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| Fenton John Anthony Hort |
In 1890,
Fenton John Anthony Hort (half of the Westcott-Hort duo) delivered a series of
six lectures on ante-Nicene fathers. They were published in 1895, a few years after his death. What follows here, with slight
adjustments, is the fourth lecture in the series.
LECTURE IV: HIPPOLYTUS
AND CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
In Justin
the Samaritan, who taught and who died a martyr’s death at Rome, we have had before us the most
characteristic of the Greek apologists of the second century, a man who went
about clad only in the traditional philosopher’s cloak, and who pleaded the
cause of the Christians against the assaults of magistrates and populace on the
ground that their faith and conduct should commend itself to philosophers and
lovers of right reason.
In
Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp at Smyrna, who became bishop of Lyons and
took an active part in promoting the peace of the Church when endangered by the
intolerance of Victor, Bishop of Rome, we have had the first great theologian,
in the strict sense of the word, whose writings are to any great extent
preserved to us. His great refutation of
the leading doctrines of the teachers called Gnostics, is a still imperfectly
worked mine of great thoughts on God's dealings with mankind through the ages,
founded on the idea of the Word before and after the Incarnation.
A few words
are due to a disciple of Irenaeus, who forty years ago would have been commonly
reckoned an obscure and unimportant Father, viz. Hippolytus.
Shortly after that date there was published
from a manuscript then lately brought to Paris an elaborate Greek account and
refutation of early heresies, chiefly ‘Gnostic,’ which it was soon recognized
could not well have any other author than Hippolytus.
There is no real doubt about the matter,
though, for quite intelligible reasons, a few still hold otherwise.
The author writes as a bishop, and
Hippolytus is
sometimes called Bishop of Rome, sometimes bishop of Portus, the commercial
port of Rome.
What he
really was, is still an open question. The
most commonly received view is that which was suggested by Döllinger, that for
at least a certain time Callistus and Hippolytus were respectively recognized
by different parties in the Roman Church as each the only true and lawful
Bishop of Rome, though eventually Callistus alone was officially acknowledged
as having been bishop. The treatise
itself is one of much value for the extracts which it gives from Gnostical
writings. But of more general interest
is the narrative of some of the inner history of the Roman Church under two
successive bishops. After every
allowance has been made for the partisanship of the writer, the picture is not
an agreeable one. But this lies outside our proper subject. Of the part taken by Hippolytus it is enough
to say that he regarded Callistus and
the dominant authorities of the Roman Church as dangerously
lax in their admission of penitents to communion, and he likewise accused them
of favoring a doctrine not far from Sabellianism, while he himself, from the
manner in which he expounded the doctrine of the Word, a doctrine which
evidently had little meaning for them, was accused by them of setting up two
Gods to be worshipped.
The end of
the story seems to be supplied by a curious early Roman record which states
that “Pontianus the bishop” (the second after Callistus) and “Hippolytus the
presbyter were banished to Sardinia, to the
island of deadly climate.” Perhaps, as
has been suggested, the Roman magistrates took this way of enforcing peace in
the Christian community, by getting rid of the two leaders together. From another record forming part of the same
document we learn that the Roman Church in the middle of the fourth century
kept on the same day the festival of Hippolytus in one cemetery and of
Pontianus in another, both evidently as martyrs. Apparently they had both perished in the mines
of Sardinia, and their bodies had been
received back in peace together.
According to a somewhat confused tradition Hippolytus before his death
had advised his followers to return to the communion of the Roman Church
authorities.
In the
fourth and later centuries the strangest and most contradictory legends of his
martyrdom became current. By a singular
good fortune a contemporary memorial of him has been preserved, such as we
possess for no other early Father whatever.
Above three centuries ago a large part of an ancient sitting statue was
dug up near Rome,
and in due time recognized by the very interesting inscriptions on the base to
have been no other than Hippolytus, though his name does not appear, and to
have been erected shortly after his death. In the great hall of the
Christian
Museum at St. John
Lateran, as you walk up between two lines of early Christian sarcophagi of the
highest interest for their carving, you are faced by this great statue of
Hippolytus looking down upon you from the platform at the end.
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| Ancient statue of Hippolytus |
Hippolytus
was one of the three most learned Greek Fathers of his time, mostly the early
part of the third century.
Of one of
them
Julius Africanus,
of whom only fragments remain, I propose to say no more.
To Origen we shall come presently.
Hippolytus’ writings chiefly fall under two
heads, doctrinal treatises of a controversial kind, and books connected with
the study of Scripture, either actual commentaries or essays at constructing
some sort of Scripture chronology.
His
defense of the Gospel and Apocalypse of St. John against certain contemporary
gainsayers might be reckoned under either head.
He was especially interested in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and
in some of the questions which they suggest.
To him they were by no means questions of idle curiosity; for in the new
hostility of the Roman state, as shown in the persecution of Septimius Severus,
he supposed that he saw a fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy.
All that remains of him however, with the
exception of the great treatise on heresies, itself far from complete, makes up
only a small volume. This is the more remarkable as the fame of his writings
spread far and wide through the East, though the story of his life was unknown
outside
Rome or
else forgotten.
Hippolytus,
following Irenaeus, has conducted us well into the third century. We must now go back half a generation or so
to make acquaintance with a different region and a different way of
apprehending Christianity and its relation to the world, though no doubt to a
certain extent anticipated by Justin Martyr.
Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile had
long been a special home of Greek learning and philosophy, a place where the
culture of Egypt, Asia, and Europe met together. But of still greater moment was the
nature of the Judaism which had arisen in the midst of the vast Jewish
population of the city, a Judaism almost wholly detached from the legal
influences which dominated the Judaism of Palestine, and aiming especially at
the comparison and harmonizing of the Old Testament, and specially the
Pentateuch, with the better forms of Greek philosophy. Of this Graecized Judaism we have invaluable
examples in Philo’s writings. We know almost nothing of Alexandrian
Christianity in its earlier days, but evidently it took its shape in no small
degree from the type of Judaism which was already current in the place.
In the
middle part of the second century we hear of a Christian Catechetical school at Alexandria,
probably for the instruction of the highly educated converts who joined the
Church. The second name preserved to us from the list of its heads or chief
instructors is that of the Sicilian Pantaenus, best remembered now as having
gone on a missionary journey to India.
Among his pupils was Clement of Alexandria, the Father who next claims our
attention, and who often speaks of him, chiefly only under the title ‘the
elder,’ with enthusiastic affection.
Clement himself is said to have been an Athenian and probably was
so. Profoundly Christian as he is, there
is no Father who shows anything like the same familiarity with the ancient
classical literature of Greece,
especially the poetical literature.
It
is not clear whether he was of Christian or of heathen parents, but we know
from himself that he traveled in early life, and came under the influence of at
least six different Christian teachers in different lands, whom he calls
“blessed and truly memorable men.” In Greece he met the first, an Ionian, i.e.
probably from Western Asia Minor: two others in Magna Graecia, the
Greek-speaking South part of Italy,
one from Middle Syria and another from Egypt. Whether he went to Rome, as one would expect,
does not appear: at all events he refers to no teacher met there. From Italy
he crossed to the East, and there he learned from an Assyrian, supposed to be
Justin’s scholar Tatian, and from another, in Palestine, one of Jewish birth. The last, he says, in order, but virtually
the first, he found lurking in Egypt,
and there he rested. He had found
Pantaenus. There is reason to suppose
that after a time he became a colleague of Pantaenus in the Catechetical
school, and at all events when Pantaenus died he succeeded him, probably
somewhere about the year 200.
He was now
or soon after a presbyter of the Church.
But two or three years later through a change in the policy of the
Emperor Septimius Severus a persecution broke out, which fell with much
severity on Alexandria, and the teachers of the Catechetical school, evidently
including Clement, took refuge elsewhere. A few years after this we have a
glimpse of him through a scrap of a letter of his pupil Alexander, fortunately
preserved by Eusebius. Alexander was at
this time apparently bishop of a Cappadocian church; certainly he was in prison
for conscience sake; and he wrote a congratulatory letter out of his prison on
their recent choice of a new bishop, sending it by Clement whom he calls “the
blessed presbyter, a man virtuous and well tried”: who by the Providence of God
was then with him and had stablished and increased the Church.
Clement
cannot have lived much longer. In
another letter to Origen, written before 216, Alexander again speaks affectionately of Clement as of
Pantaenus, both as now departed. These testimonies are of value as showing that Clement’s
withdrawal from the approaching persecution was due to no selfish cowardice,
but to such rightful avoidance of useless sacrifice of life as had been
commanded by our Lord Himself when He bade the Apostles, “When they persecute you
in one city, flee ye into another.” For
Alexander knew what martyrdom meant. He
was made Bishop of Jerusalem under very peculiar circumstances, partly in
consequence of what were regarded as Divine monitions, partly on account of
what he had bravely endured in the persecution.
It was the same to the end of his life.
In the year 250 he was brought before the magistrates in the Decian
persecution, and thrown into prison, and there he died.
Clement’s
chief writings form a connected series. First comes the
Hortatory Address
to the Greeks; the purpose is to show that the Christian faith
accomplishes what the heathen religions and philosophies vainly sought. It is
too florid in style, and overloaded with superfluous illustrations. But it is
inspired by the purest Christian fervor, and, apart from details, its general
drift is at once lofty and true.
Next
comes the
Paidagogos,
or Tutor.
The Tutor is not, as we might have guessed,
the book itself; nor is he a man. It is none other than Christ the Word of the
Father, the Tutor of mankind, educating them always in love and for their
benefit, sometimes by gifts, sometimes by chastisements. The purpose of the
book is the guidance of the youthful convert from heathenism in habits
belonging to Christian morality.
The
heads of this morality are not vague generalities, but practical and concrete
enough; e.g. meat and drink, sumptuous furniture, behavior at feasts, laughter,
bad language, social behavior, use of perfumes and garlands, sleep, marriage
duties, dress and ornaments, use of cosmetics, use of baths, exercises.
Alexandria seventeen
centuries ago was clearly not so very different a place from towns better known
to us.
The permanent interest of these
discussions is very great.
Often as we
may have to dissent from this or that remark, the wisdom and large-mindedness
with which the
Paedagogus is written
are above all praise.
On the one hand there
is an all-pervading sense that the Gospel is meant to be at once a molding and
a restraining power in all the pettiest details as in the greatest affairs of
life; on the other hand there is no morbid jealousy of the rightful use of
God's good gifts, and no addiction to restrictions not commanded by morality,
or not required for self-discipline.
The third
treatise of the series is commonly known by the name
Stromateis
(
Stromata, common in modern books, is
incorrect).
A
stromateus was a long bag of striped canvas, in which bedclothes (
stromata) were kept rolled up. Various
writers had used this name for books of the nature of miscellanies. By Clement
it is in strictness used only of the seven different books of the great
treatise,
Stromateus 1, 2 etc. His
descriptive title, if less quaint, is more really interesting, “Gnostic
jottings” (or “notes”) “according to the true philosophy.”
The
Alexandrian convert from heathenism needed instruction not only in the outward
behavior proper to the Christian life but also in the deeper grounds of the
Christian morality and religion. In the
schools of ordinary Greek philosophy he would learn the value and the dignity
of wisdom and knowledge; and now he had to be taught that, whatever might be
said to the contrary by unwise Christians, these things had a yet higher place
under the Gospel: for the Christ whom it proclaimed was not only the Savior of
mankind in the simplest and most obvious sense, but also One in whom lay hid
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
Clement was
not made timorous by the association of the word gnosis, ‘knowledge,’ with the sects called heretical of those whom
we now call Gnostics. Nay, it rather
urged him to claim for the Church a word and an idea which could not be
spared. If St. Paul had spoken of a Christian Gnosis
falsely so called, he had thereby implied that there was a right Christian
Gnosis, a Gnosis truly so called; and this is what Clement set himself to
defend and in part to provide.
It is a
leading idea of Clement that the Divinely ordained preparation for the Gospel
ran in two parallel lines, that of the Jewish Law and Prophets and that of
Greek philosophy. His exposition of it
is somewhat damaged by his following an old but quite unfounded commonplace of
Jewish apologetics, much repeated by the Fathers, that the Greek philosophers
borrowed largely from the Old Testament.
But the idea itself enabled him to look out both on the past history of
mankind and on the mixed world around him with a hopeful and helpful
faith. The treatise is a very discursive
one. The leading heads are such as
these: faith, Christian fear, love,
repentance, endurance, martyrdom, the true doctrine of marriage, teaching by
signs and allegories, the attribution of human feelings to God in
Scripture. There is much comparison of
Christian teaching on these themes with that of Greek philosophers and also of
leading Pseudo-Gnostics, usually in a candid and discriminating manner. But it is no merely theoretical knowledge
that is here celebrated.
The true
Gnostic, according to Clement, is “he who imitates God in so far as is possible
[for man] omitting nothing pertaining to such growth in the Divine likeness as
comes within his reach, practicing self-restraint, enduring, living justly,
reigning over his passions, imparting of what he possesses, doing good by word
and deed to the best of his power. He, it is said, is greatest in the kingdom
of heaven who shall do and teach in imitation of God by showing free grace like
His, for the bounties of God are for the common benefit.” [From Clem.
Alex. Strom. ii. p. 480 Potter.]
The fourth
treatise of the series, written after Clement left
Alexandria, was called
Hypotyposeis,
‘Outlines.’
The greater part of it
unhappily is lost, though a fair number of difficult but peculiarly interesting
fragments of it have been preserved.
Its
subject was apparently fundamental doctrine, while it also contained expository
notes on various books of the Bible, including
St Paul’s Epistles and four out of the
Catholic Epistles.
What remains enables
us to see that this first great attempt to bring the Gospel into close relation
with the whole range of human thought and experience en other lines than those
of the Pseudo-Gnostics contained, as was natural, various theological crudities
which could not ultimately be accepted, while it must also have been rich in
matter of permanent value.
We must now
bid farewell to Clement of Alexandria.
He was not, as far as we know, one of those whose writings have
exercised a wide or a powerful influence over subsequent theology. Large
portions of his field of thought remained for long ages unworked, or even
remain unworked still. But what he at once
humbly and bravely attempted under great disadvantages at the beginning of the
third century will have to be attempted afresh with the added experience and
knowledge of seventeen Christian centuries more, if the Christian faith is to
hold its ground among men; and when the attempt is made, not a few of his
thoughts and words will probably shine out with new force, full of light for
dealing with new problems.
A
comparatively simple passage from the Stromateis
[From Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. p. 864 P.] on
faith, knowledge, love, will sufficiently illustrate his way of writing.
“Knowledge
(i.e. Christian knowledge. Gnosis) is so to speak a perfecting of a man as a
man, accomplished through acquaintance with Divine things, in demeanor and life
and word, harmonious and concordant with itself and with the Divine Word. For
by it faith is perfected, this being the only way in which the man who has
faith becomes perfect. Now faith is a
kind of inward good, and even without seeking God, it confesses that He is and
glorifies Him as being. Hence a man must start from this faith, and when he has
made increase in it must by the Grace of God receive as far as he can the
knowledge (Gnosis) concerning Him. . . . Not to doubt about God but to believe
is the foundation of Gnosis, while Christ is both at once the foundation and
the structure built upon it, even as through Him is both the beginning of
things and their [several] ends. And the things that stand first and last, I
mean faith and love, do not come by teaching, but Gnosis transmitted by
tradition according to the Grace of God is entrusted as a deposit to those who
show themselves worthy of the teaching; and from Gnosis the dignity of love
shines forth, out of light into light.
For it is said ‘To him that hath shall more be added’; to faith shall be
added Gnosis, and to Gnosis love, and to love the inheritance”; i.e. (I suppose) the fullness of Divine
Sonship.”
I will only
add half-a-dozen pregnant lines from another Stromateus [Clem. Alex. Strom. v. p. 633
P.] expounding by a memorable image the true relation between man and
God in prayer. “As,” he says, “men attached at sea to an anchor by a tight
cable, when they pull at the anchor, draw not the anchor to themselves but
themselves to the anchor, even so they who in the Gnostic life draw God to them
(i.e. so it seems to them) have unawares been bringing themselves towards God.”
