Who Was Clement of Rome? 1 Clement (3 of 9)

The earliest Christian document outside the New Testament is a letter about a church fight.

It was written from Rome to Corinth around AD 95 or 96, and it survives because people kept reading it for centuries. Along the way it drops the single most important outside notice we have about how Peter and Paul died.

What Is 1 Clement?

A long letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth, addressing a leadership crisis.

The Corinthians had removed leaders who, in Rome’s judgment, had done nothing to deserve it. The letter argues that this was unjust, sets out how a church should be ordered, and calls for the removed men to be restored.

The tone is not what a modern reader expects. It is not a denunciation. It works by example, drawing repeatedly on the Old Testament, and it argues its case rather than pulling rank.

Why Does 1 Clement Matter for Peter and Paul?

Because chapters four through six are a catalogue of jealousy producing violence, and Peter and Paul are in it.

That is the whole notice. Clement says Peter endured hardships not once or twice but many times, and having borne his witness went to the place of glory that was his due. He says Paul was in bonds seven times, was flogged and stoned, preached in the east and the west, taught righteousness to the whole world, reached the limits of the west, and at last suffered under the rulers.

Notice what is absent. No method of execution. No location for Peter. No date. Clement had no reason to supply detail his readers already knew, and he was making an argument about envy rather than writing a martyrology.

The word usually rendered witness was still in the process of becoming a technical term for martyrdom, so the passage carries less lexical weight than it is often given. Its force is contextual. The surrounding chapters are a sequence of examples of jealousy ending in death, and Peter and Paul do not belong in that list if they died at home.

How Close Is Clement to the Events?

Within living memory, and writing from the city where at least one of the deaths occurred.

If Peter and Paul died under Nero in the mid to late 60s, Clement is writing roughly thirty years afterward, from Rome, to a church that had known Paul personally. He is not reporting a distant rumour. He is alluding to something he expects his readers to recognise.

That combination of proximity and restraint is what makes the passage valuable. A later writer would have supplied the crosses and the upside-down detail. Clement does not, which is a point in favour of his reliability rather than against it.

Who Was Clement?

Less certain than the letter is.

Later tradition names him as a bishop of Rome and places him in the succession lists, and there were attempts to connect him to figures mentioned in the New Testament. The letter itself does not name its author. It is sent in the name of the church at Rome rather than an individual.

The attribution to Clement is early and widespread, and nothing about it strains credibility. But the letter’s authority does not depend on identifying the man. It depends on where it came from and when.

What Is 2 Clement?

A different document that got attached to the first, and almost certainly not by Clement.

It reads as a sermon rather than a letter. The opening address is simply brethren, which is not a mailing address, and the speaker appears to be addressing an assembled congregation. It is generally taken as one of the earliest surviving Christian sermons outside the New Testament, by an unknown preacher.

It travelled with 1 Clement in the manuscripts, which is most of why it carries the name.

Was 1 Clement Considered Scripture?

By some, for a while, and that is worth knowing about.

The letter was read publicly in churches, was copied alongside New Testament writings, and turns up bound with biblical manuscripts. Some early lists treated it as a book worth reading in worship even where it was not counted as Scripture proper.

That is a useful window into how the canon actually settled. The boundary was not drawn in a single moment. Some books were read, valued, and eventually placed outside, and 1 Clement is the clearest example of a document that came close and did not cross.

Part of a series on the ancient witnesses behind what we know about the early church. See the overview of the witnesses.

Footnotes2

1. Clement's reference to Paul reaching the limits of the west has been read for centuries as a claim that Paul got to Spain, and it is the earliest evidence for that idea. Whether the phrase means Spain or simply Rome from an eastern vantage point is disputed and the letter does not settle it.
2. That the letter argues rather than commands is worth noticing in a document that later ages read as an early assertion of Roman authority. It appeals to Scripture, to order, and to the example of the apostles. It does not claim the right to be obeyed on account of the city it came from.

Sources

Clement of Rome, First Epistle to the Corinthians, especially chapters 5 and 44 to 47, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Supports the notice concerning Peter and Paul, the leadership dispute, and the argument from Old Testament example. Free in full at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and in The Apostolic Fathers.

Where the sourcing stops: the argument that Clement's restraint counts in his favour is my own reading, though it is a common one. The account of how the letter's canonical status was handled is a summary of the manuscript and lectionary evidence rather than a claim from a single source.