ST. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

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

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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.

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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.

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Literary works

• Great Trilogy
• Proptrepticus (p??t?ept???? p??? ?????a?
  Exhortation to the Greeks)
• Paedagogus (pa?da????? "Instructor")
• Stromata (St??µate?? "Miscellanies")
• A graduated initiation into the Christian life --
  belief, discipline, knowledge
• Treatise "Who is the Rich Man that Shall Be
  Saved?" based on Mark 1017-31,
• Not the possession of riches but their misuse is
  to be condemned.

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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 pederastic practices of
  the Greeks,
• the horrors of pagan sacrifice

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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
  Scripturesfor 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.

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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.)

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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.

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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

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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).

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.