Gnosis, Theophany, Theosis: Studies in Clement of Alexandria's Appropriation of His Background (review)

Clement of Alexandria has presented a persistent challenge to modern interpreters. Fulbert Cayre in his classic Patrology wrote that Clement's methodology consisted of "abundant and disconcerting quotation" from an abundance of "disparate and incoherent texts, which often obscured his meaning or even gave it a positively contrary sense." Johannes Quasten's assessment was a good deal more positive when he suggested that by bringing "Christian doctrine face to face with the ideas and achievements of the time," the Alexandrian was truly a "pioneer of Christian scholarship." Nonetheless, Clement's wide-ranging eclectic background set against a subtle, highly contextualized style of argumentation has made bridging the hermeneutical gap difficult at best.

In this publication of his doctoral thesis, Arkadi Choufrine examines the primary texts, and in careful dialogue with leading scholarship proposes a fresh way of viewing Clement's appropriation of non-Christian sources. Choufrine argues that Clement was not the syncretistic borrower of Hellenistic and Gnostic ideas that some have thought; rather he synthesized these sources directly with the Christian gospel. Of course, the crucial question is whether Clement's approach left him with doctrinal content that would ultimately stand the test of orthodoxy. Choufrine has designed three case studies to investigate this question, and these studies form the three chapters of the book.

The first case study is an examination of Clement's association of the term gnosis with notions of awakening and illumination—common descriptors for Christian baptism. In addition to analyzing pre-orthodox Gnostic texts and Philo's theological writings, Choufrine interacts with modern scholars such as Salvatore Lilla, Barbara Aland and Antoine Wlosok. Was Clement's doctrine of baptismal illumination orthodox, pre-orthodox Christian Gnostic, or formed from a mixture of Jewish and Hellenistic ideas? The evidence suggests a synthesis of early Alexandrian Christian (Valentinian) ideas with perhaps some Jewish influence mediated by Philo. The latter thread becomes the subject of the second chapter.

The second study is an investigation of Clement's association of baptismal illumination with the incarnation of Christ. Choufrine shows that Clement has drawn his notion of baptismal illumination from Philo's commentary on the conversion of Abraham in Genesis 15.6. At the same time, it was not a wholesale mediation, for Clement's idea of illumination is distinctly Christological set within a realized eschatological framework. The baptized are granted illumination as "'birth from above' in baptism" that corresponds to the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. This is a feature that Philo could not have imagined. Helpful excurses are included in this part of the study, which provide additional background on Philo's thought.

The third case study explores Clement's doctrine of theosis against the philosophical concept of the infinite. This perhaps is the most esoteric of Choufrine's chapters in that at first reading, a thoroughgoing knowledge of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics and ethics would appear to be a prerequisite. However, extensive footnoting is of immense help in providing explanations.

Choufrine concludes that Clement's idea of theosis is not based in Platonic ascent or in an Aristotelian movement toward an exterior end, but, instead, it is grounded in the notion of turning inward in self-contemplation. For Clement the believer is truly a part of the body of Christ and is therefore in a sense a microcosm of the church. Through self-contemplation he/she draws closer to Christ's spiritual body in his/her spiritual body, which by virtue of baptismal cleansing advances toward God by turning away from sense objects and bodily passions. Choufrine finally draws together the implications of the three case studies and addresses the question of Clement's orthodoxy, concluding that there is sufficient evidence to regard the Alexandrian as the true founder of the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

Choufrine has a firm grasp of all the relevant scholarship. His method is to take the reader through a maze of...