Codex 109

[Clement of Alexandria, Outlines]

Read three volumes of the works of Clement,[1] presbyter of Alexandria, entitled Outlines, The Miscellanies, The Tutor.

The Outlinescontain a brief explanation and interpretation of certain passages in the Old and New Testaments. Although in some cases what he says appears orthodox, in others he indulges in impious and legendary fables. For he is of opinion that matter is eternal and that ideas are introduced by certain fixed conditions; he also reduces the Son to something created. He talks prodigious nonsense about the transmigration of souls and the existence of a number of worlds before Adam. He endeavours to show that Eve came from Adam, not as Holy Scripture tells us, but in an impious and shameful manner; he idly imagines that angels have connexion with women and beget children; that the Word was not incarnate, but only appeared so. He is further convicted of monstrous statements about two Words of the Father, the lesser of which appeared to mortals, or rather not even that one, for he writes : “The Son is called the Word, of the same name as” the Word of the Father, but this is not the Word that became flesh, nor even the Word of the Father, but a certain power of God, as it were an efflux from the Word itself, having become mind, pervaded the hearts of men.” All this he attempts to support by passages of Scripture. He talks much other blasphemous nonsense, either he or some one else under his name. These monstrous blasphemies are contained in eight books, in which he frequently discusses the same points and quotes passages from Scripture promiscuously and confusedly, like one possessed. The entire work includes notes on Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, St. Paul’s epistles, the Catholic epistles, and Ecclesiasticus. Clement was a pupil of Pantaenus, as he himself says. Let this suffice for the Outlines.