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Preaching and theology
Returning to the questions raised at the beginning of this book regarding John’s exalted status, what is the answer? It was his profound, yet simple, exegetical and expository preaching. Interestingly enough, it is believed that he never preached with notes or manuscript, but always extemporaneously. His magnetic speech, coupled with his rhetorical skills and immense knowledge of the Scriptures, captured the minds, consciences and hearts of his hearers. It is easy for others to focus on his trained and skilled eloquence and forget the unction and almighty power of the Holy Spirit. John never did. He began each sermon with prayer, invoking the Spirit’s help. A form of his prayer is still used today before the sermon in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church:
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
What makes a good preacher?
In his book On the Priesthood, John devotes two chapters to what is necessary for a minister of the gospel to be a good preacher. In these chapters, one is given insight of this servant’s heart and what motivated him throughout his entire ministry. What makes a man called of God a good preacher? Several principles are set forth.
1. He must be a man of the Word. Even if he could perform apostolic miracles, this does not negate ‘the powerful application of the Word’.
2. He must not just possess a general knowledge, but the Word of Christ must dwell in him richly. This allows him to strengthen himself, repel the multi-pronged attacks of heretics, and comfort and protect the sheep.
3. He must confine himself to the boundaries of what God has clearly revealed. He must not speculate and make a determined effort ‘to learn what He does not wish us to know’.
4. There must be ‘the power of speech’, the ability to communicate truth to others.
5. He must give ‘attention to reading the Holy Scriptures’ so that the preacher, in essence, listens to God’s voice every day and learns to practise what he preaches.
6. He must ‘be experienced in disputations’ (arguments or debates). This is necessary for the protection and pastoral care of his flock.
7. There must be the ‘expenditure of great labour upon the preparation of discourses to be delivered in public’. He made no allowance for lazy preachers who did little study or preparation for their sermons.
8. He must be ‘indifferent’ to the praise of his hearers. One day they may praise the preacher and the next day criticize him.
9. He must not be affected by censure or complaint, either by ignorant or knowledgeable persons. Listen, learn and improve when they are correct, but do not be cast down or negatively affected. John then notes that it is no more possible for the sea to be without waves than that a preacher be without praise and complaint.
10. He must be patient and forbearing with those to whom he preaches.
11. In his labouring at his sermons, ‘this alone must be his rule and determination that he may please God’. There is a greater audience present than his congregation—God himself.
12. He must not be envious of those fellow labourers who possess greater skills and success, or be censorious of those who are inferior in this regard.
13. He must keep a careful watch over his own soul as one who must give an account before God.
14. He ought to be purer than those to whom he preaches. Though the preacher has his own struggles and cares, he should seek to be inwardly and outwardly holy ‘in order that the Holy Spirit may not leave him desolate’.
John concluded his book with a solemn reminder that the warfare of the devil against the preacher is more severe than with other believers: ‘… in the case of the evil one, it is not possible ever to lay aside one’s armour … for one who would remain always unscathed’. It is quite evident that John sought to implement these principles throughout his entire ministry.
Tools in preaching
Thoroughly trained in rhetoric, John employed a wide range of rhetorical devices (some would call them ‘tricks’) in his preaching to arrest and hold the attention of his hearers. One pulpit mannerism which became distinctly his own was the habit of striking his right forefinger into his left hand before criticizing some heretical group or sinful practice. Among the many skilful tools he used were: 1) epanaphora—the repetition of the same word(s) at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph (e.g., ‘What is this I see?’; ‘Is this to be tolerated?’); 2) anticipation—foreseeing the expected objections of the audience (e.g., ‘What evil?’; ‘What then will you say?’); 3) arsis—an idea first stated negatively and then positively (e.g., ‘not over many days, but in a brief critical moment’. ‘Don’t simply applaud, but wish to be corrected’); 4) diaphoresis—pretended doubt (e.g., ‘What can I say?’); 5) metaphora—application to something that does not apply literally (e.g., ‘the evening of one’s life’; ‘food for thought’); 6) simile—comparing two unlike things (e.g., ‘fit as a fiddle’); 7) exempla—examples taken from history, theatre, agriculture, sports, and a wide variety of everyday life; 8) parison—the juxtaposition of parallel phrases to emphasize the point:
For there, there was a serpent setting snares,
here, Christ is instructing us in the mysteries;
there, Eve was working her deception,
here, the church is being crowned;
there, Adam is being deceived;
here, a people is being publicly acclaimed; there,
there existed trees of different kinds,
here, there are gifts that are diverse and spiritual.
John had little use for allegory and his preaching reflected it. As noted earlier, his preaching in Antioch was primarily expositional homilies through books of the Bible. Despite his many episcopal administrative duties and other charitable works, John quickly resumed this practice in Constantinople. Handed down to us from that time are fifteen homilies on Philippians, five on Colossians, fifty-five on Acts, eleven on 1 Thessalonians, five on 2 Thessalonians, three on Philemon, and thirty-four on Hebrews, all from Paul’s epistles. It is interesting to note, convincingly to some, that Chrysostom strongly argues for Pauline authorship of Hebrews.
True to his Antiochene hermeneutic, Chrysostom deplored the Alexandrian school of allegorizing. What his homilies lacked in homiletical style was more than compensated by his exegetical precision. His messages were theologically based but drew out heavily a moral and spiritual application. He championed the literal, historical-grammatical school of interpretation that shapes evangelical, Christian preaching to this day.
This early Greek Church Father can be credited with influencing the great Geneva Reformer, John Calvin, in expository preaching. In contrast to the earlier German Reformer, Martin Luther, Calvin appreciated the School of Antioch, which rejected multi-level allegorical interpretations and instead emphasized literal interpretation. Also, Antioch allowed for little typology. Chrysostom was a part of that school and Calvin knew that ‘he never strayed from a clear elaboration and explanation of the biblical text’ and spoke with the common people in mind. This impressed Calvin and moulded his own methodology of preaching. In the introduction of a French translation of Chrysostom’s homilies, Calvin writes:
The outstanding merits of our author, Chrysostom, is that it was his supreme concern always not to turn aside even to the slightest degree from the genuine, simple sense of Scripture and to allow himself no liberties by twisting the plain meaning of the words.
Themes and marks
Some of his preaching themes occur over and over. The Trinity and the eternal equality of Christ with the Father and the Spirit, being of the same essence (substance), power and glory, and salvation by the grace of Christ were never far from his thoughts. The Cappadocian Fathers may have been the greatest theologians of Trinitarian Christianity, but Chrysostom was the greatest herald to the common people of this indispensable truth. The saving knowledge of the true God was not only for intellectual stimulation, but for a purer and more fervent love and devotion to him, accompanied by holy living in conformity to Christ’s commands within the community of his church and in the wilderness of the world.
What are some marks that characterize his preaching? Several are randomly noted. It was plain-style and simple (without being simplistic). Though he often had highly educated people in his audience, he spoke with the common person in mind. It was direct, almost always using the second person singular ‘you’. The hearer was never left guessing about whom John was speaking. He was warm and animated, never cold and lifeless. At times he used the rhetorical device of vehemence. For example:
That is why I’m telling you in advance and shouting loudly that if any deserts to the lawless corruption of the theatres after this exhortation and teaching, I will not receive him into these precincts, I will not administer the mysteries to him, I will not permit him to touch the holy table.
Another characteristic is that he was always theological. He did not shun theology in the pulpit thinking that doctrine was cold and produced coldness. Because he realized, unlike many moderns, that sound theology produces sound practice, John energetically expounded doctrinal truths in such a manner that the uneducated could understand. Passionate zeal for orthodox theology would describe the golden-mouthed preacher for ever. He was bold, not afraid of saying exactly what God said in the text. Commenting on Titus 1:3 (‘and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching’), John declares:
Through preaching, that is, openly and with all boldness, for that is the meaning of ‘preaching’ … If therefore, it is necessary to preach, it is necessary to do it with boldness of speech.
Joined with boldness was exhortation: ‘One year has elapsed since I came to your city, and I have not ceased frequently and unremittingly to exhort you on these matters.’
Invective, which was an important form of speech for an orator intended to vilify or defame a belief system and, in some cases persons or groups, often characterized John’s preaching. For instance:
Come now, let us again gird ourselves against the unbelieving and infidel Anomoeans. If they are vexed because I call them infidels, let them flee the fact, and I will hide the name; let them lay aside their heretical ideas, and I will put aside this title of reproach.
Homiletics professors today often instruct their young students to avoid this form of speech. John knew that invective was needed to keep the sheep from following false shepherds. A cousin to invective is warning. John warned unbelievers of the consequences of rejecting Christ. He warned believers of the effects of playing with sin. He warned everyone that there was a Day, above all days, when each person would stand before God and give an account of his deeds.
The last characteristic of John’s preaching was doxological. His heart would become so warm in his preaching that he would, at times, break out in praise and adoration to the triune God. Laud, honour and glory belong to God most high and John saw to it that glory was given to him, not just in the singing and prayers, but in the preaching of the Word.
Chrysostom was not a diplomat, a statesman, a philosopher, a scholar, or in the truest sense of the word, a theologian. He was, at heart, simply a preacher whose soul was filled with Scripture that burned with holy and loving fervour to the triune God. He almost always ended each sermon with these words (only with the slightest, occasional variation): ‘To which may we attain by the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom to the Father together with the Holy Spirit be glory, power, honour, now and ever and world without end. Amen.’ Carefully notice Chrysostom’s emphasis, whether they are praises or ethical imperatives; all are attainable only through the grace and lovingkindness of the triune God.
Doctrine and theology
Chrysostom lived and ministered in the young child stage of Christianity. If Christianity can be compared with the birth of a child and its growth and development into adulthood, Chrysostom’s day was that of a three to four-year-old child. Remember, he was born in 349 and died in 407. He did not possess the full canon of Scripture, which was finally settled and passed into general church law at the Council of Hippo Regis in 397. There is no record he had in his Bible the books of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation. Major controversies and heresies such as Pelaganism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and Monophysitism were to come on the scene only after his death. Though some scholars claim Origen developed a systematic theology, no substantial body of divinity had been developed by Chrysostom’s time. All that had formally been adopted by the Church were the two creeds or definitions of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). He did not have the advantage of twentieth-first-century Christians in possessing the great, finely-honed, creeds and confessions of the church.
The theology of this early Church Father is gathered primarily from his expositions of Holy Scripture, most of which were turned into commentaries. As stated earlier, John was a preacher more than a theologian; therefore, some of his rhetorical exuberances have been misinterpreted. Apart from the glory of the triune God, his chief concerns were the salvation of pagans and pseudo-Christians, and the holiness of his hearers. When he ventured into the theological realms, it was usually to defend the doctrines of the Trinity and the full deity and humanity of Christ against heretical opponents. Living in the days of a fashionable Christianity, his preaching often stressed great moral and ethical standards, which distinguished true Christians from false professors. Searching will be in vain to find clearly defined statements of absolute predestination, election (though he often referred to believers as the elect), total depravity, perseverance of the saints, and even forensic justification. Though he believed that God is absolutely almighty (that God, not demons or man ruled and controlled the world), that man is a desperate sinner needing powerful, life-changing grace, that one could come and be made right with God only through faith, and that true believers would endure to the end, Chrysostom did not express them as clearly as they are articulated today. What was his doctrine and theology?
God incomprehensible
Then, as in our day, people had great thoughts about mankind and small thoughts about God. There were those who thought they could know all there was to know about God. John would earnestly contend against that false, self-deluded notion.
Preserved from a massive body of his writings and sermons are twelve homilies by John, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God. Ten were preached in Antioch and two in Constantinople. They give us enriching insight into the God of the Bible and John’s beliefs about him: glorious and full of awe, powerful and soul-stirring. These sermons reveal the quality of training he received in Libanius’ school of rhetoric, a masterful grasp of Scripture, the passion he had for preaching, the insight into man’s spiritually dead heart, and the key to his heavenly success. Who was John’s God?
Though he dealt often and strongly with ethical and moral issues, John was thoroughly God-centred. Never was a sermon given, but what, to one degree or another, the glory, power and grace of God triune was extolled as the only remedy for all the ills of Adam’s sons and daughters. This is never seen more clearly than in three homilies entitled That Demons do not Govern the World. During John’s time there were many who seemed to excuse their resistance against evil by maintaining that the world was entirely under the dominion of devils. For John, this belief was audacious and the honour of God was at stake, and he vehemently confronted that false notion.
In the first homily, John begins with an elaborate discussion of God’s prerogative to give, take away, and give again: ‘he is at liberty to do all things as he wills’. The Old Testament prophetic declarations: ‘Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?’ (Amos 3:6); ‘I am the Lord … I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things’ (Isaiah 45:5–7); and ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21) are the opening examples to prove John’s thesis. He then quotes the proponent’s proposition: ‘But nevertheless some dare to say that demons administer our affairs. What can I do?’ This erroneous worldview continues to this day (e.g., in the 1960s, an American television comedian named Flip Wilson popularized this age-old concept by constantly quipping ‘The devil made me do it’).
John quickly countered this argument by immediately turning to the New Testament and expounding Christ’s almighty power over a legion of demons in the deliverance of the men of Gadara (Matthew 8:28–34). All things are under divine control and do not depart ‘from the order which God who made them ordained from the beginning’. Others further argue, John noted, that one person is highly exalted and another is kept in a low condition; one commits a crime and escapes while another commits the same and is caught. Is this not the work and control of demons? He offsets all their arguments by firmly asserting that these very things are ‘a great work of God’s providence’. Concluding his sermon, John pleads with his hearers to change their thinking and perceive God’s providence. In matters ‘incomprehensible let us yield to the unsearchableness of His wisdom … For His judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out’ (cf. Romans 11:33).
In John’s second sermon on God’s control over all things, he stressed that people are harmed, not by the devil, but by their own laziness and disobedience. Even good things can become harmful if people misuse them. Blessings come through the gospel and, if rejected, condemnation follows. He exhorted the people onto perseverance in faith and lists five ways of repentance that will keep people from hurting themselves, namely: condemning their own personal sins; forgiving the sins of others; fervent and diligent prayer; generous almsgiving; and humility.
In his final homily on this subject, John addressed the relevant questions of why God permits good and evil, along with the devil, to coexist in the world. The devil cannot compel anyone to transgress. All evil and sin spring from the fall of Adam and Eve, which is passed on to all human souls. Job’s fortitude is used to illustrate how one refused to give any glory to the devil and, in faith, gave all glory to God for the evil that befell him. John concludes by passionately emphasizing that Christians can resist temptations easier than Job’s and exhorts them to do so.
John argued strongly that even though God is in sovereign control, it is man’s full and undeniable responsibility, under God, to strive energetically using every ransomed power to resist Satan and all his minions and not yield to their temptations. Demons do not rule the world and Christians must stubbornly refuse to attribute to them any authority or praise. God alone is God, and he does not share his dominion with the devil.
Herein lay the secret to John’s endurance, even in his last dark years and months. His body was weakened and fatigued, but he continued. His enemies attacked, but he held the field. His supporters turned against him, but he remained steadfast. His fellow bishops lied about him, but he never wavered from his Scripture-bound conscience. His friends wanted to retaliate, but he forbade them, and instead, directed them to trust in God the Lord who had ordered all things. John’s life demonstrates the ancient truth written by the Hebrew prophet, ‘but the people who know their God shall stand firm …’ (Daniel 11:32). John’s God is eternal, infinite, just, holy, almighty, ever-present, all-knowing, wrathful, ever-loving, ever-gracious, ever-wise. We can know him and comprehend him, but only in part. He is near us, even as close as our breath, but we cannot know and comprehend him as he knows and comprehends himself. That is why his saints shall spend all eternity learning and comprehending the God who is incomprehensible.
Christ magnificent
Being a staunch Nicene Christian, John thought much and made much of Christ. It was not unusual for him during a sermon to burst into adoration and exaltation of the Saviour, even in sermons of unusual topics. Listen as he preaches the sermon entitled On the Fall of Eutropius:
Wherefore was He called the way? That you might understand that by Him we have access to the Father. Wherefore was He called the Rock? That you might understand the secure and unshaken character of the faith. Wherefore was He called the Foundation? That you might understand that He upholds all things. Wherefore was He called the Root? That you might understand that in Him we have our power of growth. Wherefore was He called the Shepherd? Because He feeds us. Wherefore was He called a sheep [lamb]? Because He was sacrificed for us and became a propitiatory offering. Wherefore was He called the Life? Because He raised us up when we were [spiritually] dead. Wherefore was He called the Light? Because He delivered us from darkness. Wherefore was He called an Arm? Because He is of one substance with the Father. Why was He called the Word? Because He was begotten of the Father. For as my word is the offspring of my spirit, even so was the Son begotten of the Father. Wherefore is He called our Raiment? Because I was clothed with Him when I was baptized. Why is He called a Table? Because I feed upon Him when I partake of the mysteries [bread and wine]. Why is He called a House? Because I dwell in Him.
This magnificent Christ was never far from John’s thinking or preaching.
Life-changing salvation
Expounding the Gospel of John, Chrysostom declared the necessity of divine grace as the cause of every good action, noting that humans can do no good thing at all, except they are aided from above (John 15:5). However, he believed that a profession of Christianity which was not evidenced by a change of life (contrary to the fashionable trends of his day) was empty and void of grace. Preaching from 2 Corinthians 5:17, he reminded the Christians that being ‘a new creation in Christ’ is a work that ‘has been actually done for them’. Yet, in expounding further on ‘old things have passed away’, he asked: ‘What old things? He [Paul] means either sins and impieties, or else all the Judaical observances. Yea rather, he means both one and the other. Behold, all things are new.’
Several decades later, some of Chrysostom’s detractors would use his unrelenting emphasis and continual stress on human responsibility and personal holiness to argue that he held to an unbound, unfettered free will and was actually a Pelagian. It was the great Doctor of Grace, Augustine the Bishop of Hippo, who came to John’s defence on this fallacious accusation, citing specific sections of John’s works to demonstrate John believed that salvation was by grace alone. Augustine further argued that, rather than being a Pelagian, Chrysostom was a truly balanced and thorough expositor of God’s free and almighty grace. Philip Schaff, the famous nineteenth-century church historian, concludes Chrysostom’s views of sin, grace and salvation by stating: ‘Thus Augustinians and Semi-Pelagians, Calvinists and Arminians, widely as they differ in theory about human freedom and divine sovereignty, meet in the common feeling of personal responsibility and absolute dependence on God. With one voice they disclaim all merit of their own and give glory to him who is the giver of every good and perfect gift and works in us “both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12)’. Such was John Chrysostom.
Christ’s Church
Concerning ecclesiastical matters, Chrysostom’s day had overthrown the apostolic simplicity of pastors and deacons (Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:1–13). A more advanced hierarchical or episcopal system of bishops, presbyters (priests) and deacons had gained the ascendancy, though in his day, bishops had no jurisdiction outside their own cities or small parochial regions. Chrysostom embraced this system simply because that was all he knew or had. He did believe in the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, as the successor to the apostle Peter, but as Schaff notes: ‘He conceded to the pope merely a primacy of honor, not a supremacy of jurisdiction’ and there is no ‘language of submission to an infallible authority’. No trace of confession of sin to a priest as a church ordinance, no absolution for sin given by priests, no worship of Mary, no slightest hint of purgatory can be found in any of his works.
Though he believed strongly in conversion before baptism, as his own testimony proves, there is much inconsistency in his belief that baptism regenerates. It is this author’s assessment, though others strongly disagree, that John’s inconsistency is simply his understanding that baptism seals saving grace rather than confers saving grace. In regeneration, a believer is put in Christ and at baptism the believer puts on Christ (Romans 13:14). He had high views of the Lord’s Supper, believing there was a real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, but ‘it would be unjust to press his devotional and rhetorical language into the service of transubstantiation, or consubstantiation, or the Roman view of the mass’.
Throughout his sermons, one will find Chrysostom directing the believer to confess his sins directly to God alone. He did not believe the human minister bestows grace; only the Holy Spirit could do such work. The belief that Mary was the ‘mother of God’ did not emerge until decades after his death. When he did speak of Mary, as in his homilies on the Gospel of John, she is not exalted or almost divine. There will be a resurrection from the dead and all will be judged at the Last Day. People will either go to heaven or hell for all eternity, there is no limbo or purgatory in between. In these aspects, Chrysostom is orthodox and evangelical.
Earl M. Blackburn, John Chrysostom (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2012), 99–116.
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