by In this paper, I discuss Clement’s “gnostic physiology,” that is, his method of nature contemplation as practiced, primarily, by saintly sages, whom he calls “holy gnostics.” His is the first consistent iteration of the ancient discipline of nature contemplation in a Christian sense, specifically, as an interdisciplinary undertaking that—together with combining ethical criteria, pedagogical principles, philosophical practices, scientific insights, and theological perspectives—introduces the holy gnostics as the core element of the method. Accordingly, Clement does not present the method in systematic fashion; instead, he records the experiences of the saints in terms of nature contemplation. At least, this is the main point I am making throughout. I take this opportunity to acknowledge that this presentation summarises the argument of the book I published earlier this year at Routledge, Nature Contemplation in Clement of Alexandria: Elements of the Method.
My treatment of Clement’s approach to nature contemplation draws on the recently arrived science-engaged theology. The latter amounts to a genuinely theological alternative to the usual ways of doing what, for better or worse, is known as science and religion or, sometimes, science and theology, or, again, faith and science. What matters is that the new arrival gave me an opportunity for considering Clement’s nature contemplation from a different angle. I had already experimented with science-engaged theology—in its dimension as a theological hermeneutic of scientific ideas—in a 2023 journal article, “Patristic and Neopatristic Antecedents of Scientifically Engaged Theology,” and a 2024 book, A New Copernican Turn: Contemporary Cosmology, the Self, and Orthodox Science-Engaged Theology, coauthored with Geraint Lewis. It is these earlier undertakings that helped me realise that Clement’s method, interdisciplinary in its scope, can be seen as an exercise in science-engaged theology.
Clement’s method entails a range of layers, from existential to theoretical to practical. He is the first Christian author to have consistently affirmed the requirement of personal transformation through purification and the praxis of virtue as a prerequisite for knowing, that is, knowing God, the universe, and the self (see Stromateis 4.25.161; 5.3.17; 5.12.82; 5.13.83; 6.7.60; 6.18.166; cf. Costache, Humankind and the Cosmos, 117–119.). This existential prerequisite entails a synergetic aspect, the contemplative (or “gnostic”) person reaching the highest, or insightful, knowledge by attaining divine proximity and enlightenment from above. But the existential component is not all there is to Clement’s method. Using Abraham and Moses as scriptural paradigms, he showed that the contemplative person must also be well acquainted with the curricular disciplines, including the available sciences, which equip him or her with appropriate tools for studying reality, from the nearest and most familiar to the farthest reaches of the cosmos (see Stromateis 1.5.32; 6.10.80; 6.11.90; cf. Costache, Humankind and the Cosmos, 120–128). By deploying both existential and intellectual tools, the contemplative person advances in knowledge and understanding, in so doing experiencing ongoing transformations. In this case, different from the scientific culture of today, exploring the cosmos through mathematics and the sciences does not require circumventing either the contemplative person or the insights of theology. And the contemplative person attends to his or her spiritual journey without ignoring the universe and the natural sciences.
Turning to Clement’s method, to comprehend the cosmos, the contemplative person follows three steps, which can be described as analysis/description, interpretation/reflection, and vision (or the “gnostic” grasp of things). The first step amounts to what Laura Rizzerio called una scienza della natura, a genuine natural science (see Clemente di Alessandria e la “φυσιολογία veramente gnostica”, 98, and the chapter on “physiology,” 39–99). It includes direct observations of natural phenomena, theorisation, experimentation, and analysis, and culminates with synthesising information. To give you a sense of Clement’s complex approach during this first step, suffice it to read quickly paragraph where he summarises the needed disciplines. In his words (and my translation),
Integral to science (ἐπιστήμη) are experimentation (ἐμπειρία), [the skill of] discerning the classes of beings (εἴδησις) and grasping what connects them (σύνεσις), together with understanding and insightful knowledge (νόησις καὶ γνῶσις). Concerning εἴδησις, it is the science of what things are, generally, in regard to their class. In turn, ἐμπειρία is the comprehensive science that interests itself in the kind and manner of each being. Furthermore, νόησις is the science of what is accessible to noetic perception. Then, σύνεσις is the science of what is compared, or the secure comparison of, or the capability to compare what is the meaning and the science of one being, each being, and all beings that refer to a single category. Moreover, γνῶσις is the science of existence itself and . . . of what is harmonious in things that become. (Stromateis 2.17.76)
These scientific disciplines are of Platonic origin (cf. Luc Brisson, “Plato’s Natural Philosophy and Metaphysics,” 212–231, 215–216). What matters, here, however, is that by making recourse to these disciplines the contemplative person forms an accurate image of the physical world, by the standards of the time. Without this image, no contemplation of nature is possible; at least, not in a theological sense. Contemplation begins from checked facts, from the “firm and sound perception and comprehension of the truth” (εἰς ὄψιν καὶ κατάληψιν τῆς ἀληθείας βεβαίαν; Prophetic Selections 32.3; cf. Stromateis 2.17.76), not untested ideas and hearsay. And it is noteworthy, within this context, that Clement was a crusader against ignorance and misinformation (Prophetic Selections 5.2). He was so adamant that believers must know and understand the world where they lived, that he even compiled two “natural decalogues,” of the earthly and celestial realms, respectively. In his words, and again in my translation,
Since the written tables [of the ten commandments] are God’s work, one will find out that they signify the natural creation. God’s finger [that wrote the lines] means God’s power that accomplishes the making of heaven and Earth, whose symbols are the two tables. Indeed, God’s writing and the production of the letters written on each table connote the making of the cosmos. Now, as an icon of things celestial, the decalogue includes the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the clouds, the light, the wind, the water, the air, the darkness, and the fire. Such is the natural decalogue (φυσικὴ δεκάλογος) of the sky. As an image of the Earth, [the decalogue] includes humans, domestic animals, reptiles, wild animals, from among aquatic beings fishes and the whale, from among winged beings, likewise, the carnivorous ones and the tame ones that desire plant food, and also fertile and sterile plants. Such is the natural decalogue (φυσικὴ δεκάλογος) of the Earth. (Stromateis 6.16.133)
Clement does not clarify why believers would need to know their home, the world, but his thinking is transparent, it seems to me. People, including Christians, are embodied beings and must acquaint themselves with all things pertaining to God’s creation, whether earthly or heavenly (see Costache, Nature Contemplation in Clement, 133–142).
The second step of the method is about translating the scientifically acquired knowledge of the natural world in familiar categories. This corresponds to what we currently call science-engaged theology. Clement’s audience was ecclesial. He communicated his sense of cosmic order and understanding of natural phenomena through traditional tropes—scriptural and liturgical in nature—such as the psalm, the song, the orchestra, the musical instrument, and the choir (see Exhortation 1.2.4; 1.4.4; 1.6.1; 1.6.5; 1.7.3; cf. Costache, Humankind and the Cosmos, 82–96). For example, as I have shown in my 2021 book, Humankind and the Cosmos: Early Christian Representations, what scientists perceive as natural laws are for Clement reverberations of the foundational, universe-making “pure song” of the Logos. Thus, in Clement’s words (and my translation),
This pure song, the support of the whole and the harmony of all, brought this universe to a harmonious measure by expanding from centres to boundaries and from extremities to things in the middle … according to God’s fatherly intention. (Exhortation 1.5.2)
What can be discerned behind this passage, I showed in Humankind and the Cosmos, is Clement’s depiction of an orchestral, or at least choral, congregation, whose liturgical rhythms mirror the harmony of the cosmos.
Against this backdrop, the second, interpretative step of Clement’s method depends on the communicator’s views, sensitivities, and audience. The theology of the ecclesial space is a language familiar to people of faith. And so, Clement’s interdisciplinary theology integrates the scientific description of reality, including cosmology, into the worldview of believers. Of course, to render scientific information artistically, poetically, or theologically is no science; it is a way of popularising it, of assimilating it culturally and socially (see Costache, Nature Contemplation in Clement, 142–152; Humankind and the Cosmos, 131–133). This, after all, is the primary task of science-engaged theology, at least as I presented it in my earlier attempts at articulating it.
Clement’s third step can be called the vision of the saints or the divine vantage point. It is “gnostic physiology” par excellence, the insightful contemplation of nature. While the first two stages of the method are available to any seekers of the truth and can be learnt—the first one by scientists and science aficionados, the second one by science-engaged theologians and believers—the third one is reserved for the aristocrats of the spirit, the saints. In the latter case, knowing is not the outcome of learning and research; it is a matter of being. Here, quality, or existential intensity, replaces quantity.
The gnostic vision is not the cumulative outcome of the previous two stages; it is an extraordinary—ecstatic and extrasensory—insight facilitated by the method’s critical element, the holy gnostics (see Costache, Nature Contemplation in Clement, 152–157). The contemplative person, divinely transformed, sees things divinely and from above, as it were, but not disconnectedly. The transformed person is in direct touch with reality, with things as they are. This is the kind of vision Columba had when, according to Adomnán of Iona, he perceived the universe as a “single ray of the sun.” In the same vein, Clement pointed out that, together with Christ and led by him, the saints comprehend “what the beings presently are, what the future things will be, and how the things that have been brought into being came to be” (Stromateis 6.9.78; cf. Stromateis 6.7.61). This grasp of reality does not require either mathematics or telescopes or any other intellectual and technological tools—it exceeds computations, models, and rationalisations (see Costache, Humankind and the Cosmos, 133–135). What makes it possible is the person’s transformation in God’s presence. Once it reaches this stage, the contemplative person knows insofar as it is, insofar as it has realised its full potential.
In short, Clement proposes a contemplative method that links the educated, purified, and contemplative self, the sciences, the ecclesial mindset, the spiritual experience, and the world.
Now, what can we learn from this method? Clement proposes a rigorous, structured approach to contemplation that favours comprehensiveness, that embraces the cosmos and whatever it contains, including society and culture, including the scientific culture of any given age. Contrary to the socially exclusivist, science-denying, politically oriented, ecologically dumb, and culturally rigid drive of many contemporary Christian groups, Clement’s approach does not bypasses the world. Instead, it makes possible for the contemplative persons to inhabit and to understand the world in all its complexity, and to make appropriate use of it—even to love it. And it is out of love that Clement goes to such lengths to describe the method and its findings, and to speak so much of the world and its many components, doing so in minute detail, interdisciplinary competence, and with obvious great delight.
The method combines a view of reality “from below,” attained via disciplinary processes, including analysis and description, and “from above,” which is a visionary insight gained in fellowship with Christ and as a divine grasp of things. In both cases, the object of contemplation is the cosmos in its entirety, visible and invisible, and in its temporal unfolding, past, present, and future. The findings of both views are mediated to Christian audiences by familiar analogies in whose light the created universe resembles the ecclesial world. That these audiences are supposed to assimilate the findings of research, such as through the “natural decalogues,” is telling in regard to what Clement believes is the actual task of Christians in the world.
What matters, however, is that Clement’s method proposes a journey of discovery that, together with causing the gradual transformation of the contemplative persons into gnostics, brings with it a deep commitment to the world, one that comes not from interested attachments, but from wonder, knowledge, and understanding. This method, which anticipates science-engaged theology, is the generous alternative of the cultivated anachronism, the rejection of science and knowledge, and the purist spiritualism of many Christians of our day and age.
Acknowledgment Paper presented (remotely) for Ancient Answers to Modern Questions, a conference organised by Alphacrucis University College and Gospel Conversations, 15-16 August 2025.
16 August 2025 © AIOCS
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