Note (return) — Chapter II

We can still prove from the works of Clement of Alexandria that a confession claiming to be an apostolic law of faith,56 ostensibly comprehending the whole essence of Christianity, was not set up in the different provincial Churches at one and the same time. From this it is clearly manifest that at this period the Alexandrian Church neither possessed a baptismal confession similar to that of Rome,57 nor understood by "regula fidei" and synonymous expressions a collection of beliefs fixed in some fashion and derived from the apostles.58 Clement of Alexandria in his Stromateis appeals to the holy (divine) Scriptures, to the teaching of the Lord,59 and to the standard tradition which he designates by a great variety of names, though he never gives its content, because he regards the whole of Christianity in its present condition as needing to be reconstructed by gnosis, and therefore as coming under the head of tradition.60 In one respect therefore, as compared with Irenæus and Tertullian, he to some extent represents an earlier standpoint; he stands midway between them and Justin. From this author he is chiefly distinguished by the fact that he employs sacred Christian writings as well as the Old Testament, makes the true Gnostic quite as dependent on the former as on the latter and has lost that naive view of tradition, that is, the complete content of Christianity, which Irenæus and Tertullian still had. As is to be expected, Clement too assigns the ultimate authorship of the tradition to the Apostles; but it is characteristic that he neither does this of such set purpose as Irenæus and Tertullian, nor thinks it necessary to prove that the Church had presented the apostolic tradition intact. But as he did not extract from the tradition a fixed complex of fundamental propositions, so also he failed to recognise the importance of its publicity and catholicity, and rather placed an esoteric alongside of an exoteric tradition. Although, like Irenæus and Tertullian, his attitude is throughout determined by opposition to the Gnostics and Marcion, he supposes it possible to refute them by giving to the Holy Scriptures a scientific exposition which must not oppose the κανων της εκκλησιας, that is, the Christian common sense, but receives from it only certain guiding rules. But this attitude of Clement would be simply inconceivable if the Alexandrian Church of his time had already employed the fixed standard applied in those of Rome, Carthage and Lyons.61 Such a standard did not exist; but Clement made no distinction in the yet unsystematised tradition, even between faith and discipline, because as a theologian he was not able to identify himself with any single article of it without hesitation, and because he ascribed to the true Gnostic the ability to fix and guarantee the truth of Christian doctrine.