3 . Chrysostom as Antiochene Exegete
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
labored at giving substance to this claim. And so "his sayings were no repeal of the former, but a drawing out, and filling up of them." Chrysostom's commentaries on the Old Testament, notably his homilies on Genesis, illustrate how important this continuity between the old covenant and the new was for his understanding of the entire biblical message."
Both they and his homilies on the New Testament, including these on St. Matthew, also demonstrate the continuing threat of the Gnostic and Gnosticizing systems which exalted the novelty of the gospel by undermining its continuity with the old covenant, glorified grace by defacing nature, and sought to protect God from defilement by repudiating the biblical doctrine of creation.
Both as a Christian and as a theologian, Chrysostom found such systems intolerable. His defense against them therefore became a leitmotiv of these homilies.
3. Chrysostom as Antiochene Exegete Second only to Chrysostom's fame as a preacher is his renown as a biblical exegete. He is, in the phrase of G. L.
Prestige, "the master and pattern of all biblical commentators belonging rather to the historical than to the dogmatic school of exposition."* Because he saw the task of preaching principally as one of interpreting the biblical text and applying it to the hearers, even so brief an introduction to Chrysostom as this must devote some consideration to this method of biblical exegesis as it pertains to these homilies on the Sermon on the Mount.
John Chrysostom is so completely the typical representative of the Antiochene school of exegesis that most of what we know about this school and its actual exegetical practice has come from him." Chrysostom's friend, Theodore of Mopsuestia,
2 Ibid. xvi. 4.
"Cf. Chrysostomus Baur, "Chrysostomus in Genesim,"
Theologische Quartalschrift, CVIUII (1927), 221-32.
*G. L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (London: S. P. C. K., 1948), Diz On °I am indebted to the researches of my student and now colleague,
Rowan A. Greer, "The Antiochene Exegesis of Hebrews"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1965), for a clarification of the relation between Chrysostom and "the school of Antioch."
INTRODUCTION
was the teacher of Nestorius, and the condemnation of Nestorianism led to the destruction of much of the scholarly literature of the Antiochene school, but Chrysostom's standing as a hero of the faith, revered by both East and West, helped to save his work from such a fate. Although he was evidently a more orthodox theologian than were some later exponents of Antiochene theology, that is, one whose principles of interpretation were more radical in their possible implications than in their dogmatic results, he does enable historians to trace the evolution of literal exegesis from its beginnings to its Nestorian foliation and to see its place within the context of the history of early Christian exegesis.' As von Campenhausen has observed, "The homilies of Chrysostom are probably the only ones from the whole of Greek antiquity which at least in part are still readable today as Christian sermons.
They reflect something of the authentic life of the New Testament, just because they are so ethical, so simple, and so clear-headed'*— and, he could have added, because they are so sober and so restrained in their hermeneutical procedure.
That sobriety and restraint may be said to be the dominant characteristics of the hermeneutics of the Antiochene school.
It seems that in its origins this school of Christian exegesis owed much to the Jewish tradition of biblical interpretation, ie., not to the tradition represented by Philo, which harmonized the Old Testament with its developed philosophy by means of an allegorical method of explaining Scripture, but to the tradition of the literal interpretation of Scripture represented by the rabbis. Applying this method of interpretation to the Christian understanding of Scripture, the Christian exegetes of the Antiochene school drastically limited the application of allegorical techniques. A later explanation of the difference, even though it dates from the ninth century, states the problem with precision:
®° Cf. Newman's comment: "There have been many literal expositors, but only one Chrysostom.
It is St. Chrysostom who is the charm of the method, not the method that is the charm of St. Chrysostom."
John Henry Newman, "The Last Years of St. Chrysostom," Essays and Sketches, ed. Charles Frederick Harrold II] (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1948), p. 220.
*Hans von Campenhausen, The Fathers of the Greek Church, trans. Stanley Godman (New York: Pantheon, 1959), p. 144.
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
People ask what the difference is between allegorical exegesis and historical exegesis. We reply that it is great and not small; just as the first leads to impiety, blasphemy, and falsehood, so the other is conformed to truth and faith.
It was the impious Origen of Alexandria who invented this art of allegory. Just as poets and geometricians, when they wish to raise their disciples from material and visible things to things hidden and invisible, erring in regard to the eternity of incorporeal matter and to indivisible atoms, say: "Just as it is not these visible signs which are signs for reading, but their hidden meanings, so from created natures one must rise by the image of thought to their eternal nature"; just so, Origen taught.
. The psalms and the prophets who spoke of the captivity and the return of the people, he explained as teaching the captivity of the soul far from truth and its return to faith.
... They do not interpret paradise as it is, or Adam, or Eve, or any existing thing."
It was against this form of exegetical alchemy, which sought to turn the lead of historical narrative into the gold of spiritual truth, that Antiochene hermeneutics protested.
In so doing, the school of Antioch was taking on a formidable opponent. The advocates of allegory could, of course, point to the use of this method within the New Testament itself, notably to the allegorical interpretation of the difference between Sarah and Hagar in Galatians 4:21-31.° In fact, however, this was one of the very few instances of the allegorical method in Scripture, and it was certainly more than counterbalanced by the meticulous attention to the minutiae of historical narrative evident not only in the Old Testament but also in the New. But by the time of its encounter with Antioch, allegory had more than Pauline precedent on its side. Against Marcion it had won the day as a vindication of the Christianization of the Old Testament; in the conflict with Gnosticism it had proved that the truly "spiritual" interpretation of the mystery of Christ did not reside only with Valentinus, Basilides, and their disciples, but was being set forth by the ° Ish'odad's Introduction to the Psalms, quoted in Robert M. Grant,
The Bible in the Church (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), p. 75.
°Cf. Chrysostom Matt. xvi. 8.
INTRODUCTION
orthodox exegesis of the church catholic.' And in the course of the controversy with Arianism allegory had marshaled the evidence of both Testaments in support of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, citing the Psalter, the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs, and the prologue to the Gospel of John as parts of the same Scripture, regardless of their chronological difference." Cardinal Newman does not seem to have been exaggerating when he proposed that "it may almost be laid down as an historical fact, that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together."® Orthodoxy itself seemed to be in jeopardy when Antiochene exegesis sought to put a limitation on allegory.
Yet in some of its outstanding representatives Antiochene exegesis was impeccably orthodox. Thus, although the later identification of Theodore of Mopsuestia as a heretic raised some questions about the orthodoxy of his teacher, Diodore of Tarsus, Diodore's own intent was evidently to assert, against Arianism, the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father and, against Apollinarism, the consubstantiality of Christ with man.
One of his disciples, Theodore, was indeed eventually labeled a heretic, but another of his disciples was John Chrysostom.
Despite the close alliance to which Cardinal Newman points between "the mystical interpretation" of Scripture and "orthodoxy" in matters of the Trinitarian and christological dogmas,
Chrysostom proved that it was possible to be altogether orthodox whenever one dealt with these dogmas—which, in his case, was not very often—and yet to follow the lead of Diodore in stressing the literal rather than the allegorical sense of Scripture.
Chrysostom's preference for the "literal" or historical sense over the allegorical is especially visible in his few surviving
7 Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott (new printing; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1960), II, 259-60,
collects the pertinent passages from Marcion's opponents. Henri de Lubac, Histoire et esprit: L'intelligence de l'Ecriture d'aprés Origéne
(Paris: Aubier, 1950), pp. 166-78.
® Jaroslav Pelikan, The Light of the World: A Basic Image in Early Christian Thought (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 55-57.
* John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Image Book Edition; New York: Doubleday, 1960),
PaoLie
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
works on the Old Testament, just as, conversely, the Alexandrians applied a freer hand to the spiritualization of the historical materials of the Old Testament than to the application of the same method in their exegesis of the Gospels. Such difficulties in the New Testament as the miracle stories were a special problem, which could sometimes be solved by recourse to allegory,° but even the most extravagant of orthodox allegorists were restrained by the example of Gnostic demythologization from dissolving the gospel narratives into allegories of the soul's descent from God and its return to him through the strata of the cosmos. When they came to the narratives of, for example, the Book of Joshua, these restraints were off; and Origen made of the Book of Joshua a rich resource of doctrinal and ethical insight, proving from its own words, such as the phrase "to this day" in Joshua 6:25, that it had not been intended as a literal historical account but as a spiritual narrative." Even in his Homilies on Genesis, however, Chrysostom showed himself an apt pupil of Diodore and an enemy of overly imaginative allegorization.
That inclination to be sober rather than imaginative in interpretation makes itself evident also in these homilies on the Sermon on the Mount, where there was, after all, little opportunity for the conflict between the two methods of scriptural exegesis to make itself felt. The conflict comes into view only at those points where Chrysostom himself attacks an excessively allegorical view or where we happen to have other commentaries on the same passage. Of the first sort is his explamation of the third of the beatitudes in Matthew 5:5:
"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
Chrysostom raises the question, "What kind of earth?"" Without specifying his sources, he goes on to note that some exegetes had said that this was "a figurative earth." It is not Cf. Robert M. Grant, Miracle and Natural Law in GraecoRoman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam: North Holland
Publishing Company, 1952), esp. pp. 193-208.
" Origen In Jesu Nave vii. 5; cf. the comments on this passage by Annie Jaubert (ed.), Origéne, Homélies sur Josué ("Sources chrétiennes,'
LX XI [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1960}), 206-7, n. 2.
™ Chrysostom Matt, xv. 5.
INTRODUCTION
clear whom he has in mind. This was indeed the interpretation of "inherit the earth" proposed just a few years later in Augustine's commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. But apparently both Augustine's acceptance of a spiritual interpretation of "earth" and Chrysostom's polemic against such an interpretation presuppose an exegetical tradition, now lost, which explained the words as a promise of "an undying inheritance, where the soul in a state of well-being rests as in its natural environment ..
. the life and rest of the saints.""* Not so, Chrysostom argued, "for nowhere in Scripture do we find any mention of an earth that is merely figurative." Hence the passage must mean that Christ sought to motivate his hearers both by the prospect of eternal glory and by the promise of temporal gain, a literal "earth" that they would possess by inheritance if they practiced true meekness.
Another passage in the Sermon on the Mount where earlier allegorists had applied their technique was Matthew 5:25.
"Some say,' Chrysostom informs us, "that [Christ} obscurely signifies the devil himself, under the name of the adversary; and bids us have nothing of his." But there was no need for so far-fetched an explanation of the words, which could be taken simply and quite literally as referring to the judges, prisons, and way of this world. We are fortunate in this instance to have two earlier pieces of evidence about the provenance of the exegesis that identified the "adversary" of Matthew 5:25 with the devil. Irenaeus informs us that the followers of the Gnostic teacher Carpocrates "declare the 'adversary is one of those angels who are in the world, whom they call the devil, maintaining that he was formed for this purpose, that he might lead those souls which have perished from the world to the Supreme Ruler.'" According to Tertullian, too, Carpocrates taught the transmigration of souls and found in this passage a substantiation of this theory." It was evidently some such allegory, perhaps even in an orthodox
Augustine The Lord's Sermon on the Mount i. 2. 4 ("Ancient eee Writers,' V [Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1956}),
* Chrysostom Matt. xvi. 13.
*Trenaeus Against Heresies i. 25. A.
* Tertullian On the Soul 35.
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
form, that Chrysostom was attacking by urging in the same passage that Christ, "after he had abashed men by higher things, and things future .
. alarms them also by such as are in this life."
But the most striking illustration within these homilies of the antithesis between the two styles of exegesis comes in the interpretation of the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:11. Here Chrysostom did not make his divergence from the exegetical tradition as explicit as he had in the explanation of the earlier passages; yet the divergence is even more far-reaching. Origen was speaking for a large body of exegetical tradition when he protested that the bread for which this petition prays could not be physical bread, as some interpreters of the passage proposed." On the basis of the discourses of Jesus in John 6, Origen argued that Christ himself was the true bread and therefore that this petition was actually a prayer for the only bread that was in the fullest sense epiousios, that is, "of the divine substance."* Chrysostom's interpretation, on the other hand, was much more prosaic, but perhaps also more accurate. The command to pray this petition, like the whole of the Sermon on the Mount, was addressed "to men encompassed with flesh, and subject to the necessities of nature." Therefore the Lord's Prayer included not only requests for spiritual blessings, but also the prayer for what the body required, daily bread. Even here, however, the teachings of Christ were emphasizing the reality of the spiritual life, for all that we are permitted to request is the simple necessity of one day's bread at a time."
Earlier we referred to the anti-Gnostic and anti-Manichaean accent in much of Chrysostom's polemic in these homilies. The discovery that in his identification of the "adversary" of Matthew 5:25 he was also voicing a polemic against an exegetical tradition of the Gnostic masters suggests a connection in Chrysostom's mind between the spiritualism of the Gnostic or Manichaean dualists and the spiritualism of allegorical exegesis.
Against both of them his Antiochene realism emphasized the "Origen On Prayer xxvii. 1.
8 Ibid. xxvii. 7.
* Chrysostom Matt. xix. 8.