Princes Shall Come out of Egypt: Clement of Alexandria

As an evangelical, one would think that in the great history of Christian theology, God stopped speaking in the seventeenth century and had perfectly revealed Godself to the Germans and the French. In terms of the geo-politics within academic settings, it would be suffice to say that up until the the latter half of the twentieth century, from psychology (Freud) to philosophy (Kant, Nietsche), to theology (Barth) to economics and history (Marx) to physics (Einstein), a vast majority of authorities in these fields were either born or educated European schools (many of them German institutions).

The world was not always like this. Before the Muslims conquered Egypt less than midway through the 7th century, Common Era, Alexandria was once the capital of Egypt. Clement of Alexandria was a Christian intellectual who would constantly write in response to the prevailing heresies and immoralities of his day. From the Gnostics to the Carpocratians, Clement was not afraid to confront his opponents in the bluntest of terms. He also struggled with traditions such as the Christian followers who studied Tertullian and who believed that studying Greek philosophy was a waste of time. To these, Clement would answer, "The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof, and anyone who seeks to help catechumens, especially if they are Greeks, must not shrink from scholarly study" Strom., VI, 89. In today's world, there are many people in the church who question the need for religious scholarship. This is because they have chosen to divide the spirit from the body, in almost the way Clement's enemies, the Gnostics once did. Let us heed the words of Clement, who argues that the body and the spirit are in mutual need for each other:


***The task of the law is to deliver us from a dissolute life and all disorderly ways. Its purpose is to lead us from unrighteousness to righteousness, so that it would have us self-controlled in marriage, in begetting children, and in general behavior. The LORD is not “come to destroy the law but to fulfil it” (Matt 5:17). “To fulfill” does NOT imply that it was defect, but that by his coming the prophecies of the law are accomplished, since before the law the demand for right conduct was proclaimed by the LOGOS to those also who lived good lives. The multitude who know nothing of continence live for the body, not for the spirit. But the body without spirit is ‘earth and ashes’ (Gen 18:27).***

Clement of Alexandria, On Marriage, Chapter VI, #46.