Does Clement’s “Mystical Communion” Make "Nakeds With Naked" Sexual?

One of the few passages in Clement that might initially seem to support a sexual reading of the Letter to Theodore occurs in Book III of the Stromata. Clement there attacks Christians who use the language of the mysteries to describe promiscuous sexual intercourse. Because the Letter to Theodore is itself framed as a response to the Carpocratians, the passage raises an obvious question. If Clement elsewhere associates heterodox “mystical” language with sexual license, does that give us grounds for interpreting the disputed expression γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ, “naked ones with the naked one,” sexually?

At first glance the argument has some force. The Letter opens by accusing the Carpocratians of wandering into “carnal and bodily sins” and becoming slaves of base desires. The Gospel passage Clement subsequently quotes contains a young man who comes to Jesus wearing a linen cloth over his naked body, remains with him during the night, and is taught the mystery of the kingdom of God. If Clement also told us elsewhere that the Carpocratians themselves called sexual intercourse a “mystical communion,” it would be tempting simply to connect the two pieces of evidence.

But that is not quite what Clement says. The famous “mystical communion” passage does not identify its subjects as Carpocratians. Clement initially calls them simply “some people.” Only a few paragraphs later does he explicitly mention the followers of Prodicus. More importantly, a later church father, Theodoret of Cyrus, understood Clement’s anonymous sexual libertines specifically as Prodicians and quoted this very passage as evidence in his chapter on Prodicus.

This matters because the argument for sexualizing γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ often depends upon treating all of Clement’s reports about sexual libertinism, all Carpocratian traditions, and all uses of mystery language as though they described a single undifferentiated phenomenon. Clement’s actual text is considerably more careful than that.

Clement’s “Mystical Communion” Passage

In Stromata 3.4.27 Clement writes:

Εἰσὶν δ’ οἳ τὴν πάνδημον Ἀφροδίτην κοινωνίαν μυστικὴν ἀναγορεύουσιν ἐνυβρίζοντες καὶ τῷ ὀνόματι ... οἳ δὲ καὶ τὴν ὁποίαν δήποτ’ οὖν ἀφροδισίων συμπλοκὴν κοινωνίαν ἀσεβῶς κεκλήκασιν.

“There are some who proclaim promiscuous Aphrodite to be a ‘mystical communion,’ thereby insulting even the name itself ... and they have impiously called any kind whatsoever of sexual coupling a ‘communion.’”

There is no ambiguity about the sexual character of this passage. But it is worth noticing exactly what makes it sexual.

It is not the word mystikos.

Clement supplies unmistakably sexual vocabulary. He speaks of πάνδημος Ἀφροδίτη, “promiscuous” or “common Aphrodite”; of ἀφροδίσια, sexual activity; and of συμπλοκή, coupling. We do not have to infer sexuality from a vague reference to bodies, nakedness, secrecy, night, or initiation. Clement tells us directly what kind of activity he means.

Indeed, the whole point of the passage is that the expression κοινωνία μυστική, “mystical communion,” has been misused. Clement says that these people are:

ἐνυβρίζοντες καὶ τῷ ὀνόματι

“insulting even the name.”

That is an important distinction. Clement is not showing that mystikos naturally means something sexual. He is condemning people for taking language belonging to the sacred mysteries and applying it to promiscuous intercourse.

In other words, the sexualization is something done to the mystery terminology. It is not something already contained within the word mystikos.

Who Are the “Some People”?

The next problem is identification.

Clement does not write:

“The Carpocratians call promiscuous Aphrodite a mystical communion.”

He writes:

Εἰσὶν δ’ οἳ ...

“There are some who ...”

The subjects are anonymous.

A few paragraphs later, however, Clement writes:

τοιαῦτα καὶ οἱ ἀπὸ Προδίκου ...

“Such things are also held by the followers of Prodicus ...”

He then attacks the Prodicians for abusing their supposed freedom, pursuing pleasure, and secretly engaging in sexual misconduct.

The word καί, “also,” means that we should still be cautious. Strictly speaking, Clement does not formally say that the anonymous people of 3.4.27 and the Prodicians are numerically identical. His wording could mean that the Prodicians share the same or similar doctrines.

But the sequence makes a Prodician identification perfectly understandable, and that is exactly how Theodoret of Cyrus later read it.

Theodoret Identifies the Passage with Prodicus

In Book I of his Haereticarum fabularum compendium, Theodoret gives a separate chapter headed:

Περὶ Προδίκου

“Concerning Prodicus.”

Theodoret presents Prodicus as belonging to the succession of heterodox teachers after Carpocrates, but he does not simply treat the two as interchangeable. He attributes to Prodicus a more developed form of sexual libertinism and says that the group treated its sexual activity as a kind of mystical rite.

Then Theodoret explicitly appeals to Clement as his witness:

Καὶ τούτου δὴ μάρτυρα τὸν Στρωματέα παρέξομαι Κλήμεντα.

“And as a witness to this I shall produce Clement the Stromatist.”

What does he quote?

Precisely Clement’s passage:

Εἰσὶν δ’ οἳ τὴν πάνδημον Ἀφροδίτην κοινωνίαν μυστικὴν ...

Thus Theodoret explicitly treats Clement’s anonymous “some people” as evidence concerning Prodicus.

This is not a modern attempt to rescue the passage from a Carpocratian interpretation. It is an ancient reading of the sequence in Stromata III, and it has a reasonable basis in Clement’s own text. Clement first describes unnamed libertines and shortly afterward says that the followers of Prodicus hold “such things.” Theodoret reads the earlier anonymous description in light of the later identification.

Carpocrates and Prodicus Should Not Be Collapsed into One Category

None of this means that Clement or Theodoret regarded the Carpocratians as models of sexual restraint. They plainly did not.

The Letter to Theodore itself opens by accusing the Carpocratians of:

τῶν σαρκικῶν καὶ ἐνσωμάτων ἁμαρτιῶν

“carnal and bodily sins.”

And Theodoret also attributes libertine doctrines to Carpocrates.

But there is an important difference between saying that ancient heresiologists accused Carpocratian circles of sexual immorality and saying that every specific sexual practice reported in Clement belongs indiscriminately to all Carpocratians.

Theodoret himself does not proceed that way. He distinguishes Prodicus from Carpocrates and places the specific “mystical communion” testimony under his treatment of Prodicus.

The careful conclusion should therefore be:

Clement knew libertine Christians who called promiscuous intercourse “mystical communion.” Clement initially leaves them unnamed, shortly afterward associates similar teachings with the followers of Prodicus, and Theodoret later explicitly cites the passage as evidence concerning Prodicus.

That is much more precise than simply calling it “the Carpocratian mystical communion passage.”

There Is Still Nothing Here About Sexualized Nakedness

There is an additional problem if this passage is used to interpret γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ.

Clement’s discussion of “mystical communion” contains no vocabulary of nakedness at all.

There is no γυμνός.

There is no ritual nudity.

There is no naked man with another naked man.

There is no male-male nakedness.

There is no suggestion that “naked” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

The activity is sexual because Clement explicitly calls it sexual.

This gives us an important control. We know how Clement writes when he wants his reader to understand that sexual activity is taking place. He uses sexual vocabulary.

That is not what happens with γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ.

What the Letter to Theodore Actually Says

The Letter certainly gives the Carpocratians a sexually charged polemical background. It accuses them of carnal and bodily sins and of slavery to improper desires. So a sexual interpretation of material circulating among them is not impossible.

But the actual disputed sentence says:

Τὸ δὲ γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ καὶ τἆλλα περὶ ὧν ἔγραψας οὐχ εὑρίσκεται.

“But the ‘naked ones with the naked one’ and the other things about which you wrote are not found.”

Nothing in that expression means “sexual intercourse.”

Nothing in it says “homosexual.”

Nothing identifies Jesus and the young man as two sexual partners.

There is only the vocabulary of nakedness.

If we wish to make that nakedness sexual, the sexual meaning has to come from somewhere else.

Clement Has Just Authenticated a Different Reference to Nakedness

This becomes still more important because Clement himself has just quoted a Gospel passage containing the word gymnos.

The young man comes to Jesus:

περιβεβλημένος σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνῷ

“wearing a linen cloth over his naked body.”

Clement presents this as part of the Gospel text quoted κατὰ λέξιν, “word for word.”

He therefore plainly does not object to the fact that nakedness occurs in the passage.

What he rejects is a separate reported expression:

γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ

together with “the other things” Theodore had written about.

This distinction has often been obscured. Clement is not saying, “There is nothing involving nakedness in our Gospel.” The Gospel he has just authenticated explicitly says that the young man wore a linen cloth over his naked body.

Clement is saying something narrower: the additional phrase γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ is not found there.

What Does the Carpocratian Context Actually Allow Us to Infer?

The context allows a limited inference.

It is entirely possible that Theodore had encountered a sexualized interpretation of the Alexandrian Gospel among people he or Clement regarded as Carpocratians.

It is possible that this helps explain the alarm with which Theodore wrote to Clement.

It is possible that some of “the other things” Theodore reported were explicitly sexual.

But none of these possibilities determines the lexical meaning of γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ.

There is an important distinction between saying:

“The people reporting this phrase may have been sexual libertines.”

and saying:

“Therefore this phrase means sexual intercourse.”

The second conclusion does not follow from the first.

The Difference Between Sexual License and Sexualized Nakedness

Question	Stromata 3.4.27	Letter to Theodore
Who is being attacked?	Initially unnamed: “there are some who ...”; later ancient interpretation associates the passage with Prodicus	Carpocratians
Mystery terminology	κοινωνία μυστική, “mystical communion”	μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον, “mystic Gospel”; initiation into the great mysteries
Explicit sexual vocabulary	Yes: Aphrodite, sexual activity, sexual coupling	No explicit sexual vocabulary accompanies γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ
Nakedness vocabulary	None	γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ and the authenticated σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνῷ
What makes the passage sexual?	Clement explicitly describes sexual intercourse	A sexual meaning would have to be inferred from the opponents’ reputation or from a reconstruction of the scene
Later patristic identification	Theodoret quotes the passage under “Concerning Prodicus”	No comparable ancient testimony says that γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ means homosexual intercourse

A Particularly Important Methodological Point

The Stromata passage actually shows why we should be cautious about sexualizing γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ.

When Clement wants us to understand that something is sexual, he does not merely mention mystery, nakedness, secrecy, or bodies and expect his reader to construct the rest. He supplies the sexual meaning.

“Promiscuous Aphrodite.”

“Sexual acts.”

“Sexual coupling.”

There is nothing remotely comparable attached to γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ.

The Carpocratian context can make sexuality a possible interpretive hypothesis. It cannot transform a nonsexual Greek expression into an explicitly sexual one.

And It Certainly Does Not Establish Homosexuality

There is an even larger problem with moving from general sexual libertinism to a specifically homosexual interpretation of the Gospel passage.

Even if we granted that the Carpocratians were understood by Clement as sexually libertine, that establishes only a reputation for sexual transgression in general.

It does not establish that every alleged practice was homosexual.

It does not establish that nakedness was sexual.

It does not establish that γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ described Jesus and the young man.

And it certainly does not establish sexual intercourse between them.

Each of those steps requires separate evidence.

The “mystical communion” passage cannot supply it because Clement’s sexual passage is explicitly about promiscuous intercourse while containing no nakedness terminology whatsoever.

Conclusion

Clement certainly knew of Christians whom he accused of turning sacred mystery terminology into a justification for sexual promiscuity. The famous example is Stromata 3.4.27, where an anonymous group calls “promiscuous Aphrodite” a “mystical communion.”

But the evidence does not justify casually identifying this as a practice of all Carpocratians. Clement initially leaves the group unnamed, shortly afterward associates similar doctrines with the followers of Prodicus, and Theodoret of Cyrus later explicitly quotes the passage as evidence in his chapter “Concerning Prodicus.”

More importantly, neither Clement nor Theodoret connects this sexual practice with nakedness. The sexual character of the practice is established by explicit sexual vocabulary, not by the word mystikos and not by gymnos.

The Carpocratian setting of the Letter to Theodore therefore gives us a reason to consider the possibility that Theodore had encountered a sexual interpretation of the Alexandrian Gospel. It does not give us permission to build that interpretation into the meaning of γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ.

The phrase still has to be interpreted from its own grammar, Clement’s actual use of gymnos, the distinction between γυμνοὶ γυμνῷ and the authenticated σινδόνα ἐπὶ γυμνῷ, and the literary setting of the disputed Gospel passage.

A reputation for sexual license is not a lexical definition of nakedness.