4, Chrysostom as Rhetor i
INTRODUCTION
goodness and the importance of the literal, the historical, and the material, as part of God's good creation and as a means of his revelation.
Readers who approach these homilies after having studied other exegetical traditions will find some interesting points of comparison.
There are certain affinities between Antiochene exegesis and the methods of the Reformers, so that anyone who stands consciously in the exegetical tradition of the Reformation will recognize many of Chrysostom's methods. On the other hand, a student of patristic literature who is accustomed to the rich diet of Origenist allegory will find Chrysostom's exegesis rather bland by comparison.
The elaborate system of symbols has been replaced by a rather matter-of-fact exposition of the text. Origen saw a succession of types and prototypes, in which the material world of experience mirrored the reality of the spiritual world in God.
When Chrysostom resorted to the notion of prototypes, it was to develop the ethical point made in Proverbs 19:17, that God becomes the debtor to whom one lends when one gives to the poor and that God is therefore the debtor "in the original sense."" But all of this is rather tame after Origen's ingenious excavations into the text to find the gold of the spiritual sense.
As we shall note in the fifth section of this Introduction, however, this method did enable Chrysostom to apply the Sermon on the Mount to the needs of his hearers with singular force and clarity. Apparently the Antiochene exegesis suited an Antiochene audience.
4. Chrysostom as Rhetor It is impossible to read the homilies of Chrysostom without being constantly reminded that he was not only a Christian priest but also a Greek orator. Both the exegetical tradition of Antioch and the rhetorical tradition of Antioch helped to shape his composition. The outstanding representative of the latter during John's youth was Libanius (314-393).
As " Ibid. xv. 13.
>The career and significance of Libanius are well summarized by Glanville Downey in a chapter on "The Old World of Libanius,"
Antioch in the Age of Theodosius the Great (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), pp. 85-102; see also the following chapter, pp. 103-132, on "John Chrysostom's New World."
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
Festugiére has shown, Libanius was one of the most eloquent spokesmen of his day for the educational ideals of classical
Greek paganism.' These he defended against the incursions of Roman paganism, by refusing to pay his worship to Roman gods or his respects to Roman literature, and against the rising tide of Christianity, by clinging to Greek astrology and to other practices of Greek religion.
Libanius was not only the most celebrated orator of his time, but also a gifted and influential teacher. He had the quite unparalleled distinction of having had as his pupils both the "apostate" emperor Julian and the Christian choryphaei John
Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus. A recent study of his work as a teacher has sought to describe the extent of his influence upon his disciples." There has been some debate among scholars about the accuracy of the report of the church historian Socrates that John Chrysostom "studied rhetoric under Libanius the sophist and philosophy under Andragathius the philosopher," and some have attempted to prove that this was a later fiction." Most historians and biographers, nevertheless, are still inclined to accept Socrates' account. As Baur has put it, "The first and greatest orator of Christian antiquity sat at the feet of the last great rhetorician of pagan antiquity."* Additional light both on Chrysostom's affinities for Libanius' style of rhetoric and on his independence of it has come from a close analysis of the rhetorical rhythms in several of Chrysostom's sermons.'
This is not to say, of course, that the sermons as we now have them represent a verbatim transcript of what Chrysostom actually said in the pulpit. Unfortunately, the evidence for an adjudication of this question is less substantial than the his- "A. J. Festugiére, Antioche paienne et chrétienne
(Paris: Editions E. de Boccard, 1959), pp. 91-139.
°P. Petit, Les étudiants de Libanius (Paris: Nouvelles éditions Latines, 1957), pp. 40-42.
* Socrates Ecclesiastical History vi. 3.
* Baur, Chrysostom, I, 22-23, summarizes the arguments.
® Ibid., p. 21.
*Stanislaus Skimina, De loannis Chrysostomi rhythmo oratorio (Krakéw: Archiwum filologiczne polskiej Akademji Umiej, 1927), esp. pp. 54-69, comparing Libanius, Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nyssa.
INTRODUCTION
torian would wish. There are two radically different recensions of Chrysostom's Homilies on Genesis, which he delivered perhaps in 388.° One recension contains numerous allusions to current events and contemporary problems in the city of Antioch; the other is, in effect, a sermonic commentary on Genesis that could almost have been written and/or preached at any time in his career—or even in the career of some other
Christian preacher in another city and another century. Perhaps the literary version of the homilies was a revision for publication based on stenographic notes taken down during the delivery of the sermons; but it is also possible, even likely, that the sermonic commentary was a literary composition in its own right. This may also be true of other series of homilies in the corpus of Chrysostom's works. As we noted early in this Introduction, it is this uneasy relation between the preached word and its written deposit that makes a history of preaching (in the sense of oral proclamation) a historiogtaphic impossibility. Thus it seems that in their transmitted form the homilies of Chrysostom were delivered orally by hundreds and thousands of Greek preachers, but not by Chrysostom himself.
The fifth book of Chrysostom's treatise On the Priesthood is a succinct description of the qualities which a Christian preacher must have. Among these, two were of special importance to Chrysostom: an indifference to the plaudits of one's hearers, and an ability to speak skilfully. For if a preacher be indifferent to praise, and yet cannot produce the doctrine "which is grace seasoned with salt' [Col. 4:6], he becomes despised by the multitude, while he gains nothing from his own nobleness of mind; and if on the other hand he is successful as a preacher, and is overcome by the thought of applause, harm is equally done in turn, both to himself and the multitude, because in his desire for praise he is careful to speak rather with a view to please than to profit.'
* These have been investigated in a study which I have not had the opportunity to examine, W. A. Markowicz, 'The Text Tradition of St. John Chrysostom's Homilies on Genesis"
(Ph.D.
Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1953).
* Chrysostom On the Priesthood v. 2.
7M)
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
Both of these qualities, as well as the correlative temptations, were familiar to Chrysostom, as his career demonstrates and his sermons and homilies attest. Yet his training as a rhetor betrayed its presence even when he was warning against the dangers of relying too much on rhetoric. The entire treatise
On the Priesthood is both a gem of Christian literature and a masterpiece of the rhetorician's art." There have not been enough investigations of the rhetorical method in other works, particularly in the exegetical series of homilies, to warrant any generalization beyond the hypothetical; but each time a scholar has applied painstaking analysis to one of Chrysostom's writings the virtuosity of his oratorical performance has been proved once more." The rhetoric could be poison-mouthed as well as golden-mouthed; certainly the most shocking of Chrysostom's works, the Homilies against the Jews, delivered apparently from August, 387, to September, 389, document the way Christian rhetoric could serve as a vehicle for Christian anti-Semitism."
Although there would seem to be a need also for a fulllength analysis of the Homilies on Saint Matthew, the reader of the ten homilies assembled in the present volume should be alert to signs that techniques of classical oratory have been applied to the task of expounding the Scriptures. The complementary and yet often contradictory traits discussed abstractly in Book V of On the Priesthood, the preachet's resistance to the blandishments of the multitude and his cultivation of skill as a rhetor, are exhibited concretely in this sermonic commentary. If there existed stenographic notes of the sermons as they were delivered, we could perhaps identify many other points where the rhetorician and the pastor have
10.W7. A. Maat, A Rhetorical Study of St. John Chrysostom's "De sacerdotio" (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1944) is helpful for the study of other works as well.
™ Two basic analyses are: T. E. Ameringer, The Stylistic Influence of the Second Sophistic on the Panegyrical Sermons of St. John
Chrysostom (Washington:
Catholic University Press, 1921); and Mary Albania Burns, Saimt John Chrysostom's Homilies on the Statues: A Study of their Rhetorical Qualities and Form (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1930).
A. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935), pp. 132-39.
INTRODUCTION
combined to produce the preacher. But even in their present state the homilies show many marks of the art that consists in concealing art, or at least in almost concealing it.
The last of the beatitudes in Matthew 5:11 provided an occasion for a disquisition on the necessity of cultivating an indifference to the flattery of one's hearers, as well as for a clarification of what this indifference did not imply. Chrysostom was not insensitive to the need for approval. He knew already in 390 what he was to learn many times again, that "it is not even possible that those who live in the practice of virtue should be well spoken of by all men." He was obviously expressing his own feelings when he went on to say:
"Most assuredly, men's evil reports have a sharper bite than their very deeds. For whereas, in our dangers, there are many things that lighten the toil, as to be cheered by all, to have many to applaud, to crown, to proclaim our praise; here in our reproach even this consolation is destroyed." The instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, as we shall note, did not pertain only to the disciples, but through them were addressed to all men." Yet they did apply with special force both to the disciples and to their successors in the church, the bishops and clergy. This was particularly true of the admonition and encouragement of the final beatitude, which, while relevant to the life of all believers, spoke directly to the condition of the preacher. It was also with both preacher and hearers in mind that Chrysostom added the clarifying comment that two limitations were appended to this beatitude. Those who endured slander were blessed "when it is for [Christ's} sake, and when the things that are said are false." One cannot help wondering whether words like these recurred to the mind of the patriarch of Constantinople when the "synod of the Oak" met in July, 403, to condemn him and urge his banishment.
In one of the passages of the present ten homilies which gives an indication that the text of the homilies probably rests upon a transcription of Chrysostom's actual preaching, the preacher had occasion to apply these warnings about applause to himself. As he was moving into the peroration of the *® Chrysostom Matt. xv. 9. el bid xyes de (7) a «a
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
seventeenth homily, he seems to have been interrupted by applause. "Did ye give praise to what hath been said?" he asked. "Nay, I want not applause, nor tumults, nor noise. One thing only do I wish, that quietly and intelligently listening, you should do what is said. This is the applause, this the panegyric for me." He attacked his hearers for treating the liturgy and the sermon as though they were a "dramatic spectacle" or a performance to be gawked at and cheered but not heeded. There are other passages in the corpus of Chrysostom's writings that refer to this custom, including one from the peroration of a homily on First Corinthians," but one of the fullest discussions appears in the homilies on Acts. Here he addressed himself specifically to those who had the gift of eloquence and the "grace of teaching,' warning them that it was easy to teach by words but that the example of one's life was a better lesson. Some preachers went to great pains with their sermons. "And if they get applause from the multitude, it is to them as if they gained the very kingdom of heaven; but if silence follows the close of their speech, it is worse than hell itself, the dejection that falls upon their spirits from the silence!"
Speaking now of his own feelings as a preacher, Chrysostom admitted that it was exhilarating to be applauded while he was in the pulpit; but the thrill was brief, for afterwards he reflected that many of those who had cheered would not take the message to heart. The only solution, he announced, was for all applause to be forbidden—and this announcement brought the house down with applause!
In the context of this lengthy discourse on applause in his Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, Chrysostom also observed: "Christ spoke publicly on the mount: yet no one said aught, until he had finished his discourse.""" Thus he sounded a theme that is relevant to an assessment of the rhetoric in the homilies collected in this volume. These were, after all, ser- ° Ibid. xvii. 6.
"Chrysostom Homilies on First Corinthians iv. 11
("A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian SU XII [New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1889}),
*8 Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles xxx, ibid., XI, 192-94.
" Ibid., p. 193.
INTRODUCTION
mons based on the greatest of sermons, and John the rhetor was merely imitating the master of rhetors; as it was the aim of the Sermon on the Mount that its hearers should "become like God, in such wise as men might become so,'" thus it was also the function of the Christian preacher to be the mouthpiece through whom Christ preached. The structure and development of these homilies allowed Chrysostom the opportunity to watch Christ the rhetor in action and to take note of the oratorical skill with which Christ "varies his discourse" or "made his argument more expressive, by trying its force in a parable."" Within the various units of the Sermon on the Mount and in the connections he found between them, Chrysostom discerned the aims of Christ's preaching and sought to conform his own preaching to them.
Christ the skilled rhetorician knew how to adapt his words to his meaning and thus to produce the desired effect in his hearers.
Christ could, for example, produce a sense of urgency by a rapid progression from one stage of a process to the next.
Matthew 5:25 was an illustration of this. "See here also how {Christ} hastens {the hearer]; for having said, 'Agree with thine adversary,' he added, 'quickly'; and he was not satisfied with this, but even of this quickness he hath required a further increase, saying, 'While thou art in the way with him'; pressing and hastening him hereby with great earnestness." For nothing was a greater threat to the Christian life than procrastination and a lack of urgency about good works. Yet this technique of producing a sense of urgency was balanced by the technique of stressing positive rewards rather than negative punishments in inculcating good works.
"This thing most especially we admire in his teaching [i.e., his method of teaching}, that while in each instance he sets down with very great fullness the prizes of the conflicts .
., if anywhere he must needs mention things grievous, he doth this in a subdued tone." There was only one reference to hell amid all the warnings and teachings of the sermon, and his correction of his
® Chrysostom Matt. xviii. 4.
* Ibid. xxiv. 3.
" Ibid. xxiv. 4.
* Ibid. xvi. 13.
* Ibid. xviii. 9.
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
hearers was done "with reserve."
In some instances Christ went so far as to avoid all reference to punishment, for merely naming the sin was enough to deter those among his hearers who had true understanding.
But it was especially in the transitions from one homily to the next that Chrysostom commented on the structure and development of Christ's rhetoric. As he began his exposition of the second of the contrasts between the old law and the new in Matthew 5:27-30, he pointed to the omission from these contrasts of the Shema Yisrael of Deuteronomy 6:4. The reason for this omission was that Christ "was for a while practicing his moral doctrine only" and holding back the dogmatic.
In this way he would prepare his hearers to receive the dogmatic later on." Again at the beginning of the eighteenth homily, Chrysostom noted that if Christ had introduced his most sublime commandments at the very beginning of his discourse, his hearers would have received neither the sublime commandments nor the lowly ones; "but now ordaining them severally in their due time, he hath by the two corrected the whole world," viz., both those who could not cope with more than the lowly commandments and those who were prepared to handle the sublime ones." Still later, in the introduction to the twenty-first homily, Chrysostom called the attention of his readers to the progression in the Sermon on the Mount: "Seest thou how by degrees he withdraws us from the things that now are, and at greater length introduces what he hath to say!""
This gradual disclosure of the message, little by little, made it more acceptable to its hearers." And again, in the introduction to the next homily, Chrysostom took note of the "amplifications and intensities [tas hyperbolas kai tas epistaseis} which Christ employed everywhere in his discourse."" Moreover, it was only after Christ had established his argument and supported it with proof that he proceeded to rebuke his hearers, and even then he developed his rebuke "by the contraries
[apo ton enantion}."
*® Ibid. xvii. 1.
8 Ibid. xviii. 1. wil Gi, SX Le *8 Ibid. xxi. 3.
© Ibid. xxii. 1.
INTRODUCTION
As the more or less technical phrases from Greek rhetoric just quoted suggest, the vocabulary of the rhetorical tradition has also affected Chrysostom's language in these homilies. Just how much it has done so would have to be left to that fulllength analysis of the rhetoric in the Homilies on Saint
Matthew whose desirability we mentioned earlier. At least two of the technical terms should probably be noted, if only because of the difficulties they have caused Chrysostom's editors and translators. We have already mentioned hyperbole, which Aristotle in his Rhetoric described as appropriate for use only by violent young men and by Attic orators." In one passage Chrysostom wanted to make it clear that the vehement words of Christ "are not in any way hyperbolical, but in another passage he explained the enigma of other words of Christ by explaining that "he hath put the thing hyperbolically.""™ Similarly, the Hebrew "parallelism of members" suggested by such passages as Matthew 7:15-18" had to be defended against the charge that it had fallen into the sin of tautology, condemned by the Greek rhetoricians;" for the two statements of the point were not quite identical.
One other allusion to the classical tradition of rhetoric also deserves mention, even though, through Plutarch and others, it may have belonged to general folklore by this time. Having cited the aphorism that faltering in speech or lisping is not fitting for a philosopher," Chrysostom went on to tell the story of how Demosthenes had cured himself of his speech problem." Such illustrations as these came with special ease to one who had been trained in classical rhetoric, even when he was applying the rhetoric to Christian preaching.
In an earlier volume of the Preacher's Paperback Library, Archbishop Brilioth observed that "it is when Chrysostom attempts to free the sermon from the shackles of rhetoric that Aristotle Rhetoric 1413 a-b.
*1 Chrysostom Matt. xvi. 11.
*? Ibid. xix. 2.
* Cf. C. F. Burney, The Poetry of Our Lord (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925), pp. 63-99; on this passage, cf. pp. 72, 104.
* Chrysostom Matt. xxiii. 8.
* Ibid. xvii. 5.
* Ibid. xvii. 6. pei)
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
the power of these shackles becomes apparent. ... The organic union of the exegetical, liturgical, and prophetic elements which would differentiate the sermon from the profane address
Chrysostom introduced but did not actualize." He adds that "the highest point in the history of the Grecian sermon also became its conclusion." Yet the fusion of preaching with oratory to form "sacred rhetoric' has continued to shape the literature about preaching, and perhaps to a lesser extent the literature of preaching, to the present day. Chrysostom as the heir of Demosthenes and of Isocrates, Augustine as the heir of Cicero and of Quintilian—both came into their pulpits less than a century after the peace of the church under Constantine.
The bugbear of "the Hellenization of the gospel," whose traces have usually been sought in the influence of speculative metaphysics on the development of Christian doctrine, should perhaps be pursued instead in the history of Christian rhetoric,
East and West. In any case, the cultural context within which preaching has developed has been the ecclesiastical establishment that began in the fourth century and did not end until modern times. The definition of the preaching office has itself been shaped by that establishment. We who are witnessing the progressive disestablishment of Christendom have good reason to inquire more carefully into the influence of sacred rhetoric on our understanding of the nature and function of Christian proclamation, and into the implications of the disestablishment for a new (or perhaps very old) definition of what Christian preaching is and does.
5. Chrysostom as an Expositor of the Sermon on the Mount The history of the exposition of the Sermon on the Mount has not yet been written.' If one were to include in that history all the references to the Sermon on the Mount in the history of exegesis, and especially the expositions of the Lord's
Prayer, it would be a massive historical enterprise. But within 7 'Yngve Brilioth, A Brief History of Preaching, trans.
Karl E.
Mattson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), p. 39.
*Cf.
Martin Dibelius, "Die Bergpredigt,'
Botschaft und Geschichte, 1 (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1953), 77-174, esp. 147-74, on the history of interpretation.
INTRODUCTION
the smaller circle of outright commentaries, Chrysostom's homilies deserve a place alongside those of Augustine and of Luther.
Even a comparison of the three commentaries by Chrysostom, Augustine, and Luther would be a worthy and quite rewarding project.
In the preface to his sermonic commentary on the Sermon on the Mount of 1530-1532, Luther consciously set his own exposition apart from the exegetical tradition, on the grounds that the Sermon on the Mount had been taken over by monks,
"who on the basis of this [fifth} chapter have laid claim to a more perfect station in life than other Christians."" Thus he identified the central question with which the history of the exposition of the Sermon on the Mount has continued to deal:
Does the Sermon on the Mount claim to give instruction to Christian folk in their everyday life in the midst of this world, or is it intended as an idealized picture of discipleship, viable at most only for the full-time ascetics or for those who are living in the brief interval during which the messianic community awaits the return of the Son of man? In the twentieth century, as Reinhold Niebuhr has observed, "a certain type of Christian liberalism interprets the absolutism of the Sermon on the Mount as Oriental hyperbole, as a harmless extravagance,"* while the advocates of the thesis that Jesus taught a consistent eschatology have raised the question with a new poignancy.' But the history of exegesis makes the question both more profound and more subtle.
Chrysostom's basic answer to the question appears to be that the Sermon on the Mount was indeed intended for all Christians, including those who live in the midst of this world. As we noted in the first part of this introduction, the relation between Christians and "the world," and therefore the definition of "the world," were undergoing a transition during the years
* Martin Luther, "Preface to The Sermon on the Mount," trans.
Jaroslav Pelikan, Luther's Works, XXI (Saint Louis:
Concordia, 1956), 6.
* Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Meridian Books, 1958), p. 108.
"Cf. Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography, trans.
C. T. Campion (New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1949), pp. 42-59.
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
of Chrysostom's life and ministry—a transition of which he was quite aware as he composed these homilies. The researches of Massaux have shown how the faith and life of the church catholic during the second century was able to resonate to the themes of the Sermon on the Mount, but also how the development of the church affected its understanding of the imperatives and promises of this message." Nevertheless, even that church, which historians of the conflicts between heresy and orthodoxy have usually called "the great church," still saw itself as a little flock, one that was indeed great with the promise of the ultimate future but that meanwhile had to endure persecution from Caesar and from the other enemies of Christ. Chrysostom's church, however, had not only made its peace with Caesar, but had baptized him. For such a church to make sense of the Sermon on the Mount and to find means for obeying it amidst "the plots in king's courts and the troubles in the houses of the rich'' required some fundamental examination both of the text itself and of the translation of its imperatives into the concrete stuff of the Christian ethic.
Nowhere does the question of the address of the Sermon on the Mount become more problematical than at the very beginning, in the beatitudes. Not even the description of how a disciple of Jesus ought to treat his enemies (Matt. 5:38-48), unattainable as it seems for even the athletes of the Christian life, creates as many difficulties as the catalogue of virtues with which the Sermon on the Mount is introduced. Who is equal to the performance of such imperatives? Yet Chrysostom was utterly confident, almost cavalier, in his belief about the universal validity of these imperatives. He warned his readers not to suppose that when the text says that Christ taught
"them," this referred only to the disciples. The Sermon on the Mount was formally addressed to the disciples, but it was intended for all "through them." The multitude then was as the multitude always is, indifferent to the life of the Spirit.
Therefore Christ spoke the sermon to the few, "in his con5E, Massaux, Influence de l'Evangile de Saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant Saint Ivrénée (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1950), pp. 7-17 and passim.
°Chrysostom Matt. xxiv. 3.
* Ibid. xv. 1.
INTRODUCTION
versation with them providing that the rest also, who were yet very far from the level of his sayings, might find his lesson of self-denial no longer grievous unto them." What is more, it was not only "the multitude" of his contemporaries whom
Christ had in mind as he spoke the beatitudes, "for though it was spoken unto them [the disciples}, it was written for the sake also of all men afterwards."" This echo of I Corinthians
10:11 enabled Chrysostom to argue, in effect, that although Christ had said many things that were not recorded in the New Testament,' what had been set down was intended for everyone, not merely for the disciples." Otherwise he would have said "Blessed are ye, if ye become poor" rather than
"Blessed are the poor."
Specifically, within the class structure of Chrysostom's audi- - ence, this meant that the distinctions between social or economic classes could not be permitted to annul the imperatives of Christ's teaching. Although the beatitudes exalted those who were "poor in spirit,' this was not a blanket endorsement of all that the poor did. For among the poor there were those who, lacking the pleasures of wealth, nevertheless managed to accumulate the evils of wealth." They bickered over their meager goods as ravenously as did the rich and powerful over their wealth. Even brutes recognized a certain community of possessions and interests, but here, among human beings,
"wrath and the love of money sweeps all away." To those who were poor in the goods of this world, however, the Sermon on the Mount addressed itself with the promise of a dignity that transcended human stratification, inviting them to rise above the bickering and the striving and to accept a new freedom and worth in Christ. "For though thou be poor, thou art free; though thou be a working man, thou art a Christian." In comparison with the difference between the God who forgave and the man who was forgiven, all human differences were so 8 Tbid. xv. 2 (italics, of course, my own).
° Chrysostom Homilies on the Gospel of Saint John \xxxvii.
("A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,' [New York: The Christian Literature Company,
1886-1900]
), XIV, 328.
* Ibid. Ixxxviii. 2, p. 333.
~ Chrysostom Matt. xv. 15.
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
trivial that we should "be humbled, and feel thankful to those who are in debt to us."" For they provided the occasion for both rich and poor to show the magnanimity which God had shown in the forgiveness of sins. And since he had shown this magnanimity not only to some but to all, it was presumably from all that it could be demanded.
Before the absolute character of the demands and promises in the Sermon on the Mount, there was a certain kind of equality, which rendered irrelevant the distinctions among men.
So also in the admonition to pray "Our Father,' the community created by a common Father made such distinctions meaningless. By this admonition "he at once takes away hatred, and quells pride, and casts out envy, and brings in the mother of all good things, even charity, and exterminates the inequality of human things, and shows how far the equality reaches between the king and the poor man, if at least in those things which are greatest and most indispensable, we are all of us fellows."
In this perspective the differences between rich and poor, master and servant, king and soldier, philosopher and barbarian were all outshone by the nobility with which God had endowed men when he permitted them to call him Father of all without distinction. Chrysostom evidently looked at the Sermon on the Mount in such a perspective, and therefore he found in it more reason to emphasize the intrinsic unity among all men than to differentiate between those who could obey all its commands and those who were able to conform only to a certain irreducible minimum of Christian behavior.
His fundamental concern was to insist on the corporate nature of the message in the Sermon on the Mount. Although he did not draw the distinction noted by later interpreters between the second person singular in the law of Moses and the second person plural in the law of Christ, he did make an issue of the communal character of the message of Jesus as reflected in these chapters.
"In every one of the clauses [of the Lord's Prayer} he commands us to make our prayers common,
. everywhere commanding us to use this plural word ['us' and (OUt | ae 12 Thid. xv. 16.
8 Thid. xix. 6.
14 Ibid. xix. 11. ays
INTRODUCTION
Nevertheless, there is some indication in these homilies of the later distinction between the evangelical counsels of perfection and the duties required of all Christians. As we noted in section four of this Introduction, Chrysostom repeatedly commented on the rhetorical skill with which Christ moved from the known to the unknown and from the attainable to the apparently unattainable. The assumption behind that progression was the inability of Christ's audience to comply with the denial of self and of the world that was implied in the call to discipleship. Chrysostom's audience was no better; we have already pointed out" that he was keenly aware of the low level of Christian perception among them. Therefore he followed the example of Christ's preaching and sought not to demand more of his audience than they were able to bear.
Thus John the Baptist, anxious though he was to direct his hearers to the higher life, had called upon them to obey only his lesser commands, lest they become discouraged and give up all attempts at obedience. Similarly, this John made a practice of exercising his hearers "in the inferior duties
. because as yet, we know, the burden of voluntary poverty is too great for you, and the heaven is not more distant from the earth, than such self-denial from you." If the total renunciation of property was too much to ask for now, generous almsgiving was not. "Let us then," he concluded, "considering the measures of that discipline which is set before us, press on at least to the middle station."
But the middle station was not the final stop on the way, only the stage to which most of Chrysostom's hearers could be expected to attain. They were not to suppose from this that "his injunctions are impossible, for there are many who duly perform them, even as it is.' Such Christians proved that "the apostolic life' did lie within the range of human possibilities, incredible as that seemed to those who were the captives of their own appetites. So it was that "the drunkard would not easily believe, that there exists any man who does not taste even water, and yet this hath been achieved by many
*% See above, pp. 7-9.
** Chrysostom Matt. xxi. 6.
TT RG oo Pa
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
solitaries in our time; nor he who connects himself with numberless women, that it is easy to live in virginity." Hermits and celibates thus stood as a judgment upon the easy compromises of Christians who lived "in the world." The law was indeed intended for all, but according to their ability to obey it. And "the societies of the monks, who have taken up their dwelling on the mountains" were the ones "who have taken the most pains to keep" the law." Later in the Homilies on Saint Matthew Chrysostom developed more fully his admiration for the monastic ideal" and his belief that "even one dwelling in a city may imitate the self-denial of the monks" both in devotion and in the manner of his life."
Seen in the context of the exegetical tradition, therefore, Chrysostom's exposition of the Sermon on the Mount seems to occupy a middle ground between the thorough-going monastic exegesis, which interpreted the imperatives of the Sermon as counsels of perfection, and Luther's radical exegesis, which demanded that the imperatives be applied to every Christian, albeit under the sign of justification by grace through faith.
Chrysostom was a realistic churchman who knew his audience and a careful exegete who knew his text. In his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount both the churchman and the exegete spoke. The ambiguities of that speaking may well endear him to those preachers of a later day who, as churchmen and exegetes simultaneously, face no less formidable a set of ambiguities.
6. A Note on the Present Edition As we have indicated in various ways, the homilies on the Sermon on the Mount presented in this edition are part of a larger work, the Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
They "represent the oldest complete commentary on the first Gospel that has survived from the patristic period.' The manuscript tradition of these homilies, indeed of all of Chrysostom, is enormous; the number of manuscripts of 8 Thid. xx. 1.
" Ibid. lv. 6; cf. Festugiére, op. cit., pp. 329-46.
" Chrysostom Matt. lv. 8.
78 Johannes Quasten, Patrology, UI (Utrecht:
Spectrum, 1960), 437.
INTRODUCTION
Chrysostom runs into the thousands, totaling more than the combined manuscripts of literally dozens of other Greek and Latin fathers." Many of the manuscripts of Chrysostom, including some that contain these homilies, have never been edited; the oldest has never been used in any edition.' It is to be hoped that they will be edited in our time, for only with the appearance of a critical edition based on all the extant textual evidence in all languages will it be possible to produce a definitive
English translation.
For this volume, meanwhile, we have relied on the best existing Greek edition and on the standard English translation.
The Greek text was published in three volumes in 1839 by Frederick Field; his edition was taken over into Migne's
Patrologia Graeca, with which we have worked in the study of the text." Sir George Prevost translated the Field edition into English," and M. B. Riddle revised that translation for Philip
Schaffs edition of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers."
Riddle's comment in the preface to his revision, that "the archaic style of the English translation ..
. even when obscure and involved ... seemed to be a fitting dress for the original," was reinforced by a study of the Greek text and by the counsel of several specialists, who urged that, in the absence of the critical edition of Chrysostom for which scholarship is still waiting, the rather Victorian English of Prevost's translation and the archaisms of the Authorized Version are still the most appropriate vehicle for the Homilies.
Readers of this volume who compare its quotations from the Bible with their own editions of Holy Scripture, whether
English or Greek, will find a great number of discrepancies *Chrysostomus Baur, S. Jean Chrysostome et ses oeuvres dans Uhistoire littéraire (Louvain: Bureaux du Recueil, 1907), p. 30, refers to 174 manuscripts of the Homilies.
* Cf. Quasten, op. cit., p. 438.
" Patrologiae cursus completus, Series graeca, Vols.
LVII-LVIII
(Paris, 1862).
°"A Library of the Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church," Vols.
XI, XV, XXXIV (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843-1851), with pages numbered consecutively throughout.
°"A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church,' Vol. X (New York: The Christian Literature
Company, 1888).
" [bid., p. iii.
THE PREACHING OF CHRYSOSTOM
between Chrysostom's text and those on which we rely today.
In part this is due to the preacher's habit of citing from memory, of weaving together passages from various biblical sources in a single and conflated quotation, of expanding and improvising as the rhetoric bore him along. Chrysostom's quotations from the Old Testament were, of course, based on the Septuagint and often reflect the differences of both canon and text between the Greek and the Hebrew versions of the Old Testament. A study has been made of the text of the Gospel of Mark that seems to underlie Chrysostom's quotations, but its results are inconclusive, partly because of the question of rhetorical technique."
No similar study of Chrysostom's Matthew seems to exist, but it would not be surprising if this too were, as Geerlings and New say of Mark, "first of all [a text} peculiar to himself and full of unattested variants. Secondly, it is the particular mixture of Neutral, Western, Caesarean, and other readings."
The homilies on the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Saint Matthew begin with Homily XV and end with Homily
XXIV. In the exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, as in the commentary as a whole, Chrysostom had in mind the practical needs of the Christian life of his hearers. Therefore in "the ninety sermons on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chrysostom spoke forty times on almsgiving alone; he spoke some thirteen times on poverty, more than thirty times on avarice, and about twenty times against wrongly acquired and wrongly used wealth; all in all, ninety or a hundred sermons on the social themes of poverty and wealth." As we have suggested earlier, this very preoccupation, which the preacher himself found rather embarrassing, ought to commend his preaching to the present generation, which is discovering that the summons of Jesus Christ to discipleship does not depend upon an ecclesiastical establishment but can be heard today out of the pages of the Gospels. It can also be heard out of the pages of Chrysostom's homilies on the Sermon on the Mount.
8 Jacob Geerlings and Silva New, "Chrysostom's Text of the Gospel of Mark," Harvard Theological Review, XXIV (1931), 122-42.
°Chrysostomus Baur, John Chrysostom and His Time, trans. M.
Gonzaga (2 vols.; Westminster, Md.; Newman Press, 1959-60), I, PANT.