LITMIR.BIZ

VIII.

       CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. DIED 220 (?) A.D.

       Table of Contents

      THE attitude of the first great Christian writers and apologists in regard to total abstinence was somewhat peculiar. Trained in the school of Plato, in the later development of neo-platonism, their strongest convictions and their personal sympathies were, naturally, anti-kreophagistic. The traditions, too, of the earliest period in the history of Christianity coincided with their pre-Christian convictions, since the immediate and accredited representatives of the Founder of the new religion, who presided over the first Christian society, were commonly held to have been, equally with their predecessors and contemporaries the Essenes, strict abstinents from flesh-eating.[63]

      Moreover, the very numerous party in the Church—the most diametrically opposed in other respects to the Jewish or Ebionite Christians—the Gnostics or philosophical Christians, “the most polite, the most learned, and the most wealthy of the Christian name,” for the most part agreed with their rivals for orthodox supremacy in aversion from flesh, and, as it seems, for nearly the same reason—a belief in the essential and inherent evil of matter, a persuasion, it may be said, however unscientific, not unnatural, perhaps, in any age, and certainly not surprising in an age especially characterised by the grossest materialism, selfishness, and cruelty. But the creed of the Christian church, which eventually became the prevailing and ruling dogma, like that of the English Church at the Revolution of the sixteenth century, was a compromise—a compromise between the two opposite parties of those who received and those who rejected the old Jewish revelation.

      On the one hand Christianity, in its later and more developed form, had insensibly cast off the rigid formalism and exclusiveness of Mosaism, and, on the other, had stamped with the brand of heresy the Greek infusion of philosophy and liberalism. Unfortunately, unable clearly to distinguish between the true and the false—between the accidental and fanciful and the permanent and real—timidly cautious of approving anything which seemed connected with heresy—the leaders of the dominant body were prone to seek refuge in a middle course, in regard to the question of flesh-eating, scarcely consistent with strict logic or strict reason. While advocating abstinence as the highest spiritual exercise or aspiration, they seem to have been unduly anxious to disclaim any motives other than ascetic—to disclaim, in fine, humanitarian or “secular” reason, such as that of the Pythagoreans.

      Such was the feeling, apparently, of the later orthodox church, at least in the West. While, however, we thus find, occasionally, a certain constraint and even contradiction in the theory of the first great teachers of the Church, the practice was much more consistent. That, in fact, during the first three or four centuries the most esteemed of the Christian heroes and saints were not only non-flesh-eaters but Vegetarians of the extremest kind (far surpassing, if we give any credit to the accounts we have of them, the most frugal of modern abstainers) is well known to everyone at all acquainted with ecclesiastical and, especially, eremitical history—and it is unnecessary to further insist upon a notorious fact.[64]

      Titus Flavius Clemens, the founder of the famous Alexandrian school of Christian theology, and at once the most learned and most philosophic of all the Christian Fathers, is generally supposed to have been a native of Athens. His Latin name suggests some connexion with the family of Clemens, cousin of the emperor Domitian, who is said to have been put to death for the crime of atheism, as the new religion was commonly termed by the orthodox pagans.

      He travelled and studied the various philosophies in the East and West. On accepting the Christian faith he sought information in the schools of its most reputed teachers, of whom the name of Pantænus is the only one known to us. At the death of Pantænus, in 190, Clement succeeded to the chair of theology in Alexandria, and at the same time, perhaps, he became a presbyter. He continued to lecture with great reputation till the year 202, when the persecution under Severus forced him to retire from the Egyptian capital. He then took refuge in Palestine, and appears not to have returned to Alexandria. The time and manner of his death are alike unknown. He is supposed to have died in the year 220. Amongst his pupils by far the most famous, hardly second to himself in learning and ability, was Origen, his successor in the Alexandrian professorship.

      His three great works are: A Hortatory Discourse Addressed to the Greeks (Λόγος Προτρεπτικὸς πρὸς Ἓλληνας), The Instructor (Paidagogos—strictly, Tutor, or Conductor to school), and the Miscellanies (Stromateis, or Stromata—lit. “Patch-work”).[65] The three works were intended to form a graduated and complete initiation and instruction in Christian theology and ethics. The first is addressed to the pagan Greek world, the second to the recent convert, and in the last he conducts the initiated to the higher gnosis, or knowledge. The Miscellanies originally consisted of eight books, the last of which is lost. The whole series is of unusual value, not only as the record of the opinions of the ablest and most philosophical of the mediators between Greek philosophy and the Christian creed, but also as containing an immense amount of information on Greek life and literature. Eloquence, earnestness, and erudition equally characterise the writings of Clement.

      He assumes the name and character of a Gnostic,[66] or philosophic Christian, not in the historical but in his own sense of the word, and professes himself an eclectic—as far as a liberal interpretation of his religion admitted. “By philosophy,” he says, “I do not mean the Stoic, the Platonic, the Epicurean, or the Aristotelian, but all that has been well said in each of those sects teaching righteousness with religious science—all this selected truth (τοῦτο σύμπαν τὸ ἐκλεκτικὸν) I call philosophy.” Again, he echoes the sentiments of Seneca in lamenting that “we incline more to beliefs that are in repute (τὰ ἔνδοξα), even when they are contradictory, than to the truth” (Miscellanies, i. and vii.). “It would have been well for Christianity if the principles, which he set forth with such an array of profound scholarship and ingenious reasoning, had been adopted more generally by those who came after him. … If anyone, even in a Protestant community, were to assert the liberal and comprehensive principles of the great Father of Alexandria, he would be told that he wished to compromise the distinctive claims of theology, and that he was little better than a heathen and a publican.”[67]

      It is in his second treatise, the Instructor or Tutor, that Clement displays his opinions on the subject of flesh-eating:—

      “Some men live that they may eat, as the irrational beings ‘whose life is their belly and nothing else.’ But the Instructor enjoins us to eat that we may live. For neither is food our business, nor is pleasure our aim. Therefore discrimination is to be used in reference to food: it must be plain, truly simple, suiting precisely simple and artless children—as ministering to life not to luxury. And the life to which it conduces consists of two things, health and strength: to which plainness of fare is most suitable, being conducive both to digestion and lightness of body, from which come growth, and health,

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