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9 - Clement’s Theology of Hiddenness and the Logic of Christian Miscellanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2020

J. M. F. Heath
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Clement’s motif of concealment has often led scholars to describe him as an ‘esoteric author,’ who chose the miscellany genre in order to hide some things from some people, in imitation of scriptural concealment by aenigma. This chapter begins to respond by arguing that Clement’s esoteric tropes draw attention to the theme of hiddenness, which is a widespread imagistic discourse in his work. Five major modes of hiddenness are discerned in Clement’s theology: theological, anthropological, exegetical, social and cosmic; in practice, all of these are grounded in the hiddenness of God. God is transcendent, but is revealed in hidden ways in persons, texts, and in the world, for those who seclude themselves from the social gaze and direct their contemplation to God through Christ. Clement invites all people to participate in the divine economy of revelation with the selective discernment that is made possible by a gnostic relationship to the hidden God. Miscellanism emerges as the necessary and normative mode of gnostic life.

Type
Chapter
Information
Clement of Alexandria and the Shaping of Christian Literary Practice
Miscellany and the Transformation of Greco-Roman Writing
, pp. 239 - 270
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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