs his pupils, from making use of all that is good and excellent in philosophy, and in every other form of instruction. For just as St. Paul became a Greek for the sake of the Greeks, so it is right to set forth the opinions that appeal to the Greek reason, if we are to gain them.

But, as Clement charily observes, “A composition is extremely fortunate that escapes the censure of the reviewer.” He will therefore strive to do his best to give his critics no reasonable pretext for fault finding, and will accordingly only deal with the kernel of that Greek philosophy which is covered over with a thick and hard shell of error.

Of course he is prepared for those who will object that such an investigation is foolish and superfluous; for those that will say that it is quite sufficient to occupy oneself with the necessary and vital truths of religion, and also for others who go further and assert that philosophy is one of Satan’s inventions to lead away men from the truth. But he hopes to show these objectors, if they will lend him a patient hearing, that evil has an evil nature, and consequently cannot produce aught that is good, and, therefore, since philosophy is good to a certain degree, it cannot be the work of the Evil One, but must be the work of God.

 

CHAPTER II

GENERAL REMARKS ON PHILOSOPHY

 

We shall now dip more deeply into the volume of miscellaneous wisdom, so appropriately styled the Stromateis.

From these lectures we learn that the same narrowness of intellect and dimness of vision which prevails in certain Christian circles—rapidly decreasing we are happy to say—of today, was predominant in a small section of the Alexandrian community. Clement evinces great skill in dealing with these ignorant and obstinate people, who condemned a philosophy as useless and hell-begotten which they had never taken the trouble to investigate. “If Philosophy were indeed useless,” he argues, “it would be a useful thing to show up its uselessness. But it is absurd for anyone who has not an intimate knowledge of it to condemn it.”

So far from ruining life by being the cause of false practices and base deeds, philosophy is “ the clear image of truth, a divine gift to the Greeks.” Nor does it draw one away from the faith; nay, rather, it helps to support it by calling into play the reason, the basis of knowledge. And yet a great many so-called philosophers deride and scoff at the truth. Such are the Sophists, who are called Sophistai, or Sophoi, because they are versed in logomachy or wordy strife. Of these the Scripture says :  I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent”.  But wisdom is manifold, and every form and degree of wisdom is from God, Who manifests His Power and Intelligence in many departments and in many modes, in art and science as well as in theology. Here we find an echo of Hebrews:

“God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets.”

Before our Lord came, philosophy was the school­master of the Greeks in righteousness, and now it conduces to piety, being an excellent preparation and discipline in religion. Philosophy then is a good thing, Clement reasons. But God is the cause of all good things, therefore philosophy is from God; perhaps not as immediately as the Old and New Testaments, but surely given to bring the Greek mind to Christ, even as the law was the school-master to lead the Hebrews to Him.

For Truth is like a river. It has one principal channel, but streams flow into it from all sides.  Accordingly, when our Saviour uttered the never-to-be-forgotten words, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children to me, as the mother bird gathers her fledglings to her under her wings”, He made allusion to the manifold ways in which the Spirit of God, Who fills the world, was pleading with and training the Jews to discern the truth in Him who said, “I am the Truth.”

While the inferior branches of study contribute their quota to philosophy their mistress, Philosophy herself is the study of wisdom, and wisdom is the knowledge of things human and divine. And these, in their turn, find their consummation, their fulfilment in Christ.

This is Clement’s general line of argument, by which philosophy is shown to be the handmaid of theology, because it gives men an aptitude for and a keen insight into the truth, and so trains men to receive the Christ.

Now, according to Clement, culture improves the mind. Accordingly, the man who has been trained in demonstration and reasoning has acquired a facility for understanding the nature and relations of things, which will prove useful to him, not only by refining and sharpening his wits, but also by purging the soul and enabling it to see the truth clearly. Besides, noble natures are always benefited by a noble training. Indeed it is not by nature but by training, Clement believes, that people become noble and good, just as the vine and the horse require a great deal of care before they can give satisfaction. Of course he does not deny that certain people have a natural predis­position or leaning towards virtue. But his point is, that such people always require a careful training, if their aptitude is to come to anything; while others, not naturally so gifted, if they obtain the education, generally attain excellence.

Man, indeed, was created by God naturally social and just. But the good in him required to be educed or evolved by precept and commandment. And so the law was given. Of course even without learning a man may be a believer; but according to Clement it is impossible for an unlearned man to understand the articles of the faith. Consequently he was un­willing to disclose our fundamental principles. For it is easier, he said, to attain unto virtue after previous training; and than instruction in philosophy and literature, there is no more excellent training.

Greek culture and philosophy must then have come down from heaven, not directly, it may be, but just as the rain falls on good land and bad, or as the seed is everywhere scattered by the hand of the sower. This is the conclusion of this able argument.

Now Clement does not limit the term philosophy to any special school, such as the Stoic, the Epicurean, the Platonic, or the Aristotelian, but “whatever has been well said by each of these sects, this eclectic  whole I call Philosophy.” But he does not regard as divine the false inferences of men.

“There are many ways to righteousness,” he says, “for God is good and saves in many ways. But Christ Himself is the Gate ; by Him the happy ones enter, and are led into the sanctuary of knowledge.”

But sophistry, which refines away the meaning of words; which embellishes falsehood with the flower of rhetoric; which tends only to glorification, never to edification ; which persuades men to regard the probable as the true, Clement believes, has been justly called an “evil art” by Plato, and a “dishonest wit” by Aristotle. To such the Apostle refers in his Epistle to Timothy, when he speaks of a kind of teaching of little depth, but of a “pale cast of thought,” busied with questions about words.

Such a method of reasoning is indeed a disease. And by such sound doctrine and holy knowledge will never be attained. There are some people, however, who think themselves so naturally endowed, that they do not require either philosophy or logic. “Faith alone is necessary,” they say.

But, as Clement aptly remarks, these people are like to men who would pluck the clusters from the vine without having spent any pains on rearing and training it.

“And, after all,” he pointedly asks, “how comes it to pass that training and experience, which are held to be essential in every other sphere of life and labour, are regarded as unessential in the highest department of all—the study of God’s Word?”

He only is to be called really learned who brings everything to bear upon the truth, and he is best able to defend the faith who knows how to select what is useful in every human art and science. The scholar who can quote examples from Greek and foreign history and philosophy is, in Clement’s opinion, like the touchstone which tests the genuine metal. And if such knowledge be necessary in mundane matters, how much more essential is it in celestial themes? Even in Holy Scripture, the ambiguous expressions of the prophets demand an intelligent exposition.

Of course, the Christian is not to practise a shallow and uncertain form of speech, but that style of oratory which instructs and edifies. This is what the Apostle means when he warns us “not to strive about words which are not profitable”, and exhorts us to beware “lest any man spoil us through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” In this passage St. Paul refers not to the true philosophy, but to that false teaching which declared the elements of life superior and anterior to the efficient cause of life—the Creator.

That Apostle, observes Clement, when dealing with the Greeks, always recognized what was true in Greek Philosophy. For example, when he uttered the words “For in Him we live and move and have our being, as some of your poets have said, ‘For we are His offspring’.”

But in the passage which is at present under our consideration, he is speaking of that false philosophy which is after the tradition of men, which worships the elements of life, air, fire, and water, and not the Word, the Creator of life.

For philosophy in general is not to be set aside and rejected, because the Stoics say that the Deity being corporeal pervades the vilest matter, or because the Epicureans banish Providence and exalt Pleasure to the throne of the Universe. Indeed, all schools of philosophy, to a certain extent, are illuminated by the dawn of Light, “The light that, coming into the world, lighteth every man.”

The universal mistake of the leaders of the different schools of philosophy is to parade that portion of truth which has fallen to their lot, as if it were the whole truth.

It is right, then, in spite of this general failing, that all should recognize and understand the germs of truth that are to be found in every sect of philosophy.

Here Clement passes in review the different Greek philosophers who have already been mentioned in these papers, and seeks to prove that Paul was ac­quainted with Greek literature. St. Paul does indeed ascribe truth to the Greeks; and it is certain from these quotations, and from that which occurs in the first Epistle to the Corinthian Church—"Evil communications corrupt good manners”—that he had some acquaintance with the noble classics of Greece.

Clement concludes by saying that there are many similar instances of Greek maxims and expressions made use of by the sacred writers, who evidently did not regard these classical authors as altogether false and unprofitable servants of the Lord.

 

CHAPTER III

JEWISH LAWS AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY—A CONTRAST

 

With all his admiration for that Greek philosophy which he assimilated in the very heart of his teaching, Clement put forward a special plea for the superiority of the Jewish law on the grounds of its greater antiquity and originality.

Clement here commits the fault of comparing a great many things which cannot be compared; for example, Jewish morality and Greek metaphysics, religious feeling and intellectual insight, natural science and philosophic thought. These subjects cannot be compared with one another, for it is only things of a like nature that can be, logically speaking, compared.

We shall now listen to Clement’s arguments against the antiquity and originality of the philosophy he loved.

“It is a great mistake,” he writes, “to suppose that it is only the Greeks who are acquainted with philosophy, or can philosophise. For most of the founders of the various Greek schools of thought were foreigners, or ‘Barbarians,’ as the Greeks would call them. Pythagoras was a Samian, and Thales was a Milesian. They both studied in Egypt, conversing with Chaldean sages, and exploring the ancient science of the country. Plato, likewise, though a true-born son of Hellas, went to Egypt, and found much to learn and admire among the so-called Barbarians. Indeed, philosophy is of great antiquity; it first flourished among the Barbarians, and afterwards it was brought into Greece. Foremost in the ranks of learning stand the Egyptian wise men, the Chaldean sages, the Gaulish Druids, the Persian Magi, and the gymnosophists, or nude philosophers of India.”

These latter, Clement writes, are divided into two classes; one class being called the Samanaei, and the other Hylobii, because they lived in the woods. Some of these Indians, he observes, follow the teaching of Buddha, who was deified on account of his personal holiness. But the oldest of all philoso­phers are those of the heathen race. For example, he bids us look at the antiquity of Moses, and contrast it with the different epochs of Greek philosophy. Moreover, it was Barbarians, not Greeks, who founded the various arts and sciences. For instance, the Egyptians introduced astrology and geometry, the Arabs augury, the Etruscans the trumpet, Cadmus   letters, the Phrygians the flute, Atlas was the first to build ships; Apis, an Egyptian—not Aesculapius—was the inventor of the healing art. Again, Phrygians discovered iron and the tempering of brass; the Tuscans were the first to mould clay; while the musical art and its instruments, if fable speaks true, were invented and embellished by Mysians, Phrygians, and Lydians, not by Greeks.

After this digression from his subject, Clement again returns to philosophy, and admits that Greek philosophy, whatever be its origin and however partial its light, prepares the way for the royal teaching of Christ. It is a training and discipline, he asserts, that moulds the character and fashions the heart of him who believes in Providence to receive the Truth. Besides, he says, it would be absurd to call philosophy an invention of the devil, seeing that it has been borrowed to a large extent from the Hebrews. In the first place, he takes for granted that it will be admitted by all that the laws and institutions of the Jews are of higher antiquity than the mental and moral science of the Greeks. For Ptolemy, the Egyptian, placed the Exodus of the Israelites in the reign of Amosis, which would correspond with that of Inachus in Argos, an epoch some forty generations previous to the foundation of Athens, the mother of philosophy, by Cecrops. 

Then Clement enters into a comparison of dates, to prove that the antiquity of the Hebrew prophets and historians is greater than that of the Greek poets and writers.

This summary of very dry facts and uninteresting numbers is somewhat relieved by an agreeable dis­cussion on dialects, which, though it has nothing to say to the question, may serve to lighten the labour of working through this chapter.

“Euphorbus,” he says, “and other historians hold that there are seventy-five nations and tongues, because of the statement of Moses, that all the souls that followed Jacob into Egypt were seventy-five: while Plato, the Greek philosopher, says the gods speak in a certain dialect, and that even irrational creatures have a dialect of their own, which is understood by all the members of the genus. Thus, when an elephant foils into the mud he bellows out, and some other elephant, which happens to be near, comes at once to his help, bringing others with him. And when a scorpion does not succeed in biting a man, it goes away to collect other scorpions, and these, by forming a chain of their bodies, obstruct the man’s path and bite him. These creatures, according to Clement, use a dialect of their own.”

After these irrelevant remarks; our lecturer counts back to Adam from the death of Commodus, and computes the number of intervening years as amounting to 5784.

This point of time, as already noticed, gives us the probable date of the composition. Commodus died 193 a.d., and these lectures were most probably delivered in the following year, 194 a.d.

Indeed Clement had a weakness for numbers, which is a proof in itself that he must have been trained in the mathematical school of Alexandria. He could not, therefore, desist from some explanation of the two thousand three hundred days mentioned by Daniel the prophet, as destined to elapse before the sanctuary would be cleansed. These two thousand three hundred days, according to him, make up six years and four months, during one-half of which Nero misruled. “And it was half a week;” while during the other half Galba, Otho, and Vitellius disgraced the high office of Emperor. Recent attempts to explain these numbers lend some interest to this very early and equally as rational interpretation of them.

Having now shown the undoubted priority of Moses in point of time, Clement essays to prove the superiority of the law delivered to Moses to that of the Greeks.

But some of his statements are very rash and unscholarly. For instance, it is an almost incredible assertion that Plato was indebted to the writings of Moses. But it is, on the other hand, an excellent interpretation of the law which sees in it not merely an engine for correction and punishment, but also a healthy training and discipline for the soul. For the law was surely given with a view to redeem the character of men, as well as to punish them for their faults. Therefore, before we open the second volume of these notes, it may be well to pause for a  moment to review Clement’s position with regard to philosophy.

One of his great statements, to wit, that philosophy owed whatever truth it possessed to divine inspiration, will be admitted by all who accept the utterance of the Master Himself, “I am the Light of the world;” and who recognize the work of God in the education of the race. But the other statement put forward by him, that philosophy was borrowed from the teaching of the Hebrews, is rashly absurd, as any one may see who will take the trouble to compare the Hebrew mind with the Greek. For the Greek intellect was essentially philosophical, being deeply interested in all the problems and questions of life and thought and God. Their mind was peculiarly curious and inquisitive, and delighted in searching out causes and tracing consequences, while arguing from given premises by middle terms to conclusions, and inferring the general from the particular. Syllogism and Induction were their logical modes .of - reasoning.

But, on the other hand, the Jewish bent of mind was anything but intellectual. It was wholly and solely religious. Their law, their sacrifices, their commandments, truly emphasizing the moral and spiritual fact of sin, which finds but feeble expression in the Greek philosophy; the manuscripts in which these were set forth, and the various interpretations and expositions of their sacred books, occupied their every thought. God, His Law and His Worship, were to them what Truth and its Investigation were to the Greeks. And as to logic, the Jews had none. Allegory, analogy, and comparison in their system occupy the place of induction, deduction, and definition. The Jewish mind was impressed by types and shadows, which pointed them to antitypes and sub­stances, between which the Greeks would see no logical connection.

It is true that Jewish allegory was blended with Greek reasoning by Origen, but it was an unnatural compound, as his exaggerations and fanciful interpret­ations amply prove. In fact, there could be nothing whatever in common between two such radically opposite types of mind, one of which was occupied with symbols, and the other with dialectics. Therefore Greek philosophy did not and could not flow from Jewish sources; although in a great measure, in its undiluted state, it was an expression of the Wisdom of Him—the Word of God—Who manifests Himself “in many parts and in many manners.” “Who is,” wrote Clement, “the teacher of all things born; the Assessor of God Who knoweth all things beforehand? Verily He, from the foundation of the world, in many ways and many parts has been engaged in educating and bringing to perfection the race of man.” It was much that Clement understood this.

In another part of the Stromateis, Clement makes the true remark that Philosophy was to the Hellenes what the Law was to the Hebrews—a preparatory discipline leading to Christ.

 

CHAPTER IV

FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE AS RELATED TO EACH OTHER IN CLEMENT’S SYSTEM

 

We shall now glance hurriedly over the stray notes of the second volume of the Stromateis. They are chiefly on the subject of faith and repentance. In the first place, Clement shows that the knowledge of God can only be attained through faith, quoting Isaiah : “Except ye believe, neither shall ye understand”: whereas it was the constant practice of the Gnostics, Basilides and Valentinus, to set faith at nought, as being a useless quantity; but our Clement put it forward in the very front of the battle as the foundation of all knowledge. For it is, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews said, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”

In one passage he seems to say that this faith is not established by demonstration, quoting the words of the Master: “Blessed therefore are those who, not having seen, have yet believed.” And yet he implies, throughout the whole treatise, that faith is not a blind choice, but a rational volition.

How are we to reconcile these apparently contradictory statements ?

The task may not perhaps be as hard as it seems. For Clement says that faith apprehends the first principles. Now it is a well-known fact and an oft repeated maxim, that first principles are not capable of demonstration.

Faith, then, according to Clement, is not to be established by demonstration, moving as it does in a higher sphere, apprehending the first cause of the Universe, soaring into a higher plane than practical wisdom, and comprehending the eternal realities, the unchanging basis of change.

It is easy to see, therefore, that faith occupies the same place in the theology of Clement that mind or intuition holds in the metaphysical system of Aristotle.

It is a spiritual instinct, a ghostly intuition instilled in mtn by the unceasing Word of Truth. In this sense, faith is higher than knowledge, which is of things that can be demonstrated. For faith alone can apprehend God. To use Clement’s own words: “Neither can God be apprehended by demonstrative science, for such science is from things precedent and more knowable, whereas nothing exists before that which is self-existent.”

Consequently the first cause of the Universe can be grasped by Faith alone.

In this way Clement placed knowledge on the basis of faith, in apparent opposition to the teaching of the Gnostics of the city of Alexandria, who treated the blind faith of the unreasoning multitudes with the greatest contempt, and held out promises of a deeper and inner knowledge of religion to the more thoughtful classes.

But Clement’s faith was not a mere blind, unquestioning belief founded on authority, but the highest faculty of the transcendental reason engaged in ques­tions that lie beyond the sphere of sense and the realm of experience. Nor did he regard faith as sufficient by itself. He would have science employed in the service of faith. “ If we wish to get any fruit from the vine,” he says, “we must work, by pruning, digging, and training, and must employ the hook, the hoe, and other implements used in the culture of the vine.”

KNOWLEDGE.

Nor is Clement’s gnosis a mere intellectual doctrine, but it is a “divine science” which by reason of faith must express itself in the life.

“Thus knowing and living here become one.” True gnosis, then, is that spiritual wisdom which springs from a spiritual insight into the Being of God, and manifests itself in spirituality of the life.

Thus we have three fair flowers growing on one stem—Faith, Wisdom, and Life. And this combination of three divine principles throws a new light on the mysterious words: “ It is eternal life to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

Now the knowledge is given to those who are worthy of it, as a deposit, on the principle that “to him that hath shall be given.” Thus “to faith shall be added knowledge, and to knowledge love, and to love the inheritance.”

“Faith is, then, so to speak, a comprehensive knowledge of the essentials, and knowledge is the strong and sure demonstration of what is received by faith and built upon faith by the Lord’s teaching, which conducts the soul to certainty, science, and understanding”. Thus from one step to another we ascend in this ladder of discipline, until perfect gnoseis are reached by the student and blended together in his life.

THE TRUE GNOSTIC.

Finally, Clement illustrates the manner in which these two principles, faith and knowledge, become harmonized in the Gnostic, the real Christian, and work together for his good. Such a one begins as a pupil of the Lord, and an eager and believing student in spiritual things. Then he grows in the knowledge of God, and of His Will, until gradually advancing in the comprehension of the essences and the things per se, he is able to bring his soul to what is essential, and to see a general principle in a particular precept, and a universal idea in a single instance : in a word, to read, with the help of the illuminating presence of the Word, the facts of God, human life and thought as they really are, not as they seem to be.

Sin therefore has no seducing influence over him, because he sees in it its true nature as disease. Death has no terror for him who regards it as a necessity of creation which cannot affect him.

He hates no one who has wronged him, but rather pities him on account of his ignorance, and because of the love for his Master that fills his own soul.

His one thought is to attain to completeness of knowledge, and so he can afford to despise the good as well as the bad things of the world.

He is serene and courteous, but strong to resist temptation. He is a man without passions, having transcended the whole life of emotion. He is rationally brave and self-controlled, and so is master of himself, and able to make use of the opportunity, because he loves God, and is counted a friend of God, and because his life is spent in prayer and converse with his Heavenly Father.

Truly this character-drawing is very like the description of the wise man of the Stoics, and is indeed to a large extent borrowed from that classical ideal.

The Christian saint, however, had an incalculable advantage over the pagan sage, by reason of his possession of the true motive-power of the soul, the true standard of human action, and the true goal of human effort.

 

CHAPTER V

CLEMENT AND THE GNOSTICS

 

Clement’s declared purpose in compiling the Stromateis was, to describe the true Gnostic, and to guard his pupils from the misrepresentations of the pseudo-Gnostics, of whom he mentions Valentinus, Basileides, Cassianus, Marcion, Prodicus and Heracleon.

As a general rule the teachers of Alexandria made the Word, or the Wisdom of God, the subject of their discussions. By Him they imagined that they had been chosen to proclaim God to the world, and from Him they believed that all the wisdom of the Gentiles had come.

Among the great preachers of the Gospel we find Apollos of Alexandria, “an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures”, who for a season was the successful rival of St. Paul in Corinth. We can trace the influence of Alexandrian thought, notably its distinction between the letter and the spirit in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of Barnabas, and in the Gospel according to the Egyp­tians, a work that was most probably used by Coptic Christians who were not of Jewish connection.

We also find reminiscences of the Christian philosophy of Alexandria in the lately discovered Logia (so-called) which have been unearthed with many other documents at Oxyrhynchus. One of these sayings has a distinctly Encratite ring. It runs so— “Except ye fast in regard to the world, ye shall not find the kingdom of God; and except ye keep the Sabbath rightly (lit. sabbatize the Sabbath), ye shall not see the Father.”

We have also the conception of the omnipresent Christ in the two sayings: “I stepped into the midst of the world, and in the flesh I appeared unto them; ” and “Raise the stone and thou shalt find me, cleave the wood and I am there.”

The Gnostic teachers of Alexandria, concerning whom Clement is our best authority, gave the city an important position in the world of letters. One of the first of these was Basileides, who belongs to the reigns of Hadrian (117—138 a.d.) and Antonius Pius. According to Epiphanius, Syria, the native land of the Gnostic systems, was his birthplace.

Basileides himself mentioned Glaucus, a scribe of St. Peter, as his teacher; while some of his followers boasted that Matthias, the apostle, was their founder.

This philosopher believed that the knowledge of God was the highest blessing which man can attain, and that he was intended to reach it. He therefore sought to construct a system of the knowledge of God.

But he defeated his own purpose, by making the God whom he desired to know, a mere portion of his system; and by treating the Word or Wisdom of God as but one of the many agencies (Dynameis) that acted upon men, and but one of the many faculties by which man apprehended God. God became more and more indistinct and shadowy to him who regarded Him as some vague abstraction, a certain Pleroma or Fulness, and looked upon the cross as a fiction. Although we have reason to believe that the seeker was honest, he ended exactly where he began in the search for knowledge.

The morality of Basileides leaves little to desired. He respected marriage and recommended some men to marry, and is not, therefore, to be held accountable for the perversions and excesses of his followers; some of whom went so far as to say that they were born to salvation and must be saved, no matter how they lived.

Such a deduction from his father’s system Isidorus his son repudiated with all his heart. Still the Zoroastrian distinction between the kingdom of Ahriman and Ormuzd,—which are thus described by the Persian Bundehesch:

“ Ormuzd is the light;

The light is without beginning ;

Ormuzd is on high, 

Ormuzd is Holy,

Ormuzd hath all knowledge.

Ahriman is in darkness;

This darkness is without beginning ;

Ahriman is in the depths;

Ahriman delighteth in strife;

Ahriman hath only a derived knowledge”—

 was so fundamental to his philosophy, that Clement had some reason for his accusation that Basileides “ deified the devil.”

Valentinus, another Gnostic philosopher, to whom there are numerous references in Clement’s works, lived in Alexandria at a somewhat later date than Basileides. He is said to have been the pupil of Theudas, the disciple of Paul, and was evidently an Egyptian, to judge from his turn of mind.

He was greatly struck by the fact that the universe seems to be made up of pairs (Syzygies, he called them). Proceeding on the dictum of Solomon, “God has set one thing over against another,” he sought these “pairs” in every place, and believed he found them.

His theology was rather absurd in form. Buthos and Depth, the term under which he spoke of God, conveys nothing to our minds but the impossibility of sounding the depths of that Godhead. His genealogies of the aeons, the spiritual essences by which man was enabled to reach God in this system, only serve at the present day to puzzle Divinity students.

Marcion was another Gnostic who engaged the attention of Clement. Though the son of the bishop of Sinope, he imagined he could find no solution of the great problems that his mind entertained in his father’s faith. For the world, which to Valentinus was full of “pairs,” seemed to him to be full of contrasts of good and evil, while Christianity appeared to be nothing but a mixture of opposites, law and grace, mercy and forgiveness.

But of him we shall speak at greater length in another place.

Carpocrates, another famous teacher who lived in Alexandria in the reign of Hadrian (130 a.d. circ.), was not impressed so much by the correspondences or contradictions in the universe, as he was by the equality of God’s dealings with man. He was a leveller who, instead of trying to raise men to a higher platform, succeeded in degrading them to a lower by his system.

The Carpocrateans, as Irenaeus tells us in his Refutation of the Gnostics, were the first Gnostics to call themselves so. The founder of the sect was a Pantheist holding that there was one supreme being, the Monad, the highest unity, from whom all existence has emanated, and to which everything strives to return. Neander compares this system with that of Buddha, and states a number of parallels that are to be found in the doctrines of these teachers. Carpocrates as an Antinomian used a very bad influence, teaching that , faith and love are everything, while conduct is a matter of indifference. Irenaeus tells us that his followers believed it to be a duty to go through all sorts of actions. It is among them that we find the first representations of the Saviour’s human form.

Clement throws an interesting light on the teaching of Tatian and the sect of the Encratites. Tatian, a stranger from Assyria, had set up as a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, where he was brought under the influence of Justin Martyr, and professed Christianity. After the death of his master, 164 a.d., he lapsed back into the Gnostic philosophy. Clement tells us that Tatian belonged to the anti-Jewish Gnostics, and that he transferred the distinction that Paul makes between the old and the new man to the relation of the Old and New Testament.

In his sytems of Morals he may be said to have formulated, although it cannot be said that he invented, the tenets of the Encratites. His principal doctrine was, that true perfection could only be reached by the imitation of Christ, especially in regard to celibacy and the renunciation of worldly possessions. Clement’s answer to those who make such statements is worth recording. “They understand not,” he says, “the reason why our Lord was unmarried. For in the first place He had His own bride, the Church, and in the, next place He was dis­tinct from other men in this, that His nature was complete; nor was it necessary that He who is eternal, and the Son of God, should have issue of His body.”

In Julius Cassianus, another teacher mentioned by Clement, we find traces of the Alexandrian Jewish philosophy. Cassianus had only the Gospel according to the Egyptians. On it he based several of his opinions. Cassianus regarded Adam as the type of a soul that had been degraded from the heavenly condition to the material world, and held that it was man’s duty to win the mastery over matter by means of ascetic discipline. Accordingly he denied that Christ had appeared in bodily form among men. This was the view of the Docetaei, among whom Cassianus was looked upon as a leader

Clement in the Stromateis shows us how this teacher attempted, by means of his allegorical method of exegesis, to find his ideas in the Old Testament.

Gnosticism, however, was not merely the hot-bed of heresy, it had its true side. It was a search after the knowledge of God. Following this clue, we shall be led safely through these mischievous though ingenious doctrines until we come to the true teaching of the Word of God, which our Clement found in his pursuit of truth. To him that Logos or Word was no mere eon or agency, but the Son of the Father, who had taken upon Himself to educate the Spirit of man, to prize it, and to lead it to the knowledge of Him in Whose image it was made, and after Whose likeness it was intended to grow; and Who, in order to reveal this Father, and display a new ideal to man, became flesh, died, and was raised again.

Clement followed the same thread of thought in all his works. God is seeking His creatures—this was the foundation-principle of his system which he read in the Tables and philosophies of the heathen, where­in he saw abundant proof of God’s presence among His people, and of His action on the human heart in drawing it into the search after the real, the substantial, and the true.

“A great and glorious search Clement thought it was,” wrote the late Rev. F. D. Maurice in his Lectures on Church History, “worthy the labour of a life or of many lives. He had pursued it as a heathen in the schools of Greece; he eagerly sought the helps which Jewish or heathen sages could afford him in Egypt, but when he received the doctrine of the Cross, another and more wonderful truth flashed upon him—God knew him. ... This was no new discovery, it was an old one... That truism may become the very centre of a man’s thoughts and hopes; it may change the positions and relations of all objects to him; it may at first revolutionize his being ; ultimately it may set in order all that had been disturbed and inverted there. So I think it was with Clement: he could perceive how St. Paul speaks of God. He apprehends us that we may apprehend Him. It is in His light that we must see light.”

Thus it was, that the abortive efforts of his predecessors were followed by the success of Clement in disentangling the threads of truth from the complications of Oriental imagery and Grecian sophistry. And so in Alexandria, at the end of the second century, we find the light in its full-orbed radiance which in the beginning of that century was veiled in the mists of invention and superstition.

 

CHAPTER VI

CLEMENT’S THEORY OF GOD

 

The theology of the nineteenth century has many features in common with that of the second. Perhaps the most important point of resemblance is this, that it was the tendency of the early age as it is of the present, to recognize the Immanence or Indwelling of God in the Universe, without, at the same time, identifying or confounding the Creator with His Creation, God with the Universe.

This was, of course, a reaction from the other and opposite tendency to banish God from His Creation, and to introduce a scale of intermediaries between Him and His creatures; a view of the Heavenly Father which is crystallized in the Roman system, in which He is approached by Saints, Angels, and the Blessed Virgin, as well as by the One Mediator.

In the days of Clement, however, it was rather the philosophical idea of the Gnostics than any religious conception that the Christian apologist had to deal with.

Indeed, it may be said to be an almost universal instinct in the natural man to shrink from the presence of God, especially when his conscience is guilty, and his sense of unclean ness has been awakened. And this is amply proved in the religion of Buddha, whose sense of the evil of life was so keen, that it was for him the acme of human perfection to lose the desire to live on earth, and to be absorbed in an unconscious Absolute after death, when neither good nor bad consequences might disturb the dreamful ease.

This natural instinct is also exemplified in the philosophy of the Epicureans, who removed the gods from the world, and relegated them to a space between the worlds (intermundia) where they dwelt free from all anxiety and thought about men.

Moreover, in the system of Plato, the Demiurgos, or Creator of the Universe, is conceived as existing before and outside the beautiful cosmos, the fashions being both pre-cosmical and extra-cosmical. He is a personal agent, but having finished His work, He retires from the scene of life, leaving the world to be peopled and managed by secondary gods, especially created for this purpose, and by its own Soul.

For Plato regarded the Universe as one vast living organism, no part of which can <be conceived but in reference to the whole, and the whole of which is unthinkable apart from the members.

The careful student will notice that Plato attributes to the soul of the Universe, and to the gods that dwell therein, the work of the Word in the Christian system.

This idea of a pre-existing Creator (Demiurgos) found little favour with the Greek schools of philosophy, but was greatly welcomed by the Jews of Alexandria, from Aristobulus (150 BC) to Philo, who flourished 40 a.d.

It was a meeting-point between Greek and Jewish thought. The Jews saw their Jahveh (wrongly spelt Jehovah) in the great Demiurgos of Plato, and the pagan gods in the lesser divinities. So much so, that some of them asserted that Plato had taken this idea from the Pentateuch. And even Eusebius, in his history, calls Plato the “atticizing Moses; ” i.e. Moses writing in Attic Greek.

We have already met and answered this charge against Plato, made however as a compliment rather than as a censure. Indeed it was a trite saying in the schools of Alexandria that the Greeks had been taught theology by the Hebrews.

Aristobulus, who wrote 150 years before the Christian era, maintained that Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and other Greek philosophers, owed all their wisdom to a translation of the Pentateuch. And, indeed, no Jew could be anything but pleased with the lofty moral tone and gran4 conception of the One God put forth in the Timaeus of Plato, which formed a stage of transition from polytheism to monotheism in philosophy.

It is no wonder, then, that we meet with the elements of Platonic thought in the schools of Alexandria. These are not, indeed, pure and unalloyed, but blended with other elements derived from every religion and philosophy under the sun.

For the philosophy of the new Athens consisted of the mysterious lore of Egypt, the elaborate theories of Chaldea and Persia, Grecian mythology, Buddha’s pale philosophy, Jewish tradition, and Christian doc­trine fused into one inharmonious whole.

This method of forming a system of philosophy or religion by selecting what is most commendable to one in the theories of other philosophers, is called the eclectic; and the particular system, which was supposed to embrace all that was known about God, was called the Gnostic.

GNOSTICISM AND THE INCARNATION.

According to the Gnostics, matter and everything connected with it is evil. God, therefore, Who is the Supreme Good, cannot be associated with it in any way. He dwells from all eternity in the pleroma, or fulness of light; and between Him and man a system of intermediaries was introduced to save Him from contamination by matter.

Needless to say, in this system there was no room for a Son of God who was also a Son of Man. For either the Godhead or Manhood would have to be sacrificed. Either Jesus was a mere man upon whom the man Christ descended at His baptism, or else the body of Christ was unreal and visionary. Such was the Gnostics’ theory of the Incarnation, and their theory of the Redemption was like unto it.

Matter being evil, man required to be delivered from his animal nature, his fleshly prison. Certain of the Gnostics sought to secure this deliverance by an ascetic discipline, while others1 affected to show a contemptuous mastery over their bodies by reckless immorality.

How unlike the teaching of the divine Master! must be the comment of every true believer. How much superior to all this vague philosophy is the real truth of the Word ever present in the life of the world, so beautifully expressed in the Breastplate Hymn, the Lorica of Ireland’s patron saint:

Christ with me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, Christ within me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ at my right, Christ at my left,

Christ in breadth, Christ in length,

                Christ in height.

Patrick and Clement drew their inspiration from the same source—the preface to the Gospel of St. John. The inspiration of these noble words is to be found in the opening chapters of the Gospel of Light.

“There was the True Light, the light that lighteth eyery man, coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But to as many as re­ceived Him, to them gave He the right to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name : which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the Only-Born of the Father”

In these words the Apostle sums up the glorious doctrine of the Incarnation of the Son of God, Who was truly man and truly God, Who made the world, Who is the ever-present source of progress and continuance in the world, and Who is also the indwelling fountain of light in the human soul.

St. Paul, too, speaks of God “energizing in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”

The key then to understand the mysteries of life, its evil and its pain, that perplexed the Gnostic, is faith in the ever-present Christ, immanent in every form of life, while at the same time transcending it.

This key Clement applied so faithfully that at last he began to see a new meaning in every expression of life, in every struggle of the race, in every effort of man. For him, therefore, the dis­tinction between natural and revealed religion was a vanishing quantity. Every good thought, every good wish, every good deed, was rightly held by him to be due to the presence of the only Good—that is God.

Whatever good there was to be found in any system of religion or philosophy, he traced back to the influence—exhibited in a less degree perhaps—of the same Divine Wisdom that spoke in the days of old to patriarch and prophet in many fragments and in many ways. God in Christ was ever in the world, educating man, now jby new trials, now by new light, until the time was ripe for the fuller revelation of God among men when the Word became flesh.

Accordingly he saw in philosophy a system divinely ordered to bring men to the wisdom of Christ, just as Paul saw in the Law a method of divine discipline intended to usher men into the fuller light of the righteousness of Christ.

And in the punishments and chastisements that follow after sin, Clement discerned a loving hand moulding and shaping the human soul, evolving what is divine in man, sometimes indeed by stem methods, not however with a view to hurt, but to heal, just as a surgeon amputates and cauterizes, not from any ill-will to the patient, but because he desires to save his life.

Thus reading a beneficent purpose in the law, the end of which, according to St. Paul, is “charity out of a pure heart,” Clement was able to reconcile the love and the justice of God, and to answer the arguments of Marcion.

This Marcion had started with the principle that the love of God is not to be reconciled with his punitive justice, as it would involve a schism in the divine nature. He then came to the conclusion that the God of the Christians was not the same God as the Jahveh of the Jews. In fact, he taught that the God of the Jews was an inferior God Who stirred ' up the minds and passions of the Jews against the Messiah Who was sent by the supreme God to save men from His severity. Marcion elaborated and formulated these opinions in a work which he named Antitheses, or Contrasts.

In this book he essayed to prove that the principles of the Old Testament were inconsistent with the character of love and mercy which our Saviour bears in the New.

“Where is one that born of woman altogether can escape

From the lower world within him, moods of tiger or of ape?

Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning age of ages,

Shall not aeon after aeon pass and touch him into shape?

All about him shadow still, but while the races flower and fade,

Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade,

Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in choric

Hallelujah to the Maker, ‘ It is finished’: ‘man is made.”’

On the other hand, Clement had laid down as the basis of his theology, the sound principle that God is the God of the Gentile as well as of the Jew.

From this point of view, the Old Testament describes the educational process of the human race in general and the Jew in particular, by the Divine Instructor, Jesus Christ, Who of necessity adapted His method of treatment to the needs of man, in order to prepare all men for the full-orbed revelation of Himself which He was afterwards to give in His incarnate Person.

Thus Clement saw love where Marcion saw only severity, and a wise beneficence where Marcion only beheld the rigour of the law. Consequently for the Alexandrian teacher there could be no schism in the divine nature of Him “Who works all things up to what is better.”

The secret of this staunch fidelity to the moral character of God has been well set forth in Dr. Allen’s Continuity of Christian Thought, rad, the following excellent summary of Clement’s teaching: “ It was Clement’s peculiar merit that he kept himself so free from entanglement with mere opinions. He never lost sight of the distinction between God as the great reality and all human

speculations about Him. In his own words, ‘ There is a difference between declaring God and declaring things about God.’ To declare God was the ruling purpose of his life. He held, or rather was held by, a supreme conviction, that God and humanity were bound together in one through Christ; that God did not leave men to themselves in the search after Him, but was for ever going forth in Christ to seek after men and to lead 1 them unto life.’ ” The knowledge of such a God came from a deeper source than man’s intellect according to Clement. For he expressly declared the impossibility of an a priori demonstration of His existence. “God,” he wrote, “is the most difficult subject to handle; for since the principle of everything is hard to find out, the first and most ancient principle, which .is the cause to all other things of their being made and of their continuance when made, must needs be hard to discover.” In the system of Clement, the knowledge of God would be an intuition to the conscience, or a divine deliverance to the soul of man from the Word, revealing Himself and His existence. It is God Who finds us, not we who find God; as Augustine {Conf. x. 6) puts it: “ Thou hast smitten my heart with Thy word, and I have learned to love Thee,”

 

CHAPTER VII

THE PERSONALITY OF THE WORD—DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS

 

Thus Clement succeeded in defending and restoring to the Church the true conception of the Deity. He also freed the Christian doctrine of the Logos, the Reason and the Word of God, the personal Teacher of men and the personal Wisdom of the Father, from the Alexandrian quibble of a distinction between the Reason indwelling, and the Reason uttered in a word, between Truth and its manifestation.

He firmly believed that the Logos is the Truth of God in the person of His Son, manifested to man, and not merely a manifestation of the Truth of God, as the Neo-Platonists held.

This school of thought, which was very popular with the Alexandrian Christians, erroneously conceived the Logos or Reason to be an emanation, an influence that radiates from God. It was from this root that the so-called Sabellian heresy sprang. Some fifty years after this work (the Stromateis) was written, Sabellius, a native of Ptolemais in Egypt, ventured to apply this theory of emanations,[XII] which reduces the Person of the Saviour and the Person of the Spirit to the rank of divine influences, to the doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Three Persons and One God.

It was very necessary then that Clement should prove, that the Logos was a Divine Person to those who were accustomed to regard him merely in the light of an influence proceeding from God.

It was also very essential to maintain the great truth, that the Logos (Word) is of the same substance with the Father, in the presence of those who had been brought up in the Jewish school of Philo, and had been taught to believe that “The Absolute Being, the Father Who had begotten all things, gave an especial grace to the Archangel and First-Born Word, that standing between, He might sever the creature from the Creator. The same is ever the Intercessor for the dying mortal before the Immortal Ged, and the Ambassador from the Ruler to the subject. He is neither without beginning of days, as God is, nor is He begotten, as we are, but is something between these extremes, being connected with both”

And Clement succeeded in doing this, in spite of opposition from Jew and Gentile alike. Just as he refuted the Gnostic idea of a distant deity, by strenuously maintaining that there is a real and constant presence of the Incarnate Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, in the world and in the life of man, so he maintained with all the vigour of his intellect and the intensity of his nature, the distinct Personality of the Son and the Godhead of the Word of God.

In this connection we may observe that Clement has a short but comprehensive passage on the Evidences of Christ and Christianity in the sixth book of the Stromateis, where we read:  The prophecies which preceded and announced His coming, the testimonies concerning Him which accompanied His appearance in the flesh, and also His deeds of power which were proclaimed and openly manifested after his Assumption, are proof that He our Saviour is the Son of God.” Having thus established the divinity of the Saviour by this threefold line of evidence—prophecy, testimony, and miracle—Clement reasons from this divinity of the Teacher to the truth of His doctrine : “The fact that the Son of God Himself taught it is proof positive that the Truth is with us. For if in every question these general principles are wanted; person (persona), and*fact (res), that which is really the truth is only to be found among us. For the person of the truth which is shown is the Son of God, and the fact is the power of faith which overcomes everything that opposes it, no matter what it is—aye, the whole world itself, when against it. And since this has been confessedly established by eternal deeds and words, it is apparent that he is worthy of punish­ment, not merely of contradiction, who does not believe in providence; and he is really an atheist.” According to Clement, then, Christianity was no longer even in his day a subject of discussion : it was manifest to the reason and the eye of man; it no longer depended wholly and solely for its verification upon the prophecy, testimonies, or miracles of the past, but also upon the present proofs of its reality, the growth of the Church, and the victory of the faith—the true facts of Christ which are the highest evidences of the truth of His Person.

 

CHAPTER VIII

CLEMENT’S THEORY OF THE WORLD AND MAN, COSMOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

THE WORLD

Having thus vindicated the Creator against those who sought to disparage or detract from His character and power, Clement now proceeds to assert the Divine wisdom and beneficence, as manifested in the Divine work—the world. For, according to his old antagonists the Gnostics, the world was extremely evil, and its existence was the result of chance. On the contrary, Clement stoutly contended the world was “very good.” To him it was, in a double sense, sacred. First, as being a Divine creation, the abode of indwelling Deity; and then as being the sphere of man’s discipline, for which it was especially prepared.

“For the economy of all things,” he writes, “ is good, and all things are well ordered; nothing happens without a cause. ‘ I must be in what is Thine, Almighty God, and if I am, then I am close to Thee.’

“Nor are the elect, whoever they may be, strangers to the world.

“Neither do they attain their salvation by renounc­ing the love of life, and the earthly blessings God bestows upon all.

“ For all things are of one God, and no one is a stranger in the world.”

Here is a true note. Clement was an optimist. And naturally so, because he believed in God,1 not in a blind Fate, and because he believed in the good­ness of that God’s work. For surely what God saw was good, can only seem vile to man when He imputes the flaw that is in his own eye to the things he sees. For as the Old adage runs : “All seems yellow to the jaundiced eye.”

There is a magnificent passage on the Overruling Providence of God in the first Book of the Stromateis, which begins thus : “All things are ordered from above with a view to what is right, that the manifold wisdom of God may be known through the Church according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord; for Nothing opposes or is contrary to God, Who is Lord and Omnipotent. Nay even the counsels and operations of those who have revolted, though only partial, arise from a bad disposition as the diseases of the body, but are guided by the Universal Providence to a healthy issue, though the cause be bad. It is there­fore the grandest work of the Divine Providence that it does not allow the evil which has arisen from a voluntary defection to remain useless and unprofit­able, much less injurious in every respect. For it is the work of the divine wisdom and virtue and power not merely to benefit (for this is so to speak the nature of God, just as it is of fire to warm and light to illumine), but this is His work above all, the bringing to a good and useful termination what has been planned by certain evil minds, and turning to advantage seeming evils.”

A strong healthy tone pervades the whole of Clement’s writings. In proof of this assertion it will suffice to quote the two short passages: “Salome asked until what time must death prevail, not as if life were evil or the creature bad ”; and, “for birth is a creation of the Almighty, who will never lead the soul from a better to a worse condition ”

Clement, however, seems to take a slightly too rose­coloured view of life, and to ignore some of those facts of nature which make some people doubt whether it is indeed by love exclusively that all things are carried on.

For such an arrangement we must admit is not immediately evident to one who has studied the development of natural life, and knows something of the cruelty and injustice that characterize the world of sentient life. Of course this all can be explained on the Christian principle, or if not exactly explained can be proved to be no result of want of love in the Author of Nature.

Clement does, however, seem to refer to this “groaning” of nature (Rom. viii. 22), in one passage where he says: “and these too (i. e. the angels, principalities, and powers) will be delivered from the vanity of the world in the manifestation of the sons of God;” but, generally speaking, he ignored that dark side of thing's which is a trial of our faith in God.

MAN.

We now turn to Clement’s anthropology, or doctrine of man.

With regard to man, Clement does not consider that the Fall of man completely severed the son’s connection with his Father, and that this connection had to be made anew in the person of Jesus Christ.

When discussing the state and destiny of man, he seems to take as his text the words of God in Genesis: “ Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” which contain what Dr. Westcott has so happily termed the Gospel of the Creation. The Incarnation accordingly appeared to Clement to be a full-orbed revelation of the relationship between God and man, a relationship that had ever existed, but was for a time obscured by ignorance and sin. In the light of this Incarnation humanity is shown to be originally connected with the Creator, and so capable of and destined for eternal life. Clement’s view then is that Christ redeems man from the power and impurity of sin by illuminating his soul and educating his spirit, giving to him the true gnosis, which is a knowledge of God as He is manifested in Christ, not merely that knowledge of the facts about God which satisfied the Gnostics; while salvation is an ethical growth, and is attained by following out the divinely-appointed law of life; in a word, by working out the principles of moral being. As we shall have to enter more fully into Clement’s theories of our nature when discussing his Soteriology, we shall now proceed to give our readers the following account of Clement’s Gospel of the Incarnation.

 

CHAPTER IX

CLEMENT’S GOSPEL OF THE INCARNATION

 

In the 28th chapter of the fifth book of his Church History, Eusebius of Caesarea quotes from a book of an unknown author, a passage in which honourable mention is made of Clement, as well as of others who upheld the divinity of our Lord against the heresy , which affirmed that He was merely man. “For who is not aware,” the passage proceeds, “of the books of Irenaeus and Melito, and the others, which proclaim the deity and humanity of Christ ? And how many psalms and hymns of the brethren (i. e. Christians) compiled by faithful men vindicate the divinity of the Word of God, the Christ, in song! ”

The writer of this passage may have had in his mind the hymn of Clement on the Word which we venture to render thus :—

“ Oh, King of the pure ones,

Triumphant Word

Of the Father Supreme,

Great Wisdom’s Lord.

Thou stay of our labours,

Eternal Grace,

O Jesu Redeemer

Of human race. .

Fisher of mortal men

Eager to save

Out of the tide of ill,

Out of the grave,

All snatched from jaws of death

Thou dost beguile,

By charm of life to leave

The devil’s wile.”

The expression the Word, or the Logos, of which Clement made such frequent use, was very familiar to all classes of Christians in his day in Alexandria, but especially to the students of the University who had to study the works of Plato and Philo. 

The Incarnation of the Word, in Clement’s system, was the crown and consummation of creation. This view of life as a whole, greatly influenced Clement’s opinion on man. Man, according to him, was created to serve God. From heaven the soul is sent, and yearns to return to God, its our true home. But for such a destiny it must be prepared by different stages in spiritual and intellectual education, through which the great Instructor, Who desires to raise man to God and to complete the image in the likeness of God, leads us.

This work of salvation is bound to be a gradual one. From faith one must pass to love, and then to knowledge, which is at first imperfect, but when the affections have been mastered, and the eye of the soul is purified, reaches its perfection in the contemplation of God.

Our guide to this knowledge, the Word of God, Clement says, “is called a pearl, being the pellucid and pure Jesus, the ever seeing and supervising eye in the flesh, the transparent Word, through whom the flesh, regenerated in the water, becomes of great price ”. Under His guidance the Chris­tian life is one grand struggle to attain to the likeness of God. For we were made in His image in order that we might strive after His likeness.

This theory Clement reads in Plato, who, as he tells in the Stromateis said that the summum bonum of existence, its “ be-all and end-all,” lay in the likeness to God, and that this likeness to God consisted in being just and holy and wise : “Is not this,” Clement asks, “what some of our teachers have understood, namely, that man on his birth received that which is according to the image, but that- afterwards, on his reaching perfection, obtained that which is according to the likeness ? The likeness then to the true Logos, so far as is possible, is the end, and means restoration to the perfect son- ship through the Son. When the Apostle said, ‘Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,’ he set down as the goal of faith the being like God, the being, so far as is possible, ‘just and holy and wise.

The attaining unto this “likeness,” Clement tells us, is by the Holy Spirit completing in us that which He has already breathed into us.

In the Stromateis our author treats of this informing work. “Teaching,” he declares, “ forms a man, and in forming him, it gives him a new nature. There is no difference between the being born such and the becoming such by time and training, and the Lord has given us both the one by creation and the other by recreation and restoration.”

In this way the man is drawn upwards to God by the teaching of the Word. But this teaching, re­garded from the divine as well as the human stand­point, is not sufficient to effect this. There must be the possibility of an essential relationship between man and God if the teaching is to be effectual.

Now in the Exhortation to the Gentiles Clement thus describes our mystical relation to God through our organic union with His Christ: “For the image of God is His Word, the Divine Logos, the genuine Son of Mind, the Light archetypal of Light. But the image of the Word is the man, the true mind in man, that which is said to have been created ‘in the image and likeness of God,’ assimilated’ to the Divine Word in the wisdom of the heart and so far rational.”

It is true, as Canon Liddon has pointed out, that Clement spoke of the Logos as the Second Principle of things, yet notwithstanding, he held the orthodox creed that the Son is one in nature Vith the Father, but distinct from Him in personality.

In the address to God at the end of the Pedagogus he tells the heathen that the “fairest sight  for the Father is the Eternal Son crowned with victory.” Consequently He must have regarded the Son as a separate Person. In one very fine passage in the same work he describes the God Word singing with the heavenly choir:

“Thus the Eternal Jesus, the one great High-Priest of One God who is also Father, prays for men and exhorts them. Hear ye me, ye nations innumerable. I summon the whole race of man, of which by the will of God I am Creator. Come to me and be enrolled under one God and one Word of God. I wish to impart this grace to you, a perfect gift—immortality.”

In the Stromateis he says: “Thus the Lord approaches our hearts, I mean the Lord Jesus Who by the Almighty Will is the Bishop of our hearts.”

These words describe the action of a distinct Person

Again with regard to his theory of the Logos, Clement seems to have considered Him as both immanent in the Father and external to Him. The use of either of these terms to the exclusion of the other would, as Newman has pointed out, have involved Clement in some form of Sabellianism or Arianism, but each term may correct the defective sense of the other. Accordingly he says: “For the Logos of the Father of the universal is not the Word that is uttered, but is the most manifest wisdom and goodness of God,” meaning that that title was not philosophically or theologically an adequate representation of him, as a word spoken has no substance. And in another passage, where he says: “ But the Logos proceeding (i. e. from the. Father) is the cause of the creation and generates Himself (i.e. as man), when the Logos became flesh, that He may be visible,” Clement shows that he did not regard the Word as altogether indwelling.

Clement did not commit himself to the peculiar theory which is found in Tatian, Theophilus, and other Fathers regarding the generation of the Son, namely, that the Word after existing from eternity was born to be a Son “at the beginning.” In the seventh book of the Stromateis he describes the Son as “the principle that is out of time, and without beginning.” And he says that “the Father does not exist without the Son, for with the fact of His Fatherhood goes the fact of His being Father of the Son.”

In Christ Clement saw the manifestation of the wisdom, love, and holiness of God made complete; in Him he saw the perennial well-spring of Reason and the perfect Revealer of God’s will, for Whose revelation the various schools of philosophy and the different forms of religion were designed, in the economy of God, to pave the way. Accordingly Christianity, or the religion of the Incarnate Word, was for Clement the summing-up of all the truths of the past as well as the source of all the discoveries of the future.

 

CHAPTER X

SOTERIOLOGY OF CLEMENT : DOCTRINE OF SALVATION

 

Salvation for Clement was no mere scheme of escape. His training in the philosophy of Aristotle taught him to regard human nature in its entirety and in the light of its end, its ideal. Consequently he saw that the summum bonum of our humanity was not merely deliverance from the actual evil that the flesh is heir to, but that it also involves a realization of all that God designed that we should become—a self-realization of self by self in God.

This, the ideal of our human condition, has been realized by one man; who was also God, and is therefore realizable by those who have been “regenerated into Him.” It is, in a word, “ the likeness of God,” which is attained by following Christ. This, according to Clement, is the final end of man, what God intended at the beginning that he should become.

This theory of salvation as a making whole, as a full development of our highest powers, as the attain­ment of the perfection of body, soul, and spirit, implies no constraint upon the human will, which is conceived by Clement as having been created by God with the power of choosing either the good or the evil. In the fourth Book of the Stromateis Clement thus states in what this liberty consists : “Now that is in our power, of which we are masters equally with its contrary, such as ... . believing or not believing.” In the second book of the same work he says that the Shepherd (Hermas) points out that “remission of sins differs from repentance, but that both are in our power,” and Clement himself (asserts that “defection, secession, and disobedience are in our power just as obedience is,” and “therefore it is voluntary actions that are judged.”

His comment on the words, “ ours is the kingdom of heaven,” is: “It is yours if you wish, you who turn your free determination to God; it is yours if you only will to believe and follow the way of the Gospel”. In the second Book of the Stromateis he uses these emphatic words: “We who have received from the Scriptures that the free power of choosing or rejecting has been given by the Lord to men;” and in the same Book he defines “the voluntary” as “that which proceeds from appetite, or settled purpose, or deliberate thought.” Clement does indeed say that it is the best thing for a bad man not to have free power. But the context shows that it is not liberty but licence that he is here speaking of. The doctrine of freedom of will is thus consistently maintained by him who said, “He is God’s true servant who obeys Him of his own free will”. For he saw clearly that if salvation is the fulfilment of the likeness of the image of God, it must be something to be attained by our personality, and that if it is to be the salvation of our true self, the preservation of the right condition of soul, it must proceed from our own self-determination to follow out the laws of our true being, so he says: “Since some are unbelieving and others are contentious, all do not attain to the perfection of the good, for it is not possible to attain unto it without deliberate moral choice, but yet Clement did not, as some affirm, attribute too much to the human will. He nowhere asserts that we can work out our salvation independently. On the contrary, he describes salvation as a gift, reaching all ages through Christ, especially in the Stromateis, where he says, “For the covenant of salvation which has come to us from the beginning of the world, through different generations and times, is really one, although it has been conceived to be different in the matter of the gift; for it was suitable that there should be one immutable gift of salvation from one God through one Lord, which benefits in many ways, and on account of which the middle wall of partition which divided the Greek from the Jew is taken away.”

Also, when commenting on a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews , he writes: He (i. e. the writer) has clearly said before that there is one salvation of the just and of us in Christ.

He held the orthodox view that “salvation is by grace”. The love which gives us the character of righteousness is described as God-bearing and inspired by God. In the fifth Book of the Stromateis our free-will is thus attributed to the power of the Father: “ Therefore wisdom, being a divine gift and the power of the Father, stirs up our freedom of will ”

In a remarkable passage in the sixth Book of the Stromateis, at first sight he does seem to attribute too much to human effort: “The question before us,” he there says, “is by what plan of action and by what course of life we may arrive at the knowledge of the Almighty God, and by what manner of worshipping God we may become the authors (causes) to ourselves of salvation."

He can, however, only mean indirect causes ; for he continues: “not learning from the Sophists, but being taught by God Himself what is pleasing in His sight, we assay to do what is right and holy.” He thus places the direction of our lives in the hands of God, our supreme teacher. He then proceeds to show how God co-operates with us not only in our theory but also in our practice: “ Our salvation is well-pleasing to Him, and our salvation is attained by good action and knowledge : in both of which the Lord is Instructor.”

According to Clement, God does not commit Himself to any one special method of salvation. He deals with each soul according to its needs and its nature. “For the Almighty God, caring for all men, converts some to salvation by precepts, some by threats, some by miraculous signs,, and some by gracious promises”

Again, he observes in the first Book of the Stromateis, that there are many ways that lead to righteousness, and all tend towards the Royal road and gate, for “God saves us in a multitude of ways, because He is good.”

Of the ways that lead to the perfection of salvation he mentions two : works and knowledge. “ And if we consider the truth,” he goes on to say, “ knowledge (or gnosis) is the purification of the governing part of the soul, and is a good activity ”

The “No effort” theory of salvation, and the sister heresy of Antinomianism receives no support from the writings of Clement. “For we are saved by grace,” he says, immediately adding, “not however without good works"; but “it is necessary, since we are naturally adapted to what is good, to pay some attention to it. We must have the mind healthy, and such that it will have no regrets in the pursuit of what is right; for this we especially need divine grace, right teaching, a pure heart, and the drawing of the Father.”

Clement then recognizes that salvation, while being the gift of God, is a process that is worked out in human life, for he observes, “hence (i. e. from ‘constant love ’) arises in the Gnostic the likeness to God the Saviour, as he grows as perfect as it is possible for man to become ”.

The treasures with which we can purchase this eternal salvation are not gold and silver, but “our own treasures of love and living faith”. Knowledge, faith, and love, manifested in good action, are thus, according to Clement, the saving principles of life. One may remark that these are some of the leading characteristics of the Christian mentioned by St. Peter, as enabling him to enter the kingdom of heaven.

We have now to consider whether the doctrine which is called Universalism finds a supporter in Clement. There are two passages which show that he was not a Universalist in the modern sense. The first of these is from the fourth Book of the Stromateis. In this he thus combated the Antinomian doctrine of the followers of Basileides. “These words I have introduced in order to confute the followers of Basileides who do not live rightly, as if they had the liberty of sinning on account of their perfection, or as if they were sure at any rate of salvation by nature, even if they sin now, by reason of their election”

In the second passage he shows that while Christ is the Lord of all, He is the Saviour of all those who have believed: “How is He Saviour and Lord,” he asks, “if He is not the Saviour and Lord of all? ” He is, for He is the Saviour of those who have believed because they wished to know Him; and of those who have not believed He is the Lord until they, becoming able to confess, receive peculiar and suitable benefit from Him.

DOCTRINE OF SIN, ACTUAL AND ORIGINAL.

As a philosophy of salvation is imperfect in which no account is taken of and no provision made against sin and all that it implies, we may remark in this connection that Clement did not in any way seek to avoid this dark mystery, but treated it as a Christian philosopher should.

“Sin,” he says, “is certainly to be placed among actions, not among substances; therefore it is not the work of God, but sinners are called the enemies of God, the enemies in truth of the commandments which they do not heed like the friends who are obedient: these latter receive their name because of their union, and the others theirs on account of their separation, which is voluntarily chosen; for enmity and sin are nought without an enemy and a sinner. Again he says: “That which is voluntary proceeding from the free will is judged; for God examines the heart and the reins, therefore he says, ‘ Do not covet ’; for it is the mind that God looks at. Accordingly the thought, the action in conception, though not yet an accomplished fact, is already an action in the sight of God, Who believes in us, and does not regard all our actions in the light of their results, but of their motives ”. In the same connection he says: “ The Logos cried out, summoning all collect­ively, though knowing certainly those who would not obey, yet since it lies with ourselves whether we are obedient or not, and in order that some might not have ignorance to plead, he made the calling a just one, but demands from each what he can do; for some have the will and the power, who have arrived at this stage by practice and are purified; while others who have the will have not the power.”

In the Stromateis he thus describes the relation in which sin, misfortune, and injustice, stand to each other : “It is, so to speak, to live luxuriously and wantonly; it is to kill one’s friend unintentionally, but is a violent act of sacrilege, such as robbing the dead; misfortune arises through an error of reason, but sin is voluntary injustice, while injustice is voluntary vice; accordingly sin is my own voluntary act.” Again he says : “We sin of our own free will; let no one say that he who acts unjustly or sins, errs because Of the influence of demons, for in that case he would be innocent, but when one chooses the same things that the devils do (as regards sin), and is unstable and light and fickle as a demon in his desires, he becomes a man like a demon ” (demonicus).

From these passages we learn that Clement regarded sin as consisting in a wrong attitude of the will—for which we are responsible—to goodness and God. In the seventh Book of the Stromateis he mentions two practical causes of sin, ignorance and moral weakness. His words are : “Though men commit deeds without number, there are, generally speaking, two originating causes of every sinful act, ignorance and moral weakness; for both we are responsible, since we are not willing either to learn or to control our lust; of these causes the one warps our judgments, and the other prevents us from carrying out our good determinations.” He distinguishes between vice, the source, and sin, the result, and takes care not to confound vice with ignorance, for “vice,” he says, “arises through ignorance, but is not ignorance. The form of vice is twofold : in one form it is insidious, in the other aggressive.” In the Pedagogus he is more explicit on the origin of vice; “When God looks away vice arises spontaneously, through the faithlessness of man”. Again he speaks of the wrestling with spiritual powers and the rulers of dark­ness who are able to try us to the utmost {Strom. iii. 558), and in the Tract on the Rich Man he describes the deadly wounds that have been inflicted upon our nature by these princes of darkness and in the Pedagogus he speaks of the tendency to sin that is in our nature.

For these various temptations from within and without Clement suggests specific remedies.

In the passage quoted above, after describing ignorance and moral weakness as the general sources of sin, he proceeds to say “that there are two kinds of discipline handed down as useful for both forms of sin; for the one, knowledge and clear demonstration from the testimony of the Scriptures, and for the other, the training according to the word which is given by the way of faith and fear.” “Both these methods,” he observes, “help us to grow in the direction of perfect charity. For the object of the Gnostic is, I think, a double one, in some cases scientific contemplation, and in others action ”. In the second Book of the Stromateis he says, “By deeds of charity and faith sins are removed.” In the third Book he thus alludes to the knowledge of God as another remedy: “For some have not the knowledge of God, I mean the sinners,” and in the Rich Man he speaks of Christ the Healer, Who has cut away the passions of our nature from the roots, and healed its wounds. Such was Clement’s theory of the nature, origin, and the remedy of sin. We shall now give some of his general sayings on this dark subject.

“The sinner is the servant of sin,” he says, quoting from the Alcibiades of Plato who calls sin a servile thing, but virtue a free thing. “ Ye were sold by your sins,” he says, with a reference to St. Paul’s words, “but I am carnal, sold under sin.” “Sin,” he goes on to say, “is the death of the soul”. Clement is very severe on sins committed after baptism. He is a strong advocate for purity of word and thought at all times. One exquisite remark of his on this subject deserves quotation it is this : “That chastity is perfect in my mind which consists of sincerity of mind and works and thoughts, and especially of words and of purity in one’s dreams.”

In words that remind us of Juvenal’s canon of purity, 

                                           “ Maxima debetur puero reverential”

Clement warns his pupils above all things to abstain from lewd conversation, and to silence those who in­dulge in it. And as ugly things present themselves to the ear as well as to the eye, he says the Divine Instructor protects his wrestling children with chaste words as a defence for their ears lest anything might corrupt them, and turns their eyes to beautiful and chaste sights. “For there is nothing in human nature that is shameful in itself, but only that use of it which is contrary to law, and that is full of shame and worthy of reproach and punishment. For vice is the only thing that is really shameful, and the things that are done through it”

We shall now endeavour to examine Clement’s opinions on the subject of—

ORIGINAL SIN.

The passage which is generally cited from Clement’s works as containing his opinion on this subject is found in the sixteenth chapter of the third Book of the Stromateis, where he says: “And when David said, ‘ In sin I was conceived, and in iniquity my mother conceived me,’ he speaks indeed of Mother Eve, but Eve was the mother of all the living, and if ‘he was conceived in sin,’ at least he himself was not in sin, nor yet was he sin himself; but if any one turns from sin to the faith, he turns from the habit of sin as from a mother to the life.”

These words of Clement when taken from their context seem to deny the fact of original sin, the natural taint of heredity. But if we look at the context, we find that Clement is maintaining against Cassianus the dignity of marriage, and denying the disgrace of birth. “Let them say,” he exclaims, “when and where the babe just born has committed fornication, or how one who has not done anything has fallen under the curse of Adam ; they must main­tain, if they are consistent, that birth of soul is bad as well as that of body.” Clement stoutly upheld that man was not in sin, or rather was sin in the sense of the followers of Cassianus, who said that the birth of David, as well as of other men, was wicked and corrupt, and that the devil and not God was the author of it.

He does indeed say, “the children (lit. the seed) of those who are sanctified are also sanctified;” but he explains what he means by referring his readers to the words of St. Paul, who said that the unbelieving husband was sanctified by the believing wife; he also quotes with approval the very words of that Apostle: “ Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; and death reigned from Adam to Moses.”

When commenting on the manner in which the serpent beguiled Eve, he connects our disobedience and our love of enjoyment in some way with the sin of “our protoplast” Adam, and he speaks of “the regeneration through water,” and of “the womb of water,” expressions which evidently imply the fact of original sin.

In the twelfth chapter of the sixth Book of the Stromateis Clement discusses the question, whether Adam was created perfect or imperfect, and faces the dilemma: “If he was created imperfect, how could the work of a perfect God be imperfect, and above all man?” and if he was created perfect, how could he disobey? Clement’s answer is that Adam was not created perfect indeed, but adapted for the acquisition of virtue. This aptitude he defines as a motion to virtue, but not virtue itself. “All men have this natural tendency to virtue”, but we are not born naturally endowed with virtue, nor .after we are born does it come to us naturally as a part of the body; for in that case it would not be either voluntary or praiseworthy, but as Plato in the Menon says, “virtue is God-given; not coming from nature, nor imparted by teaching , but being an accession by the ordinance of God, not without reason to those who acquire it”. Virtue in the abstract, according to Clement, must be sought by labour, study, and discipline ; “it is a disposition of the soul under the sway of reason consistent through the whole of life while the particular virtues can only be won by living in the light of our confession to God.

This difficulty which the attainment of the character of virtue presented to the mind of Clement could only have been due to his sense of inherited failings and tendencies. He also speaks positively of a tendency to sin, which was cut off by Christ {, and which he rather plainly connects with the disobedience of “the protoplast” in the Pedagogus, where we read : “because the first man sinned and disobeyed God, and the man who sins against his reason is compared with the beasts, the man who is devoid of reason is naturally likened to the beasts.”

We have seen that Clement held that man is of his “own nature inclined to evil” as well as to good. But we have also found that he is a strong upholder of personal responsibility and freedom of will.

In the seventh Book of the Stromateis we find the reconciliation of the two. There Clement writes: “ Now he who is bad by natural disposition, when he becomes a sinner on account of vice (inherited), turns out a bad man having that (i. e. vice) which he chose of his own free will,; being inclined to sin, and sinning in very deed.” The gist of this passage is, that a man may have the inborn tendency to vice, and yet he is not a bad man until his will co-operates with the desire and identifies itself with it. We may therefore truly say that Clement in his own philosophical system took into account the inherited failings and infection of our nature, and showed how provision was made against such in the Christian economy of salvation, without at the same time depreciating the power and responsibility of the human will.

DOCTRINE OF REPENTANCE

Repentance has always been regarded as one of the essentials of salvation, and as one of the results of the Atonement. We may therefore discuss Clement’s treatment of this subject in connection with his theory of salvation and sin; and we may at the out­set venture to say that he handled this theme as a Christian and as a philosopher. It is our repentance that God seeks by His economy of fear, he tells us in the Pedagogus. In another passage, he says that “ God takes into consideration the inward state of the soul of man, if he has chosen (good or evil) easily, if he has repented of his errors, if his conscience pricks him for his sinful deeds, and he has recognized his fault, that is, gets knowledge afterwards; for repentance is a tardy knowledge, repentance is therefore the work of faith; for unless a man believes that, by which he was pre­viously held, to be a sin, and unless he believes that punishment is imminent for the unbelieving and salvation for him who lives according to the com­mandments, he will not be moved from it.”

In the same book he tells us that the Shepherd described repentance as “great intelligence.” “For when one repents of his misdeeds he no longer performs them, but torturing his own soul for his evil works he benefits it.” “Repentance differs from remission of sins, but both are in our power.” In the Tract on the Rich Man (p. 364) he thus defines repentance: “To repent is to condemn our past actions, and to ask pardon for them from the Father Who, in His mercy alone, is able to nullify our deeds, and with the dew of the Spirit to wipe out our former sins... And though one has lived dissolutely and then repents, it is possible to overcome the effects of his past bad life by his manner of life after his repent­ance.” He regards the power of God as the first factor in our change of mind. For he says : “it is impossible to cut away all at once the passions which have been allowed to grow up with our nature, but with the power of God, and human supplication, and the help of our brothers, and genuine repentance, and constant practice, these things are set right.”

“ There are two kinds of repentance,” he writes in the sixth Book of the Stromateis:  the general one which follows acts of sin, and the other kind, when one has learnt the nature of sin, in the first place persuades us to desist from sin itself, and from this it follows that one does not continue in sin.”

In the second Book of the same work he contrasts second repentance very unfavourably with first repentance. “For it is not right,” he observes, “that one who has received remission of sins should still commit sin: for in that first and only repentance, I mean of those who lived before in a gentile and primitive life, that is, the life which is lived in ignorance, a repentance[13] is forthwith put before those who are called, which cleanses the place of the soul from sins that faith may be established.”

“ But continued and alternate repentances after sin differ in no respect from the state of the disobedient, except in respect of the sense of sin. And I do not know which is worst, to sin knowingly, or to sin afresh after repentance.” Clement then proceeds to speak of the heathen who have come to the faith. “They once for all,” he says, “ receive remission of sins, but he who commits sin after that, and then repents, even though he finds pardon, must be ashamed that he is e no longer washed (by baptism) for remission of sin; for to repent often is but to practise sin. It is then but an appearance of repentance, but is not repentance when one frequently asks forgiveness for frequently committed sins”.

In this passage Clement’s purpose was not to deny the grace of repentance to the lapsed, as Origen in his Tract on St. Matthew's Gospel (and the Novatians did, but rather to deter converts from falling back to sin, by pointing out the enormity of sinning after the knowledge of God had been acquired.

In another passage he describes repentance as a “ sufficient purification for a man when it is perfect and steadfast; if when we have condemned ourselves for our previous actions we make advance, thinking of the things that are to follow, and stripping the mind as well of the things which delight us through the senses, as well as of our former misdeeds.”

When speaking of the different stages in glory, Clement says: “then when through a long course of discipline our faithful one has been delivered from his passions, and passes to a better abode than his previous one, he still must endure the greatest punishment—repentance for the sins committed after baptism.” Accordingly Clement did not, like the Novatians, regard sin after baptism as unpardonable ; although he held firmly and correctly that true repentance must include the steadfast purpose to lead a new life, and the abandonment of one’s old courses, as well as the sorrow for past sins.

THE ATONEMENT.

Though we find no systematic theology of the Atonement in Clement, still we are able to gather from passages that occur here and there through his works, that, like Athanasius and Augustine, he regarded the redeeming work of Christ as a regeneration of our nature by virtue of our mystical union with Him. In the Tract on the Rich Man (the following passage occurs:

“ Who was he (our neighbour) other than the Saviour Himself? Or who displayed greater pity than He for us who were well-nigh slain by the rulers of darkness through many wounds, fears, desires, wraths, griefs, deceits, and pleasures. Of these wounds, Jesus is the only Physician; He cuts out our affections from the very root, not like the law which removes the bare results, the fruits of bad plants. For He lays His own axe at the roots of sin. He it was Who poured the wine (the blood) of the vine of David upon our wounded spirits, and applied the oil of the Spirit from His own heart, and freely too. He it is Who showed that love, faith, and hope are the indissoluble bonds of health and salvation ; and He it was Who subjected to us angels, principalities, and powers for a high payment. For they too shall be freed from the vanity of the world in the manifestation of the glory of the Sons of God.”

In this passage Clement speaks of the pity of the Saviour for the captives of the Rulers of Darkness, the renovation of our humanity by the extirpation of the seeds of sin, and appears to allude to the redemption of Creation, which has shared in the ruin of man, and “ which waiteth for the manifestation of the Sons of God ”, at a great cost. He speaks of Jesus as the Healer, and of sin as a wound.

In the Pedagogus he thus alludes to our regeneration in Christ and our mystical relation to Him; our sympathy with Him, and our incorruption by Him : “For if we are regenerated into Christ, He, Who regenerated us supports us with His own milk; for it is natural that every being which gives birth should supply nourishment to its offspring. By parity of reasoning, as we have been born again in an analogous way, so we have a spiritual food. We are joined, therefore, in every respect, in all things to Christ, both in kinship with Him, on account of the blood by which we are redeemed, and in sympathy on account of the nourishment which we receive from the Word and in incorruption by His guidance of life.”

In the Pedagogus he thus speaks of the double nature of the blood of Christ:

“ The great bunch of grapes (which grew on the sacred vine) was the Word Who was crushed for us; since the blood of the grape, that is, of the Word, con­sented to be mixed with water. In the same way His blood is blended with salvation. But the blood of the Lord is twofold; one kind is carnal, by which we are redeemed from destruction, and the other is spiritual, that is by which we are anointed ”.

He then proceeds to describe the spiritual union of the believer with Christ in the Eucharist. We shall have occasion to recur to this passage when speaking of Clement’s sacramental teaching.

In the Stromateis he speaks of Jesus as the “ great High Priest, of One God Who is also Father, Who prays for men.” In another passage he calls Him “the Bishop of our hearts.” “Thus,” he says, “the Lord draws near the righteous, and nothing escapes Him of our thoughts and counsels; I mean the Lord Jesus, who by the will of God is the Bishop of your heart, Whose blood was consecrated for us”.

In the Pedagogus Clement speaks of the relation in which Christ stands to our sins. He is there commenting of the sixth verse of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah : “ The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all ” (lit. the Lord hath made the iniquity of us all to meet on Him), which takes this form in the Greek of Clement, “The Lord gave Himself up to our sins.” Strange to relate, he says nothing on the subject of the burden of sin and the shame of the cross, which were endured for men, but interprets the verse in this way : “The Lord gave Himself to our sins; that clearly means, as Corrector and Amender of our sins; therefore He is the only one who is able to remit sins, our Pedagogue appointed by the Father of all being the only One Who is able to distinguish obedience from disobedience.” Moreover he goes on to say : “The same Word, Who inflicts the penalty, is the judge. But it is manifest that He Who threatens is not willing to do any hurt, nor even to perform His threats ; but by putting man in fear, he cutoff the motion to sins and shows His good-will by still waiting and making known what they must suffer if they continue ' in sin. Good therefore is God. . . . God is not then angry, as some think, but for the most part He restrains us, and in every matter He exhorts us, and indicates how we should act. Still it is a good plan to make us afraid of sinning; the fear of the Lord banishes sin. Moreover, God does not chasten us in anger, but He considers what is just, seeing that it is not expedient that justice should be suspended on our account. Each one of us chooses his punishment because he sins of his own free will. The cause is therefore in him who makes the choice, not in God. And if our injustice commends the justice of God, what shall we say then? ”

Clement having thus vindicated the justice of God, proceeds to show that the object He has in view when He threatens and punishes men is their repentance and salvation. Quoting the prophet Amos, “I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a brand plucked out of the burning, and yet have ye not returned to me,” he remarks: “ You see how God seeks our repentance by reason of His goodness, and in the economy of fear He displays His good-will to us.” Commenting on the words, “I shall turn away My face from them,” he says :

“ For where God looks, there is peace and joy ; but where He averts His countenance evil enters. He does not wish therefore to behold evil. For He is good; but when He turns away His eye, evil arises spontaneously on account of the faithlessness of man ... And therefore I would confess that He punishes the fythless—for punishment (or chastisement, is for the good and advantage of him who receives it, and it is the correction of him who resists—but that He does not wish for vengeance. Whereas revenge is the returning of evil with evil, with a view to the advantage of the avenger, but this would not be desired by Him who taught us to pray for those who revile us... That God is good, all confess, and that He is just does not need many words to prove when one can adduce the evangelical saying of the Lord: ‘That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.’ ” Thus basing the justice of God upon His goodness, Clement was able to see in God’s dealings with sinners a scheme of improvement rather than a system of retribution, and to regard the Word as the Amender rather than the Avenger of sin.

Although Clement did not attempt to formulate any theory of the Atonement, or to explain the Son’s deal­ing with the Father on behalf of the erring humanity He represented, yet he brought his readers to the very heart of the Atonement when he led them to the Person of the Incarnate Word of God.

For his favourite text, when treating of the sacrifice of Christ, was not “without shedding of blood is no. remission”, but rather, “My blood is drink indeed”. When he does use the words, “ without shedding of blood,” he is not speaking of the Son’s approach to His Father, but of our approach to the Word; and he is not referring to the Lord’s sufferings, but to the life of trial that awaits the true Christian. For if our Master, he argues, was crowned with thorns, it is not right that His followers should wear garlands of flowers.

The regeneration and sustenance that come to us from Christ are his uppermost thoughts when speaking of this solemn mystery. “The Word,” he says, “is spoken of metaphorically as bread and flesh, and nourishment, and blood and milk, for our Lord is everything, that we who believe in Him may enjoy Him”. Again he says, “the blood is represented in an allegory as wine”. The spiritual food which the Word gives to us is the subject of a long passage in the Pedagogus, where we read: “This nourishment proper to us, the Lord supplies, and gives us His flesh and sheds His blood. Thus the growth of His children is every way provided for. O wonderful mystery ! He bids us cast off the old and carnal corruption with the old food; and becoming partakers of an­other and new diet, that of Christ, to receive Him, if possible, and carry Him in our breasts. To express this truth in a more general way, the Holy Spirit is represented by the flesh—for the flesh was made by Him, and the blood signifies the Word, for as rich blood the Word is infused into our life. And the Lord, both Spirit and Word, is the food of infants. The nourish­ment is the milk of the Father; by it alone the children are nourished. He then who is the Beloved and our Sustainer, the Word saving our humanity, poured out for us His blood, through which we, who believe in God, have access to the breast of the Father—even the Word. For He alone, as it is right, supplies us, His children, with the milk of love.”

Clement also saw in the blood a symbol of our Lord’s passion. “The same blood and milk,” he said, “is a symbol of the passion and doctrine of our Lord”. The blood of Abel crying from the ground contained a prophecy, he said, of “ the Word Who was to suffer.” But, for him, the primary reference of “ blood ” was to the body of our Lord and the nourishment we derive from it; “for the blood,” he said, “is the substance of the human body”, words that seem to echo Deuteronomy, “ for the blood is the life.”

We have seen that he does indeed speak of repent­ance, which he seemed to regard as one result of the work of Christ, “as cleansing the place of the soul.” He also spoke of the cleansing of Baptism, the laver ^through which we are cleansed of our sins, “ the Baptism of the Word, by which our sins are remitted,” “the genuine drops by which we are made clean,” and he described our illumination, adoption, perfection, and immortality as results of baptism), and he regarded deliverance from darkness as a result of our regeneration. Accordingly these blessed results which flow into our nature through the Baptism of the Word, repentance, remission of sins, deliverance from darkness, redemption, cleansing, illumination, adoption, perfection, and immortality may be summed up in the two favourite terms of our author, regeneration and sustaining grace.

It would, however, seem that Clement regarded these benefits as coming to us from the Incarnation rather than from the Atonement of our Lord. He does indeed say, “we glorify Him Who was sacrificed for us, we also sacrificing ourselves ”, but he does not seem to attach sufficient importance and to give an adequate position to the sacrifice of the death of Christ in his system of Theology. He saw that Christ is the representative Man, and the Son of God Who recalled man to his relation with God by being the revelation of the Father, and won men to love and imitate God by discovering in His own nature the beauty of holiness. For salvation, according to Clement, is the following of Christ.

He understood that Christ is everywhere present organically connected with the race by His Incarnation; that He is ever working in man, leading him to repentance, giving him light, power, and love, and thus imparting Himself to humanity as their Bread of Life.

His vision was clear enough to discern in Christ, the Healer of our wounds, the Restorer of our nature, who “ cut out the tendency to sin ” and “ the passions of our flesh,” and the well-spring of a new life purifying and regenerating the souls of men. But to the mystery of the Agony and the Passion on the Cross, he makes but a passing reference,1 regarding it as an episode in the perfect identification. For the Incarnation which established the future of humanity on the restored basis of a new creation by a new relation, sympathy, and incorruption , was his one absorbing theme.

 

CHAPTER XI

CLEMENT AND THE BIBLE

 

Clement’s learning, as we have seen, was most profound and extensive. He was as much at home in the poetry and philosophy of the heathen, as he was in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Some idea of the range of his erudition may be given by the fact that the list of Greek authors alone from whom he quotes are legion. His writings are as interesting ' as they are voluminous, on account of the light they throw on the Roman Empire of the second century, the information they contain of the ancient Gnostic heresies, and the numerous quotations of lost authors that we find therein. But they reveal him more in the character of an eclectic philosopher than in that of a careful theologian. And yet, an ardent student of the Scriptures, he was anxious that others should follow his example. As we have already seen, he advised Christian couples to begin the day with prayer and reading. He recommended all Christians to prove the truth of their belief by their own independent examination of the sacred records ; and he invited the heathen to find out what the true doctrine was by searching the Scriptures themselves, at the same time urging them to exert their reason in order to “ distinguish the true from the false.” At the time he wrote, doctrine was passing from oral tradition to written definition. Clement says over and over again, that he is simply retailing an original tradition that has been handed down to him. After his mention of his teachers , he tells us that they preserved the true tradition of the blessed doctrine without break from Peter and James, John and Paul, handing it down from father to son, until at last these ancestral and apostolic seeds were deposited with him. “ Well I know that they would rejoice,” he adds, “not indeed in my exposition but in the committal of their traditions to this writing.”

And yet he insists on drawing a marked distinction between written and oral doctrine. In his Selections from the Prophets he tells that the ancients did not write, not wishing to waste the time they had to devote to teaching on writing.

Eusebius quotes a passage from Clement’s last Hypotyposeis, in which we find the statement, that our Lord communicated the gnosis, i. e. the knowledge of the true doctrine, to James, John, and Peter after His resurrection; they delivered it to the other disciples, and these, in their turn, to the seventy

“ For our Lord did not forthwith reveal to the many those things which are not for the many, but to the few who were able to receive it, and to be fashioned according to it”. “But the secret things, like God, are entrusted to word, not to writing.” Accordingly, Clement says he “ will not write down all that he knows, lest by any chance he should impart the knowledge to some one incapable of receiving it, and so ‘ cast pearls before swine.’ ”

In the case of the Hebrews, according to Clement, an unwritten tradition was clearly referred to in the words, “ For when ye ought to be teachers for the time, ye have need that one teach you which be the first principles of the oracles of God.”

He also says that certain things were concealed until the times of the Apostles; and were by them delivered as they had received them from the Lord. In support of this statement he quotes the verses of Ephesians iii. 3-5, “ By revelation the mystery was made known (the better of the two readings) to me which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men as it is now revealed to His holy Apostles and prophets.” Scripture is obscure, he tells us, for two reasons : first, that we may become more curious and more watchful in the discovery of the words of life ; and secondly, lest we should be harmed by taking the words in a wrong sense.

It is only they who have been trained in the first principles of Christian knowledge, “the milk,” that Clement admits to that fuller insight unto the divine mysteries which St. Paul called “ meat.”

In the Stromateis he writes—“ He who wishes to be enlightened by the power of God must accustom himself to philosophize on spiritual things. A logical cultivation of mind is necessary in order to understand the ambiguous and equivocal words of scripture.”

“ For neither prophecy nor the Saviour Himself announced the divine mysteries in a way that all might understand, but expressed them in parables.”

“ Of Him the Apostles said, ‘ He spoke all things in parables ’; and if ‘ all things were made by Him,’ prophecy and law were made by Him, and were uttered by Him in parables.”

Clement tells us en passant, that our Lord did not intend to cause but merely predicted the blindness of the Jews when He said, “ Therefore speak I to them in parables : because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

“ But all things are plain,” saith the Scripture, “ to those who understand,” that is, to those who receive and preserve the exposition of the Scriptures given by Him according to the ecclesiastical rule."

HIS ECCLESIASTICAL CANON.

“The false ones,” he writes in his Stromateis , “are not they who conform for the sake of salvation, nor they who are mistaken in matters of detail, but they who have gone astray in essentials, and as far as in them lies reject the Lord and take away His true teaching, not quoting or delivering the Scriptures in a manner worthy of God and our Lord. For the deposit which is rendered to God, according to the teaching of our Lord handed down to us by His Apostles, is the comprehension and the practice of the divine tradition, ‘ And what ye hear in the ear ’ (that is, in a secret and mysterious manner, for such things are in a figure said to be spoken in the ear)/ proclaim aloud upon the housetops, receiving them in an exalted mood, and delivering them in sublime strains, and explaining the Scriptures according to the canon of truth}”

This canon, which he defines as “ the harmony and agreement of the law and the prophets with the covenant which was given at the appearance of our Lord,” i. e. the harmony of the Old and New Testaments in the Incarnation of Christ, was for Clement merely a guide to the interpretation of truth, a clue to the hidden sense of prophecy and parable, not an independent source of doctrine. By following this rule, by reading law and prophecy in the light of the Incarnation, the true Gnostic was saved from the errors of the false Gnostic, who had no such method of interpretation. For the true Gnostic grows old in the study of the Scriptures, and carefully adheres to the apostolic and ecclesiastical division of doctrines.

THE CANON OE SCRIPTURE.

In Clement’s day there was no fixed canon of Scripture. He treated the Alexandrine Old Testament which contained the Apocryphal books as correspond­ing to the revised text of Ezra : telling us that “the Scriptures were translated into the Greek language, that the Greeks might never be able to plead ignorance, inasmuch as they can now hear what we have in our hands.”

Clement gives quotations from all the books of the Old Testament except 2 Chronicles, the Book of Ruth, the. Song of Solomon, and the Vision of Obadiah (although he mentions its author), and he uses the Apocryphal books freely and without distinction.

He quotes three books, the Ecclesiasticus (fifty-three times), the Book of Wisdom, and the Proverbs, evidently regarding them as parts of one work, and treating the first-named works as canonical Scripture.

He makes use of Baruch under the name of Jeremiah, and speaks of the work as “the divine Scripture.” He calls the Book of Tobit Scripture, saying, “This hath the Scripture declared in this brief saying, ‘ What you rate, do not to another ’ ”.

Moreover, there are references to be found' in his works to the Book of the Maccabees, Judith, and Esdras. Of the Apocryphal Gospels he quotes that according to the Egyptians, in connection with the question that Salome put to Christ, “ How long will men go on dying?” and the answer, “So long as women go on bearing.” He takes the sentence, “Wonder at the present things,” from the Traditions of Matthias, a work from which the Gnostic heretics Valentinus, Marcion, and Basileides derived support for several of their opinions. In confirmation of his argument, that wonder is the beginning of knowledge, he cites the well-known saying from the Gospel according to the Hebrews : “ He who has wondered will reign, and he who has reigned will rest.”

Eusebius tells us that Clement quoted from the Apocalypse of Peter in the Hypotyposeis. In the Selections from the Prophets we find at least three references to that work. One of these passages is very remarkable. Speaking of the children who have been exposed after birth, he tells us that Peter in the Apocalypse says, “ A flame of fire plays round their heads, and blinds the eyes of the women.” Clement also gives several long quotations from the Preaching of Peter, which Neander believed to be the work of some Gnostic.

On seven occasions he adduces passages from the Epistle of Barnabas, whom he calls the “ Apostolic Barnabas.” One of these deserves insertion. “And Barnabas, after that he had said, ‘ Woe to those who are wise in their own conceits and clever in their own eyes,’ added, ‘Let us become spiritual, a complete temple in God, practising as far as in us lies the fear of God, and striving to keep His commandments that we may rejoice in His judgments’.”

We find several passages on martyrdom taken from the Roman Clement’s Epistle to the Corinthians, which is called in another connection the Epistle of the Romans to the Corinthians. Clement refers to the author as the Apostle Clement. Finally, there are numerous reminiscences of the Shepherd of Hermas, and the works of Tatian, scattered through the different treatises of this copious writer. With the exception of the last-named, Clement evidently regarded all the books from which he quoted as “ apostles and prophets,” he wrote, “ undoubtedly, as more or less on the same level of inspiration with those Scriptures which we speak of as canonical.”

THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE.

On the vexed question of the inspiration of Scripture it is interesting to consult Clement. “ The disciples of the Spirit spake what the Spirit communicated to them ; but we can depend on no such spiritual guidance, which supersedes all human means of culture, to enable us to unfold the hidden sense of their words. A scientific culture of the mind is necessary to enable us to evolve the full meaning of what was imparted indeed to them by the inspir­ation of the Holy Ghost, but which they conveyed in their own language”. Clement does not therefore seem to have been an advocate of verbal inspiration, although he certainly believed in some kind of inspiration : for he says, “God leads men according to the divinely-inspired Scriptures;” and in Stromateis, “To be displeased with the divine commands is to be displeased with the Holy Spirit;” and again, “The prophets were the instruments (or organs) of the Divine Voice ”

CLEMENT’S METHOD OF INTERPRETATION.

It was not Clement’s desire to add to or to subtract from the Scriptures, which he regarded as the exposition of the government of the Divine Word, but to interpret them. And this he did in the peculiar method of Alexandria, treating the simple story of family and national life that we find in the Hexateuch as a spiritual allegory. For example, he saw in the coat of many colours the varied knowledge that Joseph possessed.

An interesting specimen of his Scriptural exegesis will be found in the sixth book of the Stromateis, where Clement gives his interpretation of the “Ten Words” (the Decalogue).

“ Let the Decalogue,” he says, “ be set forth en passant as a specimen for Gnostic exposition. It is superfluous to say that ten is a sacred number. But if the tables which were written were the work of God, they will be found to exhibit natural creation. For the ‘finger of God’ means the power of God, by which the creation of heaven and earth is accomplished. Of both these the tables must be understood to be symbols. For the writing and formation of God put on the tables is the creation of the world. Now the Decalogue, as a heavenly image, contains sun and moon, stars, clouds, light, spirit, water, air, darkness, and fire. This is the natural Decalogue of heaven. And the image of the earth contains men,  cattle, reptiles, beasts, and of creatures that exist in water, fishes and whales, and again of birds, those that are carnivorous and those that use mild food, and of plants likewise, both the fertile and the barren. This is the natural Decalogue of the earth. And the ark which contains them would be the knowledge of things human and divine, and wisdom.

Moreover, it may be said that the two tables are a prophecy of two covenants. So they were mystically renewed when ignorance and sin abounded. The commandments have thus a twofold purpose to serve, being written for two different kinds of spirits, the ruling and the subject spirit. “For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.”

And there is a ten in man as well—the five senses,  the faculty of speech, the power of reproduction, the spiritual principle given at his formation, which is the eighth, the ruling faculty of the soul, which is the ninth, and that character, the property of the Holy Spirit, which is the tenth.

To turn now to his explanations of the different commandments, which we may observe are not given in their usual order, the comment on the fifth com­mandment is very far-fetched. “By father,” he says, “ God is meant, and by mother, not as some suppose that from which they sprang, nor, as others again teach, the Church, but the divine knowledge and wisdom, called by Solomon ‘the Mother of the Just.’”

When explaining the seventh commandment, he observed that adultery means the desertion of the true knowledge of God, and the propagation of some false opinion, either by deifying some created object, or by making an idol of something that does not exist. Fornication is thus for him a synonym of idolatry.

Again, murder is the destruction of the truth, either by alleging that the universe is not under Providence, or that the world is uncreated, or by any other false opinion; while theft is when men claim to be the authors of what they are not, and so take away honour from God by asserting that they are masters of what He alone has made; or when they imitate philosophy like the Greeks.

When writing a note on the 19th :Psalm, Clement, always on the watch for mystical meanings, saw in t the words “Day unto day uttereth speech,” a reference to a written, and in “Night unto night sheweth knowledge,” a reference to a mysterious doctrine.

Perhaps one of his best comments is that on Matthew v. 29, where he says that the commend to “pluck out the right eye” is a direction to pull out the evil lusts by the roots.

These are a few samples of that method of interpretation, according to which contradictory statements were reconciled, and unconnected passages were brought into correspondence with equal facility by him who could find in Hesiod’s poems references to Abraham and the rejection of the Messiah.

 

CHAPTER XII

THE CHURCH AND THE SACRAMENTS

 

It has been remarked over and over again that Clement was strangely reticent on the subject of dogma. Various explanations of this concealment have been given. According to certain writers, the Christian Doctrine was in a nebulous condition in the age of Clement, being without any distinct baptismal formula, or even a general summary of faith. But this is hardly a sufficient or satisfactory solution of the question, as we shall see further on. For it is not likely that the Catechetical School of Alexandria in the second century was without a precise formula of faith.

Besides, Clement constantly refers to an “ecclesiastical canon,” to the “true and divine tradition,” and to the “Gospel canon.” He speaks also of a “Homologia”, or Confession of Faith. We must take into consideration the fact that Clement’s economy in this respect is largely due to his not being willing to subject the dogmas of the Christian religion to the scoffing criticism of the “uninitiated,” to whom he did not wish the “sacred tradition” to be accessible. We must also remember that he was writing as a philosopher on the philosophy of Christianity, and not as a historian of the Christian Church, and we must not expect to find in the works of our author any precise definition of the Church and the Sacraments, or any special reference to the Christian organization and its three orders. It is extraordinary, however, considering the philosophical bias of Clement’s mind, to find so many allusions as we do to the Church principle and life.

We shall now quote some of these references.

THE CHURCH.

“The Church,” writes Clement, “is like a human being consisting of many members, and is nourished by the spiritual life imparted by an indwelling Saviour. For the food He promises His disciples is Himself, the Word of God, the Spirit made flesh”.

“ While the Holy Spirit is spoken of, in a figure, as the Bread, and the Blood is a type of the Word, the Bread and the Blood are both united in the Lord, Who is Spirit and Word”.

“ The Universal Father is one, and the Universal Word is one, the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and the only virgin mother—not Mary, but the Church—is one also. This is the Church which alone had not milk because she alone was not a woman. But she is at once virgin and mother, nursing her children with the holy milk of the Word of life”.

When commenting on the Lord’s words, “You shall eat My flesh and drink My blood,” he says : “That which is drunk is clearly a symbol of the faith and the hope, by which the Church as a man, consisting of many members, is watered and increased, is welded together and made one out of both—body, which is faith, and soul, which is hope, just as our Lord had flesh and blood” .

“This is the food on which the Church is fed and  nourished, growing and living in the one personal Christ, who delivers man from sin by indwelling in the race, and by leading it to all perfection.”

“There is no distinction of elect and non-elect in this Church of God. For all men are one, because there is one Universal Father and one Universal Word. But there is organic life. The Church is a living organism. It is a sanctified humanity, because indwelt in by the Source of life, and because purified by grace, through which Christ works because He is her Head ”.

“Let us complete,” he says, “the fair person of the Church and run as children to the good mother, and if we become hearers of the Word, let us glorify that blessed economy by which man is trained up, sanctified as a child of God, and made a citizen of the kingdom of heaven”. The reference here may be either to the Incarnation, which is often spoken of by the Fathers as an “economy,” or to the Church, into which Clement says in a following paragraph, that the Pedagogue (i.e. the Word) “ introduced us and thus to Himself.”

In Pedagogus, Clement says, “As God’s will is an effect, and is called the universe, so His design is the salvation of men, and this is called Ecclesia (the Church). He knows them whom He has called, whom He has saved; He called and saved at the same time.”

“ It is not the place, but the congregation of the elect that I call the Church,” he remarks in the Stromateis, “it is the great temple of God, the individual being the small temple”; “it is the divine will on earth as in heaven”; “it is the congregation of those who devote themselves to prayer”; “it is the image of the Church in heaven,” which Clement describes now as the “heavenly Jerusalem,” now as “the Church on high above the clouds touching the heavens,” and now as the holy assembly of love.”

His favourite definition of the Church is that which consists of those whom God has called and saved. This call was for all, not for a few. All, however, do not receive it. “It is the preconceived opinions of men,” he says, “ that lead them to disobedience. For the advent of the Saviour did not make people foolish, hard of heart, and unbelieving, but wise, amenable to persuasion, and believing. But they who would not believe, separating themselves of their own free will from those who obeyed, were found to be foolish and faithless.”

Thus Clement in no way limits the love and grace of God. He regards salvation as a matter for our own individual will, and not as the result of ap arbitrary decree; as something intended to be universal in efficacy and extent, and not as the selection of the few to the exclusion of the many.

Clement was not blind to the historic claims of the Church. When discussing the origin of the different heresies, he says, “Since this is the case, it is plain, I think, from the high antiquity* and truth of the Church, that these later heresies, and those still subsequent to them, were false innovations. From what has been said, it seems evident to me that the true Church, the really ancient Church, into which are enrolled those who are just of set purposes (is one.”

Speaking of the unity of the Church, he says, “For since God is one, and the Lord is one, that which is of supreme importance is praised because it is one, being an imitation of the one principle ; the one Church has then a joint heritage in the nature of the one, but these heresies strive to divide it into many sects. In substance, then, in idea, in principle, and in excellence, we say that the ancient and Catholic Church stands alone and gathers together into the unity of one faith —which is founded on the corresponding testaments, or rather the one Testament given at various times, by 1 the will of the one God through our Lord—all those whom God predestinated, having known that they would be just before the foundation of the world. But the excellence of the Church as the principle of union lies in its oneness, in its surpassing all other things, and having nothing equal to or like itself.”

In Stromateis, our author makes reply to the objections of those who refuse to join the communion of the Church on account of the number of prevailing sects and heresies, by saying that while there is one high-road, there are many other roads, some ending in a precipice and others in a river, but that in consequence of this fact people do not abstain from a journey, but they will make use of “the safe, the royal, the frequented path.” By parity of reasoning, the truth, he goes on to say, is not to be abandoned, for in it true knowledge is to be found, because the true Gnostic follows the Apostolical and Ecclesiastical division of doctrine.

Clement lays great stress upon the truth of the Church, as we have seen from his own words: “Therefore it is evident from the fact that the Church is most ancient and most true, that the heresies which arose afterwards were false innovations; and it is clear from what we have said that the true Church, the really historic Church, is one ”

Moreover, the Church is a bride, and must be pure, pure from the evil thoughts that arise from within, and militate against the truth, pure from those who tempt her from without, who follow after heresies and persuade us to be false to the one man who is Almighty God. The Church is also faithful, “for the virtue which keeps the Church together, as the Shepherd says, is faith by which the elect of God are saved ”.

We thus find in the works of Clement these notes of the catholicity of the Church, antiquity, truth, unity, purity, faithfulness, and universality. We also find an organized ministry. For Clement makes the usual distinction between the clergy and the laity, and be­tween the different Orders of the former. Speaking of St. Paul’s precept concerning matrimony, he says : “Nay, he (St. Paul) allows him to be the husband of one wife, whether he be presbyter or deacon or layman”

THE ORDERS IN THE MINISTRY.

In the third book of the Pedagogus , when enumerating certain precepts from the Holy Scriptures, for his pupils, he adds: “But there are very many more counsels in Scripture which refer to certain persons ; of these some concern the presbyters, some the bishops, some the deacons, and others the widows, and of these I shall speak at another day”. We gather from these words that Clement believed that the Scriptures allotted their several offices and duties to the bishops, priests, and deacons.

The writings of Origen, a pupil of Clement, contain a remarkable echo of these words. In his work, On Prayer, he says : “In addition to these more general duties, there is the duty we owe the widow who is cared for by the Church, and another duty we owe the deacon, and another duty we owe the presbyter, and, the most important of all, that which we owe the bishop.”

In the Stromateis Clement only mentions the two orders of presbyter and deacon. But then he was distinguishing between the position of those who improve and that of those who wait upon others. “There are two departments in the service of man,” he says; “one of these is devoted to improvement, and the other to attendance. Medicine improves the body and philosophy the mind. Parents and rulers are served, the former by their children and the latter by their subjects. So in the Church, the presbyters are like those who improve, and the deacons are like those who serve.”

It would have spoiled the comparison to have said “the bishops and presbyters,” seeing that the presbyters are themselves subject to the bishops. There was no necessity, therefore, for Clement to mention the bishops in this passage, as he was simply comparing the functions of the diaconate with those of the presbyterate. His silence concerning that order is not a proof that he was not aware of its existence or of its functions. One might equally well say, because he did not mention mathematics or jurisprudence, that he knew nothing about the existence or use of these sciences. It is true that in another passage he called a bishop the presbyter. Whether he was alluding to his age or to the fact that “very bishop is a presbyter, although every presbyter is not a bishop,” we do not know, but we have found no passage in his works in which he ascribes the function of a bishop to a presbyter.

In the story of St. John and the Robber, incorpor­ated into the Tract on the Rich Man , we find strong testimony to the fact that Clement was well aware that the Church was regularly organized on an episcopal basis by the Apostles themselves.

After John’s return from Ephesus, we are told in it that “he went to the neighbouring nations, here to appoint bishops, there to found and establish whole churches, and in other places to set apart for the ‘ministry those who were marked out by the Spirit.” It is related also that he spoke to “ the bishop who had been appointed over the district,” and addressed him as “Bishop”.

Referring to the passage, 1 Timothy iii. 4, 5, he says : “They should be appointed bishops who from ruling their own homes well have studied to rule the Church ”

Eusebius tells us that Clement in the sixth book of his Outlines says: “Peter and James and John, after the ascension of the Saviour, seeing that they had been pre-eminently honoured by the Lord, did not contend for glory, but elected James the Just to be Bishop of Jerusalem.”

There is a very interesting chapter, in which Clement shows that there are degrees of glory in heaven corresponding with the dignities of the Church below. In this chapter he gives a description of the respective works of the bishop, priest, and deacon.

“They who have trained themselves in the Lord’s commandments,” he writes, “and have lived perfectly and gnostically (after the manner of the true Gnostic), according to the Gospel, may be numbered in the chosen body of the apostles. He is really a presbyter of the Church, and a true minister (deacon) of the will of God who does and teaches what is the Lord’s, not as ordained alone of men, nor as righteous because a presbyter, but because righteous enrolled among the presbyters.

In conclusion Clement writes: “ Such will be honored by being placed on one of the four-and-twenty thrones. Since, according to my opinion, the various steps in the Church, of bishop, presbyter, and deacon, are imitations of the angelic glory. For these, taken up into the clouds, will first minister as deacons, then as presbyters, until they grow into the perfect man.” In this way he distinguished the different orders of the ministry from one another, and showed that these are not all equal in rank or function.

CLEMENT ON BAPTISM,

There are many interesting references to the rite and meaning of Baptism in the works of St. Clement. In the Pedagogus he writes—“Being baptized we are illuminated, being illuminated we are adopted, being adopted we are made immortal.” “This work,” he goes on to say, “has many titles, grace, illumination, that which is perfect, and the laver. It is a ‘laver,’ because we are through it cleansed from sin ; it is grace, because by it the punishment of sin is remitted; it is illumination, because by it we see that holy saving light, and our sight is made keen to see God; and it is perfect because it is complete, for what doth he need who knows God ? Surely it is absurd to call that which is not perfect the grace of God, for He Who is Perfect will give perfect gifts.” 

In another passage Clement speaks of “the laver” as the synonym of salvation. In his Exhortation to the Heathen he writes: “ Receive then the water of the Word; wash, ye stained ones; purify yourselves from custom by sprinkling yourselves with the drops of truth.”

In the Pedagogus he derives the Greek word for man from that which man was intended to receive—light. “Our sins,” he says, “have been removed by one Paeonian remedy, the baptism of the Word.” In the sixth chapter of the same work he alludes to the repentance and renunciation, of which Baptism is at once seal and earnest, in these terms : “Likewise we repenting of our sins, renouncing our iniquities, and purified by baptism, hasten back to the Eternal Light, children of the Father.”

In another passage he shows how the heretic Basileides tries to reduce baptism, the blessed seal (baptism, or the laying on of hands afterwards) of the Son and the Father, to absurdities.

Clement refers to the custom of giving the newly-baptized a mixture of milk and honey, a symbol of the promised land1 flowing with milk and honey, and of all the privileges which the baptized possess. He also speaks of the custom of mixing wine with milk, which Jerome in his commentary on Isaiah says prevailed among the Western Churches. This latter compound most probably answered to the chrism. In the same work he makes a strong protest against the kiss of brotherhood which the baptized were privileged to inflict on other Christians. He tells us that he objects to this custom, the display that was made of it in the churches, and the evils that might and did arise from it. According to him, love was evinced in brotherly feeling not in outward demonstrations.

Clement alludes to infant baptism in the Pedagogus in the expression “the children drawn out of water,” and uses a remarkable figure of speech in his Exhortation to the Gentiles, where he says, ‘‘We must quench the fiery darts of the wicked with watery points baptized by the Word.”

We must now try to set down what our teacher said on the difficult subject of baptismal regeneration. When speaking of baptism he almost invariably uses some part or derivative of the verb to regenerate, e.g. we are made precious immediately after our regeneration; and “my view is this, that He Himself fashioned man from clay; regenerated him in water, made him grow by the Spirit, trained him by word for Sonship and Salvation, directing him by sacred precepts, in order that transforming the earth-born into a holy heavenly thing, by His coming He might fulfil to the uttermost that divine expression, ‘Let us make man in Our Own image and likeness.’ ”

But in the Exhortation to the Heathen he says: “Let us hasten to salvation, let us hasten to the Regeneration; though we be many let us hasten to be united in the union of one Essence.” Here Clement is evidently speaking of the state of the righteous after the Resurrection.

In his Tract on the Rich Man he uses the words “giving a great example of a genuine repentance and a great token of reformation.” Again he says, “She who is a sinner lives to sin but is dead to the commandments; but she who has repented, being born again by conversion of life, has regeneration.” In this passage he uses the two expressions side by side, in such a way, however, that it is not hard to see that he regarded the new birth as the joint result of regeneration—God’s part in the renewal pf man—and of repentance, “which purifies the place of the soul”.

Perhaps the strongest passage on the importance and efficacy of Baptism that is to be found in the third book of the Stromateis. He is there commenting on the words, “Call no man your father upon earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven,” and says that these words mean : “Do not consider him who has begotten you in the body to be the author and cause of your essence, but the assistant in your generation, or rather the minister of it. So He wishes you to be turned and to become again as little children, recognizing the true Father, and regenerated through water, this being another sowing in the Creation.”

Again he says: “For this was the meaning of the saying, ‘Unless ye be converted and become as little children, pure in body, holy in soul, and abstaining from evil works,’ showing that He wishes us to be such as He has begotten from the womb of water”. He describes the water of Baptism as “the logical water”, the water of the Word; in the Pedagogus he mentions the deliverance from darkness, the illumination, the adoption, the perfection, and the immortality that are given to us by baptism ; and immediately afterwards ascribes the same result of illumination to regeneration; and he speaks of Christ as He Who regenerates by the Spirit unto sonship all who turn to the Father.

CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION.

Catechetical instruction was very intimately con­nected with Baptism in the system of Clement. Indeed on one occasion he almost uses the term to give spiritual birth as equivalent to the word to teach. This does not surprise us, seeing that it was a leading doctrine with Clement that the Word of God illuminates the reason of man.

In the Pedagogics he says that catechetical instruction leads men to faith. Explaining the “meat” of 1 Corinthians, he says St. Paul means, “I have given you milk to drink, that is, I have poured into you knowledge, which is given by catechetical instruction, and nourishes unto eternal life.” Again he says, “Meat is faith made into a foundation by catechetical instruction”; and while milk is the catechetical instruction, which is, as it were, the first nourishment of the soul, meat is the “ speculation of the mystic”.

When drawing a distinction between the carnal and spiritual mind he says in the same book, “The carnal are those who have just been admitted to this catechetical instruction.” This form of instruction, although most extensive,—to judge from the words of Stromateis, “He who gathers what may help the catechumen, especially when they are Greeks, must not abstain from science and erudition like some unreasoning animal, but must collect together as many helps as possible for his pupils,”—was not yet the perfect knowledge of the Gnostic, which is “the perfection of faith.” The duty of a catechist was thus an onerous but a tender one; for, as Clement says, “We call him father who catechizes us; wisdom being a thing to be imparted and productive of affection to man”

It probably was the duty of the catechist to hand on to his pupils some confession or form of creed in which the principal articles of belief were summed up; for Clement says, “The first saving change from heathenism is faith, that is, a compendious knowledge of all that is necessary to salvation.” That this creed was not yet committed to writing, we may infer from the words of the Stromateis—“Many of us have received the doctrine concerning God without writing through faith.” It was no doubt that love of mystery, the predominant feature of the Alexandrian Church, owing to the influence of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, which caused a prejudice against committing the truths of religion to writing lest they should be profaned by the uninitiated.

There must have been some form of sound words which had been handed down by word of mouth in vogue in Clement’s day.

It is matter of regret that he did not explain more explicitly what was the exact formula of faith which he held, and which he was content to define in general terms. He may have intended to do so in another volume of the Stromateis which he planned, but never lived to write. For he promised his readers in the beginning chapter of his fourth volume, to give an “abridged exposition of scripture, and other matters, which he had originally intended to deal with in one book, but was prevented from doing so on account of the number of subjects that were pressing.”

Accordingly the question, Was the Church of Alexandria provided with a creed in the days of Clement? must resolve itself into the three following questions. (1) Do we find any reference to such a formula of faith in his works? (2) Can we reproduce the principal articles of our creeds from his writings ? (3) Do we find any traces of a fixed confession of faith before, during, and immediately after his lifetime?

If these three questions can be answered in the affirmative, we will establish by three lines of proof the probability of the fact that the Church of Alexandria was furnished with a creed in Clement’s day.

In the first place, can we find any reference to a fixed formula in the writings of our author ? Professor Harnack says we cannot. He asserts that we cannot gather from the works of Clement that they had in Alexandria either a baptismal confession similar to the Roman, or that they understood by such expressions as “rule of faith,” any fixed and apostolic summary of articles of belief. To prove this assertion he adduces the following passage from Stromateis: “If any one should break covenants and his agreement with us, shall we abstain from the truth because of one who is false to his profession? No; but as the just man dare not lie or invalidate any one of the things he promised, even so it is not right that we should transgress the ecclesiastical canon in any respect, and especially we maintain the confession of these truths which are of the highest moment, while the heretics transgress it.”

In his comments on this passage, Prof. Harnack contends that the word Homologia never means a confession of faith in Clement’s works, but confession in general, and that its content is given by the context; that it is possible that Clement referred to the Confession at Baptism, but that this is not certain, and that at any rate it is not proved that Clement identified his “ecclesiastical canon ” with it formulated creed.

Now if we turn to the context; from which this passage is taken, we shall see that even on Harnack’s own hypothesis the word Homologia in the last clause can only refer to a special confession of faith. Clement is there answering the objections of those who refuse to become members of the Church on account of the dissension of heresies, and the consequent difficulty of ascertaining the truth. He then proceeds to argue from the necessity of truth in mundane matters to its necessity in spiritual concerns. If any man breaks his contract with us, who are men, shall we too prove faithless to ours  Nay, but as the just must always uphold the truth in every detail; so we must not allow the ecclesiastical canon—a higher covenant than any human one—to be broken in any particular. And we do maintain, above all things, the confession which concerns the highest matters of faith while the heretics violate it.

In the light of the context the last sentence can only mean that we, the orthodox Christians, are staunch in every detail to the ecclesiastical canon and to the specific articles of our belief, which the heretics have abandoned. For Clement’s argument—“even as the right-minded man must be truthful and violate not a single one of the promises he has made, so we are bound not to violate the ecclesiastical canon in any respect, and we do guard above all things the confession which concerns the highest truths, but they violate it”—would have no force at all, if there is no specified creed, but merely a vague belief, which one might easily violate unconsciously in some way, and which would therefore be very difficult to guard in every particular.

On the contrary, this argument would have meaning if, as we believe, Clement was offering some definite form of confession (Homologia), that had the general consent of the Church to those who “refused to believe on account of the dissensions of the heretics”.

Moreover, the reference to “compacts” would have a special significance, if one might see (and why not?) in that word an allusion to the baptismal covenant which would imply a fixed form of renunciation and a fixed form of confession.

A suitable commentary on these words of his master is to be found in Origen’s Exhortatio ad Martyrium, where he says: “If he who transgresses the compacts with men be removed beyond the pale of society and safety, what must we say of those who through denial make null and void the covenants they have made with God, and return to Satan whom they renounced in their baptism?”

Clement distinctly refers to “the true teaching handed down from the Apostles to him” as “the Apostolic seeds”, the germ from which the creed was evolved. He tells that the Apostle distinguished between the common faith of the multitude and the perfection of the Gnostic, calling the former “foundation”. Now, the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews includes repentance from dead works and faith toward God, the doctrine of baptisms, and the laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead and of eternal judg­ment in the “ foundation ” which would thus, in itself, constitute the nucleus of a creed. We would gather from the words of Clement that a more elaborate and systematized form of faith was handed t down by the Apostles. In the first of these passages he says that St. Paul teaches that “the gnosis, which is the perfection of the faith, extends beyond the form of religious instruction, and is according to the glorious doctrine of the Lord and the ecclesiastical rule.” And in the second, he says this gnosis was handed down orally from the Apostles by succession to a few.

In the Stromateis he also says “the faith” is a concise knowledge of the essentials, which is in itself a good definition of a creed. He distinguishes the necessary truths which are the kernel of the faith from things which are unessential and superfluous.

Those who fall foul of the most important doctrines, he tells us, are they who reject and deny the Lord as far as they can, and deprive us of the true teaching of the Lord, asserting that the Scriptures are not in keeping with the dignity of God and our Lord.

We find a reference in Pedagogus to a form of Renunciation, which was a part of the baptismal formularies.

In the first chapter of the fifth Book of the Stromateis we find a reference to six distinct articles of faith in the Son. “There are some,” he wrote, “who say that our faith concerns the Son, but that our knowledge is of the Spirit, but they do not perceive that we must truly believe (1) in the Son ; (2) that He is the Son ; (3) that He came; and (4) how He came; and (5) concerning His Passion. But one must know Who is the Son of God. For neither is knowledge without faith, nor is faith without knowledge. (6) For neither is the Father without the Son. For as Father, He is Father of the Son.”

We also find abundant references in Clement’s works to a special catechesis or form of religious instruction, and an elaborate “ecclesiastical canon.” Is it likely that a Church which possessed such a systematized method of teaching and interpretation had no fixed formula of belief?

The fact that Clement did not quote such a formula in full is no proof that it did not exist. He naturally took for granted that the divinity students he was preparing knew their Church formularies. It should be sufficient in the case of a Professor of Theology, like Clement, to show that there are abundant references, both direct and indirect, to a confession of faith in his theological works.

We have now to consider whether we can reconstruct a creed similar to either the Apostolic or Nicene from the writings of Clement. By way of preface we may quote Clement’s declaration of the Catholic faith of one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, which occurs at the close of the Pedagogus, where he makes use of these remarkable words :

“Praising and giving-thanks to one only Father and the Son, Son and Father, the Son Instructor and Teacher, together with the Holy Spirit, One  (the Trinity) in every respect, in Whom (the Trinity) all things exist, through Whom all things are one, through Whom eternity is, of Whom we all are members, Who is good in every respect and just in every respect, to Whom be the glory both now and evermore. Amen.”

In this passage we have a strong testimony to Clement’s belief in the Divinity of the Holy Spirit, the Homoousion of the Son, and the Unity in the Trinity. We also find the following articles of belief in his different works.

1. I believe in one Father of all things.

2. Who made all things, by the Word of His Power the only almighty.

3. I believe in One Word of all things, Jesus Christ our Lord, the Word of the Father, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, Our Saviour and Lord, Without beginning, The only begotten, The Light of the Father, Who is One with the Father, by Whom all things were made according to the Father’s Will; the fruit of the Virgin Mary, the Spirit Incarnate Who came down from heaven; Who for us men took upon Him suffering flesh; Who was to suffer and Who suffered the cross and death; Who preached the Gospel to those in Hades ; Who rose again and was taken up into heaven ; Who is now glorified as the Living God, and is the Judge (“Arbiter”), and is at the righthand of the Father.

4. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, One and the same everywhere, the Third Person in the Trinity,

3 Who is praised with the Father and the Son, Who spoke through Psalmist, Prophet, and Apostle.

5. I believe in one true, ancient, pure, and Catholic Church.

6. I believe in the purification of Baptism, the Remission of Sins,

7. the Resurrection of the dead,

8. and the Life Everlasting .

Again, in the literary remains of an earlier age we can find traces of a Symbolum Fidei. In the ninth chapter of a letter of Ignatius to the Church in Tralles, written about a.d. 107, we have the following confession of faith in Christ:

1. Who was of the race of David, the son of Mary.

2. Who was verily born and did eat and drink (was made man).

3. Who was verily persecuted under Pontius Pilate.

4. Who was verily crucified and dead.

5. Who was verily raised from the dead, His own Father having raised him.

6. After which manner His Father will also raise up those who believe by Christ Jesus, without Whom we have no true life

From the Didaché of the Twelve Apostles we have the Baptismal Formula, of which the Creed (being Trinitarian in form) was a development, expressly stated thus : “Baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, in living Water.”

In the recently discovered Apology of Aristides, assigned by Eusebius to the reign of Hadrian, but which evidently belongs to the early years of Antoninus Pius (not before a.d. 138), to whom the Apology is addressed, we find the following articles of belief, which we may piece together so :

1. I believe in God the Creator and Ruler of all things.

2. Him alone, One God we must worship and glorify.

3. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. He is the Son of the most High God, and together with the Holy Spirit was revealed to us. The Word came down from heaven, was made incarnate of the Virgin Mary, was manifested of the Holy Spirit, and having assumed human form, revealed Himself as the very Son of God.

5. He was crucified by the Hebrews.

6. He rose from the dead.

7. He ascended into heaven.

8. Judgment is to come by Him upon the race of man.

9. We must worship the Creator if we wish to inherit everlasting life.

We thus find the principal clauses of the “Apostles’” Creed in a work that belongs, at the latest, to the middle of the second century. To come now to the days of Clement; in his lifetime we can trace a growing desire among the members of the Church to have a written doctrine.

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, who flourished between 177 and 202 a.d., and was thus a contemporary of Clement’s, gives us a written form of creed. In his work against the Heresies, he says, “The disciple must have a sound faith, One God Almighty, of whom are all things, and in the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom are all things, and in His dispensations by which the Son of God became man; also he must have a firm trust in the spirit of God, who later set forth the dispensations of the Father and the Soft dwelling with each successive race of men as the Father willed.”

Cyprian (circ. 250 a.d.) gives us a form of the North African creed. From his Epistle to his son Magnus, we gather that that creed consisted in the belief in the Trinity and the fact of the remission of sins and eternal life through the Holy Church. This last article of faith Cyprian advises the orthodox to put as a test to the Novatians.

We have thus shown from three distinct lines of proof, first from reference to such a formula in his own works; secondly, from the fact that we can reconstruct a creed resembling the Nicene and Apostolic Creeds from his writings; and thirdly, from the numerous traces of a fixed formula before, during, and immediately after his lifetime, that it is highly probable that the Church of Alexandria was furnished with a confession of faith in the days of Clement, and that the onus probandi lies on those who assert the contrary.

We shall now proceed to quote some beautiful passages on the Eucharist, which establish the fact that this Sacrament was correctly understood and explained by Clement.

THE EUCHARIST.

Clement’s principal utterance on the subject of the Eucharist is to be found in the second Book of the Pedagogus, where we read—“The blood of our Lord is twofold in nature; the carnal is that by which we are redeemed from corruption, and the spiritual is that by which we are anointed. To drink the blood of Jesus is to partake of the incorruption of our Lord. The Spirit is the virtue of the Word, as the blood is the strength of the flesh. As wine is mingled with water, so man is mingled with the Spirit. One mixture is a banquet for faith, the other is a path to immortality. The mixture of wine and the Spirit, i. e. of what is drunk and the Word, is called Eucharist, which is a laudable and beautiful grace, sanctifying the body and ' soul of those who receive it by faith. It is the will of the Father moving in a mysterious way, that forms this divine union of man, the Holy Spirit and the Word. Thus the Spirit is truly united to the soul, which is borne along by it and the flesh, on account of which ‘the Word became flesh’ is united to the Word.”

Clement, seeing in this sacrament a means gf drawing nearer to the Word of life, seems to have concluded that the principle of immortality is conferred on us by the partaking of this memorial of Him Who sustains us unto the undying life.

He also read in our Saviour’s references to the Vine an allusion to His own blood. “He showed,” he remarks, “that what He blessed was wine by saying, ‘I shall not drink of the fruit of this vine until I drink it with you in the kingdom of My Father.” Again he says, “Christ blessed the wine,” meaning the Word Who was poured out for many; the sacred stream of gladness. Clement extended this interpretation to the Old Testament, especially to the passage “Binding his foal to the vine”, which he thought meant binding a simple and infant people to the Word. In another passage he says, “The vine gives wine and the Word gives blood; both are drunk unto salvation, the wine bodily, but the blood spiritually.” When commenting on the 6th chapter of St. John’s Gospel he said, “The flesh and, blood of the Word is the knowledge of the Divine power and essence,” thus preventing any material interpretation of his own words.

In Clement’s different treatises there are many passing allusions to those who celebrated the Eucharist with mere water—probably the Encratites,—to those who allowed the people to help themselves to the consecrated elements, and to others who abused the privileges of the love-feast, which was connected with the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the early years of the Church—facts which speak loudly of the disorder that prevailed in those days through that slackness of discipline which is by some regarded

GENERAL SUMMARY OF SACRAMENTAL TEACHING. as one of the advantages of private judgment.

It is needless to remark, that Clement, insisting as he always does on the continual presence of Christ in the world, and in humanity, did not confound the signs of grace with that grace itself. No more could he regard the grace of God as a kind of fourth person attached to the Holy Trinity. To him the sacraments were symbols of great spiritual processes, signs of an actual sustenance and an actual purification.

In this view of the sacraments Clement is followed by those who believe that there is a real objective presence of Christ, Who purifies the soul of the babe when it is duly baptized in the water, and Who feeds the soul of the faithful with His own life at the Holy Communion, and yet do not believe in transubstantiation, or the change of the elements into the natural body and blood of Christ.

In several passages Clement speaks of the sacrifice of praise, prayer, and thanksgiving. In the Stromateis we read as follows: “The sacrifice of the Church is the word breathing as incense from holy souls, the sacrifice and the whole mind being at the same time revealed to God. The pagans regarded the ancient altar at Delos as holy. This was the only one Pythagoras visited, because it alone was not polluted by blood and death. And yet they will not believe us when we assert that the righteous soul is the really sacred altar, and that the incense that arises therefrom is holy prayer ”

And again he writes : “If God needs nothing, and delights in our homage, it is very reasonable that we honour Him in prayer. This is the best and holiest sacrifice, when we offer it with righteousness. And the altar is the congregation of those who give themselves to prayer with one voice and one mind.”

In the seventh Book of the Stromateis we read: “Prayers and praises and the readings of scripture before meals are sacrifices to Him.”

And again : “The humble heart with right knowledge is the holocaust to God. We glorify Him Who sacrificed Himself for us, we also sacrificing ourselves”.

This is indeed a fit quotation, fit because so expressive of the character of the man, with which to conclude this very imperfect review of the life and teaching of one of the saintliest men who ever trod God’s earth, the first and greatest apostle of the Greek Theology, the spiritual father of Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregories; and one of whom the late Mr. Maurice truly said: “He seems to me one of the old fathers whom we all should have reverenced most as a teacher and loved as a friend.”

 

THE END

 

SAINT CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

150-215 A.D.