| Clement passage | Greek cited / alluded to | Synoptic locus | Markan corridor location | Gospel profile | Effect on Secret Mark / Canon thesis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strom. 16.1–16.2 | «πτωχεύουσαν καὶ γυμνήν… δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι» | Mark 10:21 (cf. Matt 19:21; Luke 18:22) | Inside corridor (Mark 10) | Markan call to follow, interiorized but narratively intact | Strongly supportive (explicit Markan threshold retained) |
In Stromateis 16.1–16.2 Clement completes the interpretive arc begun earlier by naming explicitly what the “possessions” are that must be relinquished: τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀρρωστήματα καὶ πάθη. These inner maladies constitute a lethal “wealth” when present, yet become salvific precisely when they are destroyed. The soul must therefore be rendered πτωχεύουσα καὶ γυμνή—poor and naked—not economically but existentially, stripped of passions and attachments.
Only then, Clement insists, is the soul capable of hearing the Savior’s decisive summons: «δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι». This is not a generalized ethical exhortation; it is the exact wording of the call in Mark 10:21, the climactic demand placed before the rich man at the center of the Markan discipleship corridor. Clement preserves the sequence of the Markan logic with remarkable clarity: renunciation → exposure → summons → following. The call to follow does not precede purification; it is intelligible only after the soul has been rendered poor and naked.
What is crucial here is that Clement does not collapse the saying into abstraction. The command “follow me” retains its function as a threshold utterance—a moment of decision that separates those who can proceed from those who must turn away. The interpretive move is not harmonization but deepening: Clement identifies the inner condition that explains the narrative outcome in Mark (why one can or cannot follow). The Markan drama is thus psychologically explicated, not displaced.
From a synoptic standpoint, the profile is decisively Markan. Matthew’s emphasis on perfection and Luke’s distributive ethics are absent. What dominates is the Markan demand for dispossession as the precondition for discipleship, now framed in Alexandrian terms of purification and θεραπεία τῆς ψυχῆς. Even the imagery of nakedness resonates with the Markan symbolic economy, rather than with later Matthean moralization.
For the Secret Mark / Canon thesis, this passage is strongly supportive. Clement assumes the authority and narrative force of the Markan call and structures his anthropology around it. The saying «δεῦρο ἀκολούθει μοι» functions exactly as it does in Mark: as the decisive invitation that only a purified subject can receive. This confirms that Clement’s gospel logic—at least in this cluster of passages—is governed by a Mark-shaped axis, consistent with what is observed more overtly in Quis Dives Salvetur and consonant with the claim that such a Markan framework later informs Eusebius’s canonical ordering.
Accordingly, Stromateis 16.1–16.2 should be classified not as a spiritualized dilution but as a culmination of the Markan discipleship corridor within Clement’s exegesis: the soul, stripped bare, finally stands ready to hear—and answer—the Markan call to follow.
