Clement’s justification
Those were days of lively debate, and the defenders of Christian education more than once contended for its principles. “‘Thus much,’ observes Clement, ‘I would say to those who are so fond of complaining: if the philosophy is unprofitable, still the study of it is profitable, if any good is to be derived from thoroughly demonstrating that it is an unprofitable thing.’” This argument is indulged in at the present time by those who espouse the cause of modern education, and wish to defend the study of the classics and the doctrine of evolution.
The words of Clement in his arguments sound doubly striking, when we remember that to-day the feeling that the education of the senses will ultimately tend to the grasping of eternal truth by faith is just as firmly held as then, notwithstanding the fact that a careful investigation shows that this can never be the case, and that the only avenue to truth is through faith, first, last, and all the time. He says: “Perhaps the latter [philosophy] was given to the Greeks in a special sense, as preliminary to our Lord calling the Gentiles, since it educated them as the law did the Jews, for Christianity; and philosophy was a preparatory step for those who were to be conducted through Christ to perfection.”[73]
Clement lost his faith
Accordingly, we find Clement perpetually verging toward the gnostic or platonic position. “With an idea of faith which flowed from the very essence of Christianity, there was associated in his mind the still lingering notion, derived from the Platonic philosophy, of an opposition between a religion of cultivated minds, and arrived at by the medium of science, and a religion of the many, who were shackled by the senses and entangled in mere opinion.”[74]
Birth of the papacy
Here is distinctly seen the beginnings of that system of education which elevates the few and holds the masses in subjection. Herein lies the wellspring of a monarchical government and a papal hierarchy. It was the propagation of the system of education introduced into the Alexandrian school by Clement that formed the papacy. We are not surprised to read in history of the contest between the churches of Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome. Rome as arbiter was called to decide between the Greek Catholics and the Alexandrians; and from the downfall of both her rivals she gained the pontifical throne; but it was only to crown the educational ideas of the Alexandrian school, and sway the world by the enforcement of the principles of that system of instruction which substitutes scientific research for faith.
God had once called his people out of Egypt; but the church, forsaking the purity of the gospel, returned thither for its education. The Reformation was its second call, and to-day the third call is sounding. Having followed with some care the ideas first introduced by Clement, and finding that the result of the position taken by this teacher was that faith was destroyed and scientific reason substituted, we turn to the further development of this educational idea as advocated by one of Clement’s most noted pupils and his successor in the Alexandrian school. I refer to Origen.
Origen