John Chrysostom

Preaching on 2 Thessalonians 2:15 he argues that the apostles delivered much unwritten as well as written, that the two are alike worthy of credit, and that a question is settled once it is shown to be a tradition of the Church. Alongside this he is the patristic father most insistent that ordinary laypeople own and read the Scriptures at home, and he attacks the excuses they give for not doing so.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe earlier entry read scripture-primary. That understates him: he does not here rank the written above the unwritten, he calls them equally credible. Both halves of him get quoted selectively — Protestants take the read-it-yourself homilies, Catholics take this passage — and both halves are his. The tier is contested rather than researched for that reason: the correction is textually right, but Homily 4 on 2 Thessalonians is the single most contested passage in the whole Protestant/Catholic argument over the fathers, and a cell that concedes both halves cannot also claim the question is settled.

Hence it is manifest, that they did not deliver all things by Epistle, but many things also unwritten, and in like manner both the one and the other are worthy of credit. Therefore let us think the tradition of the Church also worthy of credit. It is a tradition, seek no farther.Homily 4 on 2 Thessalonians, on 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (NPNF1-13)

No canon list survives from him. What survives is his practice: he quotes Sirach in the same breath as the Psalms as authoritative admonition, cites it elsewhere with the plain scriptural formula "it says," and uses Bel and the Dragon as illustration without marking it as different in kind. The dispute this locus asks about — whether the deuterocanonical books belong in Scripture — is a sixteenth-century one, and he is eleven centuries early for it.

WORTH CORRECTINGBeing early for the Reformation dispute is not the same as living in a settled canon, and the two are easy to run together. The fourth-century Greek East had its own uncertainty about several of these books, and the Antiochene school he came out of was where that uncertainty was sharpest — a different argument, on different grounds, and neither settles the other. His usage leans toward the wider Greek canon, but it is usage rather than a stated position: do not read a settled Antiochene canon off his sermon illustrations in either direction.

stretching forth his hands to God, the prophet said, "Let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice, set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, keep the door of my lips;" and he who before admonished, himself too says again "Who shall set a watch before my mouth, and a seal of wisdom upon my lips?"Instructions to Catechumens, First Instruction §4 (NPNF1-09); the second quotation is Sirach 22:27

Creation is God's own teaching, addressed to everyone without distinction — "both wise, and unlearned, and Scythian, and barbarian." The knowledge of God was placed in men from the beginning; what went wrong was that they spent it on idols and "trusted everything to their reasonings." The failure is moral, not evidential, and it is what leaves them without excuse.

WORTH CORRECTINGHe is careful about the purpose, and the care is easy to miss: creation was not given in order to remove excuses. "For it was not to bereave them of all excuse, that He set before them so great a system of teaching, but that they might come to know Him. But by not having recognized Him they deprived themselves of every excuse." Inexcusability is what refusing it produces, not what it was for. On the suppression itself: "They trusted everything to their reasonings," and, of the same men, "having destroyed the light from their own selves, and, in lieu of it, trusted themselves to the darkness of their own reasoning."

But what was able to draw them to Him more than a voice, that He did, by putting before them the Creation, so that both wise, and unlearned, and Scythian, and barbarian, having through sight learned the beauty of the things which were seen, might mount up to God.Homily 3 on Romans, on Romans 1:19-20 (NPNF1-11)

Post-Nicene and unambiguous. The three are one undivided essence, so completely that where one Person is present the whole Trinity is present. Against the Macedonians he presses the Spirit's deity from the grammar of 1 Corinthians 12: the Spirit "worketh, not is worked," and distributes "as He will," not as He is bidden.

WORTH CORRECTINGSecond quotation, on the Spirit specifically: "if the Spirit were inferior and of another substance, there would have been no avail in his consolation... even hence is it evident, that the Holy Spirit is not of the substance of the servant, but of the King." — Homily 29 on 1 Corinthians (NPNF1-12).

For it cannot but be that where the Spirit is, there Christ is also. For wheresoever one Person of the Trinity is, there the whole Trinity is present. For It is undivided in Itself, and hath a most entire Oneness.Homily 13 on Romans, on Romans 8:9-10 (NPNF1-11)

He affirms both sides firmly and has no formula for holding them together. Against the Docetists, "was made" means real flesh; against any notion of change, the divine essence "did not change to flesh" but remained what it is. The union he states as "an Union and Conjoining" and the distinction he states as a distinction of essence between what dwells and what is dwelt in. "Not by any confusion or obliteration of substances" anticipates Chalcedon's language; "one person in two natures" is nowhere in it.

WORTH CORRECTINGDo not backfill Chalcedon. He died in 407, twenty-four years before Ephesus and forty-four before Chalcedon. Scoring him two-natures would enter him as a witness in a dispute he did not live to see. The Greek term usually pressed at this point — synapheia, "conjoining," the Antiochene word Cyril would later attack in Nestorius — reaches this entry only through the NPNF translators' footnote, and no Greek was checked on this run. The stance does not rest on it, and nobody should lean on the term without verifying it against Migne, PG 59.

For that Essence did not change to flesh, (it is impiety to imagine this,) but continuing what it is, It so took upon It the form of a servant... for by an Union and Conjoining God the Word and the Flesh are One, not by any confusion or obliteration of substances, but by a certain union ineffable, and past understanding.Homily 11 on John, on John 1:14 (NPNF1-14)

He never poses the question about the elohim of the Hebrew Bible. The nearest he comes is 1 Corinthians 10, where he holds two things together: an idol "is nothing" and can do no injury, and yet what the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons — whom he describes as fallen fellow-servants, "dishonored, condemned, prisoners reserved for intolerable punishment." Real spiritual beings stand behind pagan worship on his account, but they are convicts awaiting sentence rather than a council holding delegated rule, and he never connects them to the Old Testament gods of the nations.

Now these things I affirm, and try to withdraw you from the idols, not as though they could do any injury or had any power: for an idol is nothing... For that which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God... For verily these too are servants who have offended; dishonored, condemned, prisoners reserved for intolerable punishment.Homily 24 on 1 Corinthians, on 1 Corinthians 10:19-20 (NPNF1-12)

What Adam passed down is death, not guilt. Facing Romans 5:19 he asks outright how another man's disobedience could make me a sinner, notes that on such a reading the man would not even deserve punishment, and settles on a sense in which "sinners" means liable to punishment and condemned to death. Grace is necessary and it comes first, but it does not operate on an unwilling person: God "draws no one by force or compulsion."

WORTH CORRECTINGHe predates the Pelagian controversy, which broke out in the West after his death, and both sides of it later claimed him. Do not score him by its vocabulary in either direction. On the fall itself, expounding Romans 5:19, he raises the objection that inherited guilt would make punishment undeserved — "at this rate a man of this sort will not even deserve punishment, if, that is, it was not from his own self that he became a sinner" — and settles on: "What then does the word 'sinners' mean here? To me it seems to mean liable to punishment and condemned to death." (Homily 10 on Romans). What descends from Adam is death, not guilt.

He draws no one by force or compulsion: but by persuasion and benefits He draws all that will, and wins them to Himself... For He will have no unwilling, no forced domestic, but all of their own will and choice.Homily 10 on John, on John 1:11-13 (NPNF1-14)

He reads Romans 9 through foreknowledge from end to end. Jacob was chosen before birth because God, unlike men, does not wait on the outcome of a life to see what a soul is: He "knoweth which is the wicked and which not such" before the acts appear. The election is genuinely God's and no one else can make it, but its ground is something God sees.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe potter passage is where readers go wrong in both directions. He states flatly that "it is not to do away with free-will that he says this," and that taking it as necessity over the will would make God the maker of the wicked and leave "man free from all responsibility." Against that, his Homily 4 on 2 Thessalonians glosses 2 Thessalonians 2:13 with "Seest thou how He shows that nothing is of themselves, but all of God?" He is a preacher, not a systematician, and the two sit unreconciled.

for this was a sign of foreknowledge, that they were chosen from the very birth. That the election made according to foreknowledge, might be manifestly of God, from the first day He at once saw and proclaimed which was good and which not.Homily 16 on Romans, on Romans 9:11-13 (NPNF1-11)

No listed stance fits. He never takes faith apart into components, and the two things he does say pull against each other. Justification is "not of works, but of faith," with God "looking for faith only" (Homily 7 on Romans). And faith by itself is not enough: the man without the wedding garment had been invited and came, and was still bound and thrown out. Trust and a matching life are both required; which of the two faith itself is, he never asks.

WORTH CORRECTINGBoth fiducia and formed-faith have been read off him, and either can be produced by quoting one half. Neither is his own framing; those categories are twelfth-century and later.

let not us either expect that faith is sufficient to us for salvation; for if we do not show forth a pure life, but come clothed with garments unworthy of this blessed calling, nothing hinders us from suffering the same as that wretched one.Homily 10 on John, on John 1:12 (NPNF1-14)

To declare God's righteousness is to make the unrighteous righteous. He runs the parallel out: as declaring His riches means making others rich and declaring His life means making the dead live, so declaring His righteousness means making men rotten with sin suddenly righteous — and in the same breath, "it is not of works, but of faith." The First Instruction locates the same event at the font, glossing 1 Corinthians 6:11 to say the baptized are "not only clean, but both holy and just."

WORTH CORRECTINGBoth sides of the Reformation quote this homily and both have something. "It is not of works, but of faith" is his; so is "make them... suddenly righteous," which is transformation and not imputation. forensic would be an anachronism here, and so would infused in its scholastic sense.

So also is the declaring of His righteousness not only that He is Himself righteous, but that He doth also make them that are filled with the putrefying sores of sin suddenly righteous... Doubt not then: for it is not of works, but of faith.Homily 7 on Romans, on Romans 3:24-26 (NPNF1-11)

He never poses the question of extent. What he does say, working out why some Jews were saved and others not, puts the whole failure on the receiving side and none of it on the provision: all were called, and so far as God's part goes all were saved. He applies the same reasoning to Pharaoh, who "had as much done for him as they who were saved."

WORTH CORRECTINGThe tier is contested because of what the quotation is, not because of any doubt about it. This is an aside inside an argument about Jew and Gentile; the extent of the atonement is not the question he is answering, and reading a doctrine of extent off it goes further than he does.

It is because all were not minded to come to Him, since for His part all were saved, for all were called.Homily 16 on Romans, on Romans 9:6 (NPNF1-11)

Sonship is given at baptism and can be thrown away, and only its holder can throw it away. He preaches at length against the baptized who go "back after our baptism to the oldness we before had," and warns hearers that with a promise of rest still open some of them may yet come short of it. He balances the warning with hope — as long as it is "To-day," no one should despair — but he never suggests the fall is impossible.

WORTH CORRECTINGSecond quotation: "Let us fear, lest at any time a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." — Homily 6 on Hebrews, on Hebrews 4:1 (NPNF1-14).

no one shall be able to take this power from us, unless we are the first to deprive ourselves of it.Homily 10 on John, on John 1:12 (NPNF1-14)

The Spirit comes at the font, and he treats that as settled enough to argue from. Asked how anyone can now tell that a person has the Spirit, given that the sign-gifts have stopped, his answer is that for a believer the fact of baptism is itself the evidence. He describes the moment in the same terms — the Spirit "falling like fire into our souls," burning up the image of the earthy and producing the image of the heavenly.

WORTH CORRECTINGHe states this as a claim about how the Spirit's presence is recognised rather than as a doctrine of when it begins; the timing is assumed rather than argued.

For to me who am a believer, he that hath the Spirit is manifest from his having been baptized: but to the unbeliever this will in no wise be manifest, except from the miracles.Homily 29 on 1 Corinthians, on 1 Corinthians 12:7 (NPNF1-12)

Baptism regenerates, and he presses the word deliberately: it is not called a laver of remission, because it does not merely wipe the vessel clean — a wiped vessel keeps traces of what it was — but recasts it in a new mould. The baptized come out "not only clean, but both holy and just." He also attacks the widespread fourth-century habit of deferring baptism to the deathbed, praising his catechumens for not coming "as the most slothful among men, at your last breath."

WORTH CORRECTINGThe regeneration half of this stance is quoted; the infant half is not, which is why the tier is established rather than researched. The Instructions to Catechumens printed in NPNF address adults preparing for Easter baptism and say nothing about infants either way, and his explicit statement on infant baptism is in the third of the Baptismal Instructions, which survives only in a modern copyrighted translation.

For it does not simply take away our sins, nor simply cleanse us from our faults, but so as if we were born again. For it creates and fashions us anew... For it does not simply wipe the vessel clean, but entirely remoulds it again.Instructions to Catechumens, First Instruction §3 (NPNF1-09)

As realist as patristic language gets, and the cell records that rather than softening it. On 1 Corinthians 10:16 he glosses Paul's "communion of the Blood of Christ" as "This which is in the cup is that which flowed from His side, and of that do we partake," then asks and answers his own question: "For what is the bread? The Body of Christ." What lies on the altar is "not seen only, but also touched; and not only touched, but likewise eaten." He calls it a sacrifice in so many words — instead of the slaughter of irrational creatures, Christ commands "to offer up Himself." He never asks what happens to the bread, and never answers it.

WORTH CORRECTINGEvery side of the eucharistic argument quotes him, and the reason they can is that he is not in it. Catholic and Orthodox writers quote the realism; Protestant writers quote his insistence in Homily 28 that the Table becomes judgment "not from its own nature, but from the will of him that approaches." Both are quoting a man who is answering a different question from theirs. This cell was decided twice before this stance existed — left blank once, on the argument that all four then-available stances were sixteenth-century impositions, then reverted, because a blank taught the reader something false about the most realist of the fathers. Neither call is needed now.

For what he says is this: 'This which is in the cup is that which flowed from His side, and of that do we partake.'... For what is the bread? The Body of Christ.Homily 24 on 1 Corinthians, on 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 (NPNF1-12)

He says it twice, flatly, and in passing both times — which is what makes it good evidence. Preaching through 1 Corinthians 12 he explains that the chapter is obscure to his congregation because the things it describes have stopped happening. Arguing about the restrainer of 2 Thessalonians 2 he rules out the reading that it means the charismata, on the ground that they ceased long ago and Antichrist plainly has not come.

WORTH CORRECTINGHe is a witness that the gifts had stopped by the late fourth century, not a source for a doctrine that they were meant to. He raises the obvious question — "why did they then happen, and now do so no more?" — and immediately postpones it: "This however let us defer to another time." Second quotation: "he ought now to have come, if he was about to come when the gifts ceased; for they have long since ceased." — Homily 4 on 2 Thessalonians (NPNF1-13).

This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place.Homily 29 on 1 Corinthians, on 1 Corinthians 12:1-2 (NPNF1-12)

Endless and conscious, and preached as a pastoral instrument rather than stated as a doctrine. The guest without the wedding garment is bound and carried out to "eternal and endless wailing and gnashing of teeth"; those who refuse the invitation are received by "the unquenchable fire." Expounding Hebrews he sets the loss of the heavenly rest alongside "being delivered to an everlasting hell, and to undying punishment and vengeance."

WORTH CORRECTINGSecond quotation: "here it is not the falling of carcasses nor, as there, the being deprived of a country, but of a heavenly kingdom; and being delivered to an everlasting hell, and to undying punishment and vengeance." — Homily 6 on Hebrews, on Hebrews 4:12 (NPNF1-14).

bound hand and foot alike, is carried into outer darkness, to undergo eternal and endless wailing and gnashing of teeth.Homily 10 on John, on John 1:12 (NPNF1-14)

Never framed in these terms. He left no commentary on Revelation — the book was still disputed in the Greek East of his day — so Revelation 20 has no exposition from him at all. What he does have is a single future coming with nothing between: Antichrist arises when the restraining power is removed, Elijah comes as forerunner of the second coming as John came before the first, and Christ destroys the lawless one simply by appearing.

WORTH CORRECTINGCalling this amillennial would apply a label coined for an argument about a book he never expounded. The shape of his expectation is compatible with amillennialism; his silence on Revelation 20 is not evidence for it.

As the one was the forerunner of His first Coming, so will the other be of His second and glorious Coming, and for this he is reserved.Homily 4 on 2 Thessalonians, on 2 Thessalonians 2:8 (NPNF1-13)