The word Father is a commonplace of Clement’s theological vocabulary
and it occurs in a variety of contexts. But what status did he attribute
to the word Father? And why did he think it appropriate to use it of
God? Although he nowhere engages in a self-conscious discussion of what
he thought the word indicated about the nature of God, it nevertheless
is possible to perceive patterns in his usage. These suggest that he
took the word Father as an indication that God was the ultimate source
of existence and that God, through the Logos, exercised providential
care over humankind, a providential care oriented to the adoption of
human beings as children of God. In this paper, I shall look
particularly at how Clement uses the word Father in his discussions of
the divine nature. However often he uses the word and however
theologically important it seemingly was for him, he was also at pains
to stress the ineffability of God. While the word Father plays a
critical role in his arguments for the transcendence of God, he is
careful to avoid any suggestion that the word directly tells us anything
about the being of God, and on one occasion at least, he appears to
have been prepared to subordinate it to others of the traditional
descriptions of God, namely, those of God as God and as good.
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