The Pædagogus, or Instructor, is addressed to those who have been rescued from the darkness and pollutions of heathenism, and is an exhibition of Christian morals and manners,-a guide for the formation and development of Christian character, and for living a Christian life. It consists of three books. It is the grand aim of the whole work to set before the converts Christ as the only Instructor, and to expound and enforce His precepts. In the first book Clement exhibits the person, the function, the means, methods, and ends of the Instructor, who is the Word and Son of God; and lovingly dwells on His benignity and philanthropy, His wisdom, faithfulness, and righteousness.The second and third books lay down rules for the regulation of the Christian, in all the relations, circumstances, and actions of life, entering most minutely into the details of dress, eating, drinking, bathing, sleeping, etc. The delineation of a life in all respects agreeable to the Word, a truly Christian life, attempted here, may, now that the Gospel has transformed social and private life to the extent it has, appear unnecessary, or a proof of the influence of ascetic tendencies. But a code of Christian morals and manners (a sort of "whole duty of man" and manual of good breeding combined) was eminently needed by those whose habits and characters had been molded under the debasing and polluting influences of heathenism; and who were bound, and were aiming, to shape their lives according to the principles of the Gospel, in the midst of the all but incredible licentiousness and luxury by which society around was incurably tainted. The disclosures which Clement, with solemn sternness, and often with caustic wit, makes of the prevalent voluptuousness and vice, form a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of that period.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA COLLECTION [3 BOOKS] — Quality Formatting and Value — Active Index, Multiple Table of Contents for all Books — Multiple Illustrations Titus Flavius Clemens, known as Clement of Alexandria to distinguish him from the earlier Clement of Rome, was a Christian theologian who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. A convert to Christianity, he was an educated man who was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. As his three major works demonstrate, Clement was influenced by Hellenistic philosophy to a greater extent than any other Christian thinker of his time, and in particular by Plato and the Stoics. His secret works, which exist only in fragments, suggest that he was also familiar with pre-Christian Jewish esotericism and Gnosticism. In one of his works he argued that Greek philosophy had its origin among non-Greeks, claiming that both Plato and Pythagoras were taught by Egyptian scholars. Among his pupils were Origen and Alexander of Jerusalem. Clement is regarded as a Church Father, like Origen. He is venerated as a saint in Coptic Christianity, Ethiopian Christianity and Anglicanism. He was previously revered in the Roman Catholic Church, but his name was removed from the Roman Martyrology in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V on the advice of Baronius. —BOOKS— EXHORTATION TO THE HEATHEN THE INSTRUCTOR THE STROMATA, OR MISCELLANIES PUBLISHER: AETERNA PRESS

In The Moral Psychology of Clement of Alexandria, Kathleen Gibbons proposes a new approach to Clement’s moral philosophy and explores how his construction of Christianity’s relationship with Jewishness informed, and was informed by, his philosophical project. As one of the earliest Christian philosophers, Clement’s work has alternatively been treated as important for understanding the history of relations between Christianity and Judaism and between Christianity and pagan philosophy. This study argues that an adequate examination of his significance for the one requires an adequate examination of his significance for the other. While the ancient claim that the writings of Moses were read by the philosophical schools was found in Jewish, Christian, and pagan authors, Gibbons demonstrates that Clement’s use of this claim shapes not only his justification of his authorial project, but also his philosophical argumentation. In explaining what he took to be the cosmological, metaphysical, and ethical implications of the doctrine that the supreme God is a lawgiver, Clement provided the theoretical justifications for his views on a range of issues that included martyrdom, sexual asceticism, the status of the law of Moses, and the relationship between divine providence and human autonomy. By contextualizing Clement’s discussions of volition against wider Greco-Roman debates about self-determination, it becomes possible to reinterpret the invocation of “free will” in early Christian heresiological discourse as part of a larger dispute about what human autonomy requires.

Can humans know God? Eastern Orthodox theology affirms that we cannot know God in his essence, but may know him through his energies. Henny Fiska Hägg investigates the beginnings of Christian negative (apophatic) theology, focusing on Clement of Alexandria in the late second century.

In the second and third centuries A.D. Alexandria was the meeting-point of three distinct cultural streams, namely the Jewish-Alexandrine philosophy, Platonism, and Gnosticism, all of which had an influence on Alexandrine orthodox Christianity. Starting from the assumption that the thought of a Christian Father like Clement of Alexandria cannot be fully understood without taking this influence into account, the author examines in detail Clement's close dependence on the Jewish-Alexandrine philosophy, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Gnosticism in such matters as his attitude towards Greek philosophy, ethics, his views on 'pistis' and 'gnosis', cosmology and theology. Particular attention has been paid to the Gnostic texts from Nag-Hammadi so far published.

An interdisciplinary study of Clement of Alexandria's Christian reception of the Classical miscellany genre, in comparison with Roman authors.