On similarities in the homilies of Clement of Alexandria and Saint John Chrysostom

The foundation of the biblical foundation and vision of God, the world and man in the Church is her own attitude to pedagogy, the purpose of which is a set of upbringing and educational traits leading to salvation. The most common ways and methods of such pedagogy are teachings based on the foundations of the Gospel. From early Christian times they were called “catechetical discourses” because they contained the announcement of truths, and the teachings themselves represented a single type of book needed by the novices for their religious education. These teachings include the early Christian apostolic works Didache and Didascalia ; chronologically, the same can be said of the three- volume book of Clement of Alexandria The Pedagogue, and the Catechetical Discourses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and so on. In terms of their educational content, these teachings were divided into discourses for the catechumens and mystagogical discourses for those who had already been baptized and wanted to deepen their knowledge of faith. This order of didactic church preaching was especially important until the 6th century, when the Baptism of adults gave way to the adoption of Baptism in childhood. But the significance of such doctrinal teachings in religious science has not disappeared. They are still relevant today. The article on the above topic briefly and meaningfully talks about the Discourses of St. John Chrysostom and The Pedagogue by Clement of Alexandria. Patrological data suggest that these works appeared at different times. However, the “problem” associated with them boils down to the fact that the three-volume Pedagogue contains themes that are almost completely similar to those presented in the Discourses of Chrysostom. Therefore, the question arises: were the Discourses (taking into account the fact that they were written in the late period of Chrysostom’s life) an original work of St. John himself, or did they arise on the model of the Pedagogue written earlier? Or are these teachings just attributed to Chrysostom?