Before Rome and Dionysus: Returning to the Faith of the Word

To understand what Christianity first was—and what it was not—we have to look back to the period before it was absorbed into the machinery of the Roman Empire. In the first and second centuries, the followers of Jesus were still defining their faith against the many mystery religions of the Greco-Egyptian world. Rome later adopted Christianity as a state religion and reshaped its symbols, art, and ceremonial language to fit an imperial framework; but the earliest teachers spoke a very different dialect.

Among them was Clement of Alexandria, writing in Egypt at the end of the second century. Clement addressed people who were still steeped in the cults of Dionysus, Osiris, and Cybele; religions of ecstatic experience, ritual wine, and secret initiation. His Exhortation to the Greeks urges them to abandon those rites and turn to the “Word” (Logos), Christ, who offers a clear and rational enlightenment rather than intoxication or frenzy. Reading Clement allows us to hear Christianity before Rome systematized it; when it still defined itself sharply against the old gods and their symbols.

Clement himself says:

"Come, O madman, not leaning on the thyrsus, not crowned with ivy; throw away the mitre, throw away the fawn-skin; come to thy senses. I will show thee the Word, and the mysteries of the Word, expounding them after thine own fashion. This is the mountain beloved of God, not the subject of tragedies like Cithæron, but consecrated to dramas of the truth, a mount of sobriety, shaded with forests of purity; and there revel on it not the Mænades, the sisters of Semele, who was struck by the thunderbolt, practising in their initiatory rites unholy division of flesh, but the daughters of God, the fair lambs, who celebrate the holy rites of the Word, raising a sober choral dance. The righteous are the chorus; the music is a hymn of the King of the universe. The maidens strike the lyre, the angels praise, the prophets speak; the sound of music issues forth, they run and pursue the jubilant band; those that are called make haste, eagerly desiring to receive the Father"

The Pagan Symbols Clement Mentions

Thyrsus: A staff topped with ivy or a pine cone, carried by Dionysus’ followers during ecstatic rites. It represented fertility and divine intoxication. (Compare the ancient thyrsus with later ceremonial staffs that repeat the pine-cone motif.)

Ivy: Sacred to Dionysus, ivy crowns marked initiates of his mysteries. They symbolized an evergreen life gained through frenzy and intoxication.

Mitre: In Greek, mitra meant a headband or turban worn by priests of mystery cults in the East — Dionysus, Cybele, Attis, and others. For Clement, it was the mark of false initiation, a sign of delusion rather than enlightenment. So when he says “throw away the mitre,” he urges the seeker to abandon the outward trappings of ecstatic, irrational religion and come to spiritual sobriety and the true Logos; Christ.

Writers such as Herodotus, Plutarch, and Diodorus Siculus had already identified Dionysus with Osiris. Both were gods of wine, fertility, death, and rebirth; both promised immortality through ritual; both were celebrated with music, dance, and sacred ecstasy. Clement’s Egypt-based Christianity confronted this directly. The old mysteries of Dionysus-Osiris claimed enlightenment through intoxication; Clement offered illumination through the Word (Logos).

In the rites of Dionysus, initiates celebrated the god’s death and rebirth through acts meant to share in his life. Ancient sources describe ritual drinking of wine as the god’s blood and eating of raw flesh (omophagia) to symbolize communion with him. These feasts were ecstatic and emotional, blurring the line between worship and possession by the deity.

Clement of Alexandria knew these practices well. When he urges his reader to “throw away the mitre” and to come to the true Word (Logos), he’s calling them away from that world of physical frenzy toward spiritual understanding.

The Didache, one of the earliest Christian manuals (1st–2nd century), describes the Eucharist as a thanksgiving meal; a breaking of bread and sharing of wine in gratitude for life and knowledge given through Jesus. There is no hint of transubstantiation or ritual sacrifice; it is a communal meal of remembrance and thanksgiving.

So we see two sharply opposed paths. Dionysian Mystery: Wine as the god’s literal blood, raw flesh eaten in ecstasy, possession and frenzy, external ecstasy. Early Christian Practice (Didache): Wine as thanksgiving for divine life, bread broken in fellowship, gratitude and spiritual clarity, inner transformation through the Word.

Obelisk: once a pillar to Osiris and the sun-god Dionysus, an ancient emblem of fertility and solar power. Even the cross that crowns it traces back to the sun, yet Scripture commands the destruction of idols, not their adornment.

For Clement, this was the dividing line: the mysteries of Dionysus trapped humanity in sensory illusion, while the Eucharist of Christ offered a rational, spiritual communion with the divine. Two religions of wine stood in contrast to each other. The pagan mystery used wine that intoxicates, leading to frenzy and loss of reason, with the mitre, thyrsus, and ivy as symbols of false initiation and external ecstasy. The Christian revelation used Eucharistic wine that gives joy and divine life, with a crown of light and faith symbolising inner transformation and inward knowledge born of spiritual clarity. For Clement, these were not harmless symbols; they were veils that had to be cast off before one could see truth. He calls out, “Abandon the madness of pagan religion… Come to your senses and I will show you the true mystery: the Word of God.” Clement replaces the frenzied mountain of Dionysus with “the mountain beloved of God,” a place of purity, harmony, and praise where “the righteous are the chorus; the music is a hymn of the King of the universe.” This is his vision of genuine worship: a drama of truth, not drunken ecstasy. When we study Clement’s language, we see how early Christianity defined itself against Dionysian-Osirian worship. Symbols like the mitre, the pine cone, or the wreath had deep pagan roots, and Clement calls for their rejection or transformation. Later centuries reused some of those forms, but the meaning he insisted on was clear: the true crown is not ritual adornment but illumination by the Logos.

“Christ … will shed on thee a light brighter than the sun.” Here Clement contrasts the solar imagery of Dionysus and Osiris with the transcendent light of Christ. Dionysus was often identified with the sun god—the “burning” one who dies and rises with the yearly cycle. Egyptian Osiris, his parallel, was likewise connected with the solar journey through the underworld and rebirth at dawn. Clement adopts that imagery but raises it above the natural realm: the Logos gives light brighter than the sun, a spiritual illumination, not the seasonal fire of a dying-and-rising god.

“O truly sacred mysteries! O stainless light! My way is lighted with torches, and I survey the heavens and God; I become holy whilst I am initiated.” In the old mysteries, initiates entered dark chambers with torches, reenacting the mythic descent and return of the god. Clement keeps the structure but transforms its meaning: the “torches” are now the beams of divine knowledge. He keeps the vocabulary of initiation to show that the only real mystery is the revelation of the Word (seen in the Bible).

“The Lord is the hierophant, and seals while illuminating him who is initiated.”

The hierophant was the chief priest who revealed the secret symbols of the mysteries at Eleusis and in Dionysian rites. Clement now says that Christ Himself is the true hierophant; He alone reveals the genuine mystery, sealing and enlightening the believer. This is a complete theological inversion of the pagan system: the Logos replaces Dionysus as revealer, priest, and god.

By the end of the passage Clement lets Christ speak directly: calling all nations, both “barbarians and Greeks,” to come out from their many cults into the worship of the one God. He presents Jesus as the eternal Logos, the cosmic harmony once dimly imitated in myths like that of Dionysus and Osiris but now fully revealed.

The sun once crowned gods like Dionysus and Osiris; yet Christ is no sun-god—He is the uncreated Light from which the sun itself burns.

Revelation 17:5 (KJV):

“And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

Clement again draws the line between the divine wisdom of the Word and the madness of idolatry. He calls the followers of false gods “madmen,” trapped in folly, ignorance, and the worship of created things. Here, the “Bacchic frenzy” he so often condemns becomes the symbol of all pagan delusion—a craving for gold, glory, and visible idols instead of the eternal truth. Clement urges believers to cling to the Logos, the true light that leads to immortality, not to the counterfeit light of the sun god Dionysus or Osiris. To Clement, the pagan search for ecstasy through the senses was a descent into darkness, while the Christian path was a return to sanity through the illumination of the mind. In his vision, Christ, the uncreated Light, replaces the fiery, fading radiance of the sun and calls humanity out of the old mysteries into the clear day of truth.

In this section of his Instructor, Clement of Alexandria reveals the heart of his teaching about what it means to follow Christ. He describes Jesus as the true Instructor—the divine Word who became human, yet remained sinless and free from passion. Christ is both the image of God and the pattern for humanity. To Clement, the goal of the Christian life is to imitate that divine image, purifying the soul from passion and ignorance until it reflects the calm wisdom of the Word.

Clement teaches that sin is the sickness of the soul, and Christ is the only physician who can heal it. The pagan healers could cure the body, he says, but only divine wisdom—and the Word—can free the soul from its disorders. Every command of God is like medicine meant to restore reason and spiritual health. Sin, in contrast, is described as “irrational,” a kind of madness that blinds the mind. The Word, acting as our Instructor, works to correct that blindness, guiding us to repentance and renewal.

He also explains that God created humanity not by a mere command but by His own hands, breathing His own life into man. This shows that people are not accidents or instruments but beloved creations, made desirable for themselves and loved by God for their own sake. Because humanity bears the divine image, the Word became human to lead mankind back to its original likeness—to teach us to live wisely, temperately, and with love.

The true disciple, then, learns to resist passion, greed, and idolatry, and to live by reason enlightened by faith. Clement calls this “the straight path to immortality,” because it follows the nature of Christ Himself—the Word who became flesh, uniting contemplation and action, wisdom and love. To imitate Him is to return to sanity after the madness of sin and to be healed by the divine Instructor who alone can guide the soul to life.

Clement of Alexandria shows us a vision of Christianity that looks nothing like the later religion built under Roman power. In his Instructor he writes, “Let us, then, embracing more and more this good obedience, give ourselves to the Lord; clinging to what is surest, the cable of faith in Him, and understanding that the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is one, the master of both is also one; one church, one temperance, one modesty.”

This is the voice of a teacher speaking before the Roman patriarchy turned faith into an empire. Clement’s Christianity is not built on control or hierarchy; it is about equality before the Word, the unity of men and women in one divine image, and the shared pursuit of truth. He even says, “Their food is common, marriage an equal yoke… love and training are common, and common to them are grace and salvation.”  That is the early faith; simple, communal, illuminated by knowledge, not ruled by an illegitimate priesthood.

It is heartbreaking to see how far later religion drifted from that. The religious "establishment" took what was a living faith and buried it beneath pomp, symbols, and obedience to human authority. They played with people’s souls for wealth and power, trading the freedom of the Word for the chains of ritual and superstition. How many, believing they were worshipping Christ, have instead been drawn into the spirit of the adversary; Dionysus, Osiris, the false light that the ancients also called Zeus, the deceiver who changed his form to seduce and to rule through pleasure and illusion. The same serpent that whispered in Eden has never stopped speaking; he only changes his mask.

Clement’s words still reach across the centuries, reminding us of what the faith once was: a shared life of purity, reason, and love in the presence of the true Logos. “Now the Lord Himself will feed us as His flock forever.”  That is the Shepherd Clement knew—not an emperor, not a priesthood, but the living Word who calls all souls to freedom and truth.

Clement’s words still reach across the centuries, reminding us of what the faith once was: a shared life of purity, reason, and love in the presence of the true Logos. Christ Himself warned, “Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness” (Luke 11:35). Those words echo like a bell through history—calling us to examine what spirit fills us in our worship, what light truly shines within the temples of our bodies. For not every light is holy; the ancient world knew many false suns. Dionysus, Osiris, Zeus; their glow was dazzling, but it led to blindness and destruction. The true Light, as Clement taught, is not the fire of the sun or the frenzy of ecstasy, but the calm illumination of the Word within. Only by that light can the soul see clearly and be free.

Clement teaches here that those who have advanced in understanding the Word must let go of worldly anxiety and learn to trust God completely, just as children depend on their father. He reminds us of Christ’s words, “Take no anxious thought for the morrow; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” True faith, Clement says, means freeing ourselves from the constant worry over daily needs and resting in the care of the Father. Whoever lives this way becomes, in the truest sense, a child of God—innocent, trusting, and guided by divine wisdom, even if the world sees such simplicity as foolishness.

If we have only one Master in heaven, then on earth we are all His disciples. God alone possesses perfection; we, as His children, are always growing and learning. Clement explains that Scripture calls both righteousness and wickedness by the word “man”—the devil as a “man of blood,” perfect in evil, and Christ as the “perfect man,” complete in righteousness. The goal of every believer is to mature from spiritual childhood into the full stature of this perfect man, Christ Himself.

Quoting the Apostle Paul, Clement reminds his readers that we are “espoused to one man, Christ,” and that our growth aims at “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man.” The church (the called out assembly), he says, matures as each soul grows in love and truth, no longer tossed about by false doctrines or the clever deceit of those who seek to lead astray. When believers refuse to trust in earthly “fathers” who teach contrary to the Word and instead hold fast to Christ, the true Head, then they become whole. In Him alone humanity finds its perfection; the child growing into the likeness of the righteous Man who is God’s own Word.

Clement of Alexandria’s teaching on the word “infant” completely undermines the later Roman claim to be the exclusive, institutional Bride of Christ. His explanation shows that the true bride is not an organization or a hierarchy but the souls (apart from the established institution) made pure, simple, and gentle through the Word. He defines the bride and the Church not by structure or power but by character—a heart reborn into divine simplicity. Clement takes the Greek word nēpios, meaning infant, and reinterprets it spiritually. He says it does not mean foolish or childish in a negative sense. The truly infantile person is one who has been made new in heart and gentle in spirit, not one who is ignorant. The true Christian, the new creation, has become tender, free of hypocrisy, and open to the persuasion of goodness. Clement explains that “the child is therefore gentle, and therefore more tender, delicate, and simple, guileless, and destitute of hypocrisy, straightforward and upright in mind.” Spiritual infancy is therefore a rebirth into purity. These infants are the new people, “the band of infants” who have become pliant to the Word, free from malice and perverseness. He contrasts this new race of spiritual children with “the ancient race,” the hard-hearted people bound to corruption and idolatry. Thus the true Church, the body of the pure, is the new race of infants who live in simplicity, truth, and meekness.

Clement’s symbolism of the tender bride grows naturally from this idea of childlike purity. He writes that a virgin or bride is tender, the same quality he attributes to the spiritual infant. For him, virginity, childhood, and simplicity all describe the same inner state: a soul uncorrupted by pride, power, or false religion. He says, “For such is the virgin speech, tender and free of fraud; whence also a virgin is wont to be called a tender bride, and a child tender-hearted.” This means that the Bride of Christ is not a human institution but the community of tender-hearted souls who live in truth and simplicity before God. The bride is spiritual, not institutional; not imperial. She is the assembly of those whose hearts have become new, “the new people which we are.”

The Roman Church that later called itself the Bride of Christ was built on the opposite qualities; hierarchy, power, wealth, and the claim to divine authority through patriarchal succession. Clement’s Church has no such structure. He calls believers to imitate the gentleness of the Instructor, not to lord over others. He writes that the true believer should “cling to what is surest, the cable of faith in Him, understanding that the virtue of man and woman is the same; for if the God of both is one, the Master of both is also one.” This rejects later patriarchy and clerical control. Clement’s Church knows no superior or inferior, no priestly caste. Both men and women, as equal souls in the divine image, make up the true Bride. The Bride, then, is not a papal monarchy but a community of equals bound together in purity and love.

Clement even makes a subtle wordplay that exposes how far later religious institutions would stray. He says that those who call the spiritual infants foolish are blaspheming the Lord, because God Himself calls His followers children. He warns, “If they call us who follow after childhood foolish, see how they utter blasphemy against the Lord, in regarding those as foolish who have betaken themselves to God.” Those who exalt themselves as spiritual fathers actually deny the Lord’s teaching that “you have one Father in heaven.” Clement’s infants have one Instructor, one Master, and they need no other.

Clement concludes this section with a final theological point that destroys any institutional claim of exclusive authority: “Of late, then, God was known by the coming of Christ: ‘For no man knoweth God but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him.’” The true knowledge of God comes only through revelation by the Son (the Word), not through human succession or earthly hierarchy. The Bride of Christ, therefore, is made up of those to whom the Son Himself has revealed the Father—the souls illumined by the Word. This completely undercuts the idea that any later church can own or mediate revelation. Clement’s bride consists of those who have received inner illumination, the infants who have been taught directly by the Logos.

According to Clement of Alexandria, the Bride of Christ is the community of the reborn, the new people made pure and gentle by the Word. It is not an empire, not a patriarchal institution, but a spiritual fellowship of those whose hearts have become infantlike and tender. It is composed equally of men and women, all united in one faith, one love, and one Instructor. It is formed by revelation through Christ Himself, not through institutional authority. It is defined by simplicity, purity, and truth, the opposite of the pride, wealth, and power that would later define Rome. Clement’s Christianity is the opposite of the imperial religion that followed. The true bride, for him, is the soul or the community of souls made childlike again through the gentle wisdom of the Word. Those who rely on hierarchy, fear, or ceremony have already left that simplicity and returned to the old hardness of heart. Clement’s Church is not the Roman Church. His Bride is not a system of men, but the living union between the Word and the souls reborn in His image.

Clement explains that the “new people,” the true Christians, are forever young—not in body, but in spirit. He writes that those who partake of the Word become “always young, always mild, always new,” because they share in the incorruptible nature of the divine. To him, eternal life is not something that begins after death; it is the state of being renewed by the presence of the eternal Word and the ever-blooming Wisdom. He calls this life “a lifelong springtime,” because the truth that lives within the soul cannot decay. The one who walks in divine Wisdom is always in the morning of creation, never growing old, since Wisdom “is ever blooming, ever remains consistent and the same, and never changes.”

This is a vision of spiritual immortality that has nothing to do with hierarchy or outward religion. The soul united with the Word becomes part of the same creative power that shaped the universe. Clement says that God, as Father, cherishes and protects those who have fled to Him and that He “has begotten them again by His Spirit to the adoption of children.” Here divine Wisdom, the nourishing mother of souls, and the Word, the eternal Son, act together as the parents of the new humanity. Those reborn by the Spirit become God’s own children—lambs tended by the true Shepherd, infants of the new creation.

Clement uses the story of Isaac and Rebecca as a symbol of this divine mystery. Isaac, whose name means “laughter,” represents the joy of salvation and the play of divine Wisdom. He was seen “sporting” with Rebecca, whose name Clement interprets as “endurance.” This spiritual play, he says, is “the divine sport”—a picture of the soul rejoicing with divine Wisdom, the endurance of faith joined with the laughter of joy. The “king” who looks upon them from above represents the higher Wisdom that beholds and delights in this union of the Word and the soul. Clement even dares to say that this is “the festival with God,” the rejoicing of creation when it is restored to harmony through Christ.

He then connects Isaac’s story directly to Christ. Isaac, the son of Abraham, carrying the wood for his own sacrifice, becomes the figure of the Lord who carries the wood of the cross. Clement writes that Isaac “did everything but suffer,” yielding the suffering itself to the Word. In this way Isaac prefigures the Word’s redemptive act. The Lord, he says, is the true Isaac—the divine Child who brings laughter and joy to the redeemed. When He rose from the dead, He fulfilled what Isaac had only symbolized: deliverance from death and restoration to eternal life.

At the heart of this teaching lies Clement’s understanding of divine Wisdom. He identifies Wisdom as eternal, unchanging, and ever-youthful—the radiant counterpart of the Word. The two are never separate. The Word is the Son, the expression of divine reason, while Wisdom is the creative energy through which that reason takes form in the world. In Christ, the Word and Wisdom are one. This is why Isaiah can say, “Lo, to us a child has been born, to us a son has been given,” and call Him “the Angel of Great Counsel,” “Mighty God,” “Everlasting Father,” and “Prince of Peace.” Clement marvels at this, exclaiming, “O the great God! O the perfect child! The Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son.”

This perfect Child, who is the eternal Word, is also the divine Instructor, leading the new people—the “infants in Christ”—into knowledge and immortality. He stretches out His hands, worthy of trust, to guide His children toward Wisdom, which he describes as “the discipline of the child that extends to all.” The soul that receives this teaching becomes part of the divine family. The Bride, in Clement’s language, is the soul made new, joined to the Word through Wisdom—the living image of God restored to its original beauty.

In Clement’s Christianity, the Bride is not an institution or a church ruled by men but the assembly of souls renewed by the eternal Wisdom and the living Word. The true Church is the mother who nurses the divine children of God, always young, always new, blooming forever in the light of truth. Christ, the eternal Child, rejoices with His bride as Wisdom rejoiced with God at the creation of the world. This is the mystery of divine union that later hierarchies obscured—the harmony of the Word and Wisdom, of Christ and His faithful, existing beyond age, nation, or institution, ever new and incorruptible.

Clement’s words here make the meaning of the woman in Revelation even clearer. He identifies the divine Child not as an institution or a symbol of political power, but as the eternal Word Himself—the perfect Son who unites the human and the divine. When Isaiah says, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given,” Clement reads this as a revelation of the mystery of the Logos: the everlasting union of the Father and the Son, the divine Wisdom that governs all creation.

This divine Child, who is both God and man, is the one born of the pure woman of Revelation 12. Clement’s interpretation removes any possibility that this woman could represent the Roman Church, which did not yet exist and which later clothed itself in worldly power. The woman who travails with child is the image of divine Wisdom and of the pure Church—the spiritual mother who bears within her the Word made flesh. Her travail is not political struggle or institutional labor; it is the pain of the soul bringing forth faith and truth into the world.

The Lord’s resurrection, Clement writes, is the sign of His divinity, “for Jesus rose again after His burial, having suffered no harm, like Isaac released from sacrifice.”

In this light, the woman of Revelation is not a temporal institution claiming authority in Christ’s name, but the eternal mother of the redeemed—the living embodiment of divine Wisdom through whom the Word is continually born in the hearts of believers. She represents the spiritual reality that Clement calls “the new people,” those ever-young souls who partake of the incorruptible Word. The blood of the Lord redeems them from corruption, not through ritual or political order, but through union with the divine Child.

The vision of Revelation thus mirrors Clement’s theology: the woman is divine Wisdom, clothed with the light of heaven, bearing within her the Lamb of God—the Child who is “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The dragon (Zeus/Osiris/Dionysus) that seeks to devour the Child is the ancient adversary, the false light that deceives the world through idolatry and power. But the Christ Child, ascends to God, and is preserved.

Therefore, the woman in Revelation cannot be the Roman Church or any earthly institution. She is the spiritual mother of the faithful, the embodiment of Wisdom and the pure vessel of the Word. Clement’s vision reveals that the true Church is born from above, not built by empire. It is the bride who brings forth the divine Child in the hearts of the meek and pure—the living communion between God’s eternal Wisdom and humanity renewed through Christ, the Lamb of God.