Over a century before the first Council of Nicaea, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215 AD) employed hymnic poetry and musical imagery to impart teachings about the Father, Son, and Spirit. Describing Clement’s musical objectives in the Protrepticus, Andreas Kramarz observes, “The actual singing of Christian hymns is the most natural and proper expression and celebration of the eternal Harmony, which ultimately [for Clement] is the Most Holy Trinity” (2022). Clement uses musical terminology to reference the Triad in several passages, some of which are liturgical in nature. However, his allusions to the Father, Son, and Spirit extend beyond his prose. In the final passage of the Paedagogus, which ends with the “Hymn to Christ,” Clement urges Christians to “sing thankful praise” to the “Father and Son… with the Holy Spirit” (3.12). While he does not use the triadic formula in his hymn (unlike other Christian hymns from the second century), Clement mentions the Father, Son, and Spirit at various points throughout his 66-line hymn.
Clement’s musical, liturgical, and hymnic theology of the Father, Son, and Spirit distinguishes him from other early Christian writers. The presence of the Triad is well-documented in liturgical practices of the first and second centuries. For example, the Didache (c. 70 – 100 AD), Irenaeus’s (c. 130 – c. 202 AD) regula fidei (Haer. 1.9), and Justin Martyr’s (c. 100 – c. 165 AD) depiction of Lord’s Day assemblies (1 Apol. 69) are very early writings that emphasize the Triad within liturgical contexts. In this paper, I will argue that Clement’s musical and hymnic theology of the Father, Son, and Spirit reflects an ideological and theological unity with the Church while demonstrating a liturgical expansion that has yet to be explored. Recent scholarship has noted Clement’s references to the Triad in his musical imagery and hymnic poetry (Bahl, 2018; Webster, 2024). However, there has been no significant effort to formulate a Clementine view of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit across all of Clement’s perspectives on music. Such an endeavor would reveal that Clement not only communicated about the Triad using musical imagery, but also that second-century Alexandrian Christians sang about the Father, Son, and Spirit in liturgical contexts.