Wisdom of Saints: St Clement of Alexandria

Feast of Clement of Alexandria, Doctor, c. 210

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Clement, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Feast of Clement of Alexandria, Doctor, c. 210
O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Clement, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

St Clement of Alexandria is another Father for whom there is little concrete evidence of his early life, however a number of his writings continue to exist and his apologies and legacy as a teacher at the catechetical school of Alexandria have left a continues impact on Christianity. Perhaps one of his greatest impacts is on perhaps his most famous pupil, Origen, one of the most prolific writers in the early Church.

The 4th century bishop Epiphanius wrote that St Clement was born to a pagan family in Athens around the year 150. This correlates to assumptions made by numerous others who have examined his work and make the claim that his command of the Greek language suggests an Athenian origin and education. All of this, however, remains supposition.

His parents were likely quite wealthy as he received the best possible education. As a part of that education he travelled considerably. He, much like a later Egyptian bishop St Augustine of Hippo, travelled because he was seeking higher instruction and knowledge. He learned from numerous different masters, the final of which was Pantaenus of Alexandria who converted St Clement to Christianity. Pantaenus was a stoic philosopher who had converted to Christianity and is the first recorded president of the Christian catechetical school of Alexandria. St Clement would become the second when he succeeded his mentor around 180.

It was during this time when he settled in Alexandria that he began to write his Christian works. Apologies and discourses that gained him some notoriety as Christian theologian and apologist. Much of his lasting influence stems from his position at the Alexandrian school, developing its school of thought which was passed on to a number of notable students and became influential throughout the Early Church.

Perhaps the person most influenced by St Clement’s teachings was Origin, one of the most prolific Christian writers of all time. While not all of Origen’s works survive, the many that do show a clear influence from St Clement’s works which also survive.

St Clement lived in the age prior to the legitimization of Christianity, that period between the first and fourth centuries when the Church faced numerous waves of persecution by the Roman authorities. At the start of the 3rd century during the persecution of Septimius Severus, he sought refuge with Alexander of Jerusalem, then Bishop of Flaviada in Cappadocia. After his departure, St Clement lived out the remainder of his life outside of Egypt, never again returning to Alexandria. He died c.210, though the exact details of his death are unknown, but a martyr’s death was never reported.

Many of St Clement’s works remain and perhaps his most famous are the trilogy of the Protrepticus (Exhortation), Paedagogus (Instruction) and Stromata (Miscellaneous). This trilogy provides an outline of St Clement’s theology, which sought to unite the Greek pagan philosophy of his youth with Christianity. It contains a number of beautiful passages and theological observations that make it well worth consulting nearly 2,000 after St Clement first wrote it.

In the opening of his exhortation, he began by criticizing Greek mythology. Over the centuries the Greeks had become somewhat embarrassed by their own mythology, in particular by the pettiness of their gods. They sought to interpret their mythology not in literal, but in spiritual terms. In Greek philosophy, this interpretation was further bolstered by the idea that the physical world is inherently corrupt and only the spiritual world can be pure, thus a more literal interpretation of any text or philosophy would be viewed with scepticism by the Greek mind.

This led to a criticism of the Hebrew Scriptures by the Greeks. To them, the stories, interpreted literally, were laughable and of a very low level of understanding. In his opening chapter of his exhortation to the Greeks, St Clement points out that much of their criticism stems from an enforced interpretation of the Scriptures, including now the writings of the Apostles which would ultimately be canonized in the New Testament, that they no longer apply to their own mythologies to which they contrast the Scriptures. After discussing two famous Greek minstrels who vanquished their foes simply with the power of their music, St Clement asks, “How, let me ask, have you believed vain fables and supposed animals to be charmed by music; while Truth’s shining face alone, as would seem, appears to you disguised, and is looked on with incredulous eyes?”

He continues, noting that the subject matter of Greek myth often involves tragedy, whether due to the capriciousness of the Gods or due to the character failings of the hero. “For me, I am pained at such calamities as form the subjects of tragedy, though but myths; but by you the records of miseries are turned into dramatic compositions.” In his argument, he wonders at how this is to be celebrated, and how even when examined through a spiritual interpretation the Greek tragedies to which they are holding do not provide a good example of life to live up to. He continues contrasting that with God revealed in Scripture:

But let us bring from above out of heaven, Truth, with Wisdom in all its brightness, and the sacred prophetic choir, down to the holy mount of God; and let Truth, darting her light to the most distant points, cast her rays all around on those that are involved in darkness, and deliver men from delusion, stretching out her very strong right hand, which is wisdom, for their salvation.

In contrast to the dourness of the Greek tragedies, Holy Scripture promises God’s truth and wisdom. Where the tragedies seem to idolize crime, excess and human woe, the Scriptures promise salvation.

In his second book, he opens by defining the titular instructor, saying:

The Instructor being practical, not theoretical, His aim is thus to improve the soul, not to teach, and to train it up to a virtuous, not to an intellectual life… For the word which, in matters of doctrine, explains and reveals, is that whose province it is to teach. But our Educator being practical, first exhorts to the attainment of right dispositions and character, and then persuades us to the energetic practice of our duties, enjoining on us pure commandments, and exhibiting to such as come after representations of those who formerly wandered in error.

See how he stresses not merely teaching the Scriptures, but rather teaching holiness, and not simply through explicating the principles revealed through Scripture, but also by example of holy living. From this foundation, he establishes broad guidelines not merely for the instructor, but also students, when he explains that both men and women are equally deserving and in need of instruction:

the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is one, the master of both is also one; one church, one temperance, one modesty; their food is common, marriage an equal yoke; respiration, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love all alike. And those whose life is common, have common graces and a common salvation; common to them are love and training. “For in this world,” he says, “they marry, and are given in marriage,” in which alone the female is distinguished from the male; “but in that world it is so no more.”

After speaking extensively over three volumes he provides a brilliantly simple conclusion when he writes, “All that remains therefore now, in such a celebration of the Word as this, is that we address to the Word our prayer.” Once we have come to knowledge of Christ, through instruction, then all that is left is to pray to him.

St Clement’s wisdom is easily apparent when reading through his works, and his thoughts influenced the course of Christian exegesis, encouraging countless Fathers of the Church to explore the spiritual meaning of Holy Scripture with the same diligence and zeal as displayed by St Clement.

On Patristic Interpretation

The Tenth Sunday after Trinity

LET thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Fathers of the Church is their grounding of the fundamental tools of Christian exegesis. Exegesis comes from Greek and means to draw out the meaning of a passage, therefore the means by which the deeper meanings of a particular passage are explained.

In ancient times, the interpretation of Scripture was heavily influenced by the philosophy of the day, which saw the literal or historical sense of a passage as the lowest possible sense of meaning. There was a two-fold reason behind this. First, physical things (and thus literal descriptions of history) were viewed as being far more base or corrupt than spiritual things. The second and related reason for this was the Greek influence. Greek mythology is replete with stories that even the Greeks found somewhat embarrassing. They had developed extremely sophisticated philosophies and overall learning, yet had these narratives of gods acting capriciously, ridiculously and governed by base passions.

In order to explain that, the Greeks interpreted their mythology to explain a deeper spiritual meaning through analogy. This practice was used and expanded upon by the Fathers, who sought to discern the deeper meanings of scripture. For example, in his homilies on Genesis, St John Chrysostom explains the story of Noah’s drunkenness from Gen 9. 18-26 by pointing out that while the moral sense was not to shame our fellow Christians for their sins and faults, but rather to privately exhort them to repent and return to righteousness, in the way that Shem and Japheth cloaked Noah without looking at him, in contrast with Ham.

Over time, there came to be an understanding that every passage had at least three or four possible levels of interpretation. The literal interpretation described the historical sense of the passage and the events it was depicting. The allegorical sense gave the deeper spiritual meaning, that informed us of the nature of God. The Tropological or moral sense described the way in which the passage provides us with instruction on how we, as Christians, are to live our lives. Finally, the Anagogical sense speaks in particular to what our life in the Kingdom of Heaven will look like when we are reunited with Christ. Ss. John Cassian, Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory the Great were all Fathers who supported this four-fold interpretation.

To discover these different levels of meanings, the Fathers employed a number of different exegetical techniques. There are no uniformly accepted names for different techniques and different Fathers and Biblical scholars have called the same techniques by different names or used the same word to refer to different techniques. The terms used here may therefore not always line up with the way they are used by other authors.

There were a number of general techniques used that could be applied to most any level of Scripture. These techniques might be used to better understand the literal meaning, the allegorical interpretation, the moral interpretation or anagogical interpretation, and sometimes more than one sense of scripture might be discussed using the same exegetical technique.

The technique of redaction criticism was used to explore the context in which a passage occurs, be it the historical context in which the passage was written or the literary context in which the passage appears within a particular chapter or verse. Analysis of the skopos of a passage was used by many of the fathers in their exegetical homilies. Skopos is Greek for the goal or aim, and the analysis could either be widely or narrowly drawn, focused on the goal of a passage within a verse or chapter, or the skopos of the entire book might be examined to provide that context for the particular passage being examined. These forms of contextual interpretation were among the most widely used and important for setting the tone of interpretation whether it be the literal and historical meaning of the passage or the moral or spiritual sense.

Another of the types of analysis that was applied at multiple levels was a literary analysis. Diction would be examined. Grammar, the use of hyperbole or metaphors would be reviewed. Rhetoric and other elements of style would be used to explore an allegorical interpretation or reinforce the understanding of the context for the literal meaning. Similar to this was the technique of akoloutheia which explored the sequence of arguments in a passage, along with the structure of those arguments, to uncover its meaning.

Another technique used was to use more clearly understandable passages to interpret more obscure or dense passages. Dependent upon the idea that the Holy Scriptures are an inspired, unified and consistent whole, this technique would be used to show how passages can and must be interpreted in the context of all of Scripture together. Similar to this technique was the use of word association in which the Father would look for the use of a particular word in other parts of Scripture and build a link between the passages. In this sense, the Father is not doing a word study where the use of a word is explored in multiple contexts, but rather the specific word is used to build a linked meaning between the two passages in which it is used.

As mentioned, the use of allegory (allegoria) was one of the most popular forms of Scriptural exegesis because it provided a deeper and spiritual meaning. The problem with allegory, however, is that there was no need to justify or link the allegorical interpretation with the original passage. This left allegory wide open to eisegesis, the process of reading in an interpretation to a passage which was not intended. Origen was a champion of this method, and as he would become the head of the School of Alexandria, it would become associated with the allegorical method. In contrast to this, the School of Antioch would promote the use of theoria, a method of allegorical interpretation in which the allegory was more closely linked to the literal meaning of the passage being interpreted.

A number of different subsets of allegorical interpretation existed, that provided for allegorical interpretations hinging on particular points. A prominent form of this was typology (typos) which  would create an analogy showing how a particular Old Testament person or event had prefigured Christ in some way. In number symbolism, numbers mentioned in the Bible are used to provide a mystical or allegorical meaning. Similarly, the Fathers might use philogoy or the etymology of a word as the starting point and basis for an allegorical interpretation of a passage. This was especially used for the names of people and places, perhaps most notably in Origen’s analysis of the place names in the Book of Numbers.

An example of this can be found in St John Chrysostom’s homilies on Genesis 22. In the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac, Chrysostom explores the history behind what actually happened, and then to provide one level of spiritual interpretation he uses typology, describing how in this passage Abraham is a type of God the Father, while his only son Isaac is a type, prefiguring, Christ. Abraham is willing to sacrifice his only son, and Isaac realises that he is to be sacrificed, and goes willingly.

These types of interpretive techniques helped to open the Scriptures to people around the world, as well as forming the basis of continued exegetical interpretation to this day.