Clement of Alexandria
c. AD 150–215
“Philosophy was given to the Greeks as their own kind of Covenant, their foundation for the philosophy of Christ.” — Clement, Stromata
The Argument
Clement of Alexandria is the first great Christian intellectual to attempt a systematic engagement with Greek philosophy, and his project is the direct ancestor of the literary apologetics tradition. His argument is that philosophy was to the Greeks what the law was to the Jews — a preparation for the Gospel. God did not leave the Gentiles without witness. He gave them reason, and reason, followed honestly, points toward the Logos.
This is a bold claim and it has generated controversy in every century since Clement made it. But it is also the claim that makes Christian engagement with non-Christian literature possible. If the Logos is the source of all genuine truth, then every writer who has told the truth about human experience has, in some sense, been drawing on the Logos — whether they knew it or not.
Clement's Stromata — the word means patchwork — is deliberately unsystematic, weaving together Scripture, philosophy, and literary allusion in a way that models the kind of reading it is advocating. For a literary apologist, it is a template: wide reading in the service of a theological argument.
The Literary Apologetic
New essays from the long tradition. No noise. Just letters worth reading.