His Life (§ 1).
His Literary work (§ 2).
His Significance for the Church (§ 3).
His Eclecticism (§ 4).
His Dependence upon Philosophy (§ 5).
His Relation to Ethics (§ 6).
And to Scripture and the Church (§ 7).
Clement of Alexandria (Titus Flavius Clemens), one of the most distinguished teachers of the Church of Alexandria, was born about the middle of the second century, and died between 211 and 216. He was certainly not born in Egypt (Strom., i. 1). The indication of Athens as his birthplace by Epiphanius is supported by the classical quality of his Greek. His parents seem to have been pagans, of the well-to-do class. The thoroughness of his education is attested by his constant quotation of the Greek poets and philosophers. In quest of the best instruction, he traveled in Greece, Italy, Palestine, and finally Egypt. He became the colleague of Pantaenus, the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, and finally succeeded him in the direction of the school. During the persecution of Septimius Severus (202 or 203) he sought refuge with Alexander, then bishop [possibly of Flaviada] in Cappadocia, afterward of Jerusalem, from whom he brought a letter to Antioch in 211.
The trilogy into which Clement's principal remains are connected by their purpose and mode of treatment is composed of the Protrepticus ("Exhortation"), the Paedagogus ("Instructor"), and the Stromata ("Miscellanies"). Overbeck calls it the boldest literary undertaking in the history of the Church, since in it Clement for the first time attempted to set forth Christianity for the faithful in the traditional forms of profane literature. The Protrepticus forms an introduction inviting the reader to listen, not to the mythical legends of the heathen gods, but to the "new song" of the Logos, the beginning of all things and creator of the world. He demonstrates the folly of idolatry and the pagan mysteries, the horrors of pagan sacrifice, and shows that the Greek philosophers and poets only guessed at the truth, while the prophets set forth a direct way to salvation; and now the divine Logos speaks in his own person, to awaken all that is good in the soul of man and to lead it to immortality. Having thus laid a foundation in the knowledge of divine truth, he goes on in the Paedagogus to develop a Christian ethic. His design does not prevent him from taking a large part of his material from the Stoic Musonius, the master of Epictetus; but for Clement the real instructor is the incarnate Logos. The first book deals with the religious basis of Christian morality, the second and third with the individual cases of conduct. As with Epictetus, true virtue shows itself with him in its external evidences by a natural, simple, and moderate way of living. The Stromata goes further and aims at the perfection of the Christian life by initiation into complete knowledge. The first of these works is addressed to the unconverted, the second to the new Christian, and the third appeals to the mature believer. It attempts, on the basis of Scripture and tradition, to give such an account of the Christian faith as shall answer all the demands of learned men, and conduct the student into the innermost realities of his belief. Clement entitled this work Stromateis, "patchwork," because it dealt with such a variety of matters. He intended to make but one book of this; at least seven grew out of it, without his having treated all the subjects proposed. The absence of certain things definitely promised has led scholars to ask whether he wrote an eighth book, as would appear from Eusebius (VI. xiii. 1) and the Florilegia, and various attempts have been made to identify with it short or fragmentary treatises appearing among his remains. In any case the " excerpts " and " selections " which, with part of a treatise on logical method, are designated as the eighth book in the single (11th century) manuscript of the Stromata, are not parts of the Hypotyposes which Clement is known to have written. This work was a brief commentary on selected passages covering the whole Bible, as is shown in the fragments preserved by OEcumenius and in the Latin version of the commentary on the Catholic Epistles made at the instance of Cassiodorus. Besides the great trilogy, the only complete work preserved is the treatise "Who is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved? " based on Mark x. 17-31, and laying down the principle that not the possession of riches but their misuse is to be condemned. There are extant a few fragments of the treatise on the Passover, against the Quartodeciman position of Melito, and only a single passage from the "Ecclesiastical Canon" against the Judaizers. Several other works are only known by their titles.
The significance of Clement in the history of the development of doctrine is, according to Harnack, that he knew how to replace the apologetic method by the constructive or systematic, to turn the simple church tradition into a scientific dogmatic theology. It is a marked characteristic of his that he sees only superficial and transient disagreement where others find a fundamental opposition. He is able to reconcile, or even to fuse, differing views to an extent which makes it almost impossible to attribute to him a definite individual system. He is admittedly an eclectic (Strom., i. 37). This attitude determines especially his treatment of non-Christian philosophy. Although the theory of a diabolical origin for it is not unknown to him, and although he shows exhaustively that the philosophers owe a large part of their knowledge to the writings of the Old Testament, yet he seems to express his own personal conviction when he describes philosophy as a direct operation of the divine Logos, working through it as well as through the law and his direct revelation in the Gospel to communicate the truth to men. It is
|
138 |
Thus he emphasizes the permanent importance of philosophy for the fulness of Christian knowledge, explains with special predilection the relation between knowledge and faith, and sharply criticizes those who are unwilling to make any use of philosophy. He pronounces definitely against the sophists and against the hedonism of the school of Epicurus. Although he generally expresses himself unfavorably in regard to the Stoic philosophy, he really pays marked deference to that mixture of Stoicism and Platonism which characterized the religious and ethical thought of the educated classes in his day. This explains the value set by Clement on gnosis. To be sure, he constantly opposes the heretical gnosis. Faith is the foundation of all gnosis, and both are given by Christ. As faith involves a comprehensive knowledge of the essentials, knowledge allows the believer to penetrate deeply into the understanding of what he believes; and this is the making perfect, the completion, of faith. In order to attain this kind of faith, the "faith of knowledge," which is so much higher than the mere "faith of conjecture," or simple reception of a truth on authority, philosophy is permanently necessary. In fact, Christianity is the true philosophy, and the perfect Christian the true Gnostic-- but again only the "Gnostic according to the canon of the Church " has this distinction. Also, he rejects the Gnostic distinction of "psychic" and "pneumatic" men; all are alike destined to perfection if they will embrace it.
From philosophy he takes his conception of the Logos, the principle of Christian gnosis, through whom alone God's relation to the world and his revelation is maintained. God he considers transcendentally as unqualified Being, who can not be defined in too abstract a way. Though his goodness operated in the creation of the world, yet immutability, self sufficiency, incapability of suffering are the characteristic notes of the divine essence. Though the Logos is most closely one with the Father, whose powers he resumes in himself, yet to Clement both the Son and the Spirit are "first-born powers and first created "; they form the highest stages in the scale of intelligent being, and Clement distinguishes the Son-Logos from the Logos who is im mutably immanent in God, and thus gives a foundation to the charge of Photius that he "degraded the Son to the rank of a creature." Separate from the world as the principle of creation, he is yet in it as its guiding principle. Thus a natural life is a life according to the will of the Logos. The Incarnation, in spite of Clement's rejection of the Gnostic Docetism, has with him a decidedly Docetic character. The body of Christ was not subject to human needs. He is the good Physician; the medicine which he offers is the communication of saving gnosis, leading men from heathenism to faith and from faith to the higher state of knowledge. This true philosophy includes within itself the freedom from sin and the attainment of virtue. As all sin has its root in ignorance, so the knowledge of God and of goodness is followed by well-doing. Against the Gnostics Clement emphasizes the freedom of all to do good.
Clement lays great stress on the fulfilment of moral obligations. In his ethical expressions he is influenced strongly by Plato and the Stoics, from whom he borrows much of his terminology. He praises Plato for setting forth the greatest possible likeness to God as the aim of life; and his portrait of the perfect Gnostic closely resembles that of the wise man as drawn by the Stoics. Hence he counsels his readers to shake off the chains of the flesh as far as possible, to live already as if out of the body, and thus to rise above earthly things. He is a true Greek in the value which he sets on moderation; but his highest ideal of conduct remains the mortification of all affections which may in any way disturb the soul in its career. As Harnack says, the lofty ethical-religious ideal of the attainment of man's perfection in union with God, which Greek philosophy from Plato down had worked out, and to which it had subordinated all scientific worldly knowledge, is taken over by Clement, deepened in meaning, and connected not only with Christ, but with ecclesiastical tradition.
The way, however, to this union with God is for Clement only the Church's way. The communication of the gnosis is bound up with holy orders, which give the divine light and life. The simple faith of the baptized Christian contains all the essentials of the highest knowledge; by the Eucharist the believer is united with the Logos and the Spirit, and made partaker of incorruptibility. Though he lays down at starting a purely spiritual conception of the Church, later the exigencies of his controversy with the Gnostics make him lay more stress on the visible church. As to his use of Scripture, the extraordinary breadth of his reading and manifold variety of his quotations from the most diverse authors make it very difficult to determine exactly what was received as canonical by the Alexandrian Church of that period. Though he uses the Apocryphal Gospels, our four alone have supreme authority for him. For the other New Testament writings he seems not to have had as definite a line of demarcation; but whatever he recognized as of apostolic origin had for him an authority distinct from, and higher than, that of all other ecclesiastical tradition.
(N. BONWETSCH.)BIBLIOGRAPHY: The best text of Clement is in course of publication by O. Stahlin, to be in 3 vols., vols. i.-ii., Leipsic,1905-06: that by J. Potter, 2 vols., Oxford, 1715, in reproduced in MPG, viii.-ix. T. Zahn has given a Supplementum Clementinium in his Forschungen, iii. 1-178, 319-321, Erlangen, 1884. The best Eng. transl. is in ANF,
|
139 |
|
140 |
|
141 |
|
142 |
|
143 |
|
144 |
|
145 |
|
146 |
|
147 |
|
148 |
|
149 |
|
150 |
aernlonia Xebraici, et Chaldaici, Amsterdam, 1669 and often.
Cocceiua based his theory of life upon the Bible, and in this lies his significance. In contradistinction to devotion to church and orthodoxy, he recommends a life in and through the Scriptures. Against Hoornbeek'e "Authority of the Church" he put that of the Bible only, which was to him a wonderful expression of the deeds and words of God. Consequently all his theological concepts received a Biblical coloring; and his peculiarity was not scholastic but Biblical in origin. Concordant with this was the essentially practical bent of his theology, in which lived a mild type of the German-Reformed spirit, deviating not in doctrine, but in disposition from later Calvinism. To be sure, Biblical theology does not operate through mere uniform exposition. Cocceiua unlocked its treasure by means of the central idea of the covenant of God. Not that he originated "Federal Theology," the roots of which lay in the Reformation, while its outline had through Calvin's influence long passed current in Holland by means of the activities of Hyperius, Olevian, and Bullinger. Perhaps Cocceiua received the idea from Raph. Eglin's De fiedera 3. Doctrines. gratice (Marburg, 1613). What was new was the dynamic force of his Biblical theology, on the lines of which he carried out the conception, and the richness of knowledge of Biblical history with which he enriched it. His main work, De ftedere et teatamento Doi, portrays in bold and clear outline the whole Scriptural teaching on salvation. The relation between God and man is represented as a covenant at first existing as a divine order, then as a compact between God and man. Then came the covenant of works, under which developed the first step in sin, followed by the proclamation of the " covenant of grace." Though faith then took the place of works, this faith was no new law and Christ no new lawgiver. The power of the " Covenant of Grace " consists in this, that in contradistinction to the " covenant of works" it develops into a "Testament." This method runs through Cocceius's exegetical works; everywhere in the Old Testament he finds Jesus Christ. Though differing in the mode of interpretation, he nowhere departs from the doctrine of his Church. It is his merit to have turned from the abstract deductions of orthodoxy to the position of Calvin. In his doctrine of the Church, by keeping the sacraments in the background and by understanding, law spiritually, he greatly assisted Pietism. Though he found a place in the covenant of grace for the decalogue, the New Testament idea of a sanctified life and disbelief in the necessity to keep special days led to the dispute upon the Sabbath question. It was through this that the Church became aware of the peculiarities of his doctrine; the polemical Mareaius and the worthy puritanic Voetiua entered the fray.
II. His School: Meanwhile Cocceiua died, but the battle continued with renewed fury. A schism in the Church was narrowly averted; on the Sabbath question the pupils outdid the prudent, practical master, the affray involved the laity whom the Biblical sermons of Cocceius had made theo-
logians, from there it entered politics, the " Vaetians " being the Central party, and the Cocceians the Remonstrants. A change in the prayer-book was widely resented, and such Cocceiana as Heidanus, W. Momma, and J. van der Waeyen were expelled from the universities. The neighboring synods urged peace "in the name of the communion of the saints," and the consistory of Amsterdam observed strict impartiality; none the leas in 1694 it was necessary for the Court to curb the parties. The practise was adopted, and continued until last century, of appointing a Voetian for the chair of systematic theology, a Cocceian for the chair of exegesis, and a Lampean for the chair of practical theology. The last-named school was founded by the moderate Cocceian Fr. A. Lamps (q.v.), who did much to heal the breach of the parties. A complete change for the better was brought about in the Cocceian system through Fr. Burmann's Synopsis Theologi,ce, the text-book of later " Federalists." Among the friends and pupils of Cocceiua were the Burmanns, father and son, Heidanus (d. 1760), J. Braun, and the great exegete Campegiua Vitringa.
(E. F. KARL MOLLER.)Bat:oanera:: Elio autobiography, completed by his eon, J. H. Cocceius, is prefixed to the"Collected Works," ed. of 1873-78. His life is also given in Nic6ron, M6moiru, viii. 193 sqq., and in A. J. van der As, BioprapAiach Woordenbosk der Nsderlandsu, iii. 518 eqq., Haarlem, 1852. Consult: F. A. Tholuak, Do# akademiache L etwn den 17ten Jahrhunderta, ii . 228 eqq., Halls, 1853; G. Frank. Geschichte der protestanDiachen Theolopis, ii. 240 eqq., Leipeia, 1885; H. L. J. Heppe, Gesehidrtc des Pielismus and der Myst%k in der reformirkn Kirche, pp. 218 eqq., Leyden, 1879; A. Ritschl Geschichts des Piatiamue in der rstorm%rten Kirche, pp. 130 eqq., Bonn, 1880.
| Calvin College. Last modified on 10/03/03. Contact the CCEL. |  |