The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Martyrs' Church
Clement of Alexandria
died c. 215Early Church
The Alexandrian teacher who called Greek philosophy a tutor leading the world toward Christ.
Summary
- Lived died c. 215.
- Stood in The Martyrs' Church (AD 100–313).
- Hangs on The Fathers.
- Tradition: Early Church.
The life
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.
What was happening while he lived4 moments · AD 100–313
- c. 155Polycarp of Smyrna is burned in the stadiumThe old bishop had been a disciple of the apostle John. When the governor told him to curse Christ and go free, the account written by his own congregation records his answer: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" The traditional date is 155 or 156; some scholars argue for as late as 167.
- c. 165Justin Martyr is beheaded at RomeThe philosopher who had written open letters defending Christians to two emperors was tried by the city prefect Rusticus with six companions. The court record survives as the *Acts of Justin*. Asked what teachings he held, he explained them; asked to sacrifice, he refused, and the group was scourged and beheaded.
- 177The martyrs of Lyons and VienneMob violence in Gaul turned into arrests, torture, and days in the amphitheater. The churches there wrote an account that Eusebius preserved (*Church History* 5.1). Two names stayed: Pothinus, the bishop, over ninety years old, who died in prison, and Blandina, a slave woman whose owners feared she would break first and who outlasted them all.
- c. 203Perpetua and Felicity die in the arenaVibia Perpetua, a young mother of good family in Carthage, and Felicity, a pregnant slave woman, were arrested with several companions. Perpetua kept a prison diary that survives inside *The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity*, one of the earliest firsthand writings we have from a Christian woman. Felicity gave birth in prison days before they were sent out to the beasts.
In their own words
“We must regard the woman's crown to be her husband, and the husband's crown to be marriage; and the flowers of marriage the children of both, which the divine husbandman plucks from meadows of flesh. "Children's children are the crown of old men." And the glory of children is their fathers, it is said; and our glory is the Father of all; and the crown of the whole church is Christ.”
The Instructor Book 2 · on Proverbs 17:6
“Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of a son is his father.”
“Paul is prophetic in telling us to put up a barrier, not between ourselves and the married but between ourselves and the Gentiles who are still living immorally, and also from those heresies which believe neither in chastity nor in God.”
The Stromata Book 3 · on 2 Corinthians 6:18
“And: “I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.””
“And my doctrine is not Mine," saith the Lord, "but the Father's which sent me." And of those who steal He says: "But he that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory." Such are the Greeks, "lovers of their own selves, and boasters." Scripture, when it speaks of these as wise, does not brand those who are really wise, but those who are wise in appearance.”
The Stromata Book 1 · on 2 Timothy 3:2
“For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,”
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Clement of Alexandria at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Taught that every true thing in Greek learning was a tutor quietly leading the world toward Christ.
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received.
Standing beside himThe Martyrs' Church · 40 on this stretch of wall
A 22-year-old mother who kept a diary in prison and walked into the arena at Carthage singing.
Stayed with his people through plague and persecution, then walked to his own beheading and paid the executioner.
Traced his teaching straight back to the apostle John through Polycarp, and wrote the first great takedown of the gnostics.
Kept wearing his philosopher's cloak after he met Christ, argued the faith to the emperor's face, and was beheaded for it.
Wanted to die with his martyred father as a boy, and spent the rest of his life laying six versions of the Old Testament side by side.
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The lawyer who gave the church the word Trinity and told Rome that the blood of the martyrs is seed.