Note (return) — Chapter VI

Whilst all these phenomena, which collectively belong to the close of the second and beginning of the third century, show that it was indeed possible to suppress heresy in the Church, but not the impulse from which it sprang, the most striking proof of this conclusion is the existence of the so-called school of catechists in Alexandria. We cannot now trace the origin of this school, which first comes under our notice in the year 190,661 but we know that the struggle of the Church with heresy was concluded in Alexandria at a later period than in the West. We know further that the school of catechists extended its labours to Palestine and Cappadocia as early as the year 200, and, to all appearance, originated or encouraged scientific pursuits there.662 Finally, we know that the existence of this school was threatened in the fourth decade of the third century; but Heraclas was shrewd enough to reconcile the ecclesiastical and scientific interests.663 In the Alexandrian school of catechists the whole of Greek science was taught and made to serve the purpose of Christian apologetics. Its first teacher, who is well known to us from the writings he has left, is Clement of Alexandria.664 His main work is epoch-making. "Clement's intention is nothing less than an introduction to Christianity, or, speaking more correctly and in accordance with the spirit of his work, an initiation into it. The task that Clement sets himself is an introduction to what is inmost and highest in Christianity itself. He aims, so to speak, at first making Christians perfect Christians by means of a work of literature. By means of such a work he wished not merely to repeat to the Christian what life has already done for him as it is, but to elevate him to something still higher than what has been revealed to him by the forms of initiation that the Church has created for herself in the course of a history already dating back a century and a half." To Clement therefore Gnosis, that is, the (Greek) philosophy of religion, is not only a means of refuting heathenism and heresy, but at the same time of ascertaining and setting forth what is highest and inmost in Christianity. He views it as such, however, because, apart from evangelical sayings, the Church tradition, both collectively and in its details, is something foreign to him; he has subjected himself to its authority, but he can only make it intellectually his own after subjecting it to a scientific and philosophical treatment.665 His great work, which has rightly been called the boldest literary undertaking in the history of the Church,666 is consequently the first attempt to use Holy Scripture and the Church tradition together with the assumption that Christ as the Reason of the world is the source of all truth, as the basis of a presentation of Christianity which at once addresses itself to the cultured by satisfying the scientific demand for a philosophical ethic and theory of the world, and at the same time reveals to the believer the rich content of his faith. Here then is found, in form and content, the scientific Christian doctrine of religion which, while not contradicting the faith, does not merely support or explain it in a few places, but raises it to another and higher intellectual sphere, namely, out of the province of authority and obedience into that of clear knowledge and inward, intellectual assent emanating from love to God.667 Clement cannot imagine that the Christian faith, as found in tradition, can of itself produce the union of intellectual independence and devotion to God which he regards as moral perfection. He is too much of a Greek philosopher for that, and believes that this aim is only reached through knowledge. But in so far as this is only the deciphering of the secrets revealed in the Holy Scriptures through the Logos, secrets which the believer also gains possession of by subjecting himself to them, all knowledge is a reflection of the divine revelation. The lofty ethical and religious ideal of the man made perfect in fellowship with God, which Greek philosophy had developed since the time of Plato and to which it had subordinated the whole scientific knowledge of the world, was adopted and heightened by Clement, and associated not only with Jesus Christ but also with ecclesiastical Christianity. But, whilst connecting it with the Church tradition, he did not shrink from the boldest remodelling of the latter, because the preservation of its wording was to him a sufficient guarantee of the Christian character of the speculation.668 In Clement, then, ecclesiastical Christianity reached the stage that Judaism had attained in Philo, and no doubt the latter exercised great influence over him.669 Moreover, Clement stands on the ground that Justin had already trodden, but he has advanced far beyond this Apologist. His superiority to Justin not only consists in the fact that he changed the apologetic task that the latter had in his mind into a systematic and positive one; but above all in the circumstance that he transformed the tradition of the Christian Church, which in his days was far more extensive and more firmly established than in Justin's time, into a real scientific dogmatic; whereas Justin neutralised the greater part of this tradition by including it in the scheme of the proof from prophecy. By elevating the idea of the Logos who is Christ into the highest principle in the religious explanation of the world and in the exposition of Christianity, Clement gave to this idea a much more concrete and copious content than Justin did. Christianity is the doctrine of the creation, training, and redemption of mankind by the Logos, whose work culminates in the perfect Gnostics. The philosophy of the Greeks, in so far as it possessed the Logos, is declared to be a counterpart of the Old Testament law;670 and the facts contained in the Church tradition are either subordinated to the philosophical dogmatic or receive a new interpretation expressly suited to it. The idea of the Logos has a content which is on the one hand so wide that he is found wherever man rises above the level of nature, and on the other so concrete that an authentic knowledge of him can only be obtained from historical revelation. The Logos is essentially the rational law of the world and the teacher; but in Christ he is at the same time officiating priest, and the blessings he bestows are a series of holy initiations which alone contain the possibility of man's raising himself to the divine life.671 While this is already clear evidence of Clement's affinity to Gnostic teachers, especially the Valentinians, the same similarity may also be traced in the whole conception of the task (Christianity as theology), in the determination of the formal principle (inclusive of the recourse to esoteric tradition; see above, p. 35 f.),672 and in the solution of the problems. But Clement's great superiority to Valentinus is shown not only in his contriving to preserve in all points his connection with the faith of the main body of Christendom, but still more in his power of mastering so many problems by the aid of a single principle, that is, in the art of giving the most comprehensive presentation with the most insignificant means. Both facts are indeed most closely connected. The rejection of all conceptions that could not be verified from Holy Scripture, or at least easily reconciled with it, as well as his optimism, opposed as this was to Gnostic pessimism, proved perhaps the most effective means of persuading the Church to recognise the Christian character of a dogmatic that was at least half inimical to ecclesiastical Christianity. Through Clement theology became the crowning stage of piety, the highest philosophy of the Greeks was placed under the protection and guarantee of the Church, and the whole Hellenic civilisation was thus at the same time legitimised within Christianity. The Logos is Christ, but the Logos is at the same time the moral and rational in all stages of development. The Logos is the teacher, not only in cases where an intelligent self-restraint, as understood by the ancients, bridles the passions and instincts and wards off excesses of all sorts; but also, and here of course the revelation is of a higher kind, wherever love to God alone determines the whole life and exalts man above everything sensuous and finite.673 What Gnostic moralists merely regarded as contrasts Clement, the Christian and Greek, was able to view as stages; and thus he succeeded in conceiving the motley society that already represented the Church of his time as a unity, as the humanity trained by one and the same Logos, the Pedagogue. His speculation did not drive him out of the Church; it rather enabled him to understand the multiplicity of forms she contained and to estimate their relative justification; nay, it finally led him to include the history of pre-Christian humanity in the system he regarded as a unity, and to form a theory of universal history satisfactory to his mind.674 If we compare this theory with the rudimentary ideas of a similar kind in Irenæus, we see clearly the meagreness and want of freedom, the uncertainty and narrowness, in the case of the latter. In the Christian faith as he understood it and as amalgamated by him with Greek culture, Clement found intellectual freedom and independence, deliverance from all external authority. We need not here directly discuss what apparatus he used for this end. Irenæus again remained entangled in his apparatus, and much as he speaks of the novum testamentum libertatis, his great work little conveys the impression that its author has really attained intellectual freedom. Clement was the first to grasp the task of future theology. According to him this task consists in utilising the historical traditions, through which we have become what we are, and the Christian communion, which is imperative upon us as being the only moral and religious one, in order to attain freedom and independence of our own life by the aid of the Gospel; and in showing this Gospel to be the highest revelation by the Logos, who has given evidence of himself whenever man rises above the level of nature and who is consequently to be traced throughout the whole history of humanity.