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The doctrine of deification as the Byzantine Church knew it was in its origins essentially an Alexandrian theologoumenon. Justin and Irenaeus may have laid the foundations, but the devising of a technical vocabulary, the elaboration of a philosophical framework, the borrowing of motifs from Hellenistic and Enochic Judaism, the enlargement of biblical support through the allegorical exegesis of Scripture, and the development of a correlative christology all took place in Alexandria, shaped by the unique character of Alexandrian Christianity.

The key figures are Clement and Origen. Clement was the innovator, Origen the brilliant teacher and biblical scholar who, building on Clement, established deification as one of the Church’s most striking metaphors of salvation. Most writers who mention deification as the goal of the Christian life were influenced by them. But before we consider their intellectual achievements, we must look at the Christian community to which they belonged.

1. Alexandrian Christianity

The Church in Egypt has left no archaeological evidence dating from before the fourth century to help us trace its rise and development.¹ Written sources are also few. Eusebius offers no information for the period before the last decade of the second century beyond a bare list of bishops with an indica-tion of their date.² It is only with Bishop Demetrius (189–232), in whose

1 The origins and early development of the Egyptian Church have been studied by Bell (1953: 78–105);

Roberts (1979); Pearson (1986 and 1990: 194–213); Bagnall (1993: 278–89). See now also Jakab (2001).

2 Eusebius’ list in his Ecclesiastical History of ten names up to Demetrius, succeeding each other at approximately ten-year intervals, has all the appearance of being fictitious. The names, which are distrib-uted throughout the narrative, are: Annianus (HE2. 24), Abilius (3. 21), Cerdo (3. 21), Primus (4. 1), Justus (4. 4), Eumenes (4. 5), Marcus (4. 11. 6), Celadion (4. 11. 6), Agrippinus (4. 20) and Julian (5. 9).

episcopate Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen were active, that Eusebius has reliable material to draw on.

The near-invisibility of the early Egyptian Church may be explained by the vicissitudes of the once large Jewish community that in the earliest years must have formed the Church’s matrix. The Jewish revolt of 115–117 resulted in the destruction of Jewish life and property on such a scale that Egyptian Jewry never fully recovered. The Church in this period was probably insufficiently differentiated from Judaism not to be affected by its eclipse (Roberts 1979: 55–8). At any rate, it lost the matrix that would have enabled it to spread rapidly in the nome capitals (Bagnall 1993: 278). This is a more plausible explanation of the lack of early evidence than Bauer’s theory that Christianity’s original form in Egypt was what was later judged to be heretical, with the result that its history was suppressed out of embarrass-ment once ecclesiastical Christianity had established itself in the course of the third century (Bauer 1934, trans. 1971; cf. Roberts 1979: 49–54; Pearson 1986 and 1990: 196–8; Jakab 2001: 58–61).

The Church’s recovery between 117 and 200 was slow. Although its original foundation had probably been from Palestine, in the second phase of its development there is evidence of help from the West. For example, the parish organization that was now established at Alexandria resembles the Roman. Moreover, second-century fragments of the Shepherd of Hermas and the Adversus Haereses of Irenaeus discovered in the Fayyum point to close contacts with the West at precisely this period (Roberts 1979: 12, 23, 53, 59).

By the end of the second century the Alexandrian Church had recovered its strength and was already exhibiting two of its characteristic features:

centralized episcopal government and a Platonizing intellectualist tradition.

In the development of the episcopacy, Bishop Demetrius is a key figure. He has been described as ‘clearly the first “monarchical bishop” in Alexandria’ (Pearson 1990: 209), or even ‘the Second Founder of the Church in Alexandria’ (Telfer 1952: 2). Later tradition reports that at the start of his episcopate he was the only bishop in Egypt. By his death he had appointed three suffragans. His successor, Heraclas, consecrated a further twenty (Pearson 1990: 211 no. 64). These suffragans enhanced the power of the bishops of Alexandria. In the neighbouring regions of Syria and Asia Minor, the provincial metropolises became in the third century the seats of metropolitan bishops enjoying considerable independence. In Egypt, by contrast, the only metropolis (except in Libya) was Alexandria. The nome capitals lacked autonomy, and therefore, when Christian communities came to be established in them, so did their bishops. All power, both civil and ecclesiastical, resided in the city of Alexandria.

The Platonizing intellectualist tradition of the Alexandrian Church was the product of its interaction with its cultural environment. Second-century Alexandria was one of the foremost intellectual centres of the Roman world.

The library of the Museum had been open to the public since the time of Augustus. There was also the Serapeum, with its significant ‘daughter library’, and many schools, both public and private, which attracted students from all over the Mediterranean. The excavations which have been conducted in the Alexandrian quarter of Kôm el-Dikka have revealed an impressive series of lecture-halls, each with a seating capacity of sixty to eighty students (Haas 1997: 155, 191–3). These halls date from the reconstruction of the quarter in the early fourth century, but earlier buildings were probably similar. Alexan-dria was famous for the teaching of medicine, mathematics, and rhetoric, but the crowning subject was philosophy. Galen, for example, who came in the 150s to study medicine, claims that any doctor worthy of the name must also be a philosopher (Med. Phil. 3. 60). No merely vocational training should be allowed to take precedence over the acquisition of wisdom. For wisdom leads to the attaining of perfection, which is to cease to be human (with all the failings that being human entails) and become like God (Anim.

Pass.3. 11).

The search for God began with an inward journey. Ever since Plato,

‘Know thyself’ had been the starting-point of wisdom (cf. Charm. 164d;

Ep. 7. 341–2). To embark upon a programme of spiritual development, however, one did not need to belong to the educated elite. Any ‘literate but not especially learned’ person who wanted to investigate ‘his actual or potential relationship with God’ (Fowden 1993: xxi) could always find a suitable teacher. Before Clement began to receive students, the ecclesiastic-ally minded Christian seeker might have attended the school of Pantaenus, or, if he was attracted by a more esoteric brand of Christianity, the rival school of Basilides’ son, Isidore. His non-Christian counterpart had access to a broad range of schools and study circles dedicated to the purification and perfection of the soul and its ascent to God. The teachers of these didaskaleia included Hermetists, Gnostics, and fringe members of the philo-sophical establishment such as the ex-Christian (according to Porphyry) Ammonius Saccas. Ammonius is described by Dillon as ‘a charismatic purveyor of Numenian Neopythagoreanism’ whom one ‘did not come upon . . . in the normal academic round, but had to be put on to . . ., almost initiated into his circle’ (1996: 381, 383). This did not prevent his attracting to his lecture hall first-rate minds such as Plotinus and Origen. In Alexandria the pursuit of wisdom could transcend sectarian boundaries.

The popular literature that circulated among Alexandrian Christians in the pre-Constantinian era reflected these interests. It has long been known that apocryphal gospels and apocalypses were widely read (Gamble 1995: 236).

The discovery in 1945, however, of the Nag Hammadi texts, a collection of spiritual writings hidden in the late fourth or early fifth century in response to the changed cultural conditions of the times, has given us a more precise appreciation of the yearning of at least one group of educated Christians for

the transcendent.³ The sixty-two tractates of the cache, distributed among thirteen codices, comprise a wide variety of genres. There is, for example, a passage from Plato (Republic588a–589b), a Hermetic text (Asclepius 21–9), a collection of Neopythagorean maxims (The Sentences of Sextus), and an example of Christian wisdom literature (The Teachings of Silvanus), besides a number of Gnostic works of apocalyptic ascent (such as Marsanes, Allogenes, and Zostrianos) and other writings of a more wildly esoteric nature. The Teach-ings of Silvanus and the apocalyptic tractates are of particular interest to us, for in these works Jewish elements blend with popular Platonism to produce a powerful teaching centred on the notion of self-transcendence.

The earliest is probably The Teachings of Silvanus. A master urges his disciple to discover the divine element within himself: ‘From now on, then, my son, return to your divine nature’ (NHLvii. 4. 90). ‘Do not bring grief or trouble to the divine which is within you’ (NHLvii. 4. 92). The mind is in the image of God. To live by the mind is to become assimilated to the angelic life.

Indeed, divine reason raises man above the angels (NHLvii. 4. 116). Christ is essential to this process because one cannot know God except through Jesus Christ, who has the Father’s image (NHL vii. 4. 100). In a passage strongly reminiscent of Clement, Silvanus says that through Christ the rational man makes himself like God, even while still living on earth (NHL vii. 4. 108; cf. Strom. 7. 101. 4). For Christ ‘who has exalted man became like God, not in order that he might bring God down to man, but than man might become like God’ (NHLvii. 4. 111).

The stories of Gnostic heavenly ascent also assume a divine kernel in the human make-up, at least of the elect. ‘Awaken your divine part to God,’ says Zostrianos (NHL viii. 1. 130), for the ascent is primarily inward. ‘Understand yourself as you really are,’ says Allogenes (NHL xi. 3.

59). ‘Withdraw to reality and you will find it standing at rest and still’

(ibid.). Zostrianos, in his vision, rises by a series of purificatory baptisms through successive grades of angelic being (NHL viii. 1. 6) until his soul is eventually reintegrated with the divine (NHL viii. 1. 53), anticipating thus in the inward journey the soul’s ascent to the heavenly world after death.

These works were known and studied in serious intellectual circles. Ploti-nus encountered them in Rome in the mid-third century in the possession of Christians (Porphyry, V. Plot.16), and no doubt they also circulated in Alex-andria. When Clement arrived there in about 180, drawn by the reputation for learning of its Christian teachers, particularly Pantaenus, he would have been aware of schools claiming a superior, arcane wisdom. The most important of these had been founded by Valentinus and Basilides in the generation before Clement. Valentinus had transferred his establishment to

3 For a discussion of the possible identity of this group see Rousseau 1999: 26–8.

Rome in about 136. Basilides had died soon afterwards. But they left behind them disciples who continued their traditions. One of these was Basilides’

son, Isidore, who succeeded his father as head of his school.

2. The School of Basilides

Basilides is usually considered a Gnostic teacher in the opposite camp to Pantaenus and Clement. Too strong a contrast, however, is misleading.

Basilides’ intellectual background, like that of Clement, was the standard mix of Stoic ethics and Pythagorean theology that used to be labelled

‘eclecticism’ but is now regarded as characteristic of the Platonist philosophy of the Hellenistic age (Dillon and Long 1988: 1–13). Against this back-ground Basilides expounded a sophisticated version of Christianity, drawing on an esoteric tradition that he claimed had come down through Matthias, which sought to satisfy the religious and intellectual concerns of his Alexandrian audience. None of his writings has survived, but from the accounts given by Irenaeus and Hippolytus and the fragments preserved by Clement and Origen the main lines of his approach may be established.⁴

Basilides’ anthropology was correlative to a cosmology in which all that is descends from a supreme source and returns to it. There is a tripartite division in the original mixture of all the elements (the panspermia), which Hippolytus, in his account of Basilides’ system, describes as fine particles, particles needing purification, and dense particles (Ref. 7. 22; Osborne 1987:

289). The finest particles quickly ascend and return to their source. This is thefirst sonship. The second sonship ascends once it has been equipped with a wing provided by the Holy Spirit. The third sonship is left behind to correct and perfect the souls below (Ref.7. 25; Osborne 1987: 297–9). There is thus a movement from initial confusion first towards segregation and then towards restoration. Jesus is the first-fruit of the segregation. The pneumatikoi, revealed by the Gospel as the children of God, follow Jesus and, after purification, ascend and become like the most fine-particled. They leave their psychic selves behind and put on a new individual soul. For the elect are transcendent by nature. Among the rest, ignorance prevails to prevent the lower souls from longing for what they cannot have, ‘like fish yearning to graze with the sheep on the mountains’ (Ref. 7. 27; Osborne 1987: 305).

Everything finds its proper place in the end, the purified elements above, and the denser mass below.

4 Irenaeus, AH 1. 24; Hippolytus, Ref. 7. 14–28, Greek text with English trans. conveniently in Osborne 1987: 274–309. The fragments (seven from Clement and one from Origen) are collected in Layton 1987: 427–44. Hippolytus’ account has been thought to sit awkwardly with that of Irenaeus and the fragments from Clement, but Obsorne (1987: 52–67) has demonstrated that it is based on a close reading of Basilides. Cf. Grant (1979), who defends the originality of Irenaeus’ account.

Clement studied Basilides’ and his son Isidore’s writings carefully.⁵ What he objected to was not Basilides’ speculative cosmology but the deterministic character of his scheme of salvation and the implied ethical consequences.

If the elect are transcendent by nature, the commandments are rendered redundant and moral effort becomes superfluous (Strom. 4. 165. 3; 5. 3. 3).

Basilides’ scheme, however, offered a neat solution to the problem of innocent suffering. By means of successive reincarnations the souls of the elect might pass through several life cycles before being purified. Their suffering in this life balances sins committed in a previous one. As for the tribulations of the martyrs, Basilides thought the suffering of noble souls was a consequence of the sinfulness of being human; martyrs were not punished for sins committed, which was why they sometimes seemed not to feel any pain at all. Clement refutes this at some length on the grounds that it denies divine providence. Indeed, it leads to the logical absurdity that if martyrdom is regarded as punishment, even in attenuated form, then faith and doctrine co-operate in punishment and the devil is deified (Strom. 4.

81–3).

3. The School of Pantaenus

It was therefore not the school founded by Basilides that attracted Clement but the lecture hall of the former Stoic (or Pythagorean), Pantaenus.⁶ In his apologia at the beginning of the Stromateis Clement lists his teachers without naming them (Strom.1. 1. 11). The last and best was his Alexandrian mentor,

‘the true Sicilian bee’, who inspired all who heard him with a thirst for gnosis.

It is Eusebius who gives us Pantaenus’ name and adds the further informa-tion that he directed the educainforma-tion of the faithful at Alexandria at ‘a school of sacred learning’ that had existed ‘from ancient custom’ and was still extant in Eusebius’ own time (HE5. 10). This has often been thought to refer to the Alexandrian ‘Catechetical School’ that is described in greater detail by the fifth-century historian Philip of Side.⁷ Most probably, however, the schools of Pantaenus, Clement, and even Origen were never more than private didaskaleia, even though they seem to have worked closely with the bishop.

Eusebius appears to have run them together and institutionalized them under episcopal control, projecting into earlier times, perhaps, the more formal arrangements that existed in his own day. The Catechetical School proper dates from the time when Bishop Demetrius asked Origen, who was

5 Basilides is quoted by Clement at Strom.4. 81. 2–4. 83. 2; 4. 86. 1; 4. 153. 3; 4. 162. 1; 4. 165. 3; 5. 3. 2–3;

5. 74. 3; Isidore at Strom. 2. 20. 113; 2. 114. 1; 3. 1. 2; 6. 6. 53. On Isidore see Christou 1978a: 152.

6 On Pantaenus see most recently Jakab 2001: 107–15.

7 Fragment published by Dodwell 1689: 488; reproduced in Christou 1978a: 757–8. On Philip see ODCC³, s.v. Philip Sidetes.

already running his own didaskaleion, to undertake the teaching of catechu-mens (Eusebius, HE6. 3. 3). Later Origen appointed a deputy, Heraclas, to teach these beginners while he devoted himself to directing more advanced studies. It is doubtful whether Origen’s school of higher learning survived his transfer to Caesarea. The Catechetical School, however, appears to have been maintained under successive bishops until the end of the fourth century, when it was probably closed in the wake of the Origenist crisis soon after the death of its last known head, Didymus the Blind.⁸

4. Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria (c.150 to c.215) was the first ecclesiastical writer to apply the technical terms of deification to the Christian life. Some of his expressions are startling to Western ears (Tollinton 1914: ii. 91–2; Dodds 1965: 74). According to Clement, the Christian is deified by a heavenly teach-ing (Prot.11. 114. 4); when fully perfected after the likeness of his teacher, he

‘becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh’ (ν σαρκ περιπολν θε) (Strom. 7. 101. 4); and at the end of his life he is enthroned ‘with the other gods’ in the heavenly places. Tollinton felt that ‘some reduction in our conception of the godhead is certainly involved in such phraseology’, but suggests that with regard to the spirit’s progress in the higher life ‘we should rather envy [Clement’s] optimism than criticise his terms’ (1914: ii. 92).

Others have not been so generous. Benjamin Drewery, Clement’s fiercest critic, dismisses with contempt his ‘absurd picture of the perfect Christian as

ν σαρκ περιπολν θε’ (1975: 61).

Such polemical remarks at least highlight one of the central problems.

Clement teaches a supremely transcendent God, in whom participation is not a ‘natural relation, as the founders of the heresies declare’ (Strom.2. 16.

73), yet his doctrine of man has divinity as its telos. How is his apophatic theology to be reconciled with such an optimistic anthropology?⁹ Alexandri-ans were to struggle with this question until Cyril’s time. A satisfactory solution requires a christology which does justice to both the human and the divine in Christ. For a transcendent God can only be approached by human beings in an intimate way if he has first united himself to human nature in the person of Christ. But it was not until the Arian controversy that the problem was formulated in those terms. Clement’s task was to determine how a human being could become sufficiently like a God who was beyond all

8 On the Catechetical School as a late development see Bardy 1937 and 1942. This view is opposed by Méhat (1966: 62–70), who argues that Pantaenus and Clement must have undertaken their teaching with the encouragement of the bishop. Runia (1993: 133 n. 3) regards Méhat’s refutation as convincing. But Jakab (2001: 91–106) sides with Bardy. Cf. also Le Boulluec 1987.

9 This point is well brought out by Osborn 1981: 116–18.

human knowledge and virtue to enjoy a community of being with him. His attempt to harmonize two approaches, one philosophical, linking Genesis 1:

26 with Theaetetus 176b in the Philonic manner, the other ecclesiastical, centred on the idea of participatory union with Christ in the Pauline and Irenaean manner, may lack final coherence, but at least it set the agenda for his successors.

(a) Vocabulary

Clement’s originality is strikingly evident in his vocabulary. He is the first ecclesiastical writer to speak of the θεοποιου´µενοι, if not of θεοποησι––

the noun does not appear until the fourth century. His favourite word for pagan deification is κθεια´ζω,¹⁰ which usually means ‘to treat as divine’ or ‘to ascribe divinity to’ without any implication of personal commitment. Next

the noun does not appear until the fourth century. His favourite word for pagan deification is κθεια´ζω,¹⁰ which usually means ‘to treat as divine’ or ‘to ascribe divinity to’ without any implication of personal commitment. Next