Johanna Jürgens has written a deeply learned and incisive study of Clement’s pedagogy in the Paedagogus. It is the most recent of a number of book-length studies that have been published on that work in the last couple of decades, following Martin Pujiula’s Körper und christliche Lebensweise (de Gruyter 2006); Florian Amelsgruber’s ‘Ulme stützt Weinstock’. Literarisierung kirchlicher Verkündigung auf der Basis paganer Formen bei Clemens von Alexandrien (Aschendorff 2015); the proceedings of the third Colloquium Clementinum held in 2023 and published as Veronika Hrůšová and Annewies van den Hoek (eds), Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus (Brill 2025); and my own book, Clement of Alexandria and the judgement of taste: pedagogical rhetoric and Christian formation (Oxford University Press 2024). Jürgens is keenly aware of the research context that she is stepping into; she meticulously sketches the areas that have already been thoroughly researched. For her own study, she takes as a starting point a quotation from the Paedagogus in which Clement identifies four different aspects of his central theme: ‘The word paidagōgia is used in many different ways: one speaks of a (pedagogy) of the one who is being guided and is learning, and of a (pedagogy) of the one guiding and teaching, and thirdly it means the guiding itself and fourthly that which is taught, for example, the commandments’ (Paed. 1.54.1). She suggests that, of these four aspects, it is the first – the learner – that has been least understood in prior scholarship, and so her attention will focus on that, although the other aspects will also be considered.

In her opening chapter, after sketching what is known of Clement, his context and oeuvre, Jürgens maps out co-ordinates for thinking about Clement’s terms paideia and paidagōgia in relation to the overlapping semantic domains of the German terms Erziehung and Bildung. This opens up four areas for reflection: (1) socialisation, since learning and teaching take place in a particular setting, namely Alexandria’s religiously plural environment in the late second century, probably in a highly educated milieu, where a Christian formation at home could not be taken for granted (in her final chapter, Jürgens points out resonances with the modern world); (2) ethics and morals, since humans are relational creatures, so formation is ultimately focused not on the individual but on integration into a diverse community; (3) soteriology, since Clement sees himself as standing in an apostolic tradition of teaching, and the teaching itself is part of the outworking of salvation; (4) finally the life-long character of pedagogy in Clement, since people are not expected to make steady, uniform progress, but also to stray and return. The relationship with teacher (as with Church) therefore spans the whole lifetime. The principal chapters of the book discuss the learners (chapter ii) and the pedagogical orientation (chapter iii); a final main chapter explores Clement’s influence in late antiquity (chapter iv). Jürgens points out the imbalance between the substantial ancient reception of Clement as philosopher (in the Stromateis) and biblical commentator (in the now lost Hypotyposeis) compared with the relative lack of attention to him as an ethicist (although the Paedagogus was significant in its own day as the first Christian book on ethics).

The central contribution of Jürgens’s study is to show how Clement’s attention to philanthrōpia determines his pedagogy. Others have argued that he developed philanthrōpia as a term for God’s lovingkindness towards humanity, to which human beings respond with love in return, but Jürgens investigates also how this plays out in relations between human beings. She argues that Clement’s pedagogy is motivated and shaped as a way of practising love for fellow human beings, and that the content of his teaching is also fundamentally geared towards training people in the practice of philanthrōpia and in the recognition and rejection of its perversions and false images. This is soteriological because it is an outworking of divine love towards humanity that is practised in the sight of God. The earthly teacher represents the divine teacher but establishes authority by actively helping others to their salvation. He is like them, but has progressed further and so can serve as guide. There is a pedagogical economy at work, in that the learners also become teachers: people learn to offer themselves as examples to others and to share what they have learned, just as the incarnate logos was both the perfect image of God and the ultimate teacher. The framework is ethically oriented in that it sets love towards one’s neighbour at the heart of human interactions. In a nuanced analysis, Jürgens differentiates between different kinds of relationships and relational dynamics that Clement considers: for example, in private and public, between master and slaves, between man and woman. She also argues that philanthrōpia is Clement’s boundary marker that gives Christians their self-identity and marks them out as different from Jews, pagans and heretics. Baptism, curiously, emerges as a more ambiguous boundary, despite the fact that the Paedagogus seems to accompany people to baptism and some way beyond it. But we have limited understanding of the wider context for baptismal praxis, and Clement does not theorise his ecclesiology.

Another significant contribution that Jürgens makes is her careful account of Clement’s use of Scripture and other textual sources. She discusses his canon, his exegetical approach, his use of citations, the significance of wisdom literature (especially Proverbs) and his use of Jewish and pagan sources and concepts. Clement’s method of teaching in the Paedagogus is shown to be far better structured than scholars have recognised, and Jürgens argues that it is underpinned by his attentiveness to learners at all different levels. Clement, she suggests, is inspired by Paul’s ‘all things to all people’ (1 Cor. ix. 20–1), which he develops in his own way by becoming a ‘Greek to the Greeks’.