| Clement passage | Greek cited / alluded to | Synoptic locus | Markan corridor location | Gospel profile | Effect on Secret Mark / Canon thesis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strom. 19.4–19.6 | πωλήσας… θησαυρὸν ἐν οὐρανοῖς | Mark 10:21–22 (cf. Matt 19:21; Luke 18:22) | Inside corridor (Mark 10) | Markan command radically interiorized; anti-literal | Strongly supportive (deepens Markan logic) |
In Stromateis 19.4–19.6 Clement offers one of his most extended and explicit engagements with the Markan renunciation command addressed to the rich man. The verbal nucleus—πωλῆσαι τὰ ὑπάρχοντα in order to gain treasure in heaven—corresponds directly to Mark 10:21, which lies at the very center of the Markan discipleship corridor. Clement’s repeated interrogatives (“πῶς αὐτῶν ἀποστῇς; πωλήσας.”) presuppose the authority and inevitability of this command.
What is decisive here is not mere citation, but Clement’s interpretive strategy. He explicitly rejects a crude, transactional reading of the saying. Selling possessions is not an exchange of one external form of wealth for another (“χρήματα ἀντὶ κτημάτων”). Such a reading would amount to nothing more than a reconfiguration of material wealth. Instead, Clement insists that the command concerns a substitution of interior riches: the dispossession of passions, dispositions, and attachments embedded in the soul, and their replacement with “θεοποιὸς πλοῦτος,” a wealth that produces likeness to God and grants eternal life.
This move is not Matthean moralization nor Lukan social redistribution. Clement does not invoke Matthew’s perfection formula (“εἰ θέλεις τέλειος γενέσθαι”) nor Luke’s concern for the poor as recipients. Rather, he remains within the Markan logic of obstruction and following: possessions “block the heavens,” not because they are objects, but because they signify psychic enslavement. The Markan κρίσις—the sorrowful departure of the rich man—remains intact and intelligible within Clement’s framework.
The command to sell, therefore, is radicalized rather than softened. Clement heightens the cost of discipleship by locating the real sacrifice at the level of the soul. Only by this inner exchange can one truly “follow” and thus possess treasure in heaven. This is entirely consonant with the Markan corridor’s emphasis on renunciation, loss, and reorientation of life for the sake of the kingdom.
Accordingly, Stromateis 19.4–19.6 is strongly supportive of the Secret Mark / Canon thesis. It demonstrates Clement reasoning intensively from a Markan core saying situated within Mark 10, preserving its narrative pressure while expanding its anthropological depth. The passage presupposes a Mark-shaped gospel logic in which renunciation precedes following and inner transformation determines access to the kingdom—precisely the profile observed more overtly in Quis Dives Salvetur and crucial to the argument that Mark functioned for Clement as a primary narrative axis.
