Beggars All: Reformation And Apologetics

I’ve been doing some research on Clement of Alexandria, and I wanted to point out a link hosted by the Canadian Coptic Center:

The Deans of the School of Alexandria - St. Clement by Fr. Tadros Y Malaty

Some interesting quotes:

The Final Appeal is Scripture (Tadros Y Malaty):
"Although many scholars see that Clement is directly or indirectly, the cause of Hellenism in Christianity, they state that he is not another Minucius Felix or Boethius, whose writings give more evidence of pagan rather than Christian humanism. Commentators may call him Platonist or Neo-Platonic, Stoic or Aristotelian, but they must also call him an exegete of the Scriptures. Mondésert does not hesitate to say that his style is above all else Scriptural. There are copious quotations from Old and New Testaments, constant allusions and turns of thought too numerous to be noted. And for Clement, Scripture is the final appeal; when he says, as he often does: graphetai ('it is written'), he is invoking an authority from which he feels there is no appeal. The Alexandrian school may have stressed Christian philosophy, but it is a philosophy drawn from the pages of the Scriptures."

“St. Clement states that the Holy Scripture is the voice of God who works for man's goodness. It also, as interpreted by the Church, is the source of Christian teaching. St. Clement loved the Holy Scriptures, especially the book of Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the sermon on the mount, Gospel of St. John, etc.”

Clement of Alexandria on interpretation

"I could adduce for you a myriad of Scriptures, of which not one letter shall pass away without being fulfilled; for the Mouth of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, has spoken these things.”

Clement of Alexandria on the analogy of faith (Scripture interprets Scripture):

"And if those also who follow heresies venture to avail themselves of the prophetic Scriptures, in the first place they will not make use of all the Scriptures, and then they will not quote them entire, nor as the body and texture of prophecy prescribe. But selecting ambiguous expressions, they wrest them to their own opinions, gathering a few expressions here and there, not looking to the sense, but making use in the mere words. For in almost all the quotations they make, you will find that they attend to the names alone while they alter the meanings, neither knowing as they affirm, nor using the quotations they adduce, according to their true nature. But the truth is not found by changing the meanings, for so people subvert all true teaching, but in the consideration of what perfectly belongs to and becomes the Sovereign God, and establishing each one of the points demonstrated in the Scriptures again from similar Scriptures. Neither then do they want to turn to the truth being ashamed to abandon the claims of self-love; nor are they able to manage their opinions by doing violence to the Scriptures."