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Clement of Alexandria
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Introductory Note to Clement of Alexandria
[1031] Clement here draws a distinction, frequently made by early Christian writers, between the image and the likeness of God. Man never loses the image of God; but as the likeness consists in moral resemblance, he may lose it, and he recovers it only when he becomes righteous, holy, and wise.
[1033] [Let me quote from an excellent author: “We ought to give the Fathers credit for knowing what arguments were best calculated to affect the minds of those whom they were addressing. It was unnecessary for them to establish, by a long train of reasoning, the probability that a revelation may be made from heaven to man, or to prove the credibility of miracles . . . The majority, both of the learned and unlearned, were fixed in the belief that the Deity exercised an immediate control over the human race, and consequently felt no predisposition to reject that which purported to be a communication of His will. . . . Accustomed as they were, however, to regard the various systems proposed by philosophers as matters of curious speculation, designed to exercise the understanding, not to influence the conduct, the chief difficulty of the advocate of Christianity was to prevent them from treating it with the same levity, and to induce them to view it in its true light as a revelation declaring truths of the highest practical importance.”
This remark of Bishop Kaye is a hint of vast importance in our study of the early Apologists. It is taken from that author’s Account of the Writings of Clement of Alexandria (London, 1835), to which I would refer the student, as the best introduction to these works that I know of. It is full of valuable comment and exposition. I make only sparing reference to it, however, in these pages, as otherwise I should hardly know what to omit, or to include.]
Chapter I. The Office of the Instructor.
[1035] [See Exhortation to the Heathen, cap. xi. p. 203, supra.]
[1036] The pædagogus. [This word seems to be used by Clement, with frequent alusion, at least, to its original idea, of one who leads the child to his instructor; which is the true idea, I suppose, in Gal. iii. 24.]
Chapter II.—Our Instructor’s Treatment of Our Sins.
Chapter III.—The Philanthropy of the Instructor.
[1043] Bishop Kaye (Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alexandria, p. 48) translates, “receiving from man that which made man (that on account of which man was made).” But it seems more likely that Clement refers to the ideal man in the divine mind, whom he indentifies elsewhere with the Logos, the ἄνθρωπος ἀπαθής, of whom man was the image. The reader will notice that Clement speaks of man as existing in the divine mind before his creation, and creation is represented by God’s seeing what He had previously within Him merely as a hidden power.
Chapter IV.—Men and Women Alike Under the Instructor’s Charge.
Chapter V.—All Who Walk According to Truth are Children of God.
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