ABSTRACT
Clement’s particular construction of the philosophical implications of the idea that God is a lawgiver also extends to his discussions of the nature of human autonomy. In illuminating how his theory of providence shapes these considerations, I aim to argue that his views on what autonomy requires are, in their ancient context, more idiosyncratic than has sometimes been taken to be the case by modern scholars. In doing so, I re-examine the connotations associated with the concept of “determinism” in antiquity. Numerous studies in late antique scholarship have revolved around the question of how “determinism” shaped the intellectual landscape in which ancient Christian authors wrote. In the present chapter, I hope to demonstrate that these studies have sometimes distorted Clement’s real concerns in his engagement with ancient debates about self-determination. I will suggest here that while there is good reason to question whether Clement was concerned with “determinism” as such, in the context of his intra-Christian polemic he argues for a more expanded sense of the degree to which human beings are responsible for their characters than we arguably see in other discussions from antiquity.
