mountainman

Abbreviations following refer to the
Homilies (H.) and Recognitions (R.)

PROBABLE DATE OF THE CLEMENTINES

We now know that the Clementine writer need not have lived before Origen. Let us add that there is no reason to think he was a Judæo-Christian, an Elchasaïte, or anti-Pauline, or anti-Marcionite, that he employed ancient sources, that he belonged to a secretive sect. We are free, then, to look out for indications of date without prejudice.

R. is certainly post-Nicene, as Waitz has shown. But we may go further. The curious passage R. iii. 2-11, which Rufinus omitted, and in which he seemed to hear Eunomius himself speaking, gives in fact the doctrine of Eunomius so exactly that it frequently almost cites the Apologeticus" (c. 362-3) of that heretic word for word. (The Eunomian doctrine is that the essence of God is to be unborn, consequently the Son Who is begotten is not God. He is a creature, the first-born of all creation and the Image of God. The Holy Ghost is the creature of the Son.) The agreement with Eunomius's ekthesis pisteos of 381-3 is less close. As the Eunomian passage was found by Rufinus in both the recensions of Clement known to him, we may suppose that the interpolation was made in the original work by a Eunomian about 365-70, before the abridgment R. was made about 370-80. (The word archiepiscopus used of St. James suggests the end of the fourth century. It occurs in the middle of that century in some Meletian documents cited by Athanasius, and then not till the Council of Ephesus, 431.)

H. has also a disquisition on the generation of the Son (xvi, 15-18, and xx, 7-8). The writer calls God autopator and autogennetos, and both Mother and Father of men. His idea of a changeable God and an unchangeable Son projected from the best modification of God has been mentioned above. This ingenious doctrine enables the writer to accept the words of the Nicene definition, while denying their sense. The Son may be called God, for so may men be, but not in the strict sense. He is homoousios to Patri, begotten ek tes ousias, He is not treptos or alloiotos. Apparently He is not ktistos, nor was there a time when He was not, though this is not quite distinctly enunciated. The writer is clearly an Arian who manages to accept the formula of Nicea by an acrobatic feat, in order to save himself. The date is therefore probably within the reign of Constantine (died 337), while the great council was still imposed on all by the emperor — say, about 330.

But this is not the date of H., but of the original behind both H. and R.; for it is clear that the Eunomian interpolator of R. attacks the doctrine we find in H. He ridicules autopator and autogennetos, he declares God to be unchangeable, and the Son to be created, not begotten from the Father's essence and consubstantial. God is not masculo-femina. It is clear that the interpolator had before him the doctrine of H. in a yet clearer form, and that he substituted his own view for it (R. iii, 2-11). But it is remarkable that he retained one integral part of H.'s theory, viz., the origin of the Evil One from an accidental mixture of elements, for Rufinus tells us (De Adult. libr. Origenis) that he found this doctrine in R. and omitted it. The date of the original is therefore fixed as after Nicæa, 325, probably c. 330; that of H. may be anywhere in the second half of the fourth century. The Eunomian interpolator is about 365-70, and the compilation of R. about 370-80.

The original author shows a detailed knowledge of the towns on the Phœnician coast from Cæsarea to Antioch. He was an Arian, and Arianism had its home in the civil diocese of the Orient. He uses the "Præp. Evang." of Eusebius of Cæsarea (written about 313). In 325 that historian mentions the dialogues of Peter and Appion as just published — presumably in his own region; these were probably the nucleus of the larger work completed by the same hand a few years later. Citations of Pseudo-Clement are by the Palestinian Epiphanius, who found the romance among the Ebionites of Palestine; by St. Jerome, who had dwelt in the Syrian desert and settled at Bethlehem; by the travelled Rufinus; by the "Apostolical Constitutions", compiled in Syria or Palestine. The work is rendered into Syriac before 411. The Arian author of the "Opus imperfectum" cited it freely. It was interpolated by a Eunomian about 365-70. All these indications suggest an Arian author before 350 in the East, probably not far front Cæsarea.

The author, though an Arian, probably belonged nominally to the Catholic Church. He wrote for the heathens of his day, and observed the stiff and often merely formal disciplina arcani which the fourth century enforced. Atonement, grace, sacraments are omitted for this cause only. "The true Prophet" is not a name for Christ used by Christians, but the office of Christ which the author puts forward towards the pagan world. He shows Peter keeping the evening agape and Eucharist secret from Clement when unbaptized; it was no doubt a Eucharist of bread and vine, not of bread and salt.

The great pagan antagonist of the third century was the neo-Platonic philosopher, Porphyry; but under Constantine his disciple Iamblichus was the chief restorer and defender of the old gods, and his system of defence is that which we find made the official religion by Julian (361-3). Consequently, it is not astonishing to find that Simon and his disciples represent not St. Paul, but Iamblichus. The doctrines and practices repelled are the theurgy and magic, astrology and mantic, absurd miracles and claims to union with the Divinity, which characterized the debased neo-Platonism of 320-30. It is not against Marcion but against Plato that Pseudo-Clement teaches the supremacy of the Creator of all. He defends the Old Testament against the school of Porphyry, and when he declares it to be interpolated, he is using Porphyry's own higher criticism in a clumsy way. The elaborate discussion of ancient history, the ridicule cast on the obscene mythology of the Greeks, and the philosophical explanations of a higher meaning are also against Porphyry. The refutation of the grossest idolatry is against Iamblichus.

It is perhaps mere accident that we hear nothing of the Clementines from 330 till 360. But about 360- 410 they are interpolated, they are revised and abridged in H., yet more revised and abridged in R., translated into Latin, translated into Syriac, and frequently cited. It seems, therefore, that it was the policy of Julian which drew them from obscurity. They were useful weapons against the momentary resurrection of polytheism, mythology, theurgy, and idolatry.

An original author, not far from Cæsarea, obviously quite well
acquainted with the ecclesiastical historiography and tradition,
sponsored at some specific stage in the propaganda creation
program.

I wonder who on earth that could have been.



Pete Brown
Did Constantine create Christianity?