ST. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

1. ST. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA The Father of Christian philosophy Alexandria, Egypt

2. Biography • Born in A.D 150 in Athens • He was searching unceasingly for God. • After converting to Christianity he made extensive travels to Southern Italy, Syria, and Palestine. • His purpose was to seek instruction from the most famous Christian teachers. • At the end of his journeys he reached Alexandria where Pantaenus’ lecture had such attraction to him that he settled there and made this city his second home.

3. Biography • He became the pupil, and assistant of Pantaenus: • The second dean of the School of Alexanderia. • He was ordained a priest in Alexandria, and succeeded Pantaenus as head of the School. • Among his pupils were Origen and Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem. • In the time of severe persecution by Septimius Severus (A.D 202), he was forced to leave Alexandria and took refuge, probably in Palestine and Syria. • In A.D 215, he died without seeing Egypt again.

4. Methodology • St. Clement is the first Christian writer who brought Christian doctrine face to face with the ideas and achievements of the time. • He believed that the very constitution of the Church and Holy Scriptures was not incompatible with Greek philosophy. • He believed that there is no enmity between Christianity and Philosophy. • The difference was: while the ancient philosophers had been unable to get more than glimpses of the truth, it was left to Christianity to make known in Christ the perfect truth.

5. Literary works • “Great Trilogy” • Proptrepticus(προτρεπτικος προς Ελληνας: “Exhortation to the Greeks”) • Paedagogus(παιδαγωγός: "Instructor") • Stromata (Στρωματεῖς : "Miscellanies") • A graduated initiation into the Christian life -- belief, discipline, knowledge – • Treatise "Who is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved?" based on Mark 10:17-31, • Not the possession of riches but their misuse is to be condemned.

6. Proptrepticus (“Exhortation”) • An introduction inviting the reader to listen, not to the mythical legends of the gods, but to the "new song" of the Logos, the beginning of all things and creator of the world. • He denounces: • the folly of idolatry and the pagan mysteries, • erotic manifestations of pagan religion • the shamefulness of the pederasticpractices of the Greeks, • the horrors of pagan sacrifice

7. Proptrepticus (“Exhortation”) • He argues that the Greek philosophers and poets only guessed at the truth, while the prophets set forth a direct way to salvation; and now the divine Logos speaks in his own person, to awaken all that is good in the soul of man and to lead it to immortality.

8. Paedagogus ("Instructor") • Having laid a foundation in the knowledge of divine truth in the first book, he goes on in the Paedagogus to develop a Christian ethic. • The real instructor is the incarnate Logos.

9. Stromata ("Miscellanies") • Deals with a variety of matters. • It aims at the perfection of the Christian life by initiation into complete knowledge. • It attempts, on the basis of Scripture and tradition, to conduct the student into the innermost realities of his belief.

10. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • Chapter VI.-By Divine Inspiration Philosophers Sometimes Hit on the Truth. • For the sun never could show me the true God; but that healthful Word, that is the Sun of the soul, by whom alone, when He arises in the depths of the soul, the eye of the soul itself is irradiated. Whence accordingly, Democritus, not without reason, says, "that a few of the men of intellect, raising their hands upwards to what we Greeks now call the air, called the whole expanse Zeus, or God: He, too, knows all things, gives and takes away, and He is King of all."

11. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • Chapter VIII.-The True Doctrine is to Be Sought in the Prophets. • It is now time, as we have dispatched in order the other points, to go to the prophetic Scriptures;for the oracles present us with the appliances necessary for the attainment of piety, and so establish the truth. The divine Scriptures and institutions of wisdom form the short road to salvation. Devoid of embellishment… they raise up humanity strangled by wickedness, teaching men to despise the casualties of life; and with one and the same voice remedying many evils, they at once dissuade us from pernicious deceit, and clearly exhort us to the attainment of the salvation set before us.

12. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • Chapter VIII.-The True Doctrine is to Be Sought in the Prophets. • What the Holy Spirit says by Hosea, I will not shrink from quoting: "Lo, I am He that appointeth the thunder, and createth spirit; and His hands have established the host of heaven. (Amos iv. 13.) And once more by Isaiah. And this utterance I will repeat: "I am," he says, "I am the Lord; I who speak righteousness, announce truth. Gather yourselves together, and come. Take counsel together, ye that are saved from the nations. They have not known, they who set up the block of wood, their carved work, and pray to gods who will not save them. (Isa. xlv. 19, 20.)

13. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • CHAP. II.--OUR INSTRUCTOR'S TREATMENT OF OUR SINS • Now, O you, my children, our Instructor is like His Father God, whose son He is, sinless, blameless, and with a soul devoid of passion; God in the form of man, stainless, the minister of His Father's will, the Word who is God, who is in the Father, who is at the Father's right hand, and with the form of God is God. He is to us a spotless image; to Him we are to try with all our might to assimilate our souls. He is wholly free from human passions; wherefore also He alone is judge, because He alone is sinless.

14. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • CHAP. III.--THE PHILANTHROPY OF THE INSTRUCTOR • The Lord ministers all good and all help, both as man and as God: as God, forgiving our sins; and as man, training us not to sin. Man is therefore justly dear to God, since he is His workmanship. The other works of creation He made by the word of command alone, but man He framed by Himself, by His own hand, and breathed into him what was peculiar to Himself

15. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • CHAP. VII.--WHO THE INSTRUCTOR IS, AND RESPECTING HIS INSTRUCTION. • He is called Jesus: Sometimes He calls Himself a shepherd, and says, "I am the good Shepherd." According to a metaphor drawn from shepherds, who lead the sheep, is hereby understood the Instructor, who leads the children--the Shepherd who tends the babes. For the babes are simple, being figuratively described as sheep. "And they shall all," it is said, "be one flock, and one shepherd." The Word, then, who leads the children to salvation, is appropriately called the Instructor (Paedagogue).

16. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK I • CHAP. IX.--THAT IT IS THE PREROGATIVE OF THE SAME POWER TO BE BENEFICENT AND TO PUNISH JUSTLY. • With all His power, therefore, the Instructor of humanity, the Divine Word, using all the resources of wisdom, devotes Himself to the saving of the children, admonishing, upbraiding, blaming, chiding, reproving, threatening, healing, promising, favoring; and as it were, by many reins, curbing the irrational impulses of humanity. To speak briefly, therefore, the Lord acts towards us as we do towards our children. "Hast thou children? correct them," is the exhortation of the book of Wisdom, "and bend them from their youth... For those who speak with a man merely to please him, have little love for him, seeing they do not pain him; while those that speak for his good, though they inflict pain for the time, do him good for ever after. It is not immediate pleasure, but future enjoyment, that the Lord has in view.

17. Paedagogus ("Instructor") BOOK III • CHAP. I.--ON THE TRUE BEAUTY. • Passions break out, pleasures overflow; beauty fades, and falls quicker than the leaf on the ground, when the amorous storms of lust blow on it before the coming of autumn, and is withered by destruction. For lust becomes and fabricates all things, and wishes to cheat, so as to conceal the man. But that man with whom the Word dwells does not alter himself, does not get himself up: he has the form which is of the Word; he is made like to God; he is beautiful; he does not ornament himself: his is beauty, the true beauty...

18. Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? • But he who carries his riches in his soul, and instead of God's Spirit bears in his heart gold or land, and is always acquiring possessions without end, and is perpetually on the outlook for more, bending downwards and fettered in the toils of the world, being earth and destined to depart to earth, -- whence can he be able to desire and to mind the kingdom of heaven, -- a man who carries not a heart, but land or metal, who must perforce be found in the midst of the objects he has chosen? For where the mind of man is, there is also his treasure.

19. Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? • The Lord acknowledges a twofold treasure, -- the good: "For the good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good;" and the evil: for "the evil man, out of the evil treasure, bringeth forth evil: for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." As then treasure is not one with Him, as also it is with us, that which gives the unexpected great gain in the finding, but also a second, which is profitless and undesirable, an evil acquisition, hurtful; so also there is a richness in good things, and a richness in bad things... And the one sort of riches is to be possessed and acquired, and the other not to be possessed, but to be cast away.