The Expository Times

This article offers a critical introduction to the early Christian letter known as 1 Clement. It focuses on its text, influence, authorship, occasion, purpose and genre, date, and the authorities and sources on which its author drew.

If explication de textes needs to be part of the Christian's syllabus, we modern preachers should also teach our congregations how to question and dispute authority to win through to better understanding. Not only should we model how to raise and process puzzled questions about the text. We should also imitate Job in pressing accusatory questions, to demonstrate how to be friends of God in troubled times.

Both in the academy and in the church, students and teachers find it increasingly difficult to cope with the Bible. We have lost - and need to rediscover - a once-universal ability to read canonic texts in a creative way as a framework for engaging with ultimate questions of God and morality.