"... In the course of Clement’s impassioned plea for an end to division and discord and the return to peace and order at the church in Corinth, a special emphasis is placed on the notion that it is the Christian people who now constitute God’s “chosen portion.” It is they whom he has taken for himself from among all the other nations. In perfect continuity with the Jewish backdrop that informs his intervention, Clement thus argues that since the followers of Christ now constitute a “holy” people, they must act and conduct themselves accordingly. This he grounds on the authority of Deuteronomy 32:8–9 in the Septuagint version. “And so,” he writes, “we should approach him with devout souls, raising pure and undefiled hands to him and loving our gentle and kind-hearted Father who made us his own chosen portion. For so it is written: ‘When the Most High divided the nations and scattered the descendants of Adam, he established the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. His people, Jacob, became the portion of the Lord; Israel became the allotment of his inheritance.’” Not without a certain inconsistency, Clement maintains that it is even through “righteous deeds”— and not through “mere words”— that the holy people should acquire and preserve their holiness. In this respect, and in contrast to the “idle” and the “slovenly,” they should model themselves on the example of the host of heavenly angels ..."

Heron, Nicholas Liturgical Power: Between Economic and Political Theology (p. 66) Fordham University Press, 2018