The Structure of the Homilies
INTRODUCTION
contents. The advantages stemming from this practice are manifold: ... "25
So they are not, in Chrysostom's view and in keeping with his notion of scriptural inspiration, passive recipients of a one-way process. He sees inspiration affecting them and himself in various ways and in various situations: "If we have a precise realization of this, we will be able while relaxing at home, both before eating or after eating, to take the sacred books in our hands and gain benefit from them and provide spiritual nourishment for our soul. ... This, after all, is the secret of our salvation, our spiritual riches, our security. If we defend ourselves in this way day by day, through reading, through listening, through spiritual discourse, we will be able to keep ourselves unharmed and render the devil's wiles ineffectual." 26
Their role is not only to listen, but also to read and engage in spiritual discourse. He frequently envisages them leaving the church after his sermon to go home with their neighbors, and on the way reminiscing together on the day's theme, assisting one another in their recollection of it,27 the better to understand it themselves as well as to teach and admonish others,28 even to engage in controversy 'with them,29 or perhaps mediating the subject matter to those absent. 30 Bible discussion groups at home are also part of their lifestyle. 31
Whatever of the turbulent religious currents of contemporary Antioch, this congregation led a quite intensely scriptural life. 32
THE STRUCTURE OF THE HOMILIES
(12) As a homilist Chrysostom was not in the business of wasting the time of his listeners; they got good measure,
25. Homily 24; cf. 21.
27. Homily 14· 29. Homily 8.
31. Homily 6; 10.
26. Homily 10.
28. Homily 14; 20.
30. Homily 10.
32. For further detail, R. Hill, St. John Chrysostom's Teaching on Inspiration in his Old Testament Homilies 108-21.
ST.JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
whether they liked it or not. Newman could wax poetic on his oratorical style, others compare it to the Attic of Demosthenes; 33 certainly its flowing, meandering, even asyntactic periods discourage the impression the homilies were composed but never delivered. There was, however, little of the original and spectacular in the structure of the homilies-not surprising, in that there are 67 on the one book of the Bible.
Normally, there was the opening reading of the day's verse(s).
Cfirysostom would then link the day's sermon with the previous day'S, often through some such figure as the laying of a table; this could occasionally develop into a lengthy moral! dogmatic/polemical excursus unrelated to the Gn text and supported from other Scriptural loci. Then-sometimes with abruptness and difficulty after such a lengthy digression (disproportionate enough to discourage again an impression of perfect planning beforehand)-he would take up the day's text for exegesis/commentary.34 Finally, after a substantial time on the text, he would move to a pare netic conclusion, quite perfunctorily done by way of "supplying you with the customary paraklesis," 35 and not always arising naturally from the exegetical material; by this stage patience might be wearing thin, especially as the homilies tended to get longer and longer, and he would feel the need to apologize (cf. Homilies
15,16,17,18,lg)-though thankfully it was some such occasion that provided the beautiful rebuke about the lamplighter in Sermon 4 on Gn: "We are explaining the Scriptures to you, while you are turning your eyes away from us, and directing them instead to the lamps and the man lighting them. Such laziness! to turn away from us and attend to him. Here am I lighting the fire of Scripture, and the lamp of its teaching is enkindled on my lips ... "36
33· Cf. P. J. Ryan, "Chrysostom-a derived stylist?" VigC 36 (1982) 5-14.
34. Homily 11 omits reference to Cn to deal with imitation of the saints and especially of Chrysostom's model, Paul, through extended commentary on 2 Cor.
35· Homily 7; cf. 20.
36. In the Isaiah homilies (Hom.4 in Oziam: PC 56,121a) there is the equally beautiful metaphor for the preaching on Scripture, where the congregation is compared to a ship's company embarking en route for heaven on
INTRODUCTION
Finally and invariably, as became the pastor and theologian that he patently was, came the brief prayer for congregation and preacher, and the trinitarian doxology.
(13) To describe as exegetical homilies Chrysostom's treatment of Genesis and the other parts of the Old Testament is to stretch the definition somewhat; as his contemporary Julian of Eclanum observed, his mediation of the Scriptures was
"rather by exhortation than by exposition" (PL 21,960). This was partly due to a judgement about his pastoral role and the needs of his congregation: they got what he thought they needed, even if at times not in keeping with the stage of development of the Genesis text-such as a lecture on the evils of the race-course, or many reminders of the efficacy of fasting during Lent. His advocacy of fasting does admit of distinction: those who cannot abstain from food can pray, give alms, read the Bible;37 prompt response to the basic moral imperative is pointed out as "real fasting" in case mere abstinence be seen as a fetish 38-sound advice from a one-time addict. Beyond that, his moral exhortation centers on several well-worn themes. Most prominent in this series on Genesis, perhaps because of his diagnosis of the sin of Adam and Eve as rhathumia, "indifference/ carelessness/ sloth," 39 is the Christian life as a dialectic with indifference and enthusiasm (prothumia) as the two opposites. 40 Other chestnuts include the dialectic between truth and error/deception/the devil's wiles, and as a corollary
Chrysostom's warning about the limitations of human reasoning compared with the divine design. 4 ! The wealth of a vessel (which is the homily) driven forward by the breath of the Spirit, with Christ himself-the Word-leading the way; Chrysostom himself as preacher has only to launch the boat and supply his tongue as sail to catch the breath of the Spirit. FQr a translation see R. Hill, "St. John Chrysostom's teaching on inspiration in 'Six Homilies on Isaiah' VigC 22 (1968) 30-31.
37. Homily 10.
38. Homily 15.
39. Homily 14;18;19;21. Indifference is also Lamech's flaw in 20.
40. "Binomials" is the name F. Asensio gives to these opposites that characterize Chrysostom's thinking, in his article, "El Cris6stomo y su visi6n de la escritura en la exposici6n homiletica del Genesis," EB 32 (1973) 223-55,
329-56.
41. Homily 12;15;21.
ST.JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
Scripture, "beyond all telling" yet hidden beneath the surface, is a constant theme. In this series the Jews 42 and Judaizers 43 do not figure much, despite Baur's remarks about the threat their influential position posed to the faith in Antioch at that period!4
(14) Perhaps a word should be said about Chrysostom's sexism, if only for the heavy strain it places on the modern translator. We are not surprised to find him using only the masculine of his congregation in general or of the particular examples he takes. Today's congregations, however, would be less content to have a preacher talk about the wonderful people of sacred history and refer only to men, as Chrysostom invariably does;45 in Homily 21 he even recommends them to name their children generally after those holy andres.
Even when his LXX text reminds him that it is the human being, anthropos, that is in question-as in the case of its creation 46_ he thinks in terms of the male, so that for him (despite the text) anthropos and gyne become correlatives. His commentary on the Fall in Homily 17 further leads him to a somewhat unbalanced explanation of male superiority on the basis of greater female guilt. Doubtless he is not alone
42. Homily 8 and the following: Wilken, R. L. ed. Aspects of Wisdom injudaism and Early Christianity. (University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). --. john
Chrysostom and the jews. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). -- -. judaism and the Early Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexander's Exegesis and Theology. (Yale University Press, 1971). -- and W. A. Meeks. jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era. (Scholars Press, 1978).
43. Homily 12.
44. Baur I, 331-33. An interesting detail of Chrysostom's thought that strikes the reader when he reaches Gn 3.15 is that Chrysostom acknowledges no Messianic or Marian echoes in the text, whether through personal conviction or to discourage his congregation's looking for senses beyond the literal
(Homily 17).
45. Cf. Homily 12;21. Recent works on Chrysostom's sexism include:
Clark, Elizabeth A. jerome, Chrysostom and Friends: essays and translations. (New
York: E. Mellen Press, 1979)' Shore, Sally Ann. De Virginitate and De non iterando coniugio: On Virginity and Against Remarriage with an Introduction by Elizabeth A. Clark in Studies on Women and Religion, volume 9 (New York,
1983).
46. Cf. Homily 8; 10.