First Clement

First Clement (1 Clement) is a substantial Greek letter sent by the Church of God sojourning in Rome to the Church of God sojourning in Corinth. The letter itself does not name an individual author: it speaks in the corporate voice of the Roman church. Ancient Christian tradition associated the letter with Clement of Rome, and the conventional title “First Clement” preserves that attribution. For that reason, this edition lists Clement as the traditional author while keeping the letter’s own corporate authorship visible.

The immediate concern is a serious division in Corinth in which recognized presbyters had been removed from ministry. The Roman church urges repentance, humility, obedience, love, and concord, and it asks that the displaced leaders be treated justly. To make that case, the letter ranges widely through Israel’s Scriptures, the examples of Peter and Paul, sayings of Jesus, images from creation and civic life, and reflections on resurrection, holiness, faith, good works, order, and Christian ministry.

First Clement is one of the most important witnesses to Christianity in the generation after the apostles. It preserves early evidence for the reception of Paul, for the use of Jewish Scripture in Christian exhortation, for patterns of church leadership and succession, and for the prayer and moral vocabulary of the late first-century church. Its early reception was unusually strong: later Christian writers remembered the Roman letter to Corinth, and by the time of Dionysius of Corinth in the second century it was still being read in the Corinthian church.

First Clement is most plausibly placed near the end of the first century, although its exact date remains debated. A cautious range of about AD 80–100 reflects the fact that the deaths of Peter and Paul already belong to the past while the letter still speaks as though some ministers appointed in the apostolic generation remained within living memory. The opening reference to recent “calamities and reverses” in Rome has often been connected with the reign of Domitian, but the text itself does not name an emperor or identify a specific persecution, so a precise date of AD 96 should not be treated as certain.

The destination is Corinth, a church already famous from Paul’s correspondence. First Clement explicitly tells the Corinthians to take up Paul’s earlier letter to them, but the new crisis is different in detail: a faction has displaced presbyters whom the Roman church regards as having served honorably. The response presents order in the church as continuous with God’s ordering of creation, Israel’s worship, and the apostolic appointment of ministers. It speaks of bishops/overseers, deacons, and presbyters, but these first-century terms should not automatically be mapped onto every feature of later ecclesiastical structures.

The letter is also an important witness to relations among early Christian communities. Rome addresses Corinth with unusual confidence and expects its counsel to be obeyed, yet the document proceeds primarily through scriptural argument, moral exhortation, examples, and appeals to peace rather than through the formal legal vocabulary of a later papal decree. By the late second century Irenaeus could recall the Roman church’s intervention in the Corinthian dissension, and Eusebius later preserved Dionysius of Corinth’s report that the earlier letter associated with Clement continued to be read publicly there.

The letter opens with a salutation and a contrast between Corinth’s former good order and its present jealousy and faction (salutation; chs. 1–3). Chapters 4–13 use biblical and apostolic examples to warn against jealousy and to call for repentance, obedience, and humility. Chapters 14–36 develop the appeal to peace and holiness through Scripture, the ordered harmony of creation, the hope of resurrection, God’s promises, faith, and the work of Christ. Chapters 37–44 turn especially to order within the community: Clement uses military and body imagery, discusses ordered worship, recalls the apostolic appointment of bishops/overseers and deacons, and directly addresses the removal of presbyters. Chapters 45–58 press the Corinthians to end the schism, pursue love and unity, submit to correction, and allow those responsible for the faction to repent. Chapters 59–61 contain the letter’s great intercessory prayer for God’s people and for rulers, while chapters 62–65 summarize the exhortation, commend the Roman envoys, and close with blessing and peace.