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Clement of Alexandria and the Shaping of Christian Literary Practice The Making of a Christian Miscellanist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2020
Clement’s theme of hiddenness is connected with mystery imagery, which was a widespread topos for imagining many kinds of ‘initiation’, not only in religion and philosophy but also in more text-based arts of reading, writing and rhetoric. Clement worked creatively with this imagery to compose a mystagogical curriculum in hidden listening, where miscellanism became important at the higher stages. He shapes his three works sequentially as a programme that trains Christians to listen in a hidden way, and ultimately equips them to miscellanise better than any heretics. In the Stromateis, he engages in contemporary controversies that have sparked debate about how to miscellanise well. For Clement, miscellanism will ultimately be judged by sensitivity to the nous or telos of Scripture; this depends on a person's doctrine of God, but also on her own ethical behaviour, which conditions her possibility of knowing God and on her prayerfulness and application, for only in love and gratitude towards the Creator and in the labour of gathering passages from Scripture, is it possible truly to miscellanise well, learning the mysteries from God himself.
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