CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV.
ESTIMATES OF CLEMENT1.
THE piety and learning of Clement, his power as a teacher and philosopher, are spoken of in the highest terms by succeeding Fathers2.
The 4th of December was known in the middle ages as St Clement's Day.
In the sixteenth century Pope Clement VIII. omitted his name from the martyrology at the instance of Baronius, and his judgment was confirmed by Boniface XIV. in 1748, when the matter was again brought before him by the admirers of the Alexandrian doctor; the grounds of the decision being the uncertainty as to the details of his life, the absence of proof as to his cultus, and the doubts raised as to his orthodoxy, though on this last point the Pope refused to pronounce. The original author of the doubts as to Clement's orthodoxy is Photius, a learned writer of the ninth century, who said that his treatise entitled Hypotyposes contained Gnostic errors, whether belonging to Clement himself or interpolated by heretics. We have fragments of this book, which certainly are opposed to orthodox doctrine, and also to what is said elsewhere by Clement himself; and there is every reason to believe that they are merely quotations from Gnostic writers with a view to commenting upon them.
However, it must be allowed that he is sometimes incautious in his expressions. In one passage of the Miscellanies he seems
1 The greater part of this chapter is a reprint from an Article which appeared in the Expositor for July, 1902.
See Testimonia Veterum in Dindorf's ed., vol. i. pp. lv to lxiv. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511695513.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press
lxii
INTRODUCTION.
CH. IV. to hold a kind of docetic view of the Person of our Lord, implying that His humanity was apparent only, e.g. that food was not really needed by Him; but this is not supported by anything else in his writings.
In the discussion between Fenelon and Bossuet on the disinterested love of God, Clement is quoted by both sides as an authority. In our own day his teaching and his method are being recalled by eminent French Catholics as giving an example of what is needed in order to meet the difficulties of a period of transition. The Abbe" Cognat (1859) quotes with approval the words of Bossuet that in Clement's works we have
' une parfaite apologie de la religion chretienne,' and contrasts his methods with those of the traditionalists, who deny the rights of reason, and declare an internecine strife between science and theology. Monseigneur Freppel, in his lectures delivered in 1865, says that Clement's boldness and largeness of view are enough of themselves to give him a high position in the history of theology. No defender of the faith ever studied so deeply the relations between science and faith, between the natural and the supernatural order.
He has given a sketch of Christian science extending from the philosophy of history to the heights of mystical theology, which in its main lines is of permanent value. Eugene de
Faye in his book, published in 1898, on the Relation of Christianity to Greek Philosophy, compares our age with that of Clement as a period of transition, in which the germs of the future are fermenting. ' We cannot be indifferent to him and his work. He is the true creator of ecclesiastical theology. In him the rational and mystical elements are equally mixed. He has a beautiful trust and a noble serenity which mark the depth of his Christianity.
He feels himself possessed of a divine virtue which ensures to him the victory. He fears no one. He dares to measure himself against the philosophy and the spirit of his age, because he feels himself able to dominate them, i.e. to appropriate all that they offer of good.
He feels in himself that the Truth has made him free. He is at once the firmest of believers and the most inquisitive and independent spirit that has perhaps ever appeared in the Church.
Unhappily the legalistic spirit of Tertullian and https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511695513.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press
CH. IV.
ESTIMATES OF CLEMENT.
lxiii Cyprian prevailed over the free spirit of Clement and of Origen. It remains for Christians of to-day to revert to the wider theology1.'
Of English writers who have held Clement in esteem, perhaps the most deserving of mention are the following.
Maurice (in his Ecclesiastical History, p. 233) says: ' Clement's writings, though they are often censured as being learned and philosophical and mystical, were, I am convinced, written with a more distinctly practical purpose, and produced a more practical effect, than any which we have received from this or from almost any century'; (p. 239) ' I do not know where we shall look for a purer or a truer man than this
Clement of Alexandria. I should like to be able to tell you more of his countenance and manner, as well as to give more particulars of his history But we must be content to make his acquaintance through the words which he has spoken.
Judging from these he seems to me that one of the old Fathers whom we should all have reverenced most as a teacher and loved most as a friend.'
Bishop Westcott, speaking of the writings of Clement, says his three books ' correspond in a remarkable degree, as has frequently been remarked (Potter ad Protr. I.), with the stages of the Neo-Platonic course, the Purification (airoicadapcnt;), the Initiation (fivrjcris) and the Vision (iiroirreia)...^ Clement had done no more than conceive such a plan, his service to the Gospel of the kingdom would not have been unfruitful.
As it is, the execution of his work, if it falls short of the design, is still full of precious lessons. And when it is frankly admitted that his style is generally deficient in terseness and elegance; that his method is desultory, and his learning undigested; we can still thankfully admire his richness of information, his breadth of reading, his largeness of sympathy, his lofty aspirations, his noble conception of the office and capacities of the Faith.' ' The Stromateis is an endeavour to claim for the Gospel the power of fulfilling all the desires of men and of raising to a supreme unity all the objects of knowledge, in the soul of the true gnostic' ' Towards this great unity of all science and all life Clement himself strove; and by the 1 The quotation is condensed. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511695513.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press
lxiv
INTRODUCTION.
CH. IV. influence of his writings he has kept alive in others the sense of the magnificent promises included in the teaching of St Paul and St John, which by their very grandeur are apt to escape apprehension. He affirmed once for all, upon the threshold of the new age, that Christianity is the heir of all past time, and the interpreter of the future.
Sixteen centuries have confirmed the truth of his principle, and left its application still fruitful.'
(R of Chr. Biog. I. pp. 561, 562, 566.) I will conclude with a quotation from Hort's Ante-Nicene
Fathers (p. 93): 'In Clement, Christian Theology in some important respects reaches its highest point. With all his manifest defects there was no one whose vision of what the faith of Jesus Christ was intended to do for mankind was so full or so true'; (p. 90) ' What he humbly and bravely attempted under great disadvantages...will have to be attempted afresh, with the added experience of more than seventeen centuries, if the Christian faith is still to hold its ground among men; and when the attempt is made, not a few of his thoughts and words will probably shine out with new force, full of light for dealing with new problems1.'
1 For estimates by Harnack and Bigg see above Ch, n. p. xxxiii n. and p. xlvii n. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511695513.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press