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Describing the Eucharist as milk from the Father’s breast might sound odd to many Christians, even when Clement explains in his book, Pedagogus, that Christ is symbolically the Father’s breast, which constitutes a rich assertion of the divine feminine in Christ.

An almost certain belief in some form of reincarnation, appearing in his work Stromateis, could also mean that his job prospects in the Catholic church might not be too high. Clement said all these things. But he was a thoughtful and scholarly man, as even his enemies had to acknowledge.

Clement’s Early Life and Career

Born Titus Flavius Clemens in 150 A.D. his birth place was either Athens or Alexandria. Clement’s parents were pagan, and they provided him with a deep knowledge of paganism and Greek philosophy, knowledge easily available in these learned cities.

Clement absorbed philosophy deeply, holding a great regard for Plato, but he rejected the Greek deities as morally unworthy. Rather than join a mystery religion, he opted for Christianity, which he believed had a righteous God who demanded holy life of his people.

By 180 A.D. Clement was in Alexandria and soon his great learning led him to the headship of the catechetical school, which taught potential Christians. Alexandria was a scholar’s dream town: an intellectual ferment where Greek philosophy met with well-established rabbinical thinkers, and the trade routes from India to the Red Sea ports of Egypt had brought Buddhism and some knowledge of Hindu thought.

The Pharos of Alexandria, which spread its beams across the Mediterranean night. All Alexandrians would have been familiar with this sight. Image by Sergey Kamshlin.

Clement’s Intellectual Influences

Notably, Clement and his pupil, Origen, later to become the foremost interpreter of Scripture of the ancient world, seem to have been believers in a cyclic world view, which the philosophy of Orphism and eastern scholars taught.

By that time, Christians had become aware that they needed philosophy to analyse and expound their faith, and they were  searching for the philosophy that suited their task.

Clement, with his great philosophical depth, could draw upon a range of philosophical knowledge. There is no evidence that he drew on Indian thought, but he would have been aware of it because of the trade routes through Alexandria.

One philosophy that entered the creative melting pot of Clement’s mind was Stoicism. Like Orphism, this held to a cyclic universe with a series of creations, though Clement and Origen did not hold to Stoicism’s belief in the eternal recurrence of the same events.

The key Stoic concept was the Logos. The prologue of John’s Gospel used this so it had scriptural backing. “In the beginning was the Word [Logos] and the word was with God…,” begins John, chapter one. Christ was the Word who reveals God and effects his will in the world.

In Stoic thought, God’s Word was the underlying rationality of the created world; its organizing principle. For Clement, Christ makes sense of the world.

Clement’s Belief in Reincarnation

We are creatures of the Logos, declares Clement, according to his book Stromateis, and he pities us in our wanderings. These words foreshadow the words of the later Egyptian Synesius, who, according to Joseph Head and Sylvia Cranston, argues that we descend from the heavenly realms and unless we make it back at the first attempt, we must wander long in Earth’s lower regions. There are echoes of Clement here. Reincarnation fits well into a cyclic world view.

Pope Sixtus’ 1586 condemnation of Clement, on the advice of Cardinal Baronius,cited Clement’s beliefs in a cyclic world view and an eternal creation as heresies. Contemporaries of the time knew that Clement wrote stories or speculations about worlds before Adam, but none of these writings survive.

The condemnation also states that he was sympathetic to Docetism, the belief that Christ’s body was illusory, but this is untrue. He simply thought that Christ was a pure being, free of normal passions.

Bible Scrolls, on which Clement based much of his thought. Philosophy building on Scripture and faith was his principle. Image by James Steidl.

Clement’s End in Palestine

Scholars believe Clement died in 215 A.D, but first, he left Egypt for Palestine in the Severan persecution of 211 A.D. and Origen assumed the headship of the school.

There is some suggestion that Clement moved to Cappadocia. Ultimately, whether he suffered excecution for his faith is unclear.

Clement’s Legacy on Faith and Philosophy

What marks Clement out is the belief that the Christian must be a true philosopher. Clashing with the Gnostics, who believed that they, as intellectual Christians, were superior to people with mere faith, Clement insisted that faith and philosophy must go together in the Christian life.

Clement believed that the Christian must live an intellectually-respectable life. It is the Christian who is the true Gnostic, as he draws his knowledge from God and explores it through philosophy.

Not all Clement’s views have stood the test of time, but his insight that Christianity must meld faith and philosophy is surely a challenge to those who uphold simple or blind faith, and uncritical obedience to church authorities.