g it in the scheme of the proof from
prophecy. By elevating the idea of the Logos who is Christ into the
highest principle in the religious explanation of the world and in the
exposition of Christianity, Clement gave to this idea a much more
concrete and copious content than Justin did. Christianity is the
doctrine of the creation, training, and redemption of mankind by the
Logos, whose work culminates in the perfect Gnostics. The philosophy of
the Greeks, in so far as it possessed the Logos, is declared to be a
counterpart of the Old Testament law;[670] and the facts contained in
the Church tradition are either subordinated to the philosophical
dogmatic or receive a new interpretation expressly suited to it. The
idea of the Logos has a content which is on the one hand so wide that he
is found wherever man rises above the level of nature, and on the other
so concrete that an authentic knowledge of him can only be obtained from
historical revelation. The Logos is essentially the rational law of the
world and the teacher; but in Christ he is at the same time officiating
priest, and the blessings he bestows are a series of holy initiations
which alone contain the possibility of man's raising himself to the
divine life.[671] While this is already clear evidence of Clement's
affinity to Gnostic teachers, especially the Valentinians, the same
similarity may also be traced in the whole conception of the task
(Christianity as theology), in the determination of the formal principle
(inclusive of the recourse to esoteric tradition; see above, p. 35
f.),[672] and in the solution of the problems. But Clement's great
superiority to Valentinus is shown not only in his contriving to
preserve in all points his connection with the faith of the main body of
Christendom, but still more in his power of mastering so many problems
by the aid of a single principle, that is, in the art of giving the most
comprehensive presentation with the most insignificant means. Both facts
are indeed most closely connected. The rejection of all conceptions that
could not be verified from Holy Scripture, or at least easily reconciled
with it, as well as his optimism, opposed as this was to Gnostic
pessimism, proved perhaps the most effective means of persuading the
Church to recognise the Christian character of a dogmatic that was at
least half inimical to ecclesiastical Christianity. Through Clement
theology became the crowning stage of piety, the highest phi