The Wisdom of Saints: St Clement of Rome

The Feast of Clement, Apostolic man, Bishop of Rome, c. 100

O GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Clement to be a Bishop in thy Church and to feed thy flock: We beseech thee to send down upon all thy Bishops, the Pastors of thy Church, the abundant gift of thy Holy Spirit, that they, being endued with power from on high, and ever walking in the footsteps of thy holy Apostles, may minister before thee in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

St Clement of Rome was the Bishop of Rome in the late Apostolic Age. Surprisingly few details of his life are known, especially given how popular a figure St Clement became during the first few centuries of the post-Apostolic Age. In various chronologies of the Church he is noted to have been installed as Bishop for the majority of the AD 90s, and was martyred around AD 100. He is believed to have been martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea to be drowned.

St Clement is chiefly remembered due to the popularity of his Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, known chiefly as I Clement. It is largely dated to AD 96, prior to the end of the Apostolic Age, though some more recent scholarship has dated it to AD 70. The famous Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea in his seminal Historia Ecclesiae described I Clement as, “one acknowledged Epistle of this Clement, great and admirable, which he wrote in the name of the Church of Rome to the Church at Corinth, sedition having then arisen in the latter Church. We are aware that this Epistle has been publicly read in very many churches both in old times, and also in our own day.” (iii. 16) The Epistle was sufficiently popular to be often read in churches, and was viewed as truly articulating the faith of the Apostles, to the point of being viewed as canonical by some early Christians. While it had its proponents for inclusion into the Canon, ultimately the main reason it was not adopted into the Canon of Scripture is that St Clement was writing in his own name, rather than in the name of one of the Apostles themselves.

I Clement itself, much like the Pauline Epistles, is a letter written to another Christian community to address controversies that have arisen there. In this case, it is a letter to the Church in Corinth, which had been beset by division, which had resulted in one of the dissident groups of Christians removing the Christian Corinthian leaders from their offices. As St Clement puts describes it, he wrote his Epistle in response to the divisions in the church in, “which a few headstrong and self-willed persons have kindled to such a pitch of madness that your name, once revered and renowned and lovely in the sight of all men, hath been greatly reviled.” (I Clement 1. 1)

While a good portion of the letter is dedicated to dissecting the schism in the Church in Corinth and exploring how it was sin such as vanity and conceit which led to the schism, and how emulation of Christ's love for one another would be necessary to restore unity to the Church, St Clement addresses afterwards a number of other issues, demonstrating the Patristic understanding of a number of issues which were supported by the writings of the Apostles, even though the full canon of Scripture had not yet been received by the Church when I Clement was written.

Of particular note, in Chapter 32, St Clement addresses justification, saying:

And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God justified all men that have been from the beginning; to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. (I Clement 32. 4)

In this he expresses a doctrine which would be abandoned among large numbers of Christians until the time of the Reformations in the 16th century. Several weeks ago, this blog discussed the goal of the English Reformation as a desire to restore the Catholic Church in the Realm of England to the faith, order and tradition of the Patristic Church under the authority of Holy Scripture. Article XI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion articulates justification by faith in much the same terms, "we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings..."

Chapters 40 through 44 discuss the issue of the three-fold order of ministry in the Church, and also directly addresses issues such as Apostolic Succession. Chapter 42 in particular discusses how the Apostles were called to be teachers, and how from them were brought forth the orders of ministry:

The Apostles received the Gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ was sent forth from God. So then Christ is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Both therefore came of the will of God in the appointed order. Having therefore received a charge, and having been fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and confirmed in the word of God with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth with the glad tidings that the kingdom of God should come. So preaching everywhere in country and town, they appointed their firstfruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons unto them that should believe. And this they did in no new fashion; for indeed it had been written concerning bishops and deacons from very ancient times; for thus saith the scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith. (I Clement 42. 1-5)

Then, in Chapter 44, St Clement rather specifically address Apostolic Succession when he notes that the Apostles foresaw the possible strife the office of Bishop would create, and made preparations. According to St Clement, Apostolic Succession was envisioned to maintain good order in the Church:

And our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the name of the bishop's office. For this cause therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and afterwards they provided a continuance, that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministration. Those therefore who were appointed by them, or afterward by other men of repute with the consent of the whole Church, and have ministered unblamably to the flock of Christ in lowliness of mind, peacefully and with all modesty, and for long time have borne a good report with all these men we consider to be unjustly thrust out from their ministration. (I Clement 44. 1-2)

Along with his specific exhortations to return to unity in love of Christ, St Clements’s writings highlight several fundamental and practical doctrines of the Church which made them extremely popular among early Christians. It is not hard to see how his wisdom, which rightly articulated the doctrines and teachings of the Apostles, was viewed so highly among early Christians that some of the fathers accounted I Clement among the Canon of Scripture.