Trinity
in 1 Clement?
It seems to some that Clement of
Rome presented the Trinity doctrine in 1st century epistle known as
1 Clement. Although the epistle does not present any such theme,
Trinitarians have pointed out a single statement found in 1 Clement 58:2
as a proof that Clement was a Trinitarian.
“For as God who lives, and as the
Lord Jesus Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit (who are the faith and hope of the
elect)” (Lightfoot)
Although this is how it has been
translated (and thus quoted) by Trinitarians, it is not the best translation of
the Greek text, which reads as follows:
ζῇ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς καὶ ζῇ ὁ κύριος Ἰησοῦς
Χριστὸς καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, ἥ τε πίστις καὶ ἡ ἐλπὶς τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν
We can take τε here to mean in
addition to or to mean both. The Loeb Classical Library
translation accords with the meaning in addition to and has the primary translation
of the text as:
“For as God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the Holy Spirit all live—as do the faith and the hope of those who
are chosen”
Yet, even if we took τε to mean both, the Greek
can be translated thus:
“For God lives and the Lord Jesus
Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit, both the faith and hope of the elect”
There is nothing in the text that
can be translated as “who are” (as the Trinitarian translators render it). Notwithstanding,
when anyone takes the final clause of the text as summarizing what came
beforehand, they are forced to define the previous contexts being
summarized. Instead of choosing to take the summary as a reference to three
persons, which the text does not say, I propose that we define the content
being summarized by the factors presented within the summary itself. In
other words, since the summary is “the faith and hope of the elect,” we are
given a guide on how to interpret the preceding content. In this framework, I
suggest the following English translation be adopted.
“For God lives and the Lord Jesus
Christ lives and the Holy Spirit, which amounts to both the final and
hope of the elect”
Now that we have assessed the
text itself, let’s turn our attention toward biblical examples to see how we
might interpret the meaning of the text in accordance with early
Christian beliefs.
What is the faith and hope of the
elect according to the Bible?
“Who by him do believe in God,
that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and
hope might be in God.”
(1
Peter 1:21)
Our faith and hope is specifically
related to Christ’s resurrection that was brought about by God. The
resurrection of Christ is the basis of our own hope for life after we die, and
that hope is associated with the Holy Spirit.
“But if the Spirit of him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the
dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
(Romans 8:11)
Accordingly, the Spirit is deemed
the affirmation of our hope to come.
“After that ye believed, ye were
sealed with the holy spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our
inheritance.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)
So, if we interpret the statement
in 1 Clement 58:2 by the substantiated beliefs of the early Christians, we come
up with the following:
“For God lives [who raised Jesus
from the dead, in whom we thereby have faith] and the Lord Jesus Christ lives
[having been raised from the dead and now embodying our hope of life] and the
Holy Spirit [the evidence of our future life and the means by which that
resurrection will occur], which [in summary] amounts to both the faith and hope
of the elect.”
It is noteworthy that this entire
text we are discussing does not even discuss within the oldest
manuscript containing 1 Clement, Codex Alexandrinus. However, the argument
for its original inclusion in Codex Alexandrinus rests on the fact that a single
leaf (a page) is missing from the 5th century codex where
this passage would have appeared.
Junius (Pat. Young), who examined
the MS, before it was bound into its present form, stated that a whole leaf was
here lost. The next letters that occur are ιπον, which have been supposed to indicate ειπον or ελιπον. Doubtless some passages quoted by the ancients from the
Epistle of Clement, and not now found in it, occurred in the portion which has
thus been lost. (Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 1 (p. 20) footnote 15)
It is important to note that
there are textual variants in the newer manuscripts that demonstrate some
different wordings than what we find in the more ancient Codex Alexandrinus
(which existed over five hundred years before any of the other extant manuscripts
containing 1 Clement). If we had the missing leaf, we might find that the
phrase “and the Holy Spirit” had the missing leaf, we might find that the
phrase “and the Holy Spirit” did not exist in the earliest text. In my opinion,
the text would read more like the New Testament if it is simply said, “For God
lives and the Lord Jesus Christ lives, both the faith and hope of the elect.”
Compare “God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope.” (1 Timothy 1:1.)
As to why the leaf is missing, we can only speculate. Since the extant text
that would have appeared on the missing leaf consists almost entirely of
a lengthy prayer, the leaf may have simply been removed by someone who wanted
to use it as a prayer script. Maybe they pulled it out to copy the prayer and
it somehow never made its way back into the codex. (Jason Kerrigan, Restoring
the Biblical Christ: Is Jesus God? [N.P.: Jason Wayne Kerrigan, 2025], 485-87,
emphasis in original)
