Voices and influences
Clement of Alexandria
The Alexandrian teacher who called Greek philosophy a tutor leading the world toward Christ.
Summary
This site quotes Clement of Alexandria 128 times across 32 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 215.
- Quoted here most in Proverbs: 15 of 128.
Clement of Alexandria
- Lived
- died 215
- Tradition
- Early Church
5 of 128 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Clement of Alexandria died in 215 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
The Divinity is not angry, as some suppose, but when he makes so many threats he is only making an appeal and showing humankind the things that are to be accomplished.
The rest of the quotation
Such a procedure is surely good, for it instills fear to keep us away from sin.
Deuteronomy 32:23 I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend My arrows against them. BSB
By perverse, he means he will chastise sinners. For his natural uprightness … and his goodness toward those who believe obediently are immovable and unshakable.… Therefore, he treats them severely in the hope that perhaps he might curb their impulse toward death.
Psalms 18:26 to the pure You show Yourself pure, but to the crooked You show Yourself shrewd. BSB
Therefore, the Word is our educator who heals the unnatural passions of our soul with his counsel. The art of healing, strictly speaking, is the relief of the ills of the body, an art learned through human wisdom.
The rest of the quotation
Yet, the only true divine healer of human sickness, the holy comforter of the soul when it is ill, is the Word of the Father. Scripture says, "Save your servant, O my God, who puts his trust in you. Have mercy on me, O Lord, because I have cried to you the whole day through."
Psalms 86:2–3 Preserve my soul, for I am godly. You are my God; save Your servant who trusts in You. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I call to You all day long. BSB
Wherefore by Solomon He commands the children to beware: "My son, let not sinners deceive thee, and go not after their ways; and go not, if they entice thee, saying, Come with us, share with us in innocent blood, and let us hide unjustly the…
The rest of the quotation
righteous man in the earth; let us put him out of sight, all alive as he is into Hades." This is accordingly likewise a prediction concerning the Lord's passion.
Proverbs 1:10–12 My son, if sinners entice you, do not yield to them. If they say, “Come along, let us lie in wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without cause, let us swallow them alive like Sheol, and whole like those descending into the Pit. BSB
Ignorance involves a lack of education and learning. It is teaching which implants in us the scientific knowledge of things divine and human. It is possible to live uprightly in poverty. It is also possible in wealth.
The rest of the quotation
We admit that it is easier and quicker to track down virtue if we have a preliminary education. It can be hunted down without these aids, although even then those with learning, "with their faculties trained by practice," have an advantage. "Hatred," says Solomon, "stirs up strife, but education guards the paths of life."
Proverbs 10:12 Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers all transgressions. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Clement of Alexandria 128 times across 32 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Titus Flavius Clemens was born around 150, probably at Athens, to pagan parents, and raised in the full Greek education — Homer, the tragedians, Plato, the mystery religions. He knew that world from inside, and he never pretended otherwise. After his conversion he traveled looking for teachers. He describes the search himself: one in Greece, one in southern Italy, one in Syria, one from Palestine. The last he found in Egypt, and he stopped. This was Pantaenus, head of the Christian school at Alexandria, and Clement said he was the best of them, the Sicilian bee. He stayed and eventually succeeded him. Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the empire, with the greatest library in the world and a Jewish and Greek scholarly tradition centuries deep. Clement's school was a catechetical school — where converts were taught before baptism — but under him it became something more: a place where a Christian could be an educated person without apology. His argument, made across three linked books, was that all truth is God's truth. The Law was the schoolmaster that brought the Jews to Christ, Paul says in Galatians. Clement said philosophy did the same office for the Greeks — a tutor, given by God, holding the Hellenic mind until Christ came. Whatever was true in Plato was on loan from the same source. The three books move a reader forward in stages. The Exhortation to the Greeks argues a pagan out of the temples. The Instructor takes the new convert and teaches him how to live — what to eat, how to dress, how to speak, how to laugh, how to handle money — with Christ himself as the tutor. The Miscellanies, a sprawling, deliberately unsystematic work, is for the mature: the true gnostic, Clement's phrase for the Christian who knows God, as against the heretical gnostics who claimed secret knowledge and denied the goodness of the created world. He also wrote a short piece asking Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved? — the earliest Christian treatment of wealth, arguing that the sin is not owning but being owned. When the persecution under Septimius Severus struck Alexandria in 202, Clement left for Cappadocia. He did not return. Alexander of Jerusalem, writing around 215, refers to the blessed presbyter Clement in the past tense; that letter is how we know he was dead. His pupil Origen took the school and carried the work further than anyone. Sources: Eusebius, Church History V.11, VI.6, VI.11, VI.13–14; Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks, The Instructor, Miscellanies (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2); Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2.
128 quotations across 32 books
Where this voice is quoted
so that your faith would not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.
“Let no man therefore glory on account of pre-eminence in human thought. For it is written well in Jeremiah, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, and let not the mighty man glory in his might, and let not the rich man glory…”
And this is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.
“For he who is still blind and dumb, not having understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the contemplative soul, which the Saviour confers, like the uninitiated at the mysteries, or the unmusical at dances, not being yet pure and worthy of the pure…”
Have we no right to food and to drink?
“And if we would persuade any of our fellow-guests to virtue, we are all the more on this account to abstain from those dainty dishes; and so exhibit ourselves as a bright pattern of virtue, such as we ourselves have in Christ.”
for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”
“And, "Let no one seek his own advantage, but also that of his neighbour," so as to be able at once to do and to teach, building and building up.”
If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat anything set before you without raising questions of conscience.
“Wherefore daintiness is to be shunned, and we are to partake of few and necessary things. "And if one of the unbelievers call us to a feast, and we determine to go" (for it is a good thing not to mix with the dissolute), the…”
the other one’s conscience, I mean, not your own. For why should my freedom be determined by someone else’s conscience?
“"But the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." For conscience' sake, then, we are to abstain from what we ought to abstain.”
but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.
“But additions of other people's hair are entirely to be rejected, and it is a most sacrilegious thing for spurious hair to shade the head, covering the skull with dead locks. For on whom does the presbyter lay his hand? Whom does he bless?”
For as you eat, each of you goes ahead without sharing his meal. While one remains hungry, another gets drunk.
“The apostle, checking those who transgress in their conduct at entertainments, says: "For every one taketh beforehand in eating his own supper; and one is hungry, and another drunken. Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?”
But when we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.
“"Being judged by the Lord," says the apostle, "we are chastened, that we may not be condemned with the world." For the prophet had said before, "Chastening, the Lord hath chastised me, but hath not given me over unto death."”
Sober up as you ought, and stop sinning; for some of you are ignorant of God. I say this to your shame.
“"Be sober as is right, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God," that is, those who sin. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers." But the rulers of darkness have power to tempt us.”