The Instructor (Clement of Alexandria)

Clement of Alexandria.  The Instructor.  Ante Nicene Fathers.

Clement, head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, combined philosophical sophistication with warm, if at times excessive, piety. Although it is not made clear by the editor, Clement must be understood as representative of what a philosophical school looked like in the ancient world.  Philosophy then does not mean what it means now (or even worse, what we think it means now).  Someone who was part of a philosophical school was part of a very particular community.  This community might set forth certain rules for eating, drinking, and even walking.  This should not be understood as “adding to the bible.”  It simply went with the territory. Regardless, many of Clement’s rules, although not followed today, illustrate what life would have looked like in the 3rd century.

Scope

Clement’s argument is simple: because Christ is our Teacher, we can teach. Because Christ is our  teacher, we have a message to teach. “The whole of piety is hortatory,” aiming “to improve the soul” (I.1). Clement’s rules, while at times appearing odd or legalistic, seek only “the attainment of right dispositions.” Throughout the treatise, the instructor is primarily Jesus, although at times the particular human instructor is in view.

Virtue

Not surprisingly, given the provenance of Alexandria, there is a strong Platonic thrust to Clement’s message. “Nothing exists, the cause of whose existence is not supplied by God.” A few lines later, Clement identifies God and the Word (I.8).

“Everything that is contrary to right reason is sin” (I.13).  Virtue, accordingly, “is a state of the soul rendered harmonious by reason in respect to the whole life.” Clement expands his earlier definition of virtue as “which is the Word given by the Instructor to be put into practice” (III.6).

Speaking thus of the soul: “The soul consists of three divisions: the intellect, which is called the reasoning faculty, is the inner man,” the irascible, and appetite (III.1).

Somewhat to the chagrin of the editor, Clement believes the narrative in Genesis 6 refers to angels: “An example of this are the angels, who renounced the beauty of God for a beauty which fades, and so fell from heaven to earth” (III.2).  In a footnote the editor grudgingly admits this was the common view in the early church.

In conclusion, he sets forth the goal of Torah for the life of the student: “For the intention of his law is to dissipate fear, emancipating freewill in order to faith” (III.12).

Practice

On eating: We should eat that we may live (II.1). “Our diet should be light and digestible and suitable for keeping awake.” Clement is not trying to make a list of what is and is not acceptable for the Christian.  Rather, in our lifestyles “daintiness is to be shunned.”  He defines gluttony as “the excess in the use of relishes.”  Such people, he says, “are ruled by a most lickerish demon, whom I shall not blush to call the Belly-demon.”

On drinking: the natural drink is water, but Clement makes an interesting comment that “wine” was associated with the prophetic cluster (II.2). He says it is associated with the Word, but I think it is more accurately associated with “Kingship.” He should have pursued this line of thought, for it dovetails nicely with his comments on kingship in the Stromata.

Some of his comments, while silly, are always amusing: “The breasts and organs of generation, inflamed by wine, expand and swell in a shameful way.” 

Evidently coed public bathing was common: “The baths are opened promiscuously to men and women, and there they strip for licentious indulgence (from for from looking, men get to loving” (III.5).

Clement notes a connection between luxury and sodomy: “The Sodomites having, through much luxury, fallen into uncleanness, practicing adultery shamelessly, and burning with insane love for boys” (III.8).

Conclusion

It would not be easy to apply all of Clement’s insights today, but there are some that are worth noting.  The good teacher will seek to encourage right dispositions according to right reason.  Clement knew, perhaps breaking with Plato, that knowledge by itself is not enough. Rather, the true Instructor will form the whole man.

The Stromata (Clement of Alexandria)

Clement of Alexandria occupies the unusual position between the Apologists and Origen.  Despite Clement’s unfortunate use of the term “Gnostic” (by which means one who has true knowledge of God; he is not referring to the mystery cults), he largely avoids many of the errors of both the Apologists and Origen. Nonetheless, many of his conclusions, if not wrong, at least had to be “fine-tuned” by later Nicene writers.

Scope: Clement’s ideal man, the Gnostic, closely parallels Plato’s philosopher king. Rather than ruling a city, Clement’s Gnostic pursues the knowledge of God.  Of course, his use of the term “Gnostic” is about as tone-deaf as one can possibly imagine.

Epistemology

Clement begins his epistemology proper in book 2.  For him, anticipating thinkers like Michael Polanyi and Esther Lightcap Meek, faith and knowledge, not only of God but of anything, cannot be rigidly isolated.  Knowledge itself, being founded on First Principles, rests upon faith (2.4), since First Principles are incapable of demonstration.

Clement goes further.  Plato had demonstrated the difficulty of moving from what one knows to what one wants to know (cf. Meno). If knowledge is eternal and in the realm of forms, and what is not knowledge is in the realm of becoming, how can one from the realm of becoming to the realm of true being?  Clement cuts this Gordian Knot.  He explains: we already have a preconceived idea of what we want to know.  The act of knowing, to quote Meek, is like a vector. Faith, as it relates to knowledge, is “the anticipation of a pre-comprehension” (2.6).

I should clarify one point.  “Assent,” for the ancients, had a stronger force than it does today. When Clement calls faith “assent” (2.12), he does not mean mere acknowledgement of a true proposition.  Rather, it is closer to a necessary force on the mind.   Knowledge is a “sure comprehension,” which he calls a “katalepsis,” leading to sure and true reasons for knowledge (6.18).

Clement counters the objection that we cannot know the true Christian faith because of all the sects.  He says, by contrast, we must engage in “exercise of the apprehension of contemplation, and by reasoning of the most decisive character, we must distinguish the true from the seeming” (7.15).  Far removed from Clement is the pietistic (falsely so-called) nonsense that says we cannot trust our reasoning powers.  Indeed, we can “discover the sequence of truth” and “we are rightly condemned if we do not assent to what we ought to obey.”  Indeed, and he hints at this argument, how can we even read the Scriptures if our reasoning is so faulty?

Such a “lover of truth,” to use Clement’s elegant words, “needs force of soul.”  Not only is faith not opposed to reason, but faith, as previously glossed above, is “the essence of demonstration” (7.16).

Theology

Clement’s doctrine of the knowledge of God seems to be similar to other apophatic doctrines, but there are some differences.  Clement says God (presumably God the Father) cannot be an object of knowledge because he is not a subject for demonstration (4.25).  God is neither genus or species. Lest this plunge us into agnostic despair, Clement points towards a solution: The Son as Logos is the middle term of knowledge between the Father and us.  Clement goes on to say that the Son is “the first principle of reasoning and judgment.”

For him, the Father is “absolutely simple,” admitting of no multiplicity and distinction.  The Logos, by contrast, although very God, functions like a prism through which the simplicity unfolds into the multiplicity of the universe.

Clement, echoing the terminology of earlier Apologists, makes a distinction between the Word uttered from the Father (logos prosphorikos) and the Word in the Father (logos endiathetos). Despite his sometimes reckless language, Clement never approaches either Origen or the later Arians.  Unfortunately, he never approaches the clarity of a contemporary Irenaeus or a later Athanasius.  For example, he speaks of  “the Word issuing forth” as the cause of creation.  Later Arians technically could adopt this language, but Clement, at least here, never places the Word on the side of creation.  Clement notes that the Son is “an unoriginated First Principle” (7.1). He later says “the Son is an energy of the Father,” which is not the best use of language (7.2).

Clement equates Plato’s “region of ideas” with the “region of God,” saying that Plato “learned from Moses that it was a place that contained all things universally” (5.11).

Conclusion

Clement gives us a fascinating account of what life must have been like in an Alexandrian school.  What is interesting is Clement never talks about the role of the bishopric in the life of the church. And even if he uses mystagogical language, it is never used for initiating acolytes into the ecclesiastical mysteries.  Does Clement believe in apostolic succession?  Probably, but it does not seem to be that important for him.

Clement’s doctrine of God, while perceptive at times, remained undeveloped.  It would take the Origenist controversy and the final victory of Athanasius to cement the true faith.