In Terram Visionis (original) (raw)

Abraham, the Contemplation of Nature, and Divine Vision in Clement of Alexandria

Knowing God in Light: Theophany and Language, 2024

Published in Knowing God in Light: Theophany and Language, ed. by Nichifor Tanase, Marius Portaru, and Daniel Lemeni. Forum Orthodoxe Theologie 23. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2024: 127-144. Clement is the first Christian author who discussed seriously matters of knowing reality. For him, perfect knowledge encompasses both God and the universe. Indeed, against the current received view, he did not see natural contemplation only as a steppingstone for the divine vision. While understanding the creation ultimately leads to the creator, knowing the creator is the vantage point from where the “holy gnostics” contemplate the universe. Clement’s gnostics are Christian intellectuals equipped morally and academically. They are able to research the creation with methodological rigour as well as to interpret it theologically. What sharpens the gnostics’s grasp of reality is their spiritual advancement. One understands in proportion to one’s personal becoming. Patriarch Abraham is the perfect illustration of the “holy gnostic.” Clement discerned in him the complex traits of an astronomer and a theologian, which matched to a tee his own epistemological and ethical program. After a summary of Clement’s biography, bibliography, and reception, this chapter discusses his interdisciplinary representation of reality, then the figure of Abraham as an astronomer and a theologian, ending with suggestions regarding Clement’s lessons for the contemporary interactions between scientists and theologians.