Would 1 Clement Agree with Robert Breaker on Salvation?

Quick Facts

Question: Would 1 Clement (c. 95–96 A.D.) agree with Robert Breaker on how a person is saved?

Short answer: No, and not merely because 1 Clement mentions works. Breaker’s distinctive teaching is that the blood of Jesus Christ is the specific object of saving faith and that asking God to save you is a work. 1 Clement teaches neither, and in 7.7 it names supplication (a type of prayer) as the way the Ninevites obtained salvation.

Breaker’s soteriology: Salvation is by faith alone; the blood of Jesus Christ must be consciously trusted as the distinct object of faith; and calling on God or asking him to save you as a condition of salvation is a work (what he calls the “Beggar’s gospel”).

Clement’s soteriology: Conditional security: initial justification is “not by works … but by faith” (32.4), received through repentance and supplication/prayer (7.4–7), and continuing in salvation depends on a life of obedience (21.1, 30.3, 35.4–5, 57.2, 58.2). It is neither works salvation nor Tridentine; the letter never mentions baptism.

Key texts: 1 Clement 7.4–7, 9.1–2, 12.7, 19.2, 21.1, 28.1, 30.1–7, 32.4, 35.4–5, 36.2, 57.2 and 58.2.

Would 1 Clement Agree with Robert Breaker on Salvation?

A common answer to this question goes like this: Robert Breaker holds a modern, strict “faith alone” view, 1 Clement holds an older view in which faith and works are bound together, and so the two would not fully agree. That answer reaches the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. It gets Breaker wrong, and it gets Clement wrong.

I am writing this to correct both. Robert Breaker’s soteriology is not standard sola fide, and Clement of Rome’s soteriology is not works salvation, Tridentine, or a vague “synergism”. It is conditional security.

1. Robert Breaker Is Not Just Teaching “Faith Alone”

Plenty of Protestants teach salvation by faith alone. What makes Robert Breaker distinct is not that he excludes works. It is what he says faith must be in, and what he counts as a work. As I have shown in my series on him, his soteriology has three parts that must all be met:

1. Salvation is by faith alone.

2. The blood of Jesus Christ is the distinct object of saving faith, and you must specifically and consciously trust the blood for your salvation.

3. Calling on God, confessing, or asking God to save you as a condition of salvation is a work.

In his own words:

“the Bible says You must trust the blood... but you haven’t trusted the blood you’re not saved yet” (Robert Breaker, The Blood of Jesus: The Mechanics of Salvation or the Object of our Faith?, 18:38)

“It’s not the death that saves you. It’s how he died and what he did when he rose from the dead. And it’s all focused on the blood.” (Robert Breaker, Faith in the Blood is Faith in the Atoning Work of Jesus!, 47:43)

“Your works don’t save you. What you say doesn’t save you. What you pray doesn’t save you. It’s whether or not you’re believing IN THE BLOOD.” (Robert Breaker, What Faith in the Blood Really Means, 28:19)

He says it is “not the death that saves you” but the blood. And he does not merely exclude works such as obedience. He excludes asking God for salvation:

“it’s not oh God now please save me now because I want to be safe … if you haven’t TRUSTED IN THE BLOOD are you receiving salvation are you just begging for it and uh I call that the Beggars gospel” (Robert Breaker, Livestream With Brandon Bernardi, July 2023, 52:34)

That is the real point of comparison with 1 Clement. The question is not just “faith or works?” It is: does 1 Clement make the blood the object of faith, and does it treat asking God for salvation as a work?

2. 1 Clement Fails All Three of Breaker’s Categories

The blood is the ground of salvation, not the object of faith. 1 Clement 7.4 says:

ἀτενίσωμεν εἰς τὸ αἷμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ γνῶμεν ὡς ἔστιν τίμιον τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ, ὅτι διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν ἐκχυθὲν παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ μετανοίας χάριν ὑπήνεγκεν. “Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ and understand how precious it is unto His Father, because being shed for our salvation it won for the whole world the grace of repentance.”

The blood is what was shed “for our salvation”, and what it won is “the grace of repentance”. Clement does not tell anyone to trust the blood. He tells them what the blood made available: repentance.

A Breaker defender might answer: “But Clement says to fix your eyes on the blood. Isn’t that the blood as the object of faith?” The verb is ἀτενίζω, “to gaze intently”, and Clement uses it for many things that are plainly not objects of saving faith: “let us fix our eyes on those who ministered perfectly to his glory” (ἀτενίσωμεν εἰς τοὺς τελείως λειτουργήσαντας, 9.2), “let us fix our eyes on the Father and Creator of the whole world” (19.2), and “through him we fix our eyes on the heights of the heavens” (36.2). In Clement, ἀτενίζω is a word of contemplation, not of trust. And 7.4 says what the gazing is for: “and understand how precious it is … because … it won for the whole world the grace of repentance.” The readers look at the blood in order to grasp what it won for them, and what it won is repentance.

In 12.7 the object of faith is God himself: redemption comes “through the blood of the Lord to all them that believe and hope on God” (πᾶσιν τοῖς πιστεύουσιν καὶ ἐλπίζουσιν ἐπὶ τὸν Θεόν). The blood is the means of redemption; God is the one believed and hoped in.

Asking God is exactly how the Ninevites were saved. This is where 1 Clement and Breaker collide head-on. 1 Clement 7.7:

Ἰωνᾶς Νινευίταις καταστροφὴν ἐκήρυξεν, οἱ δὲ μετανοήσαντες ἐπὶ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασιν αὐτῶν ἐξιλάσαντο τὸν Θεὸν ἱκετεύσαντες καὶ ἔλαβον σωτηρίαν, καίπερ ἀλλότριοι τοῦ Θεοῦ ὄντες. “Jonah preached destruction unto the men of Nineveh; but they, repenting of their sins, obtained pardon of God by their supplications and received salvation, albeit they were aliens from God.”

ἱκετεύσαντες, “by supplicating”, is the word for a suppliant pleading for mercy. The Ninevites obtained God’s mercy by begging him for it, and they “received salvation”, the same σωτηρία for which, according to 7.4, Christ’s blood was shed. What Breaker calls the “Beggar’s gospel” is the very thing Clement holds up as the model of how salvation is received. Clement then applies it to his readers: “becoming suppliants (ἱκέται) of his mercy and goodness, let us fall down before him and turn to his compassions” (9.1).

And faith alone, in Breaker’s sense, is not the whole of Clement’s soteriology. Clement does teach that initial justification is not by works (32.4, below). But he also teaches that continuing in salvation depends on how one lives (section 3). Breaker condemns exactly that combination: “So you’ll say it right: Jesus died on the cross and His sacrifice and faith in His blood is the way we’re saved. But then you turn around and you say, ‘But you have to endure to the end to be saved.’ … They don’t work.” (Livestream with Robert Potthoff, 3/24/2026, 53:54)

So 1 Clement does not just “partly” disagree with Breaker. It fails every one of his three categories.

3. Clement’s Soteriology Is Conditional Security

The usual way to describe 1 Clement is to set chapter 32 against chapter 30 and call the result “synergism”, as if Clement had simply blended faith and works without distinction. That misses how the letter actually works. Clement distinguishes between how a person is first justified and how a person remains in salvation.

Initial justification is not by works. 1 Clement 32.4:

καὶ ἡμεῖς οὖν, διὰ θελήματος αὐτοῦ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ κληθέντες, οὐ δι’ ἑαυτῶν δικαιούμεθα οὐδὲ διὰ τῆς ἡμετέρας σοφίας ἢ συνέσεως ἢ εὐσεβείας ἢ ἔργων ὧν κατειργασάμεθα ἐν ὁσιότητι καρδίας, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς πίστεως… “And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith…”

Clement could hardly be clearer. Not wisdom, not piety, not even “works which we wrought in holiness of heart”. And in chapter 7 he shows how that saving faith responds: by repenting and supplicating God for mercy (7.7).

Continuing in salvation is conditional. Once a person has received God’s mercy, Clement repeatedly warns that it can be lost:

21.1: Ὁρᾶτε, ἀγαπητοί, μὴ αἱ εὐεργεσίαι αὐτοῦ αἱ πολλαὶ γένωνται εἰς κρίμα ἡμῖν, ἐὰν μὴ ἀξίως αὐτοῦ πολιτευόμενοι τὰ καλὰ καὶ εὐάρεστα ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ ποιῶμεν μεθ’ ὁμονοίας. “Take heed, beloved, lest his many benefits turn into judgment for us, if we do not walk worthily of him and do what is good and well-pleasing in his sight with concord.”

28.1: φοβηθῶμεν αὐτόν, καὶ ἀπολίπωμεν φαύλων ἔργων μιαρὰς ἐπιθυμίας, ἵνα τῷ ἐλέει αὐτοῦ σκεπασθῶμεν ἀπὸ τῶν μελλόντων κριμάτων. “Let us fear him, and forsake the foul desires of evil works, that we may be shielded by his mercy from the judgments to come.”

35.4: ἡμεῖς οὖν ἀγωνισώμεθα εὑρεθῆναι ἐν τῷ ἀριθμῷ τῶν ὑπομενόντων, ὅπως μεταλάβωμεν τῶν ἐπηγγελμένων δωρεῶν. “Let us therefore strive to be found in the number of those who wait patiently for him, so that we may share in the promised gifts.” Clement then lists the conditions, each introduced by “if” (ἐάν, 35.5).

57.2: ἄμεινον γάρ ἐστιν ὑμῖν ἐν τῷ ποιμνίῳ τοῦ Χριστοῦ μικροὺς καὶ ἐλλογίμους εὑρεθῆναι, ἢ καθ’ ὑπεροχὴν δοκοῦντας ἐκριφῆναι ἐκ τῆς ἐλπίδος αὐτοῦ. “For it is better for you to be found little in the flock of Christ and to have your name on God’s roll, than to be had in exceeding honour and yet be cast out from the hope of him.”

58.2: ὁ ποιήσας ἐν ταπεινοφροσύνῃ … τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ δεδομένα δικαιώματα καὶ προστάγματα, οὗτος ἐντεταγμένος καὶ ἐλλόγιμος ἔσται εἰς τὸν ἀριθμὸν τῶν σωζομένων διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. “He who in humility … has done the ordinances and commandments given by God, he shall be enrolled and have a name among the number of those who are being saved through Jesus Christ.”

Why 30.3 does not contradict 32.4:

Chapter 30 says “being justified by works and not by words” (ἔργοις δικαιούμενοι καὶ μὴ λόγοις, 30.3), using the same verb Clement uses in 32.4. Read the whole chapter, though, and it is clear what kind of justifying he means.

It opens by addressing people who already belong to God: Ἁγίου οὖν μερὶς ὑπάρχοντες, “being therefore the portion of the Holy One” (30.1). And the contrast in 30.3 is not works against faith. It is works against words: deeds against talk.

The next verse explains it with Job 11:2–3: Ὁ τὰ πολλὰ λέγων καὶ ἀντακούσεται· ἢ ὁ εὔλαλος οἴεται εἶναι δίκαιος; “He who speaks much will also hear much in return; or does the fluent talker think himself righteous?” (30.4). Then: “Let our praise be in God and not from ourselves, for God hates those who praise themselves” (30.6), and “let the testimony to our good deeds be given by others, as it was given to our fathers, the righteous” (30.7).

The question in chapter 30 is how people who already belong to God are shown to be righteous: by deeds that others can see, not by talking about themselves. It is about the righteousness of those already in God’s portion. How a sinner is first justified is the subject of 32.4, and there Clement says “not … through works … but through faith”.

Initial salvation by faith, through repentance and supplication, and continuing salvation conditioned on obedience: that is conditional security.

4. Not Works-Salvation, and Not Tridentine

It is not works-salvation. A works-based reading has to explain away 32.4, where Clement says we are not justified “through … piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart”. It also ignores 7.4, where repentance itself is a grace won by Christ’s blood, and 38.4, where Clement says “we have all these things from him”. In 1 Clement, works do not earn initial salvation. They are the condition of continuing in it.

It is not Tridentine. The Council of Trent teaches that “the instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith, without which (faith) no man was ever justified” (Session VI, Chapter VII). 1 Clement never mentions baptism. In Clement, the Ninevites were justified by repenting and supplicating God, “although they were aliens from God”: no covenant, no law, and no sacrament.

“Synergism” is too vague to be useful. Calling 1 Clement “synergistic” treats chapters 30 and 32 as a single blend. Clement himself separates them: how one is first justified (32.4, 7.7) and how one remains in God’s mercy (21.1, 28.1, 35.4–5, 57.2, 58.2).

5. Conclusion

1 Clement does not disagree with Robert Breaker only because it mentions works. It disagrees with him at the center of his theology. Breaker says the blood must be trusted as the specific object of faith; Clement says the blood won the grace of repentance, and that redemption comes to those who “believe and hope on God”. Breaker says asking God to save you is a work and calls it the “Beggar’s gospel”; Clement says the Ninevites obtained salvation by supplicating God, and tells his readers to become suppliants themselves. Breaker rejects any teaching that the saved must “endure to the end to be saved” (“How do you just tell me you get saved like this, but then you’ve got to do this to be saved? They don’t work”, Livestream with Robert Potthoff, 3/24/2026, 53:54); Clement warns that the unfaithful can be “cast out from the hope” of Christ (57.2).

Clement of Rome is not a Breakerite, and he is not a Tridentine Catholic. His soteriology is conditional security.

Sources

Greek text of 1 Clement: Lightfoot (1869), corrected from the Jerusalem codex; Kirsopp Lake’s edition (1912), as corrected by the Open Apostolic Fathers project. English of 7.4, 7.7, 12.7, 30.3, 32.4 and 57.2: J. B. Lightfoot’s translation; other translations are literal.

Council of Trent, Session VI, Chapter VII: history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct06.html

Robert Breaker, The Blood of Jesus: The Mechanics of Salvation or the Object of our Faith?: youtu.be/cDnVW1kvwrY?t=1118

Robert Breaker, Faith in the Blood is Faith in the Atoning Work of Jesus!: youtu.be/vCUCLFVX3CY?t=2863

Robert Breaker, What Faith in the Blood Really Means: youtube.com/watch?v=WCS71BofWmc&t=1699

Robert Breaker, Livestream With Brandon Bernardi, July 2023: youtube.com/live/uyrsf8jaPqg

Robert Breaker, Livestream with Robert Potthoff, 3/24/2026: youtube.com/live/GBO6WzcMwhE

My series, “Robert Breaker’s Salvation Theology Is a Modern Doctrine”, Parts 1–4.