I finally got around to reading the Epistle of 1st Clement. Written by Clement of Rome (or, as bishop of Rome, Pope Clement I if you’re Catholic), 1st Clement represents one of the earliest if not the earliest authentic Christian document after the apostles.
There has been a lot of back-and-forth about the nature of the Great Apostasy in Latter-day Saint circles. As far as what we canonically know from D&C in the core of our concentric circles of authoritativeness, God told Joseph Smith that all the other sects were “wrong” and doctrinally incorrect. We also know, per John the Baptist, that priesthood authority was “taken…from the earth.” However, the details beyond that are fuzzy. For example, we don’t know when it was taken from the earth. Commentary has traditionally assumed that it was sunsetted with the death of the apostles but we don’t know for sure.
Clement is a first-hand account of a good, devout man trying to make things work in the immediate aftermath of the apostles. For the first time the Christian community had to figure out how to run a church without apostles ordained by Christ. (Early Church historians suggest that Clement himself knew the apostles, but these claims were all documented 100-200 years after Clement if I’m not mistaken, so I’m putting that in the maybe/maybe not category). Of course, as seen from the New Testament epistles, keeping everybody on the same page was no small task even when the apostles were alive.
I read a 1912 translation.. A few thoughts:
- We get little hints of the early post-apostolic Church structure from his letter. (Apparently the Didache, the other early post-apostle document that I haven’t read yet, also has some details). Bishops are the primary loci of authority. This is obvious to anybody that knows the history of the early Church, but the primary paragraph establishing this is interesting in various ways.
Our Apostles also knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the title of bishop. For this cause, therefore, since they had received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have been already mentioned, and afterwards added the codicil that if they should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their ministry. We consider therefore that it is not just to remove from their ministry those who were appointed by them, or later on by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and have ministered to the flock of Christ without blame, humbly, peaceably, and disinterestedly, and for many years have received a universally favourable testimony.
First, it is intriguing to me that even at this early date, 200 years before the Church became an extension of the state, when Christians were sporadically discriminated against and the Church was far from being a route to imperial glory and power, there were political machinations for the title of bishop over My reading of this is that Clement believed that the original apostles set up some kind of succession system to replace deceased bishops (”eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church,”) but the exact mechanism or procedure isn’t clearly spelled out, and from a Latter-day Saint perspective it seems like the crux of the matter is in the “and afterwards added the codicil that if they should fall asleep…” and “or later on by other eminent men,” whereas if the traditional Latter-day Saint take on the Great Apostasy–that the authority was lost once the apostles died–is correct, this belief about some kind of apostolic codicil is in error, and there was no mechanism provided for the perpetuation of bishops (in our parlance stake presidents more or less) once the apostles were gone. Depending on your religious background, either of these are reasonable beliefs–that there was some kind of succession mechanism that was authorized by the apostles, or that in the same way that pseudepigrapha was often written in the name of the apostles to give it authority, so too by the time of Clement there had organically arisen some kind of succession process that was back-dated to the apostles to give it more authority.
- This verse, a version of the one in Ezekiel, was moving:
Repent, O house of Israel, from your iniquity. Say to the sons of my people, If your sins reach from the earth to Heaven, and if they be redder than scarlet, and blacker than sack cloth, and ye turn to me with all your hearts and say Father, I will listen to you as a holy people.
The footnote states that “the origin of this quotation is obscure: possibly Clement’s text of Ezekiel was different from ours and really contained it.”
- Clement repeats a sort of fun/strange faith promoting rumor.
Let us consider the strange sign which takes place in the East, that is in the districts near Arabia.
There is a bird which is called the Phoenix, This is the only one of its kind, and lives 500 years; and when the time of its dissolution in death is at hand, it makes itself a sepulcher of frankincense and myrrh and other spices, and when the time is fulfilled it enters into it and dies.
Now, from the corruption of its flesh there springs a worm, which is nourished by the juices of the dead bird, and puts forth wings. Then, when it has become strong, it takes up that sepulcher, in which are the bones of its predecessor, and carries them from the country of Arabia as far as Egypt until it reaches the city called Heliopolis,
And in the daylight in the sight of all it flies to the altar of the Sun, places them there, and then starts back to its former home.
Then the priests inspect the registers of dates, and they find that it has come at the fulfillment of the 500th year.
Do we then consider it a great and wonderful thing that the creator of the universe will bring about the resurrection of those who served him in holiness, in the confidence of a good faith, when he shows us the greatness of his promise even through a bird?
- I might be missing something in the translation, but throughout the epistle he refers to concepts such as the temple, sacrifices, and Hebrew offices such as priests, high priests, and levites, almost as living offices. Again, I’m sure experts in the Clement-era church have some thoughts on this, but at least from my superficial, amateur reading it looks like there are vestiges of temple Judaism still in the Christian church at this point, not just as a precursor to something that lays the groundwork for Christ.
- By this point apparently sermons started taking the form we are familiar with today with a bevy of scriptural quotations throughout. Of course the other epistles and the New and Old Testaments themselves quote scripture, but more often than not they just preach as if the words themselves are scripture. Clement at times sounds like a modern-day preacher that has to rely on authoritative scriptural citations to at least provide the base for the sermon.
- There is also a backhanded feminist paragraph.
Many women have received power through the grace of God and have performed many deeds of manly valour. The blessed Judith, when her city was besieged, asked the elders to suffer her to go out into the camp of the strangers. So she gave herself up to danger, and went forth for love of her country and her people in their siege, and the Lord delivered over Holofernes by the hand of a woman.Not less did Esther also, who was perfect in faith, deliver herself to danger, that she might rescue the nation of Israel from the destruction that awaited it; for with fasting and humiliation she besought the all-seeing Master of the Ages, and he saw the meekness of her soul, and rescued the people for whose sake she had faced peril.
I don’t know if use of “manly” as a sort of back-handed irony when discussing women is in the original Greek, but if so it calls to mind Moshe Dayan’s quip that Golda Meier was the only man in the Israeli cabinet, or Queen Elizabeth I’s rally-the-troops cry that “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”
- Another inspiring quote about the distinction between being the honors of men in the Church and sincere spirituality (and how they aren’t synonymous): “for it is better for you to be found small but honourable in the flock of Christ, than to be pre eminent in repute but to be cast out from his hope.”