Divine Pedagogy and the Gnostic Teacher according to Clement of Alexandria

Abstract

Divine Pedagogy and the Gnostic Teacher according to Clement of Alexandria Judith L. Kovacs (bio) The centrality of in Clement's explication of Christianity is well known.1 He presents Christ as the consummate and ,2 who seeks to train all humanity up to perfection: Therefore since the Logos himself has come to us from heaven, it seems to me that we need no longer have resort to human teaching, seeking knowledge in Athens or the rest of Greece or Ionia. For if we have as [End Page 3] teacher the one who has filled everything with his holy activities—creation, salvation, beneficence, law-giving, prophecy, teaching—this teacher now gives us all instruction, and, through the Logos, the whole universe has now become Athens and Greece. (Prot. 11, 112.1)3 One aspect of Clement's portrayal of Christian that has not been fully explored is what Clement says about his own teaching.4 Relevant to this topic are not only those texts where Clement speaks directly of his own activity as teacher5 but also his descriptions of the perfect Christian, whom he calls the Gnostic. André Méhat, arguing against the view that Clement's Gnostic is a "solitary dreamer," points to texts that describe teaching as an essential characteristic of the Gnostic.6 In Strom. 2.10.46.1, for example, Clement says: Our philosopher clings to these three things: first contemplation, secondly the performance of the commandments, and third the training of good men. When these things come together, they complete the Gnostic. [End Page 4] But whichever of these is lacking makes knowledge incomplete.7 According to Méhat, the perfect Gnostic is an idealized picture of Clement's teacher, Pantainos, as well as a reflection of Clement's own life.8 There is much we do not know about Clement's activity as teacher, including the debated question of whether he was the official head of a catechetical school in Alexandria.9 What is quite clear from Clement's own writings is the exalted view he had of the vocation of the Christian teacher. This is illustrated by Strom. 7.9.52.1-3,10 which is part of a lengthy treatment of the superior character of the Gnostic Christian: The exalted position of the Gnostic is extended further by the one who has undertaken to superintend the teaching of others and accepted the management in word and deed of the greatest good on earth, through which he mediates union and fellowship with the divine. Just as those who worship earthly things pray to statues as if they hear, and confirm their [End Page 5] covenants before them, so also in the case of living statues, that is human beings, the true magnificence of the Word is received from the trustworthy teacher , and his beneficence towards them is credited to the Lord, in whose image the true man, as he educates , creates and refashions the person being instructed , renewing him to salvation. As the Greeks call iron Ares and wine Dionysus, giving them a higher meaning , so the Gnostic, who considers the benefit done to his neighbor as his own salvation, would rightly be called a living image of the Lord, not because of the character of his physical form but because he symbolizes the Lord's power and because of the similarity of his preaching. Clement presents the Gnostic teacher as the image of the Lord, who mimics his creative work and shares in the execution of the divine plan for salvation, an activity he designates by the term . This word appears frequently in Clement's works, in senses ranging from household management to providence to the divine plan for salvation.11 At the beginning of Stromateis 7 Clement uses it to characterize the power of the Logos to order all things: This [the nature of the Son] is the highest excellence, which arranges everything according to "the will of the Father" (John 6.40) and steers the whole world in the best way, performing all things with untiring, limitless power . . . . The whole host of angels and gods has been subjected to him, to the Word of the Father, who has been...