THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PÍSTIS, DIÁNOIA AND NOUS IN THE GNOSEOLOGY OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PÍSTIS, DIÁNOIA AND NOUS IN THE GNOSEOLOGY OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

Summary/Abstract: An analysis of Clement’s gnoseology highlights the existence of a double faith theory, identifiable in Aristotelianism and Stoicism, which will be introduced by the Alexandrian to the Christian philosophy. That theory will infuse the whole medieval philosophy of Scholasticism, especially the Jewish, Islamic and Christian. The Hellenistic instances of faith and the way faith relates to reason are taken over by Clement and given further to the Jewish East, to Saadia Gaon for instance, but also to that Arab Islamic, to Averroes. We find the same theory by Augustine of Hippona and later by Thomas Aquinas in the West. It is about what Clement called prólepsis and pístis èpistemonokón. Hence a certain understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology, but also an outlining of what was called the theory of double truth by Maimonides.

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