| Clement locus | Gospel saying cited | Canonical reference | Synoptic parallels | Place in Markan discipleship corridor | Significance for harmonized Mark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paed. 2.3.36.2 | «Πώλησόν σου τὰ ὑπάρχοντα … καὶ δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι» | Mark 10:21 | Matt 19:21; Luke 18:22 | Central scene of the corridor (rich man episode, Mark 10:17–31) | Strong: Clement cites the Markan command as the decisive dominical call to discipleship |
| Paed. 2.3.36.2–3 | “Follow God naked … naked of arrogance … naked of worldly display” | Interpretive gloss on the call to follow | — | Same corridor context | Supports Alexandrian ascetic reading; not narrative but presupposes Markan scene |
This passage from Paedagogus 2.3.36 is significant precisely because it completes a trajectory that can already be seen running through Clement’s handling of Markan discipleship material, and because it does so by making explicit what elsewhere remains implicit: the logic of naked following as the fulfillment of Jesus’ call.
Clement cites the dominical command, “Πώλησόν σου τὰ ὑπάρχοντα … καὶ δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι,” the summons issued to the rich man. In the canonical tradition this saying belongs to Mark 10:21, the structural center of the Markan discipleship corridor (Mark 8:34–10:52). In Mark, this episode is not merely about wealth but about the cost of following Jesus “on the way.” The command to sell everything and follow is the sharpest formulation of what Mark has been developing since 8:34: renunciation, loss, and bodily exposure as the condition of true discipleship.
What Clement does here is decisive. He does not treat the command as a situational ethical counsel, nor does he soften it into a general exhortation to moderation. Instead, he radicalizes it by translating the act of selling and following into the language of nakedness: “ἕπου τῷ θεῷ γυμνὸς ἀλαζονείας, γυμνὸς ἐπικήρου πομπῆς.” To follow Christ is to be stripped—of arrogance, of display, of all that clings to the self as possession or status. Clement insists that what remains is “τὸ ἀγαθὸν τὸ ἀναφαίρετον μόνον,” faith in God, confession of the suffering one, and beneficence toward others. In other words, nakedness is not incidental imagery; it is the theological completion of the Markan call to follow.
This is where the relevance to “Secret Mark” becomes acute. In the Alexandrian tradition as Clement knows it, nakedness is not merely metaphorical. The Secret Mark passage—where the young man comes to Jesus “γυμνὸς γυμνῷ” and is taught the mystery of the kingdom—presents nakedness as the embodied realization of discipleship, not simply its ethical interpretation. What Paedagogus 2.3.36 supplies is the doctrinal and pedagogical rationale for that scene. The stripping away of possessions in Mark 10 becomes, in Clement’s Alexandrian reading, the stripping away of everything that mediates between the disciple and the Lord. Nakedness is what remains when the command “sell what you have” has been obeyed to its limit.
Seen in this light, Clement’s treatment of the rich man saying is not an isolated ascetic flourish. It presupposes a Markan framework in which discipleship advances toward ever-greater exposure: from leaving nets, to taking up the cross, to losing one’s life, and finally to standing before the Lord with nothing left to divest. That logic is Markan in structure, Alexandrian in interpretation, and given concrete narrative form in the Secret Mark passage. Clement does not quote that passage openly, but his language here only makes full sense if such a scene—or something very much like it—already stands in the background of his thought.
This is also why this material fits so naturally with the way Eusebius’s Gospel Canons quietly privilege Mark as the structural spine of the Synoptic tradition. The canons do not advertise Mark’s priority, but they rely on Mark’s sequencing to maintain coherence across divergent Matthean and Lukan expansions. Clement’s handling of Mark 10 does the same thing at a theological level. Matthew supplies additional sayings, Luke offers variations, but the decisive act—the call to follow that results in nakedness—belongs to Mark’s corridor. Clement reads that corridor to its endpoint, and in doing so preserves a trace of an Alexandrian gospel tradition in which the final form of discipleship is not simply poverty or humility, but the complete exposure of the self before Christ.
In that sense, Paedagogus 2.3.36 does more than support our argument; it clarifies it. The “naked young man” of Secret Mark is not an anomaly or a scandalous aside. He is the embodied fulfillment of the Markan command Clement expounds here. What Clement articulates doctrinally—following God naked of all encumbrance—the Secret Mark narrative enacts. Together, they reveal a harmonized Markan discipleship tradition, preserved in Alexandria, that underlies both Clement’s pedagogy and, more quietly, the structural logic later codified in Eusebius’s Gospel Canons.
