Law, Politics, and 1 Clement

The paper considers the way Rudolph Sohm and Adolf von Harnack debated each other over 1 Clement as evidence of the institutionalisation of early Christianity and the rise of early Catholicism. Moving beyond their treatment, it considers ways in which Clement supports his arguments for restoration of deposed leaders by appeals to civic themes of concord and then relates those themes to the natural order. The paper concludes by locating Clement's arguments about concord and the natural order within Roman imperial conceptions of the political order from the Flavian through the Hadrianic period during which the letter may be dated.