What does St. Clement of Alexandria say about tradition?

The answer

Eusebius comments, “In the [Stromateis] he refers to himself as having been next in succession to the Apostles … he acknowledges that he was forced by his companions to hand down to posterity in writing traditions which he happened to have heard from the elders [presbyters]of old.”²³⁴ According to St. Clement, the true gnostic (his ideal Christian), “having grown old in the Scriptures, and maintaining apostolic and ecclesiastic orthodoxy in doctrines, lives most correctly in accordance with the Gospel, and discovers the proofs, for which he may have made search (sent forth as he is by the Lord), from the law and the prophets. For the life of the Gnostic, in my view, is nothing but deeds and words corresponding to the tradition of the Lord.”²³⁵ He further says that he who spurns the tradition of the Church deprives himself of being a man of God,²³⁶ and that gnosis (knowledge) is found by few (of us) being handed down from the apostles, through their successors, passed on to us unwritten (agraphōs).²³⁷

Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty