Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume I/Church History of Eusebius/Book V/Chapter 11

Clement of Alexandria.

1. this time Clement, Of the place and time of Titus Flavius Clement&#8217;s birth we have no certain knowledge, though it is probable that he was an Athenian by training at least, if not by birth, and he must have been born about the middle of the second century. He received a very extensive education, and became a Christian in adult years, after he had tried various systems of philosophy, much as Justin Martyr had. He had a great thirst for knowledge, and names six different teachers under whom he studied Christianity (see below, &#167;4). Finally he became a pupil of Pant&#230;nus in Alexandria, whom he afterward succeeded as the head of the catechetical school there. It is at this time (about 190 ) that he comes out clearly into the light of history, and to this period (190&#8211;202) belongs his greatest literary activity. He was at the head of the school probably until 202, when the persecution of Severus having broken out, he left Alexandria, and we nave no notice that he ever returned. That he did not leave Alexandria dishonorably, through fear, may be gathered from his presence with Alexander during his imprisonment, and from the letters of the latter (see below, Bk. VI. chaps. 11 and 14, and cf. Bk. VI. chap. 6, notes). This is the last notice that we have of him ( 212); and of the place and time of his death we know nothing, though he cannot have lived many years after this. He was never a bishop, but was a presbyter of the Alexandrian church, and was in ancient times commemorated as a saint, but his name was dropped from the roll by Clement VIII. on account of suspected heterodoxy. He lived in an age of transition, and his great importance lies in the fact that he completed the bond between Hellenism and Christianity, and as a follower of the apologists established Christianity as a philosophy, and yet not as they had done in an apologetic sense. He was the teacher of Origen, and the real father of Greek theology. He published no system, as did Origen; his works were rather desultory and fragmentary, but full of wide and varied learning, and exhibit a truly broad and catholic spirit. Upon his works, see Bk. VI. chap. 13. Upon Clement, see especially Westcott&#8217;s article in Smith and Wace, I. 559&#8211;567, and Schaff, II. 781&#8211;785, where the literature is given with considerable fullness. For an able and popular presentation of his theology, see Allen&#8217;s Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 38&#8211;70. being trained with him in the divine Scriptures at Alexandria, became well known. He had the same name as the one who anciently was at the head of the Roman church, and who was a disciple of the apostles.

2. In his Hypotyposes he speaks of Pant&#230;nus by name as his teacher. It seems to me that he alludes to the same person also in the first book of his Stromata, when, referring to the more conspicuous of the successors of the apostles whom he had met, he says:

3. &#8220;This work is not a writing artfully constructed for display; but my notes are stored up for old age, as a remedy against forgetfulness; an image without art, and a rough sketch of those powerful and animated words which it was my privilege to hear, as well as of blessed and truly remarkable men.

4. Of these the one&#8212;the Ionian &#8212;was in Greece, the other in Magna Gr&#230;cia; the one of them was from C&#339;le-Syria, the other from Egypt. There were others in the East, one of them an Assyrian, the other a Hebrew in Palestine. But when I met with the last, &#8212;in ability truly he was first,&#8212;having hunted him out in his concealment in Egypt, I found rest.

5. These men, preserving the true tradition of the blessed doctrine, directly from the holy apostles, Peter and James and John and Paul, the son receiving it from the father (but few were like the fathers), have come by God&#8217;s will even to us to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds.&#8221;