Titus Flavius Clement, Panten's successor, was probably an Athenian, from a pagan family. Well-read in Greek literature and well versed in all the philosophical systems that existed then, he did not find anything in all this that could give permanent satisfaction. As an adult, he accepted Christianity and in his distant wanderings to the West and East he looked for the wisest teachers. Arriving in Alexandria about A.D. 180, he became a student of Panten. Captivated by the personality of his teacher, whom he used to call "the blessed presbyter," Clement became a presbyter in the Alexandrian church, an assistant to Panten, and around 190, his successor. Clement continued to work in Alexandria. He converted pagans and enlightened Christians until persecution under Emperor Septimius Severus in 202 forced him to flee, never to return. In the year 211 we meet again with Clement, participating in the correspondence of the bishops of Caesarea in Cappadocia and Antioch. Approximately five years later, Christians mourned his death (Eusebius of Caesarea, 6. 14, 18-19). As head of the catechetical school, Clement left his mark on it, trying to combine the biblical and Hellenistic worldview with his deep and refined thought. This was the age of Gnosticism, and Clement agreed with the Gnostics to adhere to "gnosis" - that is, that religious knowledge or enlightenment be the main means of perfecting Christians. For him, however, "gnosis" presupposed the tradition of the Church.
Clement was a man of extraordinary erudition. The writings of Clement show us how well he knew Greek and Biblical literature. On each page we find exact quotes from a variety of books. His works are literally overflowing with quotations from ancient Greek tragedians and poets. He knew philosophy from primary sources and was fluent in the Gnostic sects and mysteries. In total, 359 classical and other non-Christian sources, 70 books of the biblical tradition, 36 patristic and New Testament apocryphal writings, including heretical ones, are cited in the writings of Clement. Total number quotations reaches almost 8 thousand, while more than a third are pagan authors.
Clement gave in his Stromata the first ecclesiastical work in which the religious philosophy of the Greeks serves not only polemical purposes, but also for the discovery of Christianity by the intellectual part of society. Stromata (from the Greek language - “patterned carpets”, “fabric”) are collections of individual thoughts that the author has not brought into an integral system. This title needs some explanation. It does not constitute the literary property of Clement and for that time is rather banal. There was a whole genus of literary works for which a fancy name was, as it were, a distinctive sign. Clement notes that authors who, for whatever reason, found it necessary to hide their thoughts from the crowd, chose this kind of literature. Not the last reason for such a presentation was the task of the work - to acquaint the reader with the dogmas of the Gnostic tradition in such a form that they would not tempt anyone. The famous catechet made extensive use of the freedom of presentation, which was hallmark such works.
In the Stromata, Clement depicted the principles of Christian philosophy, or, as he calls it, knowledge (gnosis), in order to refute the false wisdom of various Gnostics of his time and the errors of paganism. The richness of various thoughts is here combined with the same richness of the sayings of philosophers and poets. The main idea of this essay is the following: Christianity is true and higher philosophy. The first book says that the law of Moses and the philosophy that preceded Christianity are to the latter as bits of truth to the whole; both prepared Christianity. Therefore, philosophy in itself "is not unworthy of the believer and should not be neglected", on the contrary, it is needed to protect him from attacks; philosophy is a gift of God and originated from the original revelation, the philosophy of the Greeks is later than Jewish and partly owed its heritage to the latter. The second book reveals the concept of Christian philosophy. Philosophy is based on faith in revelation as the essential foundation of salvation; science sets it in motion through various spiritual forces and its crown is in God. Faith also contains practical virtues - love, purity, repentance. The moral teaching of Moses is a model for the best Greek moralists. In the third and fourth books, the shown concept of knowledge is justified, and precisely by two practical points in which true knowledge differs from heretical knowledge - the moral importance of life and love (the first is found in virgin life, the other in martyrdom). In the fifth book he speaks of faith and hope. In the sixth book, he convinces the pagans to turn from philosophy to Christianity, since it contains not only all the best of the philosophical discipline; but reveals the most perfect truth in the manifestation of God in the flesh. A true Christian Gnostic conquers passions in himself, being inspired in his deeds by the thoughts of the purest philosophy. The seventh book continues to describe the life of a true Gnostic as a student of the word, his spiritual enlightenment through prayer and contemplation, his purification through love. To the objections of the pagan that the occurrence of so many heresies in Christianity makes its truth doubtful, the writer makes excellent remarks about the character Orthodox Church and sects and gives rules to seek the truth. In the Florentine Code, the 7th book is followed by the 8th book. But it has no connection with previous books. Therefore, most scientists refuse to consider it a continuation of Stromat. It is believed that this passage is from Clement's Hypotyposis, which has not come down to us.
Clement is aware of the task - to process philosophically the content of Holy Scripture and assimilate it to himself through thinking. Faith has been given to us, however, it should be turned into knowledge, that is, it is necessary to develop a doctrine that would meet scientific requirements in relation to philosophical outlook and ethics. Knowledge is not contrary to faith; it is not limited to what supports and explains it, no, it elevates it all to a higher sphere: from the area of domination of authority to the area of clear knowledge and inner spiritual harmony, arising from love for God. But faith and knowledge are connected with the fact that both draw their content from the Holy Scriptures. It includes the final goals and the entire apparatus of idealistic Greek philosophy (since around the year 200, Neoplatonic philosophy arises in Alexandria, which immediately enters into a somewhat peaceful exchange of thoughts with Christian philosophy). The apologetic task that Justin set for himself is here transformed into a systematic theological one. Positive material is not included in the evidence based on fulfilled prophecies, but is turned into scientific dogma. By placing the idea of the Logos, which is Christ, as the highest principle of the religious explanation of the world and the depiction of Christianity, Clement gave it a richer content than Justin. Christianity is the doctrine of the creation, upbringing and completion of the human race by the logos, whose work is crowned by the perfect Gnostic, for which he used two means: the Old Testament and Greek philosophy. Logos is everywhere where a person rises above the level of nature; but true knowledge of it is obtained only from Revelation. He is the law of the world, a teacher, or, in the person of Christ, a hierarch who, through the sacred sacraments, leads one into knowledge. For the perfect, it is the path to union with God himself. Besides Scripture, also the Greek combination of knowledge and ceremonial initiations gave Clement the opportunity to put forward the meaning of ecclesiastical Christianity. The ecclesiastical gnostic, as it were, ascends through the Scriptures and the Christianity of the communities into divine spheres; he leaves everything earthly, historical, statutory and strives upward in love and knowledge. The ascension is accomplished by certain steps, and all philosophical ethics finds expression for itself from a reasonable knowledge of the measure to the excess of consciousness and apathetic love. Church tradition also finds expression; but the true Gnostic must, on the upper rung, overcome the lower rung. Clement was the first to understand the task of the theology of the future: adhering to historical traditions and to the universal Christian community, to achieve in the Church the freedom and independence of one's own life. True, there is a danger in Clement that the ideal of a self-sufficient Greek sage will supplant typically Christian sentiments. But still one senses an attempt to solder the goal of the gospel with the ideal of Platonic philosophy.
Researchers believe that at the time of Clement in Alexandria there was a certain group of Christian Gnostics - lovers of philosophy, who were not very inclined to share their beliefs with others, had something mysterious. Obviously, these beliefs differed from the general church. These were not Gnostics like Marcion or Valentin, but these people regarded themselves as some kind of ecclesiastical elite. The Alexandrian elite considered themselves to be special chosen ones. The researchers concluded on the basis of the works of Clement that Clement himself belonged to the community itself, because to draw a line between simply educated Christians and the so-called. "Gnostics" is almost impossible. The tasks that Clement of Alexandria set himself in his teaching activity was to present Christianity understandable and accessible to the modern world. When Clement reflects on Christianity and paganism, he believes that some of the Christian truths were already contained in paganism. There is no opposition between philosophy and the gospel, because both strive to achieve the highest truth. In an effort to convert the Hellenists to Christianity, Clement tries to show them the superiority of Christianity over paganism, although he completely retains a loyal attitude towards Greek philosophy. "Philosophy was needed by the Greeks for the sake of righteousness before the coming of the Lord, and even now it is useful for the development of true religion, and it is useful as a preparatory discipline for those who come to faith by thought." For God is the source of all goodness. He either speaks directly to man, or speaks indirectly in the case of philosophy. Philosophy was the "tutor" of Hellenism to Christ, i.e. was what the OT was for the Jews (that is, philosophy is the preparation that paved the way for a person to Christ). Clement was afraid to speak derogatoryly about what was so dear to many Gentiles, so he practically equated the OT for the Jews and philosophy for the Gentiles. “Much can be expounded by initiation into knowledge, i.e. in accordance with the mysterious initiation, in which we will advance according to the well-known and revered rule of tradition. For Clement, Christian gnosis is a positive concept that presupposes a kind of spiritual aristocracy. He understands that many ordinary believers who have not received high education can't study philosophy. At the same time, he believes that it is the direct responsibility of an educated Christian to know as much as possible, to strive for the highest philosophical knowledge and this knowledge is auxiliary to a person's faith. Philosophy helps to establish a connection between Christianity and the outside world.
The question of the relationship between faith and gnosis was the most controversial at that time. The "false" Gnostics looked down upon faith, considering it to be the property of the psychic. On the other hand, orthodox Christians denied any gnosis as a delusion, shied away from science and considered any evidence of their faith superfluous. In contrast to these extreme opinions, Clement tries to reconcile faith and knowledge. It is to this task that he devotes his Stromata and solves it so satisfactorily that his theory of the relation of faith and gnosis has retained its significance in subsequent times.
Against the "gnostics" Clement defends the necessity of faith. In life, faith, which is “some inner good bestowed by God,” is, as it were, an anticipation of complete knowledge, is its beginning and necessarily precedes it. Any science proceeds from the basic provisions that are not proven by anything, but are taken on faith. In particular, this takes place in philosophy and religious knowledge: man himself, with his weak forces, cannot know God, for the “born” cannot approach the “unborn”. The knowledge of God can be communicated to him only through faith. But faith in its essence follows not from a simple and unreasonable trust in external authority, but from an inner feeling, a mystical power innate in man. Man, by his very god-like nature, has an attraction to the divine and therefore is convinced of the truth of divine revelation when it is given to him by God. Contrary to the negative attitude of orthodox Christians towards gnosis, Clement defends the necessity of gnosis in order to achieve our perfection. Faith cannot stop in its development. It must grow and improve. Without this, it will not be firm and durable, it will not be reliably protected from all attacks and delusions. Perfection gives faith gnosis. Faith and gnosis are related like a building and its foundation, like an internal and expressed word. Thus, Clement recognizes two stages of the spiritual life of a Christian - the stage of faith and the stage of gnosis.
The difference between faith and gnosis is both intellectual and moral. The first difference between gnosis and faith concerns its depth: the believer lives on the outside of religion, while the gnostic (a Christian who has reached moral perfection) lives on the inside. The believer is satisfied with the knowledge of the most necessary sources of dogma, and the Gnostic achieves knowledge about God and divine things, about man, his nature, about virtue, about the highest good, about the world. The morality of a gnostic and the morality of faith differ to the same extent from each other. The motivation for moral activity in the believer is the fear of punishment and the hope of reward. Both flow from his faith in the justice of God. For a Gnostic, the motive is an unselfish love for virtue, the desire for goodness for the sake of goodness. The believer is thus a slave, while the Gnostic is the free son of God.
The principle of the believer's activity is "consent with nature", the observance of natural moderation in meeting needs. Man must eat in order to live, not live in order to eat. The principle of activity for the Gnostic is an ascetic rise above the needs of nature for the sake of love for God. The spirit of the Gnostic is wholly directed towards God. His life - unceasing prayer, mental conversation with God, constant remembrance of Him. The Gnostic already here, on earth, reaches incomplete god-likeness and unites with God through perfect love. Therefore, high morality is the characteristic mark of a true Gnostic. Despite the difference between faith and gnosis, they are essentially the same. Their content is the same, and they differ only in a formal respect, according to the degree of elaboration and development. Gnosis is the same faith, only scientifically processed, it is believing knowledge. Faith is the basis of gnosis. She is his source, for she gives him content. She is his criterion; it is as necessary to the Gnostic as the breath of air. Briefly, this correlation of faith and gnosis is expressed in the following formula: "There is no knowledge that would not have a connection with faith, just as there is no faith that would not depend on knowledge." Establishing a correct view of faith and knowledge and their relationship is an important merit of Clement in a dogmatic-historical sense.
The significance of Clement of Alexandria in the history of Christian enlightenment is closely connected with the flourishing of the Alexandrian school of theology, which he, together with his student Origen, raised to the height of scholarly glory. The weakening of the charm that Gnosticism enjoyed among contemporaries is the undoubted merit of Clement and Origen. Clement gave Christianity "reason", which then attracted the best minds of the then educated society to the Church.
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"Christianity". Encyclopedia of Efron and Brockhaus. M., 1993. Pp. 765.
Philaret (Gumilevsky). Historical Doctrine of the Fathers of the Church. Volume 1. M., 1996. Pp. 202-204.
Skurat K. "Holy Fathers and Writers of the Church of the 1st-5th Centuries". Voronezh, 1998. P. 103.
Skurat K. "Holy Fathers and Writers of the Church of the 1st-5th Centuries". Voronezh, 1998. P. 105.
Skurat K. "Holy Fathers and Writers of the Church of the 1st-5th Centuries". Voronezh, 1998. P. 106.
"Christianity". Encyclopedia of Efron and Brockhaus. M., 1993. Pp. 766.
Priest Maxim Mishchenko
Most of his life, Clement spent in Alexandria, without exaggeration, the most remarkable city of the Roman Empire of his time. In Clement's time it was a metropolis, with a population probably as high as a million inhabitants of various nationalities. “I saw among you not only Hellenes and Romans, but also Syrians, Libyans, Sicilians, inhabitants of more distant countries, Ethiopians and Arabs, Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and even a few Indians,” is how Dio Chrysostomos describes (Oration., 32, 40) the multinational character of Alexandria. In this list, he forgot to mention the Jews, probably also quite numerous, and the Copts, the indigenous population of Egypt. In Alexandria there was a Museum and a Library, famous scientists, philosophers, writers and poets lived here, many of whom were contemporaries of Clement. Alexandria was also a religious center, more precisely, a center where different things mixed like wine and water in a crater. It was the Alexandrian culture that gave rise to such a phenomenon as hermeticism, combining Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek Hermes in one person, Hermes the Thrice Greatest. Clement himself, as several remarkable pages from the fifth book of Stromatus show, is far from being indifferent to Egyptian religion and culture.
The second century, the reign of the Antonines, is a period of temporary stabilization of the Roman Empire, relative peace and calm compared to the storms of the era of Claudius and Flavius. At this time, contacts between the eastern and western parts of the empire are improving, a cosmopolitan, inherently unified culture is developing. Knowledge of Greek becomes almost mandatory for all educated people of the empire. Roman orators and philosophers cite Greek texts in abundance in their writings and use philosophical terms without providing any translation. The process of erasing the boundaries between different philosophical schools continues and even intensifies, and they themselves draw closer to various religious and mystical communities. Generally speaking, Stoics, Platonists, or Neo-Pythagoreans differ at this time from each other only in their certainty that they (nominally) belong to one school or another. Classical philosophical positions are being rethought at this time in a new way: first of all, the desire to “bring everything together”, to show that the basic ideas of the main philosophical teachings are identical and ultimately go back to the same source. There are widespread ideas about the existence of an ancient secret tradition, thanks to which perfect knowledge was preserved, passing from teacher to student. It has been argued that Pythagoras, Plato, Moses and other Hellenic and "barbarian" thinkers and prophets belonged to such schools. All these tendencies are clearly seen in the works of Clement. He was a man of his time, deeply and sincerely immersed in his - Alexandrian - culture.
Convinced of the historical mission of Christianity as the world's one God, addressed to everything " the human race"(Strom. VI 159, 9), Clement devoted his whole life to what can be called "spiritual monasticism." His perception of Christianity in a very personal and non-dogmatic way, as well as belonging to a circle of people who can be called the "cultural bohemian" of Alexandria, contributed to this task in the highest degree. Indeed, Clement, although well educated, appears to have been non-learned and hardly had much in common with the scientific and philosophical schools of Alexandria. A certain Christian school that existed in Alexandria and was founded by the mysterious person Panten, whom Clement calls his teacher, is associated with his name. The status of this school, as well as the content of the disciplines taught there, cannot be established with a sufficient degree of certainty. The testimonies of later authors, especially Eusebius, should hardly be taken literally. Nevertheless, it is clear that in the time of Clement, and after him, Origen, there was a certain learned community in Alexandria, the purpose of which was to propagate Christianity and educate those who converted to Christian faith.
What we know about Clement's life is a symbol of the journey: a long search for the meaning of life and a mentor who could discover it. He says that he was born in Athens (which probably means only that he considers himself a Hellene by origin), received a traditional education, was initiated into the Hellenic mysteries, traveled a lot (among the points of his wanderings, he mentions almost all the provinces of the Greek part of the Roman empire), striving to comprehend the wisdom of various philosophical and religious schools and find a teacher who could initiate him into the mysteries of knowledge. After a long search, Clement nevertheless met with his future teacher Panten, who was “hiding” (Strom. I 11, 1–2) in Alexandria (thus confirming that The best way to hide from human eyes is to settle in the pandemonium of a huge city). Thus, a decisive step was taken, which determined the entire future fate of Clement.
Panten, says Clement, excelled all the teachers he had hitherto encountered in the art of interpreting scripture, but he refrained on principle from the written presentation of his teachings. Panten saw his mission in the transfer of secret knowledge that he received from the apostles themselves (Strom. I 11, 3; Eusebius, Hist. 13, 2). If so, then he certainly had weight in Christian circles. He taught what is hidden behind the letter of Scripture, the ability to understand it correctly. Hermeneutic science was considered by him as part of the oral church tradition. Clement, he says, was honored with this teaching, and he constantly appeals to the “apostolic authority” of his interpretations in the course of polemics with the “false”, as he calls them, Gnostics, who allow themselves too free interpretations, neglecting tradition and destroying it.
Alexandria was the ideal place for such figures as Panten and Clement. Against a background of great cultural diversity and considerable free-thinking, the new Christian doctrine could easily be accepted by an educated public. To do this, it was necessary to express it in a language they understood and fit it into the circle of late antique religious and general cultural ideas, without losing its original originality and without losing the “new word” that it contains. Only in this case, in the eyes of an educated Hellene, could it cease to be a Jewish sect of dubious content and turn into a new religious and philosophical worldview. Like his older contemporary Justin, an inhabitant of another great city of Rome, Clement was at the very peak of this process, by and large, among its arbiters.
Apparently, Clement was a professional mentor. Following the gospel commandment, he never calls himself a teacher, reserving this word exclusively for a heavenly mentor, but his followers call him that. A former disciple of Clement, Bishop Alexander of Jerusalem, calls him presbu/thj. It is noteworthy that this title reflects a typical Egyptian tradition, according to which "old man" does not necessarily mean old age, but serves as an indication of special respect, the glory of "first among equals", deserved by knowledge and a righteous life. This is the role that Clement assigns to the true Gnostic in Stromata. It should be noted that even in the time of Clement such an independent position and spiritual authority could have been the cause of a conflict with the “official” bishop, the overseer, who performs an administrative function, but often claims full power.
A true teacher, according to Clement, should be able to plant new knowledge on the tree of a culture alien to him, keeping it viable and fruitful. A student may be a Greek or a Jew, but regardless of this, the teacher must be able to use and direct in the right direction what he inherited from his culture, thus planting the new without destroying the old. Further, this knowledge will find its own way and develop.
The Jewish prophets in Stromata speak in one voice with the Hellenic philosophers and poets. God is the only creator of all that is beautiful, so what is said is important, not by whom. Therefore, those are ridiculous who are afraid of science and philosophy like children of a mask. You just need to know what is acceptable and what is not. And if everything is created for the good, then why should a person deny himself the pleasure of using it. However, the main must be separated from the secondary, the internal from the external. You can be rich and poor at the same time, own goods and not own them. Everything external can be neutral, "present, absent." A person can be free from it, which does not mean indifferent to it (like God, who, being at rest, does not cease to do good). Such neutrality promotes the release of what is harmful and the acquisition of what is necessary.
The subjects that Clement dealt with in his writings are mainly related to ideas about the secret life, secret knowledge and the esoteric tradition of this knowledge, which leads to true gnosis. This determines the non-academic and unsystematic nature of his style. The element of esotericism is constantly present in his texts. Evidently, Clement placed personal experience and the inner life so far above all verbal expression that under such conditions any systematic philosophy or theology would hardly have been appropriate. “Only a failing memory,” as our author says, “and numerous requests from friends,” already at a mature or even advanced age, moved him to literary works and forced him to publish some of his thoughts. These works (with the exception of the sermon On how the rich will be saved and speeches To the Hellenes) were originally planned by him as working notes and materials for lectures.
The materials included by Clement in the Stromata obviously took him quite some time to collect. Nevertheless, the relative integrity of the work suggests that it acquired a literary form in a fairly short time, perhaps in two stages: books from the first to the fourth, then from the fifth to the seventh. The so-called eighth book, as it currently exists, is an extract from some logical studies and is clearly not finished.
Clement himself explains what made him choose such a literary form. At the very beginning of the first book of Stromat, he writes that the subjects in his treatise, on the one hand, were presented in the form in which they "came to mind" of the author, and on the other hand, purposefully mixed in order to hide their true meaning from the uninitiated and to force students who want to understand to work first. As a result, everything in the Stromata is jumbled together "in the manner of meadow flowers" and in order to make something whole out of them, they must first be found and then arranged in the proper order. The method corresponds to the task of the treatise, because since it must be a mysterious reality, it is impossible to openly state it. It is appropriate to keep silent about such things, but the text may turn out to be a “spiritual spark” for the reader, but only for one who already has the personal experience necessary for this. And since real knowledge, and even more so the highest gnosis, can only be obtained in communication with a knowledgeable mentor or a heavenly Teacher, written works will bring little benefit to those who are unable to understand them, and can even harm. For this reason, says Clement, he cares little what the "Greeks" who have not comprehended its meaning will think of this work, as well as those Christians who, out of false devotion to Christianity, fear Greek philosophy as an invention of the devil:
Those who claim that philosophy is invented, let them remember what is said in Scripture, that the devil himself takes on the "form of an angel of light." But why? Clearly, in order to prophesy. But if he prophesies as an angel of light, then he speaks the truth. If he speaks angelic and luminous, then he prophesies and brings good, having changed according to the nature of the action, although remaining different in his essence due to falling away. How else can he be deceived, except first, by making friends with the lover of knowledge, and then pushing him into error? It is natural to conclude that he knows the truth, perhaps without understanding it, but without being completely alien to it. Philosophy is thus not a lie, but expresses the truth, albeit in a distorted way. And therefore, one should not dismiss out of ignorance what is said [by the philosophers] and the prophets, but one should carefully consider everything said to see if it does not contain the truth (Strom. VI, 66, 1-5).
The situation is almost Faustian. Truth, like the "kingdom of heaven" (according to the gospel saying) "is taken by force," therefore, the weak in this struggle are doomed to perish. So you should not even try to engage in combat with. It is better for them to wait for salvation and limit themselves to "pure faith." However, the Gnostic cannot afford this and has no choice: as a farmer, he must plow the field and sow it, then be able to distinguish the good shoots from the weeds. Only by getting rid of these latter will he reap the harvest of knowledge.
Despite the unsystematic nature of his work, Clement quite often talks about the need for a systematic study of various sciences, moving from simple to complex. This scheme is quite traditional: education begins with moral purification, followed by instructions in various sciences (physics, mathematics, astronomy), then philosophy and dialectics, and finally, moral philosophy and theology:
As necessary, the gnostic turns to that which allows the exercise of gnosis, assimilating from each science that which leads to truth. Thus, studying music, he comprehends harmonic relations, through arithmetic he sees the laws of addition and subtraction of numbers, their mutual relationship and how various things fall under the same proportion; by means of geometry, he learns to contemplate pure essences and comprehends continuous extensions and immovable bodies, different from physical bodies. And through the science of astronomy, having risen with his mind above the earth, he rises to heaven and follows their movement, investigating the eternal divine phenomena and comprehending their mutual relationship: Using dialectics, the gnostic, isolating species and genera, comprehends the division of essences, reaching the knowledge of the very first and the simplest (Strom. VI, 80.1-4): Therefore, dialectics is a defense against sophists, so that they do not trample the truth with impunity (Strom. VI, 81.5) Eusebius (Hist. 18, 3) describes the organization of the "school" in this way . Such education is necessary, but should be regarded as a preparatory stage leading to true knowledge - gnosis.
philosophizing Hellenes consciously close their ears and do not hear the truth: The apostle calls this sensual and self-loving philosophy “the wisdom of this world,” since it teaches only about this world and what is in it, following the instructions of those who rule in this world. Therefore, this particular philosophy is very elementary, while really perfect knowledge goes beyond the limits of the world, turning to the intelligible and more spiritual: And I will not be afraid to say (for such is the Gnostic faith) that such a person knows everything and understands everything, reliably grasping which is difficult for us to achieve. He is a true gnostic, and so were James, Peter, John, Paul and the other apostles: Gnosis is nothing else than something peculiar to the rational soul, aimed at its exercise, so that thanks to gnosis it could achieve participation in immortality (Strom. VI 67 , 1 - 68.3).
The Gnostic allows himself to "amuse himself" with the Hellenic sciences in rare moments of rest from his main works. Such dilettantism and knowledge is welcome. It is quite probable that Clement himself went in this way in his education.
"Philosophy and Hellenic Science" for Clement is primarily Platonism and Pythagoreanism. It is from them that the Gnostic must learn the art of comprehending the sensible world and its laws, leading to the science of contemplating simple intelligible entities. According to Clement, Plato, like many other Hellenic philosophers, were followers of Pythagoras and thanks to him they comprehended the secrets of the Eastern (Jewish and barbarian) teachings. This idea was popular among neo-Pythagoreans contemporary to Clement. So believes, for example, the neo-Pythagorean Numenius (see fr. 24 Des Places), known to Clement.
Pythagorean philosophy and symbolism, Clement devotes several chapters of his main work. This plot is especially interesting in the context of the problem of philosophical education. First of all, according to tradition, education in the Pythagorean school included several stages, through which, gradually, the student reached, if he was capable of it, genuine knowledge. This knowledge was not revealed to everyone, and not because it was a secret society of conspirators, but because of the complexity of the subject itself, which could only be comprehended after long labors. Clement informs us (and this is confirmed by other ancient sources) that the Pythagorean union was divided into two "degrees of initiation" - acousticians and mathematicians (Strom. V 56, 1). The former are presented to them as students who have just embarked on the path of perfection and whose task is to “listen” and fulfill the religious and ethical prescriptions contained in “akusmas” or symbols, a set of ancient Orphic and Pythagorean maxims. This preparatory stage lasted quite a long time - five years (Strom. V 67, 3). During this period, the student finally comprehended the science of self-concentration and "pure contemplation."
The Pythagorean union serves as a model for Clement, which illustrates his favorite subject: the difference between secret and explicit knowledge. We have seen that even the deliberately "esoteric" style of his writing he explains in terms of this division.
What are the goals of the symbolic and secret teachings? First of all, says Clement, “higher truths require an appropriate attitude towards them,” therefore, since ancient times, they have been hidden from the gaze of those who are unable to treat them with due respect. The Egyptians kept them in sanctuaries, the Jews closed them with a curtain, behind which only the elect were admitted (Strom. V 19, 4; Strom. V 56, 3). People inclined to evil and unkind can pervert the instructions of the teacher, so it is better to try to avoid this danger (Strom. I 13, 2; VI 124, 6). In short, one should not "cast pearls before pigs."
Further, since spiritual experience is largely inexpressible in words, a teacher, interpreter, and mentor is needed to help master it. Thanks to such guidance, the student is not only more diligent in his studies, but also does not risk losing his way, since he is led by a person who has already passed this path (Strom V 56, 4). But on the other hand, attempts to retell an inexpressible spiritual experience often provoke false interpretations. Taking the symbolic too literally, the hearers are the innocent victims of an inept teacher, who then deserves punishment for his negligence. Therefore, the custodian of the tradition is responsible not only for preserving the exact meaning of the knowledge transferred to him, but his functions include protecting this knowledge from the ignorant and malicious and transferring it into the hands of the worthy. And the best means for this since ancient times has been a cipher, the key to which is given only to the elect.
These technical considerations are followed by psychological and epistemological reasons. “Things hidden through the veil,” says Clement, “make a more impressive impression” (Strom. V 56, 5), that is, they seem more mysterious and attractive than fully illuminated and put on public display. The trick is that these objects seem to be better and more significant than they really are (like rotten fruit at the bottom of a stream seems attractive only until it is removed from the water). Full illumination reveals defects in everything, and nothing in this world is without them. Human actions, if their motives are hidden, also make a greater impression. Contemplation of the mysterious has a certain effect on the soul, allows it to achieve greater "spirituality", breaking away from the material and sensual and overcoming the fetters of sober reflection, to soar above the routine of everyday life. Indeed, even familiar things can be looked at differently than usual. This effect is achieved by the ritual action. During the mystery, it is not the things themselves that change, but their meaning. Ordinary things lose their form and meaning in the eyes of the initiate, and exhibit such qualities that it is impossible to see in them in an ordinary everyday state.
In addition to the ability to "awaken the soul", the symbolic is able to show "many things at the same time." Clear things have a very definite meaning. In principle, various allegories, metaphors or allegories are also unambiguous, since they are specially created in order to figuratively point to something specific. A symbol, on the other hand, is able to include many interpretations and at the same time not be reduced to any of them individually, or to their “sum”. “The general meaning, “hidden behind the veil of allegories” (Strom. V 57.5 - 58.6), cannot be interpreted, but only in some way “found” or understood. And what is understood, as you know, is not always verbally expressible. In turn, such symbolic knowledge is also a preliminary and preparatory stage on the way to pure contemplation - theory. The one who sees with the mind does not need any symbols and likenesses, since he sees everything clearly, with full illumination. Noetic objects do not have the defects inherent in material nature, so there is no need to veil them. They open in daylight.
This is my vision of the main ideas contained in the central part of the Stromat, dedicated to the symbolism and philosophy of education. I will not be surprised if the opinion of my readers turns out to be different from what has just been stated. Clement is a complex author, difficult to describe and generalize. Further details are discussed in the notes to the text, which I have tried to keep to a minimum, dealing mainly with literary parallels and comparative observations. In conclusion, I will dwell on a few details of a technical nature.
The word u(po/mnhma or, more commonly, pl. u(pomnh/mata is more common and means notes to memory, that is, a notebook. In this case, the name oi(twn u(pomnhma/twn strwmateij should end up mean "various extracts from notebooks." It is quite likely that this was the case. It is obvious that not a single work, especially one as complex as the Stromata, can be written without preliminary preparations. In antiquity, as at the present time, the accumulation of material, the compilation and methodical selection of various excerpts, constituted a large, if not the main, part of literary work.I will give one well-known example illustrating the methods of work of ancient authors - collectors of knowledge.In one of his letters, Pliny the Younger describes the methods of work of his uncle (one of the most encyclopedic minds of antiquity), which allowed him to write so many books, despite being busy and active in politics:
IN summer days, free from various worries, he liked to sit in the open air and, having ordered to read a book, took notes and wrote out quotations (adnotabat excerpebatque). He wrote out quotes from all the books that turned up to him (nihil enim legit quod non excerperet): He took brief (or cursive?) notes while eating (super hanc liber legebatur adnotabatur, et quidem cursum): As a result of such labor, he left me 160 notes books (commentarios), written in small handwriting on both sides, which doubles their actual number.
Pliny the Younger gives us some interesting details. First, note that the notebooks could be wax tablets (pugillares) used repeatedly, or scrolls intended for longer storage. Pliny specifically notes the fact that these notebooks (in this case, the scrolls) were written on both sides, since this was at odds with the usual practice of book production. As a rule, only one side of the scroll was used for writing. This is fully explained by the fact that the outer side of the scroll wore out quickly and was of poorer quality. Further, it is obvious that notebooks in the form of a codex, which would seem to be more convenient for such records, were not used in the time of Pliny and came into circulation only at the turn of the second - third centuries. So Clement most likely used writing material in the form of a codex or what was called di / ptuxon, tri / ptuxon k.t.l., that is, a kind of notebook made up of several sheets or wax tables. Now let's imagine that we connected several such notebooks together and bound them - we get a book in the modern sense of the word. Having sketched out a preliminary plan and having at hand a sufficient number of such notes, it is possible to compose an essay of the Stromat type with their help in a fairly short time.
What books did Clement use? Most likely, all that fell under the arm. Indeed, books at that time were a much greater luxury than they are today, even in a city of books like Alexandria. Therefore, every work that fell into the hands, or somewhere specially obtained, was surely read by such a writer as Clement with great attention. It was necessary to memorize what was read and take notes, since at the right time this book might no longer be available. Notebooks thus replaced personal libraries and were valued no less than actually published works. The same Pliny the Younger goes on to say that during the time of Pliny the Elder's procuratorship in Spain, he was offered a considerable sum for these notebooks. If Pliny had sold his notes, or allowed them to be copied, another anthology would have arisen. The line between publication and private use was very thin. Various excerpta may have contributed to a more formalized literary work or, as in the case of the three surviving notebooks of Clement, may have been circulated, almost unchanged, alongside works intended for publication, sometimes without the knowledge or even against the will of their author. Extracts from books or abstracts of oral presentations (a)po? fwnhj) could later also be used in a literary work, or even published as "lectures". Arrian recorded and published the lectures of Epictetus, Amelius recorded the speeches of his teacher Plotinus. According to Lucian, Hermotimus was an eternal student and lived by taking down and correcting other people's lectures. Clement quotes letters and sermons from Valentinus. Could they also be preserved in such notebooks of listeners?
The lack of literary texts, on the one hand, and the growing interest in education, on the other, are the main reasons that explain the spread that various anthologies and textbooks compiled in late antiquity received by people who had access to a fairly extensive library. Anthologies like the Florilegium of Stobaeus were certainly used by Clement, and not at all because of their superficiality, but simply because he hardly had direct access to all the abundance of literature he used. This may apply not only to "rare" or, conversely, "textbook" authors, but also to quotations from Holy Scripture. The same fundamental statements of Jesus or the apostles are very often repeated in the Stromata, and this suggests that Clement could well have used a certain summary of the books of the Old Testament and excerpts from Christian literature, including apocryphal literature, which were organized according to some thematic principle as a kind of Christian anthology.
Clement often quotes from memory. First of all, this applies to extracts from Holy Scripture and Homer. Very often these texts and poetic lines are retelling close to the text. It is possible that in some other cases the quotations were "verified" by editors and scribes, because we should not forget that the Stromat text that has come down to us has an immensely long history, and every ancient copyist was at the same time an editor, especially if he made a copy for myself. Even modern publishers, and even more so translators, tend to "correct" ancient authors on the basis of known texts or quote instead of paraphrase.
So, Stromata are "notes and memoirs compiled on the basis of notebooks." Clement specifically emphasizes that his work is Gnostic notes, in accordance with true philosophy. The ideas contained in the Stromata as a whole constitute a fairly coherent doctrine of Christian knowledge, which Clement calls true gnosis. It is clear that considerable attention is being paid to false gnosis in this connection. In fact, the notion of "true" crystallizes in the Stromata against the false aberrations and distortions inherent in "false" gnosis. Clement speaks of the Gnostics all the time. The information he gives about Gnosticism, especially about Valentinus, Basilides and Isidore, the Carpocratians and Marcion, as far as comparison with other sources shows, is quite accurate. In addition to numerous testimonies about gnosis, Clement owns a detailed analysis of their teaching, which is also very remarkable, since, on the one hand, Clement was well-informed and educated enough to understand what he was talking about, and on the other hand, in contrast, for example , from Origen or Tertullian, is sufficiently dependent and eclectic in his views to be a good witness. Moreover, he often consciously assigns this role of a witness to himself: the Stromata are written by him as u (pomnh / mata notes for memory and “remembrance” about what he learned from more worthy husbands. The names of these husbands are not mentioned in the Stromata themselves, Clement hints only that they possessed apostolic authority. The Gnostics (Marcion, Basilides, and Valentinus) are reproached precisely with the fact that they boast of their teachers (Strom. VII 108, 1). Too frequent mention of a name means doubting its authority. Reverence for the secret teachings and secret tradition, like the admiration for good education, which Clement experiences and constantly professes, has no limits. Constantly indicating the source of citation, in the case of, for example, Holy Scripture, Plato or Homer, seems to him indecent. Educated people should know their classics. Hence such phenomena not uncommon in the Stromata as the offhand remark: "Plato said somewhere," followed by a half-page quotation "from memory."
A detailed analysis of citations, paraphrases and various allusions in the Stromata by A. van den Hoek shows very well the peculiarities of the citation technique used by Clement. For example, out of 1273 citations from the Apostle Paul noted in the O. Stöhlin Index, Clement mentions his name (or at least says that he is an apostle) only 309 times (of which 13 times the name is simply mentioned, and no quotation is given). follows). Plato is quoted (verbatim or not) 618 times, but directly or indirectly mentioned (Pla/twn, o(filo/sofoj, oi(filo/sofoi, o(e)c (Ebrai/wn filo/sofoj k.t.l.) only 139 times ( and again, "bare" mention of the name is observed in 41 of these 139 cases. Quoting Plato is usually accompanied by an exact indication of the dialogue, letter or even book (when referring to the State or Laws). It can be assumed that Clement had constant access to the writings of Plato or he used a fairly good selection of quotations. Clement resorts to Plato almost exclusively in order to confirm his opinion. Only in the rarest cases is the classic criticized. Clement prefers not to notice the differences between Platonism and Christian doctrine, and the most obvious of them tries to eliminate by hermeneutic means, sometimes referring to even on the "mistakes" of the scribal.
Philo of Alexandria is a special case. Clement uses it quite often (more than 200 times, according to O. St?hlin), but the name is mentioned only four times (moreover, twice he calls him a Pythagorean). Probably, such silence can be explained by special reasons. However, as Hoek notes, it is these four references that are followed by extensive borrowings and multi-page paraphrases, so that Clement "confesses" in about 38% of the material used from Philo.
Homer and Euripides are Clement's favorite poets. Of the 243 citations from Homer, his name (or at least an indication that the Poet said it) occurs in 37%. The name (Iliad or Odyssey) is hardly mentioned. Simply: “The poet said somewhere:” Euripides is quoted 117 times, and his name (Euripides, tragedian, stage philosopher, tragedy, etc.) is mentioned 59 times (52%).
Lesser known authors are usually listed by name. In fact, the general rule applies: if the source is not indicated, then the author is known. Quoted and mentioned: the poets Homer, Orphica, Hesiod, Pherekides, the legendary Terpander, elegy (Solon, Theognidea), Anacreontea, Archilochus, Simonides from Amorgos, Phocylides, Melanippides, of course, Bacchilid and Pindar and a number of other little-known poets; tragedy and comedy (from Aeschylus to Hellenistic and Jewish imitations); Hellenistic authors such as Callimachus and Aratus; historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Hecataeus, Theopompus, Alexander Polyhistor and others; philosophers of various schools, beginning with the seven wise men and ending with Numenius; rhetoricians (for example, Isocrates), grammarians, physicians, geographers, etc. The total number of authors exceeds four hundred. The set of literary sources that Clement refers to is quite standard, so to speak, school. All cases of quoting I indicate in page notes to the text. When necessary, more details are given in the notes.
Along with books that later became part of the Christian canon, Old Testament and New Testament apocrypha are cited (for example, the Apocalypse of Zephaniah, the Sermons of Peter, the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the letter of Barnabas, the Gospel of the Egyptians, etc.). Many of these quotes are unique: Clement is our only source.
Gnostic literature (Valentinus, Basilides, Isidore, Epiphanes, Marcion, excerpts from Gnostic myths, etc.) are quoted very often and make up a significant part of the second, third and fourth books of Stromat.
Unlike the classics and allies (for example, Philo), Clement always gives an exact reference to the works of his opponents. Is it usually kata? le/cin literally (out of 24 occurrences of this expression, 12 refers to the Gnostics, the rest to various not-so-known Greeks and prophetic books), sometimes w(de/ pwj (which can be translated simply by a colon). In contrast, expressions like a)/ ntikruj, diarrh/dhn are explicitly reserved exclusively for goodies such as Plato, Homer or Euripides, and are never used when quoting a Gnostic text. Numerous fasi/, fhsi/, le/gei, le/gousi k.t.l. expressions are ambivalent and do not lend themselves to any classification.
For example, quoting from the book On Justice by the Gnostic Epiphanes, Clement first notices that he has this book ()Epifa/nhj ou(toj, ou( kai? ta? suggra/mmata komi/zetai, u(io?j h)n Karpokra /touj, k.t.l.), and a little further says: "Then he adds literally the following - w(de/ pwj e)pife/rei kata? le/cin" (Strom. III 5.1; 9.3). hard to imagine.
Commenting on any source, Clement quite often gives a series of quotations and more or less literal paraphrases. Hoek demonstrated this well with the example of Philo (fortunately, his texts have been preserved and there is something to compare with). Sometimes Clement, apparently remembering a phrase, begins his commentary with it, for same, apparently referring to the text itself, sequentially unfolds the scroll, writing out quotations. This process has been observed on several occasions, and on one occasion Clement apparently folded the scroll rather than unrolling it, as the quotations are in reverse order.
Notes (u(pomnh/mata) in Clement's time are not just a notebook or abstract, but some kind of literary genre, very well, as the author himself notes, suitable for philosophical reflection (actually, I believe, due to a lack of writing material) "Notes of this kind are known to have been composed by Plutarch. The (lost) writings of the Stoic Chrysippus are said to have been famous for the number of quotations they contain. The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius is another example of a pseudo-notebook. As Martha Turner points out, the trick is that the over-proliferation of semi-private notebooks, anthologies, and various collections led original writings to imitate the u(pomnh/mata) genre. Books could simply consist of a collection of maxims (e.g., the Sentences of Sextus or the Gnostic Gospel of Philip). literary fashion, texts of this kind served a dual purpose: such a genre allowed the author to express his views and, at the same time, provide the reader with a mass of useful information, which, with a literary shortage, significantly increased the value of a relatively elementary or even mediocre work. Finally, the style was covered as a shield that saved the critics from the arrows. The lack of system and darkness of style, they say, is due to the genre, so those who cannot understand should not read. As we have seen, Clement repeatedly presents all these arguments to the reader in various places in Stromatus. In the preface to Noctes Atticae, Gellius says:
I arrange these extracts here in the same order in which I collected them. Every time I came across a Greek or Latin book, or heard anything worthy of attention, I wrote down without a definite plan everything that I liked, from whatever field it came from, in order to use it later as memoirs ( subsidium memoriae): so that, if necessary, I could find and reproduce various information or words, even if I forgot them, and the book that says this was not at hand:
Indeed, at first glance, the Attic nights give the impression of an extremely chaotic collection of various information, however, the internal structure in them, as the researchers note, is present and betrays conscious literary creativity. Gellius continues
Some call their books Muses, Forests (Silvarum),
others - Stromata, Helicon, Problems,
Memories (Memoriales), Beginnings, Random Notes (Pa/rerga) and Instructions: I have titled my essay unpretentious and even somewhat rustic (subrustice). The name Attic nights only indicates the time and place of my nightly activities: Remembering the famous words of the Ephesian philosopher that much knowledge does not teach the mind [quoted by Gellius in Greek], I carefully looked through many scrolls, devoting all my free time to this activity, but I took a little from there - only what can easily push active and sensitive readers to independent research: and save too busy people from not knowing what it is shameful not to know:
We see, firstly, that the name Stromata was traditional in the general series of various collections, and secondly, the goal set by Gellius, namely, to encourage those capable of independent research, exactly coincides with the goal of writing Stromata, which Clement proclaims. :
Meadow flowers grow as they please, and fruit trees in the garden are not arranged in separate plantations, according to their appearance, as if someone had compiled a scientific collection: Meadows, Helikons, Apiaries, Covers, etc. In the same way, since we write things down as we remember them and do not follow any particular order or sequence of presentation, but, on the contrary, deliberately mix them up, our notes are as varied in form as a meadow. These notes are, in a sense, like the first spark that kindles a fire, since one who is ready for the perception of gnosis, if he happens to read them, will be rewarded for the effort expended and the study will do him good (Strom. VI 2, 1-2)
If this were not a commonplace, reflecting an already established literary tradition, one would have to conclude that Gellius was paraphrasing Clement, or vice versa (they were contemporaries). Let us note in conclusion that, unlike Aulus Gellius, who assumes that his readers, in the words of Cicero, neque doctissimi, neque indoctissimi, sed viri boni et non illiterati, Clement raises the bar to an unfathomable height: only “touched by thyrsus and initiated into the mysteries gnosis" is ultimately able to understand the depth of the doctrine he professed.
Stromat structure and manuscript tradition
The seven books of "Gnostic Notes on True Philosophy" are not a single treatise. Rather, they can be called the Collected Works different years, a kind of Variorum, compiled and edited by the author himself.
Each book of Stromat is devoted to a certain problem and can (though at the cost of richness and variety of content) be briefly recounted and titled. The Stromat text is highly repetitive: the same ideas, sometimes almost literally, appear in different books, within the same book, or even within the same chapter. In fact, without getting tired of repeating a few of his favorite thoughts, Clement illustrates them each time with new material, obviously using preliminary preparations. It can be said that the Stromata are holographic in nature: each part of them reflects the whole to some extent. After reading one or two books, you can meet (and more than once) with absolutely all the ideas of Clement, presented with varying degrees of detail. The reader will be able to verify this by looking at a brief outline of all the Stromat books (below).
The Stromata are sometimes said to be "chaotically organized". Of course, this is a metaphor or even hyperbole. Although chaos, as you know, can also be organized: against the background of obvious disorder, a certain structure can be traced and crystallized. This does not mean at all that chaos itself becomes less chaotic, nevertheless, it loses its homogeneity and shows some internal symmetry. Order out of chaos, like Binar cells. The chaotically scattered "flowers of the literary meadow" for a moment freeze before the reader's gaze in an unstable balance, only to crumble and mix again the next moment.
Like organization and self-organization, structure can be internal or external. The internal structure of the text follows its own elusive laws, while the external structure is introduced consciously and expressed explicitly.
Stromata have a common preface, where the author speaks about the features, goals and objectives of his work (Strom. I 1.1 - 21.2). Further, almost every book has a separate preface and conclusion. Clement quite often explicitly expresses his future plans. The last preface (to the seventh book) presents a problem: Clement promises and plans clearly more than he actually says in this last book. The most natural assumption is that the author intended to write more, but for some reason did not. Given the fact that this is not the only unfulfilled promise in the Stromata, it can be assumed that Clement simply abandoned some of the ideas expressed at the very beginning, perhaps due to lack of material. Clement tries several times to talk about philosophical metaphysics, but he never does. The reason seems to be clear: his interests lie exclusively in the field of ethics, everything else is stated very superficially. The hypothetical continuation of the Stromat, if there was one, disappeared without leaving any trace. I guess he didn't.
Following the seventh and last book of Stromat, notes compiled on the basis of notebooks, there are three notebooks proper: a summary of some logical studies (the so-called eighth book of Stromat), Extracts from the writings of the Gnostic school of Valentinus Theodotus and Eclogue, excerpts from various prophetic writings. These texts are clearly unfinished, but along with various quotations they contain the thoughts of Clement himself, sometimes quite interesting. Extracts from Theodotus will be useful to us more than once when commenting on the text of the fifth and sixth books of Stromat.
To what extent this order of Clement's writings was generally accepted is difficult to say. The ueberlieferunggeschichte of the Stromat text is very simple: all our information is based on a single manuscript dating from the 11th century (L Laurentianus V 3, Florence) containing the full text of the Stromat and the above three notebooks. Another manuscript dating from the 16th century, Parisinus Supplementum Graecum 250, is a copy of the previous one. However, Photius reports, for example, that in the manuscript he used, following the seventh and last book of Stromat, there is immediately a sermon How the rich will be saved. On the other hand, various ancient authors from the middle of the fourth century onwards quote from the Eclogue, saying that it is the eighth book of the Stromatus.
It seems to me that the volume and content of the notes preserved under the title of the eighth book of Stromat do not allow for the idea that this is really the final book. This would be a highly bizarre conclusion, although Pierre Nautin makes an attempt to resolve this riddle by presenting the situation as follows: He believes that the ancient copyist (for some reason) after the seventh book decided to shorten the remainder and began to rewrite with abbreviations. The result of such activity is a very fragmentary text, which, nevertheless, reflects what Clement promised at the beginning of the fourth book of Stromat and in some other places, namely, after describing the "true Gnostic" to move on to (1) the doctrine of first principles, (2) refutation some heterodoxes and (3) an explanation of subjects related to cosmology and theology. The same promise is repeated in the conclusion to the seventh book: Clement says that having finished ethics (which is the subject of most of this book), he intends to go on to what was previously promised and cryptically adds that he is going to "start anew." Nautin believes that next come (1) first principles, that is, the doctrine of causes and logic (the first part of the eighth book - Strom. VIII 1.1 - 24.6), (2) criticism of heterodoxy (that is, Extracts from Theodotus) and ( 3) Eclogues, part of which is really devoted to theology and cosmology. The rest of the "eighth book" is some part of the Hypotyposes, a work of Clement that has not come down to us, which is mentioned and quoted by Eusebius and other ancient authors. Such an explanation seems unnecessarily complicated to me, and not only because it is based on the inexplicable selectivity of the scribe. The Eighth Book, Extracts and Eclogues are an order of magnitude less organized than the Stromata. These are just notebooks, raw and unstructured material, and their nature is not explained by any alleged “abbreviations”: if they have not yet passed from a state of chaos to order, why postulate the opposite?
Text Stromat: editions, translations and bibliography
So, the Stromata consist of seven books, and this division belongs to the author himself. The division into chapters, paragraphs, and subparagraphs now accepted is the product of the scholars and publishers of Clement's text, from the editio princeps to the edition of Otto St?hlin. The division of books into chapters, dating back to the Oxford edition of 1715, is not always adequate, and the headings reflect the actual content of a particular chapter very approximately. More fractional division (O. St?hlin) is rather an external grid, convenient for quoting and not fully reflecting the semantic structure of the text. Assuming an outward division into chapters (Roman numerals), paragraphs (Arabic numerals in bold), and subparagraphs (Arabic numerals), I have provided the translation with headings that, in my opinion, reflect the development of the plot. This is done solely for the convenience of readers. I emphasize: these headings are not part of the text.
The main Stromat manuscript mentioned above, although well preserved, is very carelessly executed and contains a large number of errors and omissions. Over the past three centuries, the publishers of the Stromat text have done a titanic job of putting all this in order. O. St?hlin, in preparing his edition, took into account the work of previous researchers and rechecked the text against the manuscripts. All previously suggested fixes are provided in the bottom app. crit., while the top app. indicates quotations and literary parallels. The famous German scientist can be reproached for only one thing: quite in the spirit of the German philological school of the last century, he makes too many corrections to the original text, trying with all his might to make it “clear”. These corrections not only fill in the gaps and restore the corrupted text, but also “improve” the grammar and semantic content. Work on the text of Stromat was continued by the author of the second and third editions, L. Fr?chtel (1960).
Work on a new critical edition of Stromat, with translation and commentary, was begun by C. Mondsert, P. Caster, P. Camelot, and has, it seems to me, led to very satisfactory results. The fifth book was edited and translated by P. Voulet and, together with a lengthy commentary, published by A. Le Boulluec (1981). There is a separate edition of the seventh book (F. Hort, J. Mayor, 1902). Unfortunately, commented editions of the fourth and sixth books have not yet appeared. While working on the sixth book of Stromat I had the Stöhlin-Fröchtel edition in front of me, using the German translation by O.Stöhlin and the English by W. Wilson for verification. The Russian translation by N. Korsunsky is also known to me, of course. The work on the fifth book was greatly facilitated by the publication of Voulet - Le Boulluec. I will mention in conclusion the new English translation by J. Ferguson (1991), provided with compact and very useful notes.
Alexandrian school.
The capital of Egypt, Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, was the cradle of Hellenism and the center of a brilliant intellectual life even before the rise of Christianity. Christianity came here very early, probably in the first century, and by the fourth century the population of the Egyptian capital was predominantly Christian.
The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark (Eusebius Pamphilus, church history, II, 16.1), arrived in the 40s. 1st century with a sermon in Alexandria. In the Acts of Mark, it is reported that the apostle established Christian communities in Alexandria and appointed bishops and others to officiate. Here, around the year 63, the evangelist was martyred.
Already in the second century in Alexandria there was a catechetical (catalogue) school. Such schools existed in many local communities to teach catechumens (or catechumens) preparing for baptism. The Alexandrian school was characterized by its special direction and quality of teaching. It was designed for the public, already sufficiently educated and, therefore, prosperous. It was consistently headed by famous theologians, and gradually the school acquired not only a categorical, but also an academic character (among its rectors were not only clergymen, but also lay intellectuals). Only in the fourth century did this state of affairs change, when the archbishops who led the Alexandrian church, themselves theologians, took complete control of the theological and intellectual life of the school.
Initially, the Alexandrian theological school provided a broad encyclopedic education, including knowledge of Greek philosophy. This was especially necessary for Christian apologetics, since in order to explain the Christian faith and St. Scripture to the Greeks, it was necessary to carefully study their way of thinking. It was here, in the Alexandrian school, that theologians began to apply exclusively the allegorical method of exegesis (interpretation). An interesting example of the "Alexandrian" allegorization of Scripture we find in the "Epistle of Barnabas" (pseudo-Barnabas), where one can already note a tendency to forced interpretations, sometimes having nothing to do with reality - a tendency to abuse the method, which was inherent in many exegetes of the Alexandrian school . On the one hand, they understood the necessity and importance of the Old Testament story, but, on the other hand, the allegorization of all, even the smallest, details of this story relieved interpreters of the need to take this story seriously, at the same time making the Old Testament more “acceptable” for Greek audience. Holy Scripture, in the understanding of the representatives of the allegorical school of interpretation, was something like a cryptogram for the uninitiated, had an esoteric meaning, accessible only to a select elite of educated intellectuals, but not to ordinary unenlightened mortals.
2. Clement
Titus Flavius Clement
(c. 150, presumably Athens - c. 215, Palestine) - a Christian apologist and preacher of the Holy Scriptures among the Hellenistic scribes, the founder of the Alexandrian theological school, who headed it before Origen.
Judging by full name, Clement was born into a family of Roman citizens (according to Epiphanius - in Athens). The surname Flavius suggests that his ancestors, like Josephus Flavius, were participants in the anti-Roman uprising in Judea, captured and pardoned by Emperor Titus and therefore took his family name as a sign of their second birth. Having reached the age of majority after a conversion to Christianity (of which we know very little), he set out to travel around the Mediterranean in order to receive instruction from the most famous Christian teachers. During the journey, Clement studied and experienced various spiritual traditions. According to Eusebius, in Alexandria, Clement becomes a listener of the lectures of Panten, a newly converted Christian and head of the famous catechumens school, from where missionaries graduated, who converted many peoples to the faith of Christ. Panten, a former Stoic, at that time, according to Eusebius, was one of the "most enlightened Christians." It is possible that Clement took some of his Stoic ideas and his "pedagogical" method from him. Here he makes a career as a Christian apologist, takes holy orders and writes many of his works. On the one hand, he decisively debunks the teachings of the Gnostics, on the other hand, he argues with those Christians who perceived with great suspicion "intellectualized Christianity", enriched with the concepts of pagan philosophy. In Alexandria, Clement stayed for a long time and spent twelve whole years there, succeeding his teacher as head of the catechumen school. In 202, he had to leave Egypt because of the persecution of Septimius Severus. The categorical school was closed, and Clement was forced to leave Alexandria, where the young Origen soon took his place. He moved to Palestine, where he found protection and patronage from his student Alexander of Jerusalem. There he died in 215, never seeing Alexandria again. Due to his closeness to Origen, Clement did not receive canonization in Orthodox tradition; the Catholic Church venerated him as a saint until 1586.
In a bull dated July 1, 1748, Pope Benedict XIV, with a new edition of the martyrology, did not include Clement among the glorified saints for three reasons: 1) lack of information about his life and exploits; 2) not a single ancient church or region knew about the liturgical veneration of Clement; 3) in the works of Clement there are doubtful thoughts, not to say - delusions. Patriarch Photius treated some of Clement's thoughts with a certain degree of condemnation. Alexander of Jerusalem called Clement "holy" (Euseb., H. E.VI, XIV, 9.) In the Alexandrian chronicle, he is called "the most venerable presbyter of Alexandria."
List creations of Clement known to us from the "Ecclesiastical History" of Eusebius. These include:
- "Exhortation to the Gentiles" (Protreptikus), written for the purpose of converting the Greeks to Christianity;
- three books titled "Educator" (Paedagogus) represent a continuation of the "Exhortation" and contain mainly moral teaching - it teaches the catechumen of Christian morality, which is designed to cleanse his soul from carnal attachments and reorient it from the earthly to the heavenly;
- eight books titled "Stromata" (Stromata - mix, miscellaneous), containing "scholarly notes on true philosophy" - should have revealed to those who are already sufficiently instructed in the faith and have gone through moral catharsis, some secrets of the highest Christian knowledge - gnosis.
The name "Stromata" can also be translated as "collections" or even "carpets": it expresses the concept of a multi-colored pattern or mosaic. In the Stromata, Clement, according to Eusebius, not only scatters the flowers of the divine Scripture, but also borrows from the pagans places that seemed useful to him. Here he explains many of the opinions of the Greeks and barbarians, refutes the false teachings of the chiefs of heresy, and recounts quite a few historical tales, thus providing material for a versatile education. To all this he adds the opinions of philosophers, so that the title of the work - stromata - perfectly corresponds to its content. Clement also uses evidence in them from controversial writings: from the so-called wisdom of Solomon, from Jesus the son of Sirach, from the letter to the Hebrews, from the letters of Barnabas, Clement and Jude; also mentions the composition of Tatian against the Hellenes; speaks of Cassian as a writer of chronology and of the Jewish historians Philo, Aristobulus, Joseph, Demetrius and Eupolemus, arguing that all of them in their writings raised Moses and the Jewish people to a much greater antiquity than the Hellenes.("Church History", book 6, ch. 13)
Addressing the reader of "Stromatus", Clement wrote: "Do not look for either order or elegance in my books; I intended to confuse and mix things up so that only those who know and are attentive can understand them" (Str. I 48).
In these three works, internally interconnected, Clement, firstly, refutes paganism with its science and education, secondly, sets out the foundations of Christianity, especially in its moral content, for new converts, and, thirdly, sets out his philosophy of Christianity for mature Christian. In his teaching, his understanding of the relationship between faith and knowledge, religion and science is especially interesting. In the person of Clement we are dealing with a typical Christian intellectual, of which there have been many in the history of Christianity. It can be said that Clement belongs to the type of apologist, but more philosophical and creative than the authors of brief apologies addressed to the Roman emperors. At the turn of the second and third centuries, Christian dogma had not yet been developed. Not bound by rigid dogmatic definitions, Clement, in his attempts to explain Christianity in terms of contemporary knowledge, often expresses risky thoughts, sometimes quite consciously and even deliberately.
The task that Clement set himself was not only and not so much apologetic (although it remains relevant for him), but missionary, the task of converting an educated pagan to Christianity. Solving it, Clement had, of course, to take into account the tastes of his audience, and therefore had to make compromises, had to "Christianize" philosophy and "philosophize" Christianity (Harnack). The result of such conformity was that, on the one hand, Clement left us many beautiful discourses on the high dignity of philosophy and even, following the Gnostics, declared the superiority of knowledge (gnosis) over blind, unenlightened faith; on the other hand, following Philo, he subordinated philosophy to theology, putting forward the famous thesis "philosophy is the servant of theology" (Str. I 5), and limited the area of gnosis to the sphere of rational interpretation of the provisions of faith, i.e., the sphere of the future "rational theology".
The main task of Clement, like other apologists, was to make Christianity understandable and accessible to the modern Hellenistic world, to “build bridges” between the Christian faith and the Greek philosophy explain the relationship between belief and knowledge. Attempts at such a rapprochement must be made again and again, but this path can also lead to errors, and then Christianity is in danger of turning into an isolated, useless sect.
According to Clement, part of the truths of Christian teaching was contained in paganism, and there is no complete opposition between philosophy and the Gospel - both strive to achieve the highest Truth. In an effort to convert the Greeks to Christianity, to bring them into the Church, Clement proves the superiority of Christianity over paganism, while at the same time maintaining a completely positive attitude towards Greek philosophy:
Philosophy was needed by the Greeks for the sake of righteousness, before the coming of the Lord, and even now it is useful for the development of true religion, as a preparatory discipline for those who come to faith by visual demonstration ... For God is the source of all good: either directly, as in the Old and the New Testaments, or indirectly, as in the case of philosophy. But it is even possible that philosophy was given to the Greeks directly, for it was the "tutor" (Gal. 3:24) of Hellenism to Christ - the same as the Law was for the Jews. Philosophy was thus the preparation that paved the way for man to perfection in Christ.("Stromates", 1.5)
In this regard, Clement raises an important question: is it necessary to study philosophy in order to understand Christian revelation? Some things I have written will speak in riddles; for some, the meaning of what is written will be clear; ... the written will speak mysteriously, reveal in a hidden way, show while remaining silent. The dogmas of the principal heresies and the answers to them will be presented, which must be followed by initiation into knowledge, that is, according to the mysterious initiation, in which we will advance according to the well-known and revered rule of Tradition ... so that we become ready to hear the content of the Gnostic Tradition. ("Stromata", 1.1).
As can be seen from this text, for Clement, Christian "gnosis" is a positive concept, suggesting a certain elitism or (as N.A. Berdyaev said) "the aristocracy of the spirit." Of course, many simple believers who have not studied at the university or even simply illiterates cannot study philosophy, but the direct responsibility of an educated Christian is to know as much as possible, for science is a step to higher knowledge, philosophy, which, in turn, is an auxiliary means. for faith. In addition, knowledge of the sciences and philosophy helps to establish a connection between Christianity and the outside world. In other words, philosophy is necessary as an intellectual fence of divine revelation. Clement strongly criticizes the views of those who believe that philosophy is empty worldly sophistication, from which there are only heresies and confusion in the souls. The Hellenes, without any Revelation, came to the realization of the existence of a single God - the First Cause and Limit of the Universe, for God is a single source of knowledge.
Clement was the first to clearly pose the problem of the relationship between faith and reason as a way to overcome ancient skepticism. Faith is the direct perception of knowledge. This is how we perceive the premises of the syllogism. However, this is not mere self-evidence or intuition. Faith is an act of choice, an act of constructing one's own attitude of consciousness, for which a person is responsible. With the help of faith, a person is able to simulate the future situation, which allows him to protect himself from many troubles. The intensification of faith produces the hope by which Clement proves his superiority religious life. Pagans believe in many gods who are in a state of permanent conflict with each other. You cannot please all the gods, so a pagan develops phobias. He does not know where he is in danger. The life of atheists is also full of troubles, because they do not expect bounties from the Lord. Only a religious person understands that behind the external chaos of phenomena stands a transcendent personality who gave us existence, that life here is only a preparation for eternal life, that the meaning of life is in the afterlife, which is the limit of bliss. With such an attitude, one can easily overcome all the hardships of life here.
The problem of the correlation of faith and knowledge, theology and philosophy, which will be one of the key problems of medieval thought, is first considered in detail by Clement. The position of Clement in this problem represents the middle between two extremes: the position of the majority of Christians, who believed that faith and revelation make cognitive search and philosophy superfluous or even harmful, and the position of the minority (gnostics), who believed that there was some kind of special knowledge (gnosis) and a special philosophy, the possession of which renders faith itself superfluous. Objecting first, Clement says that philosophy is "a priceless treasure, the acquisition of which we must devote all our strength" (Str. II And) and that the ability to philosophy, like artistic or oratory skills, is a special gift of providence (Str. I 4 ). Not everyone is given to be philosophers, but whoever has this gift should not neglect it. The call to philosophize is contained, according to Clement, in Scripture (Mat. 7, 7; Luke 11, 9 - Str. VIII 1); this call comes from the very nature of our mind, which is designed for cognitive activity. However, true philosophy must be distinguished from false, that is, from sophistry (Str. I 3). "True philosophy," writes Clement, "is the knowledge of divine and human subjects, is a science that gives us an idea of our relationship to God and the world, showing us the means to achieve wisdom and virtue"(Str. II 11).
True philosophy (like truth itself), according to Clement, can only be one, but the paths leading to it are manifold; two among them are marked by the special care of providence: the path of "barbarian philosophy" and the path of "Hellenic philosophy", which each in its own way led mankind to the adoption of "Christian philosophy" (Str. I 5). The difference between these two paths lies in the fact that "barbarian philosophy" (as Clement calls the teaching of the Old Testament) was communicated to the Jewish people by God himself through his prophets, and Greek philosophy was the result of self-discovery of the natural light of reason, characteristic of all peoples, but bestowed on the Greeks par excellence. . Pagan philosophy was to the Greeks what the law of Moses was to the Jews; the pagan philosophers were the prophets of the Greeks. Both the Jews and the Greeks drew their wisdom from the same source - the Logos, although in one case (to the Jews) the Logos-Word appeared in the direct verbal form of Holy Scripture, in the other (to the Greeks) - in the indirectly natural form of the natural laws of thinking and morality ( Str. VI 5; 8). But besides this natural basis, Greek wisdom has another, which ensures its direct connection with Jewish wisdom: by the will of Providence, the Greeks borrowed the best part of their teachings from the Old Testament. All these arguments of Clement are already familiar to us from the analysis of the views of Justin and other apologists. Even the argument in favor of plagiarism is the same as theirs: knowledge is acquired through a teacher, therefore, the Greeks had to learn their wisdom from someone. However, there is a profound difference here, which consists in changing the general attitude. Justin's task is to show convinced pagans that Christian teaching is not absurd from the point of view of the most "spiritual" samples of pagan philosophy and therefore deserves a tolerant attitude towards itself. The task of Clement is to convince Christians or those who want to become so that pagan philosophy in most cases is not absurd from the point of view of Christian doctrine, that, moreover, it served as a "preparation" for Christianity and therefore deserves all respect and study. In the first case - an apology of Christianity before the court ancient culture, in the second - rather an apology for ancient culture before the court of Christianity. This historically conditioned change in attitude was expressed in Clement, for example, in the fact that he included in a long series of ideological predecessors of Christianity almost all the ancient philosophers known to him, excluding completely, perhaps, only Epicurus, although Clement admits the existence of elements of truth in him (Str. I 7). In any Greek philosophical school and even in any sect (except the most immoral) one can find grains of truth, which, however, always remained scattered, like pieces of the body of Pentheus, torn to pieces by the Bacchantes. The unity of truth was restored, according to Clement, only by Christianity (Str. I 7; 13).
The question of the unity of truth is considered by Clement from a different perspective, namely from the point of view of the unity of philosophy and specific sciences, as well as philosophy and theology. "Science, Clement writes, should not only strive towards one goal, but must also go towards it by one path, with the only difference that the lower sciences pass only the first part of this path, leading to philosophy, and philosophy leads further, leading to theology, which finally crowns works"(Str. VI 11). According to this reasoning borrowed from Philo, the only discipline of absolute value is theology. All the rest serve as a preparation for it and have the character of a means leading to it as an end. The relative value of other sciences depends on their relation to theology: philosophy directly prepares for theology and serves to prove its statements, therefore it is the "handmaid of theology", but it is also the mistress of other, lower sciences, such as geometry, astronomy, music, which act as means of ascent to philosophy and are its "servants".
The other side of Clement's position on the question of the relationship between knowledge and faith is revealed in his polemic with the Gnostics. Here Clement, on the contrary, emphasizes the importance of faith. The Gnostics, interpreting the New Testament texts in a peculiar way (Matt. 10:26; 13:11; 20:16, etc.), believed that salvation was prepared only for the elect, who higher knowledge- gnosis, and the hopes of ordinary believers for salvation are in vain. Contrasting this "aristocratic" doctrine with his own, more "democratic", Clement insists that the simple Christian faith is sufficient for salvation (Paed. I 25). Faith is a "reduced knowledge" of the same thing to which all Greek philosophy led. But the advantage of faith is precisely that it is available to everyone, and Greek philosophy was cut off from at least half of all mankind - women (!). Another advantage of faith is that this "reduced knowledge" is given to mankind as a gift and ready-made, while philosophy follows the path of long proofs and no guarantee of complete success (Paed. I 10). Finally, against the Gnostic idea of the self-sufficiency of knowledge, Clement puts forward his main and, perhaps, the most interesting argument: the act of faith in general is an integral part of the cognitive procedure; in any knowledge there is an element of faith; Faith and knowledge are inextricably linked. If we take, for example, deductive proof, which underlies all theoretical knowledge, we can easily see that it is inconceivable without the assumption of something unprovable and taken simply on faith. If all propositions had to be proved, then not only would not a single proof have an end, but it would not be based on anything solid. Therefore, a logical reasoner always puts at the basis of his reasoning something that precedes the proof, whether it be a self-evident position of intuition, a hypothesis, or the opinion of an authority. In all these cases, Clement believes, the reasoner performs an act of faith: in the case of intuition, he believes in himself, that is, in the infallibility of his inner experience; in the case of a hypothesis, he believes in the truth of the assumption and seeks to justify this belief by the evidence itself. Finally, relying in evidence on the authority of others, a person believes the opinions of others.
Clement concludes that faith is not only prior to knowledge, but also its criterion. Without faith, there is no knowledge. True, and faith without knowledge is nothing more than a foundation without a building (Str. VIII 3) 6. Therefore, it is more correct to speak not about submission, but about the unity of faith and knowledge, which is similar to the unity of the inner word and the spoken word, where the inner word - faith is revealed through the word expressed - knowledge. Finally, faith (pistis) and knowledge (gnosis) are only different human manifestations of the same universal force that pervades the world, the force of reason (phronesis) (Str. VI15-17). Moreover, faith, as something more original, turns out to be both more fundamental (it is the foundation) and more elementary (it is only the beginning and the first step) manifestation of phronesis, so that in this sense, knowledge, although it depends on faith, is higher than faith.
The final solution to the problem of the correlation of faith and knowledge in Clement is given in terms of religious faith and "religious knowledge" and boils down to the fact that Christian gnosis is the same Christian faith, but brought to understanding through intellectual comprehension. According to Clement, a true Gnostic is a believing Christian who has reached perfection in the knowledge of his religion (Str. IV 21). Thus, Clement was the first in the history of Christian thought to clearly formulate the famous principle of the harmony of faith and reason, becoming in this the forerunner of Augustine, Anselm, Thomas and many other philosophical classics of the Middle Ages.
source and foundation Clement's theological system is the doctrine of the Logos (Word). According to Clement, the Logos is the creator of the universe. Through Him, the revelation of God was carried out in the Old Testament law and in Hellenic philosophy, which ended when “the fullness of times had come” with the Incarnation of Christ. As divine mind, the Logos is the teacher and legislator of humanity. True Christianity lies in knowledge, and knowledge is interconnected with faith. The urgency with which Clement again and again emphasizes the role of knowledge (i.e. "gnosis") reflects the intellectualism of his religious thinking. Sometimes it seems that he really believes that the fullness of knowledge is available only to a select elite.
Following Philo of Alexandria, Clement defines God negatively, that is, with the help of negations. The goal of the believer is to know God - in "gnosis", that is, mystical and spiritual knowledge. He contrasts this higher understanding of God with moral and legal knowledge, following the letter of Scripture, with which the majority of Christians are satisfied. Clement introduced into theology the concepts of "city of heaven" and "city of earth", which were later developed by Blessed Augustine. He also agreed with Augustine on the issue of the permissibility of an uprising against an impious and godless government (which, for example, was the uprising of the Jews against the pharaoh).
Clement believes that becoming like God, and therefore positive knowledge of God, is an endless process that can only be started in this life and will continue uninterruptedly after physical death. In earthly existence, however, a gnostic can contemplate God only through creation and under the guidance of faith, that is, through "natural" and "revealed" knowledge of God.
The meaning of divine creativity is better manifested when the Gnostic turns to revelation, but not in the way that a simple believer does, turning revelation into an object of blind faith, but in the way that a true Gnostic should do, that is, applying the method of rational interpretation to Scripture, Philo's symbolic exegesis. The Gnostic Clement is an exegete who indulges in meditation on the text of the Bible. An example of such a Gnostic is Clement himself. Allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, in the spirit of Philo, can be found in all of his three major works. But it is noteworthy that Clement extends Philo's method to the proper Christian New Testament, thereby becoming the forerunner of Origen and all subsequent Christian exegesis.
According to Clement, christian god transcendent, incomprehensible in its essence and inexpressible in language. Theologians' statements about God are homonymous, that is, they imply the ambivalence of all terms applied to God. To say that God is one, good and just (the usual attributes ascribed to God by Christians) is to endow these terms with a higher content than they have in human language. The inability of human language to express the divine essence Clement connects with infinity, and therefore (according to ancient ideas), with the uncertainty (apeiron) of God. In a language, only something definite, having a limit, a measure, a form, can be expressed. But God is infinite, immeasurable and not limited to a particular form, and therefore he is nameless (Str. V 12). To imagine what God is, Clement writes here, one must first abstract from physical dimensions: length, width and depth. The result is a representation of a point; then one must also abstract from the geometrical point itself, passing into the realm of the purely transcendental. What remains will be beyond space, beyond time, beyond expression, beyond the conceivable - this is God (Str. V 11). Thus, Clement, following Philo, laid the foundations for the future apophatic theology, which would flourish in the writings of the Cappadocians, the Areopagite, and Maximus the Confessor.
Although elements of Gnosticism can certainly be found in Clement's teaching, a distinction must be made between Gnostics like Valentinus, who broke with the Church and founded his own sect, and "gnostics" like Clement, who always remained in communion with the Church and contributed significant contribution to its Tradition.
IN Clement's teaching on Tradition the gnostic orientation of his thought becomes even more pronounced: he speaks of the transmission of knowledge through individuals. Unlike St. Irenaeus, who asserted that the Truth belongs to the Church, that Christian knowledge is of a communal, public nature, Clement considers knowledge to be the prerogative of the elect. His comments on this matter can be understood in different ways. In a sense, Clement asserts something diametrically opposed to St. Irenaeus. But we should also not forget that in the Orthodox tradition, saints who possessed a direct contemplative and mystical knowledge of God have always enjoyed special reverence. St. Basil the Great in his writings distinguished between the authority of charismatics (people endowed with spiritual gifts) and the authority of the church hierarchy, emphasizing, however, that there should be no conflict between them. The history of the Church knows examples of such great saints and mystics as St. Seraphim of Sarov and Simeon the New Theologian, who personally reached the highest level of knowledge of God. But even such saints never claimed any special authority or rejected the authority of the episcopate. The Church as a whole has always recognized the saints as people who have a special gift of communion with God, and in this sense a certain "gnostic" element was invariably part of Orthodox Tradition in the East, but it was balanced by the universally recognized authority of the Church. In Clement, this balance is disturbed: from his writings one gets the impression that the knowledge of God in the true sense is accessible only to a few educated and intelligent people, that only they can comprehend the mystical heights of communion with God.
At the same time, in Clement we find a number of statements that are in complete agreement with Orthodox ecclesiology: There is one true Church, the real ancient church to which all the righteous who fulfill divine commands belong... This one Church is forcibly split by heretics into many sects. Essentially, ideally, by origin, by excellence, we say that this ancient catholic Church is the only Church. By the will of the one God, through the one Lord (Christ), this Church brings about a unity of faith which accords with the respective covenants, or rather with one covenant made at different times.... The superiority of the Church, as well as the source of her organization, depends on her absolute unity: it is much higher than everything in the world, and it has neither rivals nor equals ... There is one teaching of the apostles and also one Tradition ...("Stromata", 7.16) .
A careful examination of Clement's teaching on the Eucharist reveals that he understands this sacrament in two ways. Communion of the Holy Mysteries, we participate in a symbolic, spiritual initiation, which actually gives us access to the knowledge of the Truth: Strange secret! We are invited to put aside our old carnal corruption and, leaving the old food, partake of the new food - Christ: we are invited, as far as possible, to keep Him in ourselves, to take the Savior to our hearts so that we can order the attachments of the flesh ... "My Flesh" - it is an allegory of the Holy Spirit... Similarly, “Blood” means “Word,” for the Word flows like thick blood into our lives. A mixture of flesh and blood is the Lord, the food of his babies; The Lord is the Spirit and the Word. This food - that is, the Lord Jesus, that is, the Word of God, the Spirit made flesh - is sanctified heavenly flesh. This food is the milk of the Father. which we babies feed on.
The blood of the Lord is twofold. On the one hand, it is blood in the physical sense, the blood through which we have been delivered from corruption; on the other hand, it is the spiritual blood through which we are made anointed. To drink the blood of Jesus is to partake of the Lord's immortality; and the Spirit is the power of the Word, just as the blood is the power of the flesh... As wine is mixed with water, so by analogy. Spirit mixes with man. This mixture nourishes a person for faith; The spirit leads to immortality. The mixture of both - the drink and the Word - is called the Eucharist, the grace of praise and beauty ...
“Milk” (I Cor. 3:2) is teaching, considered as the initial nourishment of the soul, “flesh” is mystical contemplation. The flesh and blood of the Word is an understanding of divine authority and essence... He communicates himself to those who partake of this food in a more spiritual way.("Teacher", 1.6; 2.2; "Stromats". 5.10)
interesting part Clement's heritage is his moral doctrine addressed to the laity (as a rule, church writers preferred to write on moral and ascetic topics, addressing primarily to the monks). Of particular note is the discussion of the question of married life and celibacy - an exciting topic for all generations and peoples. In the dissolute atmosphere of Greco-Roman society, Christianity introduced two completely new, unheard-of ideas: the idea of the uniqueness of marriage and the idea of a celibate life, equally alien to Judaism and Hellenism. At the same time, Christian writers strongly - sometimes even too much - insisted on the superiority of celibacy over married life.
Temperance is neglect of the body according to the confession of faith in God. For temperance is not merely a question connected with the sphere of sex, but something that also applies to everything to which the soul has a bad inclination, not being content with the essentials of life. There is also abstention from talkativeness, money, profit, desires. It not only teaches us self-control: rather, self-control is given to us, for it is divine power and grace ... Our view is that we welcome, as blessed, abstinence from marriage in those to whom it is granted by God. But we also admire monogamy and a high level of monogamy, arguing that we should share in the suffering of our neighbor and "carry one another's burdens."(Gal. 6:2). ("Stromates", 3)
In other words. Clement argues that celibacy is only one form of asceticism, while true abstinence is something more than abstaining from sexual relations. The Eastern tradition has always affirmed the need for celibacy in monastic life, including also other forms of abstinence, such as obedience, poverty, etc. Celibacy itself is not a virtue, because it can also have egocentric motivations. The Christian life consists in doing God's will, and it is important to be able to recognize this will. Life in marriage can be no less virtuous, and certainly no less difficult and responsible than the path of chastity.
Clement disagrees with the prevailing view among early Christians about the sinfulness of wealth. In his opinion, wealth in itself does not affect the salvation of the soul, because property can be disposed of both in a good way and in a bad way. "Scripture requires us not to give up property, but to give up excessive attachment to property."
Finally, what the Christian moral precepts teach is reduced by Clement to the following stoic formula: “To live virtuously means to live in accordance with reason: everything that is contrary to it is sin; everything that is in accordance with its laws is virtue. man differs from animals" (Paed. 113).
3. Origen
Origen
was born about 185 in Alexandria. Studied under the guidance of his father, Leonidas, sacred texts. He studied with Plotinus under Ammonius Sakkas, and then at the catechetical school under Clement. After the martyrdom of his father in 203, Origen began teaching at a theological school. While practicing asceticism, he slept on the bare ground, fasted, did not wear shoes, did not have a change of clothes. According to Eusebius, during this period Origen castrated himself in a fit of piety. He studied ancient philosophy (according to some sources, in the school of Ammonius, from which Plotinus also came out). Since 217, he headed the Christian school in Alexandria, turning it into a Christian university. Traveled a lot: Rome, Athens, Antioch, Arabia, Palestine. In 231, he was condemned at the Alexandria local council, after which he transferred his teaching activities to Palestine (in the city of Caesarea). In 254 in Tire, during the next wave of anti-Christian repressions, Origen was thrown into prison and tortured, from which he soon died.
Origen left behind a vast creative heritage.
- The first group of his writings is Biblical Criticism: Exapla(a collection of six different texts of the books of the Old Testament. The text is placed in six columns for ease of comparison), Octaply(in some places the number of columns increased to 8), Tetraples(abbreviation exapl). Origen performed this enormous work for 30 years and completed it only in Caesarea ca. 244 The manuscript of Origen was kept in the Caesarea library and c. 600 perished along with the library. Very small excerpts from the Hexaple have survived to our time.
- Biblical exegesis includes scholia(brief notes on difficult places in the Holy Scriptures), Homilies(liturgical sermons with an edifying interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. In the homily, Origen interpreted all the canonical books of the Old Testament), Comments: Scientific interpretation of the Holy. Scriptures (Origen interpreted the comments in such detail that in some of them he did not have time to go beyond the first chapters) and Explanations (mostly allegorical, they also contain philological analysis, historical, archaeological, etc. references), as well as Comments on Song of Songs(preserved in the Latin version of Jerome) and Comments on the Gospel of John(9 out of 32 books survived).
- Dogmatic works:
- About the beginnings(the first experience of the Christian dogmatic system). The whole work is divided into four parts or books: 1 book. About the spiritual world (God, Logos, Holy Spirit, angels). 2 book. About the material world and man. 3 book. About free will, about sin, redemption and eschatology. 4 book. Oh Holy. Scripture and principles of its understanding.
- About the resurrection(Origen here held a view of the identity of the resurrected body with the earthly one only in form and denied identity in terms of matter itself. Only fragments have survived)
- Stromata(scholia on Holy Scripture)
- Dialogue with Heraclitus(is a verbatim record of a dispute about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity). - Apologetics: Against Celsus(An apologetic essay in 8 books directed against the "True Word" - the writings of the pagan philosopher Celsus).
- Edification: About prayer(Part 1. About prayer in general. Part 2. About the Lord's Prayer). Exhortation to Martyrdom(an inspired hymn to martyrdom, addressed to the comrades-in-arms, languishing in prison, in order to maintain courage and console).
- Letters. In ancient times, there were collections of Origen's letters, Eusebius collected over a hundred of them. But only two have survived to our time: to Julia Africana(the authenticity of those parts of the Greek version of the book of the prophet Daniel that are not contained in the Hebrew text (the story of Susanna, the story of Vila and the dragon) is proved, while Julius speaks in favor of the late origin of the story of Susanna) and St. Gregory the Wonderworker(contains an exhortation not to grow cold in the study of the Holy Scriptures, but to enlighten him, pray for help from above).
Origen of Alexandria can rightly be considered the first systematizer of the philosophical and theological teachings of Christianity (Mayorov). He can truly be called the founder of Christian theology (Meyendorff). Unlike Clement, he tried to clarify and rationalize Christian dogmas as much as possible and therefore boldly used the method of exegesis, freely interpreting biblical theologemes in terms of contemporary pagan philosophy. He learned this philosophy at the school of Ammonius Sakkas, the founder of Neoplatonism, the teacher of the famous dialectician Plotinus and the philologist Longinus. From Ammonius, Origen could have adopted the very method of applying Greek philosophical concepts to the mythologies and religions of the East.
Origen borrows much more from ancient philosophers than his predecessors, and in the sphere of positive doctrine, while, however, fundamentally different from them: he places human reason and philosophy high, but puts faith and religion even higher; for him (unlike the "ancient" philosopher), intellectual activity is not an end in itself, but only a means by which the provisions of religion are clarified. At the same time, Origen believed that the religious dogmas of Christianity do not contain anything unreasonable or unnatural, and even, on the contrary, if properly understood, either (in most cases) fit into the framework of the rational and natural, or (as in the case of "divine essence") transcend reason and nature, but do not contradict them. From this, Origen's point of view on the relationship between Christianity and philosophy is immediately deduced: a correctly understood Bible does not interfere with sound philosophy, a correctly applied philosophy does not harm the Bible (Contr. Сels. VI).
Recognizing in Origen one of the greatest theologians of all time, who influenced the entire further development of Christian thought, it must be said that he did not quite succeed in this field either - his teaching deviated in many points from the basic meaning of Christian revelation. In addition, in later times, "origenism" gave rise to many other diverse currents that are not compatible with Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, it is difficult to overestimate the greatness of Origen's personality - both as a wonderful Christian thinker and as simply an attractive person.
In their interpretations and discourses on Holy Scripture Origen uses the traditional Alexandrian method of allegory. For modern man this method may seem useless and pointless. For a correct assessment of it, it must be remembered that Origen wrote for the Greeks and was culturally a Greek himself. He loved the Old Testament and was careful about its smallest details, but at the same time he well understood that for his Greek contemporaries the need to read the Old Testament history was not obvious. Without this, however, they could not become Christians and properly understand Christianity. Therefore, Origen explained that all, even the most seemingly insignificant details of the Old Testament books have an eternal meaning and they need to be understood symbolically, as allegories of abstract spiritual and true important events pertaining to Christ and the Church. Sometimes Origen is so carried away by allegorism that he completely neglects the historical meaning of the text. But in many cases, his spiritual interpretation has become the traditional Christian interpretation of the Bible. Origen's writings also vividly speak of his personality and character: a brilliantly educated scholar, professor, with a characteristically Hellenic mindset, he was in love with the Old Testament text with the love of an intellectual, was sincerely devoted to the Church and was a very conscientious theologian.
Origen considered Scripture to be the body of all world wisdom. It contains answers to everything philosophical questions that have ever been set or will be set by mankind. However, in order to get answers, according to Origen, one must be able to correctly interpret the verbal content of the Bible, since a multifaceted symbolic meaning is often hidden behind the letter of biblical expressions. In the exegetical writings of Origen, the words, expressions and narratives of the Bible are interpreted in moral, psychological, ontological and mystical senses. But a particularly characteristic method of exegesis, which distinguished Origen from Philo of Alexandria, was for him the method of, so to speak, providential interpretation, which reveals encrypted indications of the gospel teaching in the content of the Old Testament. All these exegetical devices served Origen, on the one hand, to prove the high authority of the Gospel and the Bible as a whole, the spiritual significance and moral value of their content; on the other hand, they served him to build on the basis of the biblical worldview his own philosophical and theological theory, which, according to his plan, was to become for a Christian the same as ancient philosophy was for an enlightened pagan. The result was a peculiar form of religious-philosophical syncretism, too religious to compete even with late antique philosophical theories in terms of evidence, and too philosophical to become the official teaching of the Christian church. Origen was condemned by the pagans because this student of ancient wisdom used it as a tool to rationalize "barbarian superstition" (In Gen. XIII 3). He was condemned by the Christian Church because this defender of the Bible used it as material for unacceptably free philosophical speculation.
The basic concepts of the positive teachings of Origen are God, Logos, the world, the soul, freedom, i.e., both theological and philosophical concepts. However, the idea of God, according to Origen, must precede philosophical deduction by right "first in itself", although "first for us" is not God, but the world (Contr. Сels. VII 46). God is the only self-sufficient being, he is a monad (monas), something absolutely first and only, but he is also a genad (henas) - a unique singularity and perfect simplicity that does not allow decomposition and division (De pr. prolog 6; 9). As the cause of all being and all essence, he is higher than being itself and essence itself; as the cause of thinking, it is higher than thinking (Contr. Cels. VI 64). Therefore, in his essence, God is incomprehensible. But we can judge some of the properties of God analogously (ascending to him from his creation) and apagogically - by negating those properties that contradict his concept. Thus, being perfect simplicity and indivisibility, God cannot be corporeal, for everything corporeal is complex and divisible. Everything material has the ability to change, and change presupposes the weakening and disappearance of some qualities and the appearance of others, i.e., it presupposes incompleteness, imperfection of at least some qualities. But God-monad should be presented as perfect, and therefore non-material. From this Origen concludes that God is pure thought - thought thinking itself (De pr. prolog 9.). This conclusion, Aristotelian in origin and Neoplatonic in meaning, had a significance that can hardly be overestimated in the history of Christian doctrine; thanks to him, Christianity begins to gradually free itself from the original Stoic influence, replacing it in the field of theology, and then philosophy, with the influence of Platonic idealism and spiritualism. For Origen himself spiritual performance about the deity was the basis for the "spiritual" interpretation of Scripture. Thus, for example, interpreting the corresponding passage in the Gospel of John, he wrote that although God is here called light, this does not mean that he must be represented in the image of the light of the sun; it's called light "for in him there is a power through which each of us is enlightened"(In loan. I 39). This force, according to Origen, is the second trinitarian hypostasis - the Logos.
In the interpretation Logos Origen was very inconsistent and wavered between the subordinationism of the Platonists, the immanentism of the Stoics, and the position that was recognized a century later as orthodox Christian. The Middle Ages did not forgive him for these hesitations and largely thanks to Jerome, the translator and interpreter of his "Beginnings", included his doctrine of the Logos among the heretical ones. For the sake of objectivity, let's say that the indicated teaching of Origen was no more and no less "heretical" than most other early Christian teachings with their characteristic subordinationist tendency. According to Origen, God the Father, that is, the God of the Old Testament, is completely transcendent to the world, but he creates this world and takes care of it through the mediation of his only-begotten Son, who is Christ and is the Logos.
Origen interprets the Logos in two ways: neoplatonic, attributing to him the same properties that Plotinus attributed to Nous, and stoic, endowing him with the features of a rational force immanent in the world. Like Plotinus, the God-monad of Origen is higher than being, life and mind-truth, higher as their source. Logos (as well as Nus Plotina), on the contrary, is being itself, life and mind-truth, generated by God (for Plotinus, emanating from God). As with Plotinus the emanation, so with Origen the generation of the Logos occurs outside of time, and the Logos is just as eternal as God the Father. However, the Logos (like Nous) is lower than the God-monad, for there is only its effect, generation, energy and image, although this generation and this image is the same necessary property of the divine nature as "radiance is a necessary property of light." The Logos is the second cause, which, being subordinate to the first, is less than it; he becomes God "through participation in the deity"; he is "an image of the Father's goodness, but not the Good itself" (De pr. I 1). In Origen, the role of the "image of the image" is the rational structure of the world and man. "Logos Origen writes, there is the highest truth - the prototype of rational beings, the beginning of the causes of all things, the source of all forces, the model, but to which the world was created. It contains the plan of the world and the ideas of everything created. Everything that is reasonable and good is from him ... "(Contr. Cels. Ill 34). And further: rational beings have the same relation to the Logos as the Logos to God the Father(In loan. II 2). The Logos is the rational soul that animates the world, it is, as it were, the heart and supreme mind of the world! (In loan. II 29).
Cosmogony Origen is creationism whimsically combined with stoicism and Platonism (Mayorov). The world is created by God out of nothing, since otherwise the matter of the world would have to be co-eternal with God, which is unacceptable, firstly, because the existence of the first two principles is contradictory; secondly, because the eternal existence of matter would be causeless and would not have a logical foundation. However, the very process of creation is eternal, and God always created the world. If he had not ever created, he would not have been a creator, and this would contradict the very Christian concept of God. God in his concept is omnipotent and good, but omnipotence would remain unmanifested and goodness inactive if there were no creation. Finally, God would turn out to be fickle and changeable if he did not create for some time, and then began to create the world. If God is omnipotent and can always create the world, and because he is good, always wants to create it, then this means that he always creates it (De pr. I 2). From Origen's arguments, it necessarily followed that if the world is not eternal in the sense in which God is eternal (eternity, according to the ideas of that time, coincides with immutability), then it is in any case infinite in time, has neither a temporal beginning, nor end, i.e., practically eternal. Origen, apparently, considered the concepts of creation and the temporal beginninglessness of the world to be quite compatible, and indeed combined them in the idea of "eternal creation." However, the idea of eternal creation looked too extravagant and heretical. Therefore, Origen supplements it with the Stoic idea of world cycles. If the majority of Christians, Origen reasoned, believe in the beginning and the end of the world, then they are right, because they mean our world. This world was created in time and will be destroyed at some time. But they do not exhaust the creative activity of God. Both before our world and after it, there were and will be countless similar worlds (eons), which come and go, being replaced by subsequent ones (De pr. Ill 4-5). The cause of the rise and fall of worlds is always the same. Thus, Origen left the possibility for the providential improvement of the worlds as they progressively change. Here we are confronted with the imposition of the biblical concept of linear time on the ancient concept of cyclic time, natural for the era of Origen. The first was still unusual, the second is well known. Combining creationism with cyclism, Origen obtained a cosmogony that, on the one hand, satisfied his rationalistic aspirations, and, on the other hand, could find confirmation in Scripture.
Assuming an infinite succession of worlds, Origen considered these worlds to be finite in space. The creation of the infinite would mean, according to Origen, the creation of the indefinite, the immeasurable (apeiron). But what is created is quite certain, and, as it says in the book of Wisdom (II, 21), God arranged everything according to number, weight and measure. Hence the world must be "moderate", that is, finite. Moreover, the omnipotence of God itself must be, according to Origen, limited, for God can do everything except the contradictory and unthinkable and what is incompatible with his perfection: for example, God can create a moderate, but not immeasurable, orderly, but not disorderly, just but not unjust, formalized but not formless (De pr. O 9). For this reason, Origen considered the creation of matter as matter already formed, for he considered matter without form to be pure abstraction (De pr. II 1). In general, in his attempts to rationalize the dogma of creation, Origen went far beyond the boundaries of the Old Testament text, although, according to his own conviction, he did not deviate from it a single step and only commented on this text with his philosophy. But Origen went even further away from Christian views when he connected his cosmogony with the doctrine of the soul.
It seems that he referred the concept of "eternal creation" only to the material world, for he spoke quite clearly about the immortality of the soul and at the same time about its creation. Worlds perish and are created again; souls, once created, never perish, but only undergo various metamorphoses. Moreover, in clear contradiction with his doctrine of eternal creation, Origen suggests that at first purely spiritual, incorporeal entities were created, and only then a corporeal world was created for them. This assumption introduced a significant change in his cosmogony, which now looked like this: the purely spiritual substances created at the beginning were created completely equal, morally pure and equally happy, otherwise God should have been recognized as unjust. They were also endowed with freedom, that is, the ability to choose between good and evil. Among these spiritual substances was the spirit of Christ. The original bliss of all spirits consisted in the contemplation of God and in unity with him through love. However, unity with a higher being is not a state of inactivity and rest, but, on the contrary, requires the highest tension of energy. When the energy weakened, the spirits fell away from God. More precisely, the falling away of the spirits from God was caused by a wrong choice made by their free will: they preferred the creation to the creator, which was symbolized by the act of the fall. Anticipating this situation, God created matter in order, on the one hand, to stop the further falling away of spirits and their complete annihilation (God is the source of being, and falling away from God is the path to non-being), by binding the spirits with bodies and, as it were, freezing them; on the other hand, to punish them with the incarnation for the wrong choice. All spirits thus embodied became souls. The return of the soul to its original spiritual state is, according to Origen, its "disembodiment". From the moment of the first incarnation begins Origen's endless cycle of worlds and souls. "Because these finite sensory worlds Origen writes, called into existence as a result of a certain state of spirits, and since these spirits will never be deprived of freedom, and consequently of the possibility of falling, one should think that, just as there were other worlds before this world, so there will be after it too ... "(De pr. III 4).
So, the material worlds are only appendages of the spiritual world, a means of educating fallen spirits and returning them to a normal incorporeal state. Burdened with flesh, every spirit undergoes cathartic suffering in this world, which pays for its return journey to its "homeland". Since God, the master of spirits, is absolute mercy, he cannot allow the exorcism of spirits to be eternal; therefore, at the end of this world, there must come a general rebirth, the restoration of everything to its original state, apocatastasis(Greek - "restoration"), when all souls, including the soul of the devil, will be cleansed, forgiven and returned to unity with God. But even after the apocatastasis, the spirits will remain free, and therefore everything can start all over again.
Origen's teaching illustrates well the fact that the introduction of ancient paradigms into the doctrine of Christianity led to its ever greater spiritualization and intellectualization, which contributed to its subsequent acceptance by the educated part of the ancient world. It can be said that Christianity ideologically won ancient world using his own weapons. In this sense, Origen rendered an invaluable service to Christianity. He transferred to it from ancient storerooms such ideas as the idea of the immateriality of God, the immateriality of the soul, the idea of the material sensible world as a reflection of the spiritual and intelligible world. "If there are those who call even mind and soul corporeal, Origen wrote, then it is permissible to ask them: how does our soul acquire true concepts about objects so great and so subtle? Where does the power of memory come from? How to explain the contemplation of invisible objects? Where do thoughts about incorporeal objects come from? How can corporeal nature know the sciences, the arts, the causes of things?"(De pr. I 1.7).
In contradiction to his Platonism, he also approves of such specifically Christian ideas as the idea of the resurrection of the dead and the idea of eternal torment, i.e., ideas most unacceptable to the ancient intellectual. Dumping all this into one heap, Origen, of course, could not end up with a theologically pure and philosophically convincing teaching, which he would like to make the worldview basis of the Christian faith. He failed to realize the commandment of Clement of Alexandria on the balance of faith and knowledge, either deviating too much towards philosophy, or sharply turning towards religion. However, from the point of view of the formation medieval philosophy Origen's place is honorable enough: he was the thinker who began the history of Christian philosophical speculation.
In my Spiritual moral doctrine Origen emphasizes that the purpose of human life is the contemplation of God. It is achieved through the struggle with passions and liberation from them. Under the passions, Origen understood submission to everything that is not God. Returning to contemplation of God, the soul cleansed of passions regains the perfection lost in the fall. Primal Perfection human nature was affirmed by many teachers and fathers of the Church, but in the teachings of Origen this perfection has a purely spiritual, noetic (from the Greek noes, mind) character, for the very concept of materiality, by definition, implies a falling away from God and submission to passions.
Following Philo of Alexandria, Origen uses the image of the ascent of Moses to Mount Sinai as an allegory of the mysterious ascent of the soul to God - an image that St. Gregory Nyssky. The commentary and teachings on the Song of Songs are devoted to this topic, in which the marriage union of two lovers is described as an allegory of the mystical union between the soul and God and between Christ and the Church.
Ecclesiology . He understands all church structures in a spiritual sense. During his life, Origen repeatedly quarreled with the bishops. While ecclesiastical tradition has always seen in the bishops the guarantee of unity and the central authority of the Church, Origen assigns the main place in the ecclesiastical structure to the so-called "teachers of the Church." Anyone can perform ceremonial activities, but few are endowed with the spiritual gift of teaching. For a "teacher", according to Origen, can only be one who, behind the literal meaning of the text of Scripture, sees its highest, eternal, hidden meaning. Origen considered himself to be such a teacher. The top of the Church should be engaged in the training and enlightenment of ordinary believers of different levels of education. After all, Christ himself, according to Origen, was primarily a Teacher, leading "reasonable creatures" to the contemplation of God. The sacramental functions of the clergy are relegated to the background. And no wonder - for Origen understands the sacraments in a purely symbolic sense.
Although Origen repeatedly speaks of the Eucharist as the body of the Lord, emphasizing its real sacrificial character, but for him this is only one of the possible interpretations. He mostly prefers allegorical or symbolic interpretation as more "worthy" of God and obvious to those "possessed of learning". Origen left the literal understanding of the Eucharist (as well as the Holy Scriptures) to the share of "simple unenlightened people." The same applies to his understanding of baptism, which also lacks a sacramental dimension in fact. Just as, speaking of the "flesh of the Word" and the "bread of life", Origen means "the fruits of wisdom," in the same way, "the likeness of the death of Christ", i.e. baptism, he understands rather as an ascetic effort, and not as an entry into the path of heavenly life in the Church, the beginning of deification.
In his teaching about St. trinity Origen primarily proceeds from the idea of God as a unity or monad, terms borrowed from the Neoplatonic vocabulary. In addition, he uses the term Trinity and, describing the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity, for the first time uses the non-biblical term consubstantial (omo'usios), which later became part of the Niceno-Tsargrad Creed.
Son, second Person of St. Trinity, is the Son of the Father, i.e. perfect image showing us the Father. From the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, Origen concludes that the Son is just as eternal as the Father. At the same time, he sometimes says that the Son is a creature, like the rest of the world. But since in Origen's system God is the Creator by nature, who always creates, then in essence it is impossible to draw a line between the Creator and the creature, between God and the universe, because both are eternal. When applied to the Son, Origen also uses the term begotten. Both creation and the birth of the Son he attributed to eternal realities. He found evidence of the created nature of the Son in the Bible: “The Lord had me as the beginning of his path, before his creatures, from the beginning ... I was born when the abyss did not yet exist ...” (Proverbs, 8:22-23). (The identification of the Old Testament Wisdom with the second Person of the Holy Trinity has firmly entered Christian tradition.) Likewise, the holy apostle Paul says that Christ "is the image of the invisible God, born before every creature" (Col. 1:15). Origen owns the famous expression "there was never (such a time) when He (Christ) was not", that is, "He was always." But if God always created, then in a sense the same can be said about any creature, including the Son and the Spirit.
From all this we can conclude that for Origen there was no difference between creation and birth, the difference first established by St. Athanasius the Great and became the cornerstone of Christian cosmology. While Origen says that God is the eternal Creator, we say that He is the eternal Father. We do not consider the existence of the created world to be a necessity, for God is completely self-sufficient and creates exclusively according to his own good will. There is an unbridgeable gulf between the transcendent, absolutely different God and His creation. Origen tried to bridge this abyss when he affirmed both the consubstantial Son to the Father and the created nature of the Son. This is the main weakness of his doctrine of the Trinity and the creation of the world, a weakness that became the source of many other errors both for Origen himself and for his numerous followers, one of whom was the famous heresiarch Arius.
4. Origenism
In the century following Origen's death, many leading theologians avoided mentioning Origen's name and paraphrased his thoughts in their own writings. In the 4th century, his views were expounded by Evagrius of Pontus, and from him they migrated to the writings of John Cassian. Origen was treated with understanding by such Greek "fathers of the Church" as Eusebius Pamphilus, Athanasius the Great and the Cappadocian saints. Epiphanius of Cyprus, on the contrary, saw in Origen the source of all kinds of heresies and approx. 375 subjected his "freethinking" to systematic criticism. At the end of the 4th century, Rufinus' translation into Latin of Origen's treatise "On the Principles" caused a fierce dispute with Blessed Jerome (who at first called Origen the greatest theologian since the time of the apostles).
After Jerome's anti-Origen attacks, orthodox theologians sharply condemned Origen for "heretical" opinions (the doctrine of apocatastasis) and for including in the Christian dogma the theses of ancient philosophy incompatible with it (in particular, the Platonic doctrine of the preexistence of souls). However, to exclude the influence philosophical system Origen failed. The exemplary holiness of his life and martyrdom contributed to his popularity in monastic circles. In the sixth century, the Origenist movement revived in the Palestinian "new laurel", prompting Emperor Justinian in 543 to issue an edict declaring Origen a heretic. The Fifth Ecumenical Council extended the condemnation of Origenism to Evagrius and Didymus.
But even the official condemnation did not remove the works of Origen from the theological circulation. The study of the forbidden theologian is reflected in the medieval writings of Maximus the Confessor and John Scotus Erigena, and the Renaissance was marked by a large-scale surge of interest in the cyclic concept of time and other metaphysical constructions of Origen.
The history of Origen's influence on the religious thought of Russia is interesting. Origen was the favorite writer of the 18th century Russian religious philosopher G. Skovoroda. One of the founders of Slavophilism, A.S. Khomyakov. Vl. Solovyov was fond of the ideas of Origen, learned and applied the allegorical method of the latter in many of his works. An interesting book about Origen was written by one of the founders of the church history school, V.V. Bolotov, having analyzed in it the teaching of Origen about the Trinity. Origen was written about by such Russian theologians as D.A. Lebedev, V. Lossky, L.P. Karsavin, G. Florovsky and others. It is interesting to note that in the 1870s the Russian writer N.S. Leskov, who was busy translating and publishing in Russian the book of Origen "On the Beginnings".
And the Stoics; was initiated into the pagan mysteries.
Out of love for knowledge, he began to study Jewry and Christianity and, convinced of the superiority of the latter, was baptized already in adulthood, listened to the best Christian teachers in different places and, having met Panten in Alexandria, remained with him, and when Panten went on a missionary mission to India , was elected instead of him, in the city, to the post of chief mentor and head of the Alexandria catechumens school, with the elevation to the rank of presbyter. Among his students was St. Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem.
Information about Clement of Alexandria is reported by Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, Cyril of Alexandria and Photius. More detailed studies about him - Tillemont, Fabricius, Cellier, also in Mehler's "Patrology"; presentation and criticism of his doctrines - by Freppel ("Cours de l "éloquence Chrétienne", P., 1865), V. F. Pevnitsky ("Proceedings of the Kiev Theological Academy"), Dmitrevsky ("Alexandria School", Kazan, 1884), Livanov "Clement of Alexandria and his writings" (in "Orthodox Review", 1867).
The name of Clement of Alexandria, a teacher of the Church, until the end of the 16th century was listed among the names of the saints in the Roman Martyrology under December 4, removed from there during the next editing of the martyrology under Pope Clement VIII. ABOUT Orthodox veneration Clement of Alexandria as a saint is not given.
Compositions
In three works that form, as it were, a trilogy - in "Exhortation to the Gentiles" (λογος προτρεπτικός), "Stromati" (στρωματεΐς - carpets) and "Teacher" (παιδάγωγυς), Clement considers paganism, with its science and education ("Exhortation ") , Christianity, in its relationship to paganism and philosophy ("Stromata") and in itself ("Educator"), thus creating a theory of mutual agreement of faith and knowledge, religion and science.
At the end of the II century. Christian church is strengthened and new tasks arise before Christian theology. Christianity no longer needs simply to defend itself against paganism, Judaism and other religions - the task of spreading and propagating the teachings of Christ arises. There is a need to systematize Christian theology.
At this time, theologians appeared who laid the foundations of Church-Christian philosophical thought. These are Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Minucius Felix, Lactantius and others. We will get acquainted with the teachings of the first three - those who greatly contributed to the formation of future Christian philosophy.
Clement of Alexandria (150-215) was born in Alexandria, a Roman province in northern Africa. For the first time he tried to combine philosophy with Christianity and develop a proper Christian philosophy. Clement, following Philo of Alexandria, repeated that philosophy is the servant of theology. He first poses the problem of the relationship between philosophy and religion, faith and reason. Philosophy and religion, he considers not contradictory, but complementary to one another. Christianity, in his opinion, combined ancient Greek philosophy and the Old Testament.
The Lord, by His providence, leads all mankind to salvation through Jesus Christ. But He leads all nations differently. The people of Israel - by giving them the Law through Moses, and the peoples of Europe - by giving them philosophy. So Socrates is to the Greeks what Moses is to the Jews.
The defect of ancient Greek philosophy was that it treated religion with distrust and contempt. And the defect of the Jewish religion is that it abhorred philosophy. Christianity surpasses all these forms of knowledge in that it unites both religion, given through the Old Testament prophets, and philosophy, through which the ancient Greeks also came to know God, whom, as the Apostle Paul said, they, without knowing it, honored.
Clement does not agree with those who believe that faith makes knowledge superfluous, but also denies the position of the Gnostics, who argued that there is some kind of special knowledge that makes faith unnecessary. In Clement, philosophy is "a priceless treasure, the acquisition of which we must devote all our strength."
Clement also sees an element of philosophizing in the Gospel in the phrase: "Seek and you will find." One must seek the truth, and this is possible only through philosophizing. Reason is not given to people by chance, and since it has thought as its object, and the knowledge of truth as its goal; and we must seek by philosophizing and meditating.
Clement says that philosophy is true and false. False is sophistry, materialistic philosophy, etc. True philosophy teaches about God and man, about how man can return to God. Truth is one, but there are many paths to it. The ancient Greeks were given the light of reason, through which they came to the knowledge of the truth. Both the light of reason and the Law that was given to the ancient Jews have the same source - the Logos.
Faith and reason do not contradict each other. In the sciences based on reason, there is subordination. The lower sciences lead to philosophy, and philosophy to theology. Philosophy is indispensable for the theologian, since it puts into his hands an instrument of argument, a method of argument, in order to preach and defend Christianity.
In a dispute with the Gnostics, Clement denies their approach to the problem of the relationship between faith and reason. He says that the ratio of faith and reason is harmonious. Every human ability (both faith and reason) is necessary. Faith has some advantage, it opens the objects of knowledge, it is simpler, easier, because all people have faith. It is given ready-made, and there is always an element of faith in knowledge. A person takes on faith many positions as unprovable - this is what the ancients spoke about. Whether from books, or from other people, or as a hypothesis - in any case, all our rational knowledge is based on some provisions that a person simply believes. However, faith as a foundation is not sufficient, because on this foundation there must be some kind of harmonious building, built with the help of rational arguments. Therefore, faith and reason do not exclude, but complement each other. Faith is the foundation of knowledge, and rational knowledge is the walls erected on that foundation. Walls without a foundation collapse, but a foundation without walls is not a building. This means that without faith there is no knowledge, and without faith, faith is empty.
Both faith and knowledge are a manifestation of the same general ability - rationality. Therefore, the ideal of every Christian is to achieve precisely this rationality, which Clement calls true. gnosis, absorbing both rational knowledge and Christian faith. Christian gnosis is the same Christian faith brought to understanding with the help of intellectual, rational comprehension. And in this understanding of the relationship between faith and reason, Clement of Alexandria stands at the beginning of the tradition that Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and other Christian theologians would later adhere to.
How can a person know God? How can one understand that which stands above all and is unknowable? Clement shared the ancient principle that like is known by like. Therefore, if a person can cognize God, then he somehow has a divine nature in himself. But since God surpasses man in everything, the process of knowing God is an endless and unattainable process within the framework of one human life. Therefore, revelation is necessary for true knowledge. Therefore, there are two forms of religion: the natural knowledge of God and the religion of Revelation, which, in particular, was given to ancient Israel. The Christian religion embraces natural religion and the religion of Revelation, and is therefore the true and final religion.
Clement of Alexandria was in many ways close to Plato - in understanding God as an infinite Being, having the same nature as the human soul. It is quite possible that Clement took this understanding from his Jewish predecessor, Philo of Alexandria. From him he took the allegorical method of interpreting and explaining Holy Scripture. In particular, Clement interprets God's creation of the world out of non-existence in the way Plato says about it in the Timaeus dialogue: creation out of some disorder, out of chaos.
Clement sees the second hypostasis of the Holy Trinity - Jesus Christ - both as the Son of God, and as the Logos, and as the energy emanating from the Father, uniting in this vision both Stoic, and Platonic, and Philonic elements. Thus, Clement of Alexandria laid the foundations for the harmonious coexistence of the Christian religion of Revelation and pagan philosophy.
