Clement of Alexandria
150-215 · Eastern Christianity · Known
Clement was an early Christian Platonist who taught at Alexandria around the year 200 and was remembered as head of the Christian school there. The Gnostics of his day claimed a secret knowledge, gnosis, that saved whoever held it. Clement took the word away from them and handed it to the church: real knowledge is ordinary faith carried all the way to maturity, and the Christian who gets there is the true gnostic.
Signature
The position Clement is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful
- Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Grounded in God / Receptive Intellect
Positions on the 12 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- The Divine
- mildly between Describable and Indescribable (50 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Universals
- leans Realism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Ethics
- leans Means (75 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- leans Pacifism (30 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
8 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Clement refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Moral Realism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason / Grounded in God / Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Speech Act
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Paradox as Error
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?