Saturday, December 9, 2017

Clement of Alexandria and Transformative Justification

Clement of Alexandria (150-215), speaking of justification, wrote the following which demonstrates that he held to transmarine, not merely declarative justification:

"Wherefore," he says, "ye are justified in the name of the Lord." Ye are made, so to speak, by Him to be righteous as He is, and are blended as far as possible with the Holy Spirit. For "are not all things lawful to me? yet I will not be brought under the power of any," (1 Cor 6:12) so as to do, or think, or speak aught contrary to the Gospel. "Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats, which God shall destroy," (1 Cor 6:13) --that is, such as think and live as if they were made for eating, and do not eat that they may live as a consequence, and apply to knowledge as the primary end. And does he not say that these are, as it were, the fleshy parts of the holy body? As a body, the Church of the Lord, the spiritual and holy choir, is symbolized.1 Whence those, who are merely called, but do not live in accordance with the word, are the fleshy parts. "Now" this spiritual "body," the holy Church, "is not for fornication." Nor are those things which belong to heathen life to be adopted by apostasy from the Gospel. For he who conducts himself heathenishly in the Church, whether in deed, or word, or even in thought, commits fornication with reference to the Church and his own body. He who in this way "is joined to the harlot," that is, to conduct contrary to the Covenant becomes another "body," not holy, "and one flesh," and has a heathenish life and another hope. "But he that is joined to the Lord in spirit" becomes a spiritual body by a different kind of conjunction. (Stromata, vii.14 [ANF: 2:548-49], emphasis added)

In Clement’s soteriology, justification is transformative, with the telos being that of being made/transformed to be as righteous as Christ is. Christ’s righteousness, of course, is not a declared righteousness merely, but also intrinsic.






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