What is unity of the Church according to St. Clement?
Q578 · The Person of the Church
It is a natural feature that makes the Church distinct from the heretical groups that have the spirit of division within.1161 In this, the Church resembles God who is one. He says, “For the God of both [genders] is one, the master of both is also one, one church … their food is common.”1162
“Therefore, in substance and idea, in origin, in pre-eminence, we say that the ancient and Catholic Church is one, collecting as it does into the unity of the one faith the righteous according to God’s will … But the pre-eminence of the Church, as the principle of union, is, in its oneness, in this surpassing all things else, and having nothing like or equal to itself. But of this afterwards.”1163
The secret of this unity is her oneness of faith: “The Catholic Church is one, collecting as it does into the unity of the one faith — which results from the peculiar Testaments, or rather the one Testament in different times by the will of the one God, through one Lord — those already ordained, whom God predestinated, knowing before the foundation of the world that they would be righteous.”1164 In this, St. Clement’s aim might have been to oppose the heresies such as Marcionism which believed in dualism.
The fruit of such oneness is for the Church to worship in one spirit: “The Church is the assembly of those who worship together in unity and offer prayers in harmony as with one voice.”1165
Thus, the symphony of true love is offered, in which Christ takes pleasure. Through this symphony, the Father sees the faithful as true children, as St. Clement says: “The union of many in one, issuing in the production of divine harmony out of a medley of sounds and division, becomes one symphony following one choir-leader and teacher, the Word, reaching and resting in the same truth, and crying Abba, Father. This, the true utterance of His children, God accepts with gracious welcome — the first-fruits He receives from them.”1166
1160 Eric G. Jay, The Church: Its changing image through twenty centuries, Volume 1 (London: SPCK, 1977): p. 60.
1161 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 7.17 (ANF 2:555).
1162 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor or Christ the Educator (Paedagogus) 1.4 (ANF 2:211).
1163 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 7.17 (ANF 2:555).
1164 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 7.17 (ANF 2:555).
1165 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 7.6 (ANF 2:532).
1166 St. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen 9 (ANF 2:197).