Christian gnosis: from Clement the Alexandrian to John Damascene

Abstract

Christianity has emerged in history as a community of learners, disciples of a Teacher, Jesus Christ, and his successors, the apostles. As a master of Christian philosophy and perhaps an Alexandrian presbyter, Olivier Clement structured his teaching by the classical paideia, with a Christian twist. Clement was concerned with perfection, which, as depicted for the Alexandrine intelligentsia, he construed complexly. Perfection was unreachable without the curricular stages of theoretical and practical disciplines such as music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, dialectic, and philosophy. Clementine pedagogy aimed at personal transformation by way of a gnostic process that led to enlightenment. Athanasius Kircher displayed nevertheless a sense of tradition which entailed familiarity with an Alexandrian forebear and Clement's onetime disciple, Origen. Evagrius Ponticus pointed out that Athanasius was concerned with how the gnostic faced the snares of the evil one and the requirement of enduring trials nobly.