Clement of Alexandria

Christian theologian (c.150 – c.215)

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Lived 150–215, aged 65

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Era
150–215
Aged 65

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

A Christian theologian who tried to marry Athens and Jerusalem — reading Plato and the Stoics into scripture at a time when most of the church wanted nothing to do with pagan thought.

Biography

About

Titus Flavius Clemens was a convert who brought his classical education with him. Around 150 AD he landed at the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where he taught students including Origen and became the most Hellenistic Christian thinker of his era. He wove Plato, the Stoics, and traces of Jewish esotericism and Gnosticism into his three major works, and once claimed that Greek philosophy itself came from Egyptian scholars who taught Pythagoras and Plato. The Western church venerated him until 1586, when Pope Sixtus V scrubbed his name from the Roman Martyrology; the Eastern Orthodox had alr…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria

saidundated

He alone can remit sins who is appointed our Master by the Father of all; He only is able to discern obedience from disobedience.

— Paedagogus (The Instructor, c. 198 AD), Book I, Ch. 8

Clement of Alexandria

saidundated

It is monstrous for one to live in luxury while many are in want.

— Paedagogus (The Instructor, c. 198 AD), Book II, Ch. 13

Clement of Alexandria

saidundated

There is one river of truth, which receives tributaries from every side.

— Stromata (Miscellanies, c. 198–203 AD), I: 5.

Clement of Alexandria

saidundated

The purified righteous man has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his King stamped upon him.

— Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 104.

Clement of Alexandria

saidundated

How can it not be necessary, for him who wishes to lay hold of the power of God, to philosophise and to grasp with comprehension intellectual concepts?

— As reported in Clement of Alexandria by Eric Osborn (Cambridge University Press: 2008), p. 63.

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