ABSTRACT
Clement of Alexandria, writing early in the third century, was a Christian polymath, probably a convert, who found materials for the construction of a more intellectual (“gnostic”) form of theology in all three branches of Greek philosophy – ethics, physics and dialectic. The object of his principal work, the Stromateis, was to defend the use of philosophy against the hostility of fellow Christians; at the same time, his own worldview is grounded in an understanding of the “salvific economy” of the Logos for which he found no clear warrant in any of the Greek schools.
