Greek-speaking Alexandrian Church Father (c. 150-c. 215) and head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria before Origen. Probably born at Athens to pagan parents; converted to Christianity and traveled widely seeking Christian teachers (Greece, Italy, Syria, Palestine, Egypt); finally settled at Alexandria as student and then teacher under Pantaenus at the Catechetical School; succeeded Pantaenus as head of the school (c. 190); taught at Alexandria until the Severan persecution forced him to flee (c. 202), after which he served as a Christian teacher in Cappadocia under his former student Alexander (later bishop of Jerusalem). Clement's principal literary work is the great trilogy: (1) the Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticus), addressing pagans and arguing for conversion to Christianity as the true philosophy; (2) Christ the Educator (Paedagogus), addressing newly-baptized Christians and providing substantial moral and practical guidance under Christ as the divine pedagogue; (3) Miscellanies (Stromata, patchwork), addressing mature Christians and engaging Greek philosophy, Christian doctrine, and the Christian gnosis (true knowledge as distinct from the heretical Gnostic counterfeit). Clement's distinctive contribution is the substantive Christian engagement with Greek philosophy: he treats Greek philosophy as preparatory to the gospel for the Greeks just as the Mosaic law was preparatory for the Jews; he commends Christian gnosis as the true philosophy that fulfills what the Greeks sought. His allegorical exegesis (continuing the Alexandrian tradition of Philo) anticipates Origen's more developed method. The patriarchal-Reformed reader engages Clement with substantive interest in his cultured Christian engagement with Greek philosophy while exercising discernment on his more speculative-philosophical elements.