A few words in honour of the Golden Mouth

Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople
القدّيس يوحنّا الذهبي الفم رئيس أساقفة القسطنطينية

Because I have already written one of my ‘hagiographical’ blog posts in memory of Saint John Chrysostom, I feel that marking today, his main feast-day, with another such blog post would be rather redundant. At the same time, leaving the day unmarked here would also be a sinful oversight on my part, given how important Chrysostom’s writings have been to me and to my spiritual and intellectual development thus far.

Worthy of note is that Saint John Chrysostom is from a young age versed in the pagan philosophers, particularly Plato. His understanding of the Greek philosophers is apparently fairly profound, and we can see certain traces of their influence on him in his sermons. Chrysostom’s clear belief that there is a Truth that is foundationally real, is a Platonic belief. However, his sermons have nothing in them of the exoteric-esoteric distinction. One of the reasons, it has been posited, that Saint John’s sermons seem to have received so little attention from academic philosophers and theologians, is precisely because they are so little given to philosophical speculation, featuring so little of what is popularly termed ‘theology’. Chrysostom’s sermons are practical, straightforward, commonsense, aimed toward the common man. We can speak of a certain populism in the Golden Mouth’s style; however, it would be more fitting simply to call him a good Antiochian.

The tragœdy of the philosopher – a matter of particular significance to Strauss, Kojève, Grant – is his relationship to power. The search for a personal truth, an esoteric truth, a truth ‘within’ or ‘out there’ rather than the truth before your face… this leads to a certain position whereby it becomes possible to compromise with and acculturate oneself to power. Chrysostom follows the path of the philosopher, that much is clear, in his early præ-monastic life. It seems to me that he comes eventually to an understanding of the compromise at the heart of the philosopher’s calling, and the tragic choice it presents between individual seclusion and accommodation of power. It seems that ultimately, he rejects both choices.

He ends up finding a different option, in the form of the Antiochian School of Catechesis. The teaching of Diodōros of Tarsos was clearly quite influential on Saint John. The Antiochian School is concerned primarily with the Truth of Christ as man… that is to say, the Truth that any person can touch and hear and see before one’s face. As such, the Antiochian approach to Scripture is one which seeks to situate it historically and socially. The allegorical approach of Origen and Cyril – the approach which tries to dig through layers of meaning in order to deliver esoteric truths to those select few hearers who are of a ‘superior’ quality – is something which Chrysostom deliberately eschews. Chrysostom chooses the Magian spirit of the Old Testament prophets, over the Apollonian spirit of the neo-Platonists.

Chrysostom therefore touches on certain political matters of his own time and place. However, even though his political preferences are shaped to the realities of fourth-century Byzantium, certain principles he touches on are valid no matter what setting they are in. His discourses on the love between a husband and a wife, for example, are timeless. Much of what he has to say is directly applicable to modern spouses, and is very justly taken to be part of the apostolic deposit. Likewise, Saint John’s discourses on wealth and poverty are applicable to any time or place. Saint John considers wealth to be a moral problem for those who have it, a distraction from spiritual matters; and he considers the poor to be bearers of an ascetic burden not of their own choosing, but to their credit as they choose to bear it.

Saint John Chrysostom’s teachings on œconomics, also, seem to be fairly relevant. He is a noted critic of the gold standard, claiming that gold has no intrinsic value, and indeed on purely utilitarian grounds appears to prefer the classical Laconic iron standard:

Let us not consider that wealth is anything great, nor that gold is any better than clay. The value of a substance does not come from its name but from what we think about it. For if we were to investigate the matter carefully, iron is far more necessary than gold. Gold brings nothing useful into our lives, but iron serves countless arts and supplies many of our needs.

And on the topic of usury:

Nothing, nothing is baser than the usury of this world, nothing more cruel. Why, other persons’ calamities are such a man’s traffic; he makes himself gain of the distress of another, and demands wages for kindness, as though he were afraid to seem merciful, and under the cloak of kindness he digs the pitfall deeper, by the act of help galling a man’s poverty, and in the act of stretching out the hand thrusting him down, and when receiving him as in harbour, involving him in shipwreck, as on a rock, or shoal, or reef.

And on the topic of public versus private ownership:

The possessions of the Emperor, the city, the squares, and the streets, belong to all men, and we all use them in an equal degree. Look at the economy that God has arranged. He has created some things that are for everyone, including the air, sun, water, earth, heaven, sea, light, and stars, and He has divided them equally among all men, as if they were brothers. This, if nothing else, should shame the human race. The Emperor has made other things common to all, including the baths, cities, squares, and streets. There is not the slightest disagreement over this common property but everything is accomplished peacefully. If someone tries to take something and claim it as his own personal possession, then quarrels arise. It is as if the very forces of natures were complaining, and as if at that time when God was gathering them from everywhere they were trying with all their might to separate among themselves, to isolate themselves from each other, and to distinguish their own individual property by coldly saying that 'this is yours but that is mine'. If this were true, quarrels and bitterness would arise, but where there is nothing of this sort neither quarrels nor disagreements occur. In this way we see that for us as well a common and not an individual ownership of things has been ordained, and that this is according to nature itself. Is not the reason that no one ever goes to court about the ownership of a public square the fact that this square belongs to all?

Saint John Chrysostom’s œconomics, in fact, seem to have much in common overall – at least in terms of first principles, though obviously the discretionary forms and details relating to technical capacity are understandably different – with the various left-populist movements that much later arose in Russia, in China, in the Balkans and in the Americas. We can even see, perhaps, some parallels between Saint John’s teaching and the Arab nationalism that would emerge around the same time.

But although these parallels exist and are worthy of note, they are to a certain extent misleading. Saint John’s œconomic principles are not laid out in a political programme, but are fundamentally tied up with the Magian prophetic spirit, the one which undergirds the Hebrew Scriptures in particular. His particular insistence – whether in his teaching on marriage or in his teaching on property – on forgoing any notion of ‘mine’: this comes directly from the witness in the Scriptures to the fact that the Hebrews were called out by God to live as strangers in a strange land, and to extend hospitality to all who came among them. It is in this spirit, the Antiochian spirit of holding the Scripture up as a reflection first of their own time and place, and subsequently looking for the practical ways in which to obey the commandment that comes before our face, that the Golden Mouth’s writings must be read.

Holy Father John, chief among the exegetes and most inspired of pastors, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!