‘The king, who is Christ, watches our laughter from above’. No one enjoyed theology more than Clement, yet his skilful synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem has furrowed many brows. It has often been my experience that thinkers who appear to be simple prove to be complex, while those who appear complex turn out to have clear concepts. Clement belongs to the second category.

From Irenaeus to Tertullian, early Christian theology has a common structure – that of the preaching or kerygma of the earliest churches – and a common source – the scriptures which became the Christian bible. Justin had a similar structure but a limited set of scriptures, drawing on the Sayings of Jesus and Old Testament writings as his source. Fortunately, Irenaeus has left us a statement of the kerygma, the logic of which dominates his own thought and that of Clement.

Clement has been approached in three ways which are found elsewhere in the history of ideas. The retrospective method starts from Nicaea and Chalcedon and asks what he contributed to their later solutions. The doxographical method collects verbal similarities and parallels between Clement and other ancient writers. The analytic or problematic method asks what problems Clement was trying to solve and what new moves he made towards this end, including how he used the doxographical material. The retrospective method has never found much in Clement for the development of doctrine. In contrast, the doxographical method has been unendingly fruitful.