CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA 150-215

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA 150-215

Titus Flavius Clemens. Born possibly at Athens, and after studying in different cities, came to the School at Alexandria (probably between 185-195), where he studied under the headmaster, Pantaenus, a converted Stoic. He was ordained a priest, and succeeded Pantaenus as headmaster in 200. He fled to Caesarea in Cappadocia during the persecution of Septimus Severus in 202, and died by 215. Like the Catechetical School at Alexandria in general, Clement sought to develop a systematic presentation of Christian wisdom.
Clement wrote Exhortation to the Greeks, a work less intended to defend the Christian faith, than to teach it to unbelievers, or at least persuade them to accept it.

In the Stromateis (Miscellanies in Latin), Clement argues that philosophy is in itself a good, one of the works of God. Against the objection that philosophy must be bad because God has replaced it with faith, Clement argues that the correct historical understanding of philosophy is the help God sent the Greeks, to prepare them to receive Christianity. The philosophers have been the prophets for the natural reason, and philosophy itself a praeparatio evangelica—preparation for the Gospel.

Philosophy remains useful for Christians, provided they keep it in its proper place. "…philosophy co-operates for the acquisition of wisdom. For philosophy is the study of wisdom, and wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human, and of their causes. Wisdom therefore sways philosophy, as philosophy sways preparatory intellectual culture." Implicit in Clement’s work is the view that we believe first, in order to move to understanding. Credo ut intelligam. Explicit is the belief that philosophy is necessary for Christians, an aid to understanding Christianity. Christians are to advance to knowledge from faith. Blind faith, passive acceptance, is not an ideal for Clement. He sought a Christian Gnosis: the Christian faith becoming intellectual knowledge, men learning the meaning of the faith they have accepted.

Clement believed that philosophers had broken up the natural unity of truth. Philosophy itself is that body of truths that are not particular to any one school, but found in all. The Christian philosopher must reunite philosophy, by eliminating all that is false (for example, the completely "useless" Epicureans), and singling out the truth.

Rejected any real positive knowledge of God—we can only truly know what God is not, because God is beyond all our experience or conceivability. We can truly say God possesses perfections, but we must understand that these "names" of God are inadequate and so inapplicable.