Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens was probably born to pagan parents in Athens and sought out teachers across Greece, Italy, Syria, and Palestine before settling in Alexandria under Pantaenus. About 190 he opened his own school there. He is the first significant representative of the Alexandrian theological tradition, and Origen was among his pupils.1
Let us remove the ignorance and darkness that spreads like a mist over our sight, and let us get a vision of the true God.2 Clement of Alexandriaas quoted by Mark Galli
Clement took a positive view of Greek philosophy, which he regarded as a handmaiden to theology. God, he taught, used philosophy to prepare the Greeks for Christ as he used the law to prepare the Jews, and he held Socrates and Plato in high regard. In line with Greek thought he ranked spirit above matter and held that God is without passions.3 Yet he confessed the deity of Christ plainly: the Word “has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man.”4
His Legacy
Clement’s conviction that all truth is God’s truth set the course of the Alexandrian school. Through Origen his approach shaped the allegorical reading of Scripture and the marriage of faith and philosophy that the medieval church inherited and Thomas Aquinas perfected. The Reformers, by contrast, returned to the plain sense of the text and were wary of making Scripture answer to the philosophers.
