Concord and Humility

The first two-thirds of 1 Clement (chs. 1–39) form a sustained plea for concord (homonoia) against sedition (stasis), built in the manner of Greco-Roman oratory “on concord” but filled with biblical content. Clement traces the Corinthian schism to jealousy and envy (zēlos kai phthonos), illustrates their ruin from a long catalogue of Old Testament and recent examples, and answers them with the opposed virtues of repentance, humility (tapeinophrosynē), and obedience — crowned by the humility of Christ himself (ch. 16) and grounded in the peace and order of the created cosmos (chs. 19–20), which the Master (despotēs) governs in harmony and which the Church is summoned to mirror.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostolic Father)

The letter of the Roman church to the Corinthians was occasioned not by heresy but by a quarrel — a congregation that had deposed its lawful presbyters — and its remedy is therefore moral and ecclesial before it is doctrinal. The whole argument of the first thirty-nine chapters turns on a single contrast: between concord, which had once adorned the Corinthian church and which the Creator wills for all things, and the jealousy and self-assertion that had overturned it. What follows is the theology of that appeal — its master-theme of homonoia, its diagnosis of zēlos as the root of schism, its call to repentance, its long gallery of the obedient and the humble, its supreme example in the lowliness of Christ, and its grounding of the whole in the peaceful order of creation. The argument from order is then carried into the question of church ministry in chapters 40–44, which are treated separately in Order and the Ministry; here the concern is the moral and cosmological foundation on which that later argument rests.

Homonoia: Concord as the Master-Theme

1 Clement is, in its rhetorical form, a discourse peri homonoias — “on concord” — a recognized genre of Hellenistic and Roman political oratory in which a speaker urges a divided city to set aside faction and recover civic harmony. The vocabulary is dense and deliberate: homonoia (concord, like-mindedness) and eirēnē (peace) on the one side; stasis (sedition, civil faction) and eris (strife) on the other. Clement takes over this civic rhetoric wholesale and Christianizes it, replacing the appeal to the welfare of the polis with the appeal to the will of God and the order of his creation (Lona 1998; Lindemann 1992). The genre is not a husk but the very shape of the argument: the letter reasons as a plea for the healing of a body politic, the church of Corinth, that has fractured.

The opening chapters establish the contrast by way of praise. Before the sedition, the Corinthians had lived “in profound and rich peace,” “an insatiable desire for doing good” upon them, the Spirit poured out on all; they were “humble-minded” (tapeinophronountes), not boastful, subject rather than subjecting, giving more gladly than receiving, walking “in the ordinances of God,” obedient to their leaders and rendering due honor to their presbyters (1 Clement 1.2–2.8; trans. Holmes 2007). This portrait of former harmony and good order is itself a rhetorical instrument: it sets the height from which the church has fallen and names, in advance, the virtues — humility, obedience, subjection, peaceableness — whose loss the rest of the letter will lament and whose recovery it will urge.

Then comes the turn, marked with a single sentence drawn from Deuteronomy: “every kind of honor and prosperity was bestowed upon you, and then that which is written was fulfilled: the beloved one ate and drank, and was enlarged and grew fat and kicked” (1 Clement 3.1, quoting Deuteronomy 32:15). Out of satiety came jealousy, and out of jealousy strife: “from this arose jealousy and envy, strife and sedition, persecution and disorder, war and captivity” (1 Clement 3.2; trans. Holmes 2007). The catchword zēlos — jealousy, rivalrous zeal — now governs the indictment, and the “worthless rising up against the honored, the dishonored against the honored, the foolish against the wise, the young against the elders” (3.3) names exactly the inversion of order that the deposition of the presbyters represents. Concord has given way to stasis; the whole subsequent argument is the labor of reversing that movement.

Jealousy and Envy as the Root of Schism

Having named zēlos kai phthonos as the source of the trouble, Clement devotes chapters 4 through 6 to demonstrating, by a long catalogue, what jealousy destroys. The method is biblical illustration heaped up for cumulative force, a technique characteristic of the letter throughout. The Old Testament series runs: Cain’s jealousy of Abel, which led to the first murder (Genesis 4, at 1 Clement 4.1–7); Jacob fleeing from Esau (4.8); Joseph persecuted and sold by his brothers (4.9); Moses driven into flight by his own kinsman’s reproach and later resented (4.10–12); Aaron and Miriam shut out of the camp (4.11); Dathan and Abiram swallowed alive for their rebellion against Moses (4.12); and David, envied not only by foreigners but persecuted by Saul, king of Israel (4.13). The refrain is relentless: in each case it is “on account of jealousy” (dia zēlos) that brother turned on brother, subject on ruler, and ruin followed.

From these ancient examples the letter moves, with great rhetorical weight, to recent ones — “the noble examples of our own generation” (1 Clement 5.1). “Because of jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars were persecuted and contended unto death” (5.2; trans. Holmes 2007). These are Peter, who “endured not one or two but many labors, and having borne his witness went to the place of glory that was his due,” and Paul, who, “having taught righteousness to the whole world… bore his witness before the rulers, and so was released from this world and taken up into the holy place, having become the greatest example of endurance” (5.3–7). To these the letter adds “a great multitude of the elect,” the men and women who suffered “because of jealousy” — a possible allusion to the Neronian persecution (1 Clement 6.1–4). The point of placing the apostolic martyrdoms here is structural: they are the climax of the catalogue of zēlos, the proof that jealousy, unchecked, brings even the holiest to ruin and the church to the loss of its greatest. The fuller treatment of these verses as a witness to the deaths of the apostles at Rome belongs to The Apostles in Rome; here their force is moral — if jealousy could destroy Peter and Paul, the Corinthians must see what spirit they are entertaining.

Repentance and the Call to Return

The diagnosis given, the letter turns to remedy, and the first word of the remedy is repentance (metanoia). “Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ and understand how precious it is to his Father, because, being poured out for our salvation, it brought to the whole world the grace of repentance” (1 Clement 7.4; trans. Holmes 2007). Repentance is presented as a gift offered in every generation: Noah preached repentance and those who heeded were saved; Jonah proclaimed destruction to Nineveh, and the Ninevites repented and were spared (1 Clement 7.5–7). The letter then strings together a chain of prophetic calls to repentance from the Greek Old Testament — words from Ezekiel and Isaiah in which the Master swears, “As I live, says the Lord, I desire not the death of the sinner so much as his repentance,” and promises that though sins be as scarlet they shall be made white as snow (1 Clement 8.1–4, drawing on Ezekiel 33:11 and Isaiah 1:18). Repentance is thus not a bare demand but the open door that God himself, across the whole of Scripture, has held open; the Corinthian schismatics are summoned to walk through it.

The Obedient and the Humble: A Gallery of Examples

If jealousy had its catalogue, so does its opposite. Chapters 9 through 12 set out a gallery of those who pleased God by obedience, faith, and humility — the answer in persons to the persons destroyed by zēlos. Enoch, “found righteous in obedience,” was translated and “death was never known to happen to him” (1 Clement 9.3, on Genesis 5:24). Noah, “found faithful,” preached regeneration to the world, and through him a remnant was saved in the ark (9.4). Abraham, “called the Friend of God,” was found faithful in obedience to God’s words, went out from his land and kindred at the command, and received the promise of a seed as the stars of heaven; the letter quotes the Genesis promises at length (1 Clement 10.1–7, citing Genesis 12:1–3 and 15:5–6). Lot was saved out of Sodom for his hospitality and godliness, while his wife, set as a sign of her divided mind, became a pillar of salt (1 Clement 11.1–2, on Genesis 19).

Then comes Rahab, whose example the letter develops most fully and reads as a type. She was saved “for her faith and hospitality” when she hid the spies and sent them out another way; and the scarlet cord she was told to hang from her window the letter takes as a sign “that there should be redemption through the blood of the Lord for all who believe and hope in God” (1 Clement 12.1–8, on Joshua 2; trans. Holmes 2007). The reading of the scarlet thread as a figure of redemption by the blood of Christ is among the earliest pieces of Christian typological exegesis outside the New Testament, and it shows the letter’s habit of finding the gospel already prefigured in the order of the Old Testament narrative.

The Call to Humility and the Example of Christ

From the gallery of the obedient the letter rises to its central exhortation, the call to humility (tapeinophrosynē) that occupies chapters 13 through 19. “Let us therefore be humble-minded, brethren, laying aside all arrogance and conceit and folly and anger” (1 Clement 13.1; trans. Holmes 2007). The exhortation is grounded at once in Scripture: Clement quotes the great rebuke of self-glory from the prophets and Paul together — “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches; but let him who glories glory in the Lord” — words from Jeremiah 9:23–24, gathered up by Paul at 1 Corinthians 1:31 and now placed at 1 Clement 13.1. He follows with sayings of the Lord Jesus enjoining mercy, forgiveness, and gentleness — “be merciful, that you may obtain mercy… as you do, so it shall be done to you… with what measure you give, it shall be measured to you” (1 Clement 13.2) — among the earliest citations of dominical sayings in the Apostolic Fathers. The summons is then sharpened against the schismatics: it is better to obey God than to follow “those who in arrogance and unruliness have set themselves up as leaders of an abominable jealousy” (14.1).

The supreme example of humility is Christ himself, set out in chapter 16. “For Christ belongs to the humble-minded, not to those who exalt themselves over his flock. The scepter of the majesty of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, did not come in the pomp of arrogance or pride, though he could have done so, but in humility” (1 Clement 16.1–2; trans. Holmes 2007). To prove it, Clement quotes Isaiah 53 in its entirety — the Suffering Servant who “had no form nor comeliness,” who was “despised and rejected,” who “bore our sins” and “as a sheep was led to the slaughter” and “opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:1–12, quoted at 1 Clement 16.3–14), and adds Psalm 22:6–8 (“I am a worm and no man,” at 16.15–16). The argument is direct and devastating for the proud: if the Lord of glory took the lowest place, “what shall we do, who through him have come under the yoke of his grace?” (16.17). The humility of Christ is the pattern to which the Church, and above all those who have seized power in it, must be conformed.

Around this center the letter ranges the humility of the Old Testament saints (chs. 17–18). Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel, the prophets clothed in skins, called themselves nothing; Abraham confessed himself “dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27, at 1 Clement 17.2); Job declared no man clean from defilement (17.3–4, on Job 14:4–5); Moses, “faithful in all his house” (Numbers 12:7, at 17.5), said when called, “Who am I, that you send me?” (Exodus 3:11). The crown of the series is David, whose penitential prayer Clement quotes nearly entire — “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy… a broken and contrite heart God will not despise” (Psalm 51:1–17, LXX 50, quoted at 1 Clement 18.1–17). The man after God’s own heart is presented not in triumph but on his knees, the very image of the humility the letter commends.

Peace and the Order of Creation

The exhortation to humility issues, at chapters 19 and 20, in the most celebrated passage of the letter — a hymn to the order and peace of the created cosmos, which becomes the deepest ground of the whole appeal. Having recalled the humility and obedience of “so many and so great” examples, Clement turns to “the Father and Creator of the whole world” and bids the Corinthians look at the harmony with which he has arranged all things (1 Clement 19.2–3). The chapter that follows is a sustained meditation on cosmic concord: “The heavens, revolving under his government, are subject to him in peace. Day and night follow the course he has appointed, in no way hindering each other. The sun and the moon and the choirs of the stars roll on, in harmony, within the bounds assigned to them, according to his direction, swerving not at all. The earth, bearing fruit in due season… the unsearchable depths of the abysses and the indescribable regions of the lower world are constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea… does not pass the barriers placed around it, but does as he has commanded; for he said, Thus far shall you come, and your waves shall be broken within you” (1 Clement 20.1–7, echoing Job 38:11; trans. Holmes 2007). The seasons give way to one another in peace, the winds and the ever-flowing springs perform their service, the smallest living things meet together “in concord and peace” — and over it all stands the refrain that the whole is governed “in peace and concord” (en eirēnē kai homonoia) at the command of the Master, “the Creator and Master (despotēs) of all things” (20.10–11).

The theological force of the passage is the hinge of the entire letter. The God who is despotēs of an ordered, peaceful, harmonious universe has willed concord into the very fabric of creation; the heavenly bodies and the seas obey their appointed bounds and do not transgress them. If the irrational cosmos keeps the peace and order assigned to it, how much more should the Church, the people of this same Creator, live in homonoia rather than tear itself apart in faction. The language here is tinged with Stoic and Hellenistic-Jewish coloring — the appointed bounds of sea and land, the harmony of the elements, the obedient ordering of the heavens — drawn from the common stock of cosmological reflection and pressed into the service of a thoroughly biblical doctrine of the God who orders all things (Lona 1998; Lindemann 1992). [Disputed: scholars differ over how far the cosmic hymn and the peri homonoias framework reflect direct Stoic influence as against shared Hellenistic-Jewish synagogue tradition (so Lona 1998); the letter’s vocabulary is consistent with either route, and the two are not exclusive.] This argument from the order of creation is precisely the foundation on which chapters 40–44 will build their argument from the ordered ministry of the Church; the cosmological appeal here and the ecclesial appeal there are one movement of thought (Order and the Ministry).

Fear of God, Faith, and the One Body

The remaining chapters of this section (21–39) draw out the consequences. The Corinthians are urged to take care lest the many benefits of God turn to judgment if they do not “live worthily of him, doing in concord what is good and pleasing in his sight” (1 Clement 21.1; trans. Holmes 2007); they are to reverence the Lord Jesus, honor their presbyters, guide the young in the fear of God, and direct their wives toward goodness (21.6–8). The fear of God, faith, hospitality, and good works are commended through further scriptural witness, and the certainty of the resurrection is argued at length — including the famous appeal to the phoenix as a sign of God’s power to raise the dead, treated separately in The Resurrection and the Phoenix.

The argument returns, near the end of this section, to the figure that had governed it from the start: the church as one body. Drawing directly on Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12, the letter insists that the members exist for one another. “Let our whole body, then, be saved in Christ Jesus, and let each be subject to his neighbor, according to the gift bestowed upon him. Let the strong care for the weak, and let the weak respect the strong. Let the rich provide for the poor, and let the poor give thanks to God” (1 Clement 38.1–2; trans. Holmes 2007). The head cannot do without the feet, nor the feet without the head; “the greatest cannot exist without the smallest, nor the smallest without the greatest; there is a kind of mixture in all things, and therein lies the advantage” (37.4–5, on 1 Corinthians 12:12–26). The same order that binds the cosmos in peace binds the body of Christ in mutual service; the schism at Corinth is a member rising against the body, the small exalting itself against the great, in defiance of the harmony the Creator has woven into both nature and the Church.

The Theology of the Appeal

The theology of 1 Clement 1–39 is, throughout, pastoral and reconciliatory rather than speculative. Its God is the despotēs who orders all things, whose will is concord and peace, and whose creation is the great visible argument for the harmony he asks of his people. Against this background the moral logic is plain. Humility (tapeinophrosynē) and concord (homonoia) conform the Church to the order of the Creator and to the example of Christ, who though he held the scepter of God’s majesty came in lowliness. Jealousy, envy, and self-assertion (zēlos, phthonos, the spirit of stasis) are the sin that wrecks that order — the sin that slew Abel, drove out Moses, hunted David, and, in living memory, brought even Peter and Paul to their deaths. The Corinthian schismatics, who have deposed their presbyters out of rivalrous ambition, stand convicted by this whole array: by the cosmos that keeps its bounds, by the saints who called themselves dust and ashes, by the Lord who washed his disciples’ feet and was led as a lamb to the slaughter. The letter’s appeal, saturated in the Greek Old Testament and shaped by the rhetoric of civic concord, is finally that the Church return to the peace from which it has fallen — and so become again what creation already is, an ordered harmony under the hand of its Master.

References

Clement of Rome. First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Clement). In Holmes, Michael W., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.
Ehrman, Bart D. The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library 24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Lightfoot, J. B. The Apostolic Fathers, Part I: S. Clement of Rome. 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1890.
Lindemann, Andreas. Die Clemensbriefe. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 17. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992.
Lona, Horacio E. Der erste Clemensbrief. Kommentar zu den Apostolischen Vätern 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998.