HOMILIES AGAINST PAGANS AND JEWS—CONDITION OF THE JEWS IN ANTIOCH—JUDAISING CHRISTIANS—HOMILIES ON CHRISTMAS DAY AND NEW YEAR’S DAY—CENSURE OF PAGAN SUPERSTITIONS. A.D. 386, 387.

In dealing with the Arians, the contest mainly turned, as has been pointed out in the previous chapter, on the interpretation of Scripture; but in doing battle with Pagans and Jews, with the former especially, Chrysostom had of course to take up a different attitude. The method which he adopts towards the Jew is to demonstrate the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and to insist on the consequent abrogation of the Jewish dispensation. The ground on which he mainly relies against the Pagan is the miraculous establishment and progress of Christianity in the face of unprecedented opposition, as an evidence of its divine origin.

The treatise addressed to Jews and Gentiles combined exhibits a powerful application of both these methods.234 “He would first of all enter the lists against the Pagan. And here caution was requisite. He would not say, when the Pagan asked how the divinity of Christ was to be proved, that Christ created the world, raised the dead, healed the sick, expelled demons, promised a resurrection and a heavenly kingdom, because these were the very questions upon which they joined issue. But he would start from a ground which even the Pagan would accept: no one would venture to deny that the Christian religion was founded by Jesus Christ, and from this simple fact he would undertake to prove that Christ could be no less than God. No mere man could, in so short a time, with such feeble instruments, and in the face of such opposition arising from inveterate custom and forms of faith, have subdued so many and such various races of mankind.235 How contrary to the common course of events, that He who was despised, weak, and put to an ignominious death, should now be honoured and adored in all regions of the earth! Emperors who have made laws, and altered the constitution of states, who have ruled nations by their nod, in whose hands was the power of life and death, pass away; their images are in time destroyed, their actions forgotten, their adherents despised, their very names buried in oblivion:—present grandeur is succeeded by nothingness. In the case of Jesus Christ all is reversed. During his lifetime, all seemed failure and degradation, but a career of glory and triumph succeeded his death.236 Before his death Judas betrayed him, St. Peter denied him; after his death, St. Peter and the rest of the Apostles traversed the world to bear witness to his truth, and thousands of people have died rather than utter what the chief of the Apostles once uttered from fear of a maid-servant’s taunts. ‘His rest shall be glorious:’—this was true, not only of the Master, but also of his disciples. In that most royal city of Rome, monarchs, prefects, generals, flocked to the sepulchres of the fisherman and the tent-maker; and in Constantinople they who wore the diadem were content to lay their bones in the porch of the Apostles’ Church, and to become as it were the door-keepers of humble fishermen.237 Christ had made the most ignominious death, and the instrument of it, glorious. It was written, ‘Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree,’ yet the cross had become the object of desire and love; it was more honourable than the whole world, for the imperial crown itself was not such an ornament to the head: princes and subjects, men and women, bond and free, all delighted to wear it imprinted on the brow. It was conspicuous on the Holy Table, and in the ceremony of ordaining priests; in houses, in market-places, by the wayside, and on mountain sides, on couches and on garments, on ships, on drinking vessels, in mural decorations, the cross was depicted. Whence all this extraordinary honour to a piece of wood, unless the power of him who died upon it was divine?”238

Christ had declared that the gates of hell should not prevail against his Rock-founded Church. How far had this prediction been verified? In a short space of time Christianity had abolished ancestral customs, plucked up deeply-rooted habits, overturned altars and temples, caused unclean rites and ceremonials to vanish away. Christian altars had been erected in Italy, in Persia, in Scythia, in Africa. “What say I? even the British Isles, which lie outside the boundaries of our world and our sea, in the midst of the ocean itself, have experienced the power of the Word, for even there churches and altars have been set up.” Thus the world had been, so to say, cleared of thorns, and purified to receive the seed of godliness. What a proof of superhuman power! The progress of the Church had been encountered by customs which were not only venerated but pleasant; yet these traditions, handed down through long lines of ancestors, were abandoned for a religion far more severe and laborious, a religion which substituted fasting for enjoyment, poverty for money-getting, temperance for lasciviousness, meekness for wrath, benevolence for ill-will. Men who had long been enervated by luxury, and accustomed to the broad way, had been converted into the narrow, rugged path, not by tens or twenties, but by multitudes under the whole heaven. By whose agency had these mighty results been wrought? By a few unlearned obscure men, without illustrious ancestors, without money, without eloquence.239 And all this in the teeth of opposition of the most varied kind. For where the new doctrine penetrated, it excited divisions and strife; children were set at variance with parents, brother with brother, husband with wife, master with servant. Yet, in spite of persecution and disruption of social ties, the new faith grew and flourished. How could such unprecedented marvels have come to pass but through the divine power, and in obedience to that Word of God which is creative of actual results? Just as, when He said “Let the earth bring forth grass,” the wilderness became a garden, so when the expression of His purpose had gone forth, “I will build my Church,” straightway the process began, and though tyrants and people, sophists and orators, custom and religion, had been arrayed against it, yet the Word, going forth like fire, consumed the thorns, and scattered the good seed over the purified soil.240

In attempting to convince the Jews of the divinity of Jesus Christ by proving the exact fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy in his person and work, Chrysostom displays that intimate familiarity with every part of Scripture which is his eminent characteristic.

The passages are, on the whole, most judiciously selected; some corresponding passage from the New Testament being placed, if possible, against each, with a careful attention even to verbal parallelism. For instance, against the passage in Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,” he places the verse from St. John i. 32, “I beheld the Spirit descending like a dove, and it abode upon him.”241 He refers each event in Christ’s life, his Incarnation, his rejection by the Jews, his betrayal, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, the descent of the Holy Ghost, and the beginning of the Apostolic labours to some corresponding prediction.242 He sometimes, however, falls into the error, less common in him than in other patristic interpreters, of seeing direct references to the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom, to the almost total exclusion of any other meaning. For instance, such passages as “Their sound is gone out into all lands,” “That thou mayest make princes in all lands,” are cited as if exclusively predictive of the propagation of Christianity. In such words as “The virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company,” he sees a distinct foreshadowing of the honour to be paid to virginity under Christianity.243 In other passages, again, he is misled by ignorance of the Hebrew, and a too literal adherence to the Septuagint translation. In the passage, “I will make thy officers peace,” thine “exactors” being rendered in the Septuagint bishops or overseers, he extracts from this word a direct reference to the Christian priesthood.244 “He shall descend like rain into a fleece of wool” is interpreted as significant of the extreme secrecy of Christ’s birth, and the noiseless gentleness with which his kingdom was founded.245 Whereas, the strict translation being “like rain upon new-mown grass,” it is rather illustrative of the fruitful results of Christ’s advent.246

Such occasional defects, however, will not prevent us from according the praise due to the great skill with which, on the whole, he has worked out this method of argument, and the noble vindication of Christianity in this treatise has seldom if ever been surpassed by Chrysostom elsewhere. The several parts of his argument are unfolded in orderly procession, and expressed with an eloquence at once luminous and earnest, and which, though at times copious and ornate, does not degenerate into the mere redundancy, still less into the affectations and flowery artifices, of rhetoric; he is always real and earnest, he is sometimes sublime.

Closely connected with this treatise in subject, and not far distant in time of composition, are the Homilies directed against Jews and Judaising Christians. The Jews, ever since the time of Antiochus the Great, were a considerable body in Antioch, and over the Christian population exerted a seriously pernicious influence. Their position, indeed, in the Empire at large had been increasingly favourable from the reign of Hadrian to Constantine. Though they were not permitted to approach Jerusalem, yet the worship in their synagogues was freely tolerated; they were permitted to circumcise their own children though not the children of proselytes; and their religious organisation in the Empire was held together under the sway of the Patriarch of Tiberias.247 After the recognition of Christianity by the Empire, the Jews, as a natural consequence, were less favourably treated. The statutes of Constantine and Constantius were severe. Those Jews who attempted the life of a Christian were to be burned. No Christians were to become Jews, under pain of punishment. Jews were forbidden to marry Christian women or to possess Christian slaves. The national character of the Jew seems to have deteriorated, as the race became more widely dispersed, and as their wealth and importance increased. They were no longer indeed so morosely and sullenly proud as when they gloried in the possession of a holy city and distinct religious ordinances, and a geographical position which isolated them from the rest of mankind, but neither were their faith or morals so pure. Self-indulgence, sensualism, and low cunning corrupted their life; a superstitious and material cast of thought depraved their faith. Their habits harmonised too well with that propensity to luxury and licentiousness which was the besetting vice of the people of Antioch; their materialism worked hand in hand with the prevailing Arianism, if, indeed, Arianism may not be regarded as in some sort its product. Certainly, whenever popular insurrections caused by religious dissensions occurred either in Antioch or in Alexandria, the Jews ranged themselves on the Arian side, as if the spirit and character of the Arian sect were the most congenial to their own.248

Allowing for some exaggerations in the preacher, carried away by the impulse of the moment, the invectives of Chrysostom must be permitted to prove that the Jewish residents in Antioch were of a low and vicious order. They seem to have been regarded by the common people with a mixture of dislike and awe; the age was superstitious, and the Jews availed themselves of superstitious terrors to make a livelihood, especially through a kind of quackery in medicine. Their quarters are denounced by Chrysostom as dens of robbers and habitations of demons.249 A whole day would not suffice to tell the tale of their extortions, their thefts, their deceptions, their base methods of traffic, such as the sale of amulets and charms.250 Their priests were no better than counterfeits, because they had not gone through all the elaborate rites of consecration. They had no sacred ephod, no Urim and Thummim, no altar, no sacrifice, no prophecy.

The Festival of Trumpets was a scene of great debauchery, more iniquitous than the proceedings in the theatre. Any catechumen who was detected attending that festival was to be excluded from the porch of the church; any communicant so detected was to be denied access to the Holy Table. The booths erected at the Feast of Tabernacles were like taverns, crowded with flute-players and ill-conditioned women. The synagogues were frequented by the most abandoned characters of both sexes, and dancers, actors, and charioteers were largely drawn from the Jewish population. In spite of this, many Christians were seduced to attend the Jewish festivals and fasts, and even to swear Jewish oaths in the synagogues, under the superstitious impression that such were more solemn and binding than any Christian forms. He had himself, only three days ago, rescued a woman being dragged off, against her will, to take an oath of this kind, by a man who professed himself a Christian. On stopping to rebuke him in the sternest language, Chrysostom was shocked to learn that the practice was extremely common among Christians. He passionately exhorts the faithful to reclaim their deluded brethren from these pernicious ways:—If twelve Apostles had converted the larger part of the world, it would be a shame that the Christians, who were the majority in the population of Antioch, should fail to allay the plague of Judaism. What treason! what inconsistency, that they, who worshipped the Crucified One, should associate with the race which crucified Him.251 The synagogue ought not to be an object of reverence because it contained the Books of the Law and the Prophets, but rather of abhorrence, because those who possessed the Prophets refused to recognise Him of whom their writings spoke. Was the temple of Serapis holy because it contained the Septuagint, deposited there by Ptolemy Philadelphus?252

Christians seem to have attended Jewish services much in that spirit of curiosity with which Protestants sometimes go to Roman Catholic churches, to be entertained by music, incense, and a grand ritual. They maintained that the effect was solemnising; but, observes Chrysostom, the value of the offering to God depends not on the nature of the offering, but on the heart of the offerers. The worshippers sanctify the temple, not the temple the worshippers. You would not touch or address the murderer of your own son, and will you court the society of those who slew the Son of God?253 Let them consider that cry uttered by the deacon from time to time in the celebration of the holy mysteries: “Discern one another.”254 So let them do. “If you discern any one Judaising, hold him fast and expose him, that you may not yourself participate in the danger.”

“In military camps, if any soldier be detected sympathising with the barbarian or the Persian, not only does he himself run a risk of his life, but also any of his comrades who were conscious of his defection, but did not represent it to the general. Since, then, you are the army of Christ, search diligently whether any stranger has intruded into your camp, and expose him, not that we may put him to death, but that we may punish him, deliver him from his error and impiety, and render him wholly our own; but if you willingly conceal him, be well assured that you will sustain the same punishment with him.” This homily is concluded by a solemn adjuration: “In the words of Moses, I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that if any of you now present or absent attend the Feast of Trumpets, or enter a synagogue, or observe a fast, or a sabbath, or any Jewish rite whatever, I am guiltless of your blood. These discourses will rise up for both of us in the great day of our Lord: if you shall have obeyed them, they will give you confidence; but if otherwise, they will stand as severe accusers against you.” Therefore he implored them to institute the most rigorous search after the Judaising brethren. When their mother the Church had lost a child, it was criminal to conceal either the captor or the captured; let the men seek out the men, the women the women, the slave his fellow-servant, and present the culprit to him before the next assembly.

Another Judaising practice, which he condemns in the severest language, was the custom of keeping Easter on the 14th day of the month, according to Jewish calculation, irrespective of the week-day on which it might fall; thus sometimes feasting when the rest of the Church was fasting, or fasting when the rest was feasting. The existence of such a practice at this time was a remarkable instance of the increasing influence of the Jews in Antioch and the neighbouring regions. For up to the year A.D. 276, the Antiochene patriarchate had observed Easter in conformity with the Catholic usage; the adoption of the Jewish calculation was made after that date, when most of the rest of Christendom had dropped it, and was therefore the subject of special condemnation at the Council of Nice.255 Such a discrepancy in practice was regarded as a most serious rent in the unity of the Church. Chrysostom denounces it especially as a contumacious disregard of the Council of Nice, which had distinctly ordained by the mouths of three hundred bishops that Easter should be kept at one and the same time throughout Christendom. He implores the Judaisers to desist from the idle inquiry into the exact dates of seasons; to follow the Church, and to place harmony and charitable peace before all things. It was impossible, in fact, to fix the actual day on which Christ rose; therefore let them observe that day which the Church through her bishops had prescribed. It was a less offence to fast on the wrong day than to rend the unity of the Church. “How long halt ye between two opinions?” if Judaism be true, embrace it altogether, and “cease to annoy the Church; if Christianity be true, abide in it, and follow it.”256

The Jews themselves could not, in Chrysostom’s opinion, legally perform sacrifices, or observe festivals of any kind. Jerusalem was the only place in which such observances were commanded; and Jerusalem being destroyed they became void.257 They had been suspended during the Captivity, to be resumed when the people returned to the holy soil. If the Jews of the present day also expected restoration, let them likewise suspend their rites; but, in fact, this never would occur. The Temple never would be rebuilt, and restoration was a vain hope. Jerusalem was to be trodden down of Gentiles till the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled; and by the fulfilment of those times Chrysostom understood the end of the world.258 All four Captivities of the Jews—their subjection to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Antiochus, and the Romans—had been distinctly foretold. To each of the first three prophecy had assigned a limit; but to the last none—it reached into all time; there was no sign or intimation of any probable cessation.259 The revolt of the Jews under Hadrian, and under Constantine,260 had ignominiously failed; the attempt of Julian to rebuild the Temple had been frustrated by portents: fire issuing from the foundations had consumed some of the workmen, and scared the spectators; the naked substructions, left just as they were when the work was abandoned, presented a visible monument of the divinely-arrested work.261

The eager exhortation reiterated in his last homily, that the faithful should seek out their brethren who had been caught in the Jewish snare, is a powerful rush of indignant eloquence, and a wholesome admonition on the responsibility of all for the spiritual welfare of their fellow-men. “Say not within thyself, I am a man of the world; I have a wife and children; these matters belong to the priests and the monks. The Samaritan in the parable did not say, Where are the priests? where are the Pharisees? where are the Jewish authorities? but seized the opportunity of doing a good deed, as if it was a great advantage. In like manner, when you see any one requiring bodily or spiritual care, say not within thyself, Why did not this or that man attend to him?—but deliver him from his infirmity. If you find a piece of gold in your path, you do not say, Why did not some other person pick it up? but you eagerly anticipate others by seizing it yourself. Even so, in the case of your fallen brethren, consider that you have found a treasure in them and give the attention necessary for their wants.” He besought them not to proclaim the calamity of the Church by idly gossiping about the numbers of those who had observed some Jewish custom, but to search them out; and, if necessary, to enter their houses, tax them with their guilt, and solemnly warn them against the iniquity of consorting with the enemies of Jesus Christ. “Listen not to any excuses which they may plead on the ground of cures effected by the Jews; expose their impostures, their incantations, their amulets, their charms, their drugs.” Even if they really effected cures, it would be better to die and save the soul, than resort to the enemies of Christ to heal the body. Let them rather appeal to the assistance of the martyrs and saints who were His friends, and had great confidence in addressing Him. “Why did the Son of Man Himself enter the world? Was it not to seek and to save wandering sheep? This do thou, according to thy ability. I will not cease to speak, whether you hear or whether you forbear. If you heed not, I shall do it, but with grief; if you listen and obey, I shall do it, but with joy.”262

It is difficult for us, in our altered position towards Jews and heretics of all kinds, to sympathise with the vehemence of Chrysostom’s feelings and language. Yet there can be no doubt that such dabbling, if the word may be used, in the customs, the observances, the ritual of an obsolete dispensation, and a debased people, did seriously imperil purity of faith and morals, and unity of discipline, in the Christian Church.

Towards dissentient Christians, not infected by Judaism, Chrysostom adopts a milder tone, and indeed restrains the immoderation of party feeling in others with wholesome censure. He laments263 the distracted state of the Church in Antioch, which was now divided into the three sections of Meletians, Eustathians, and Arians; but he denounces the practice of anathematising. It was uncharitable and presumptuous. St. Paul anathematised once only; the casting off of a heretic ought to be as painful as plucking out an eye or cutting off a limb. A holy man before their times, one of the successors of the Apostles, and judged worthy of the honour of martyrdom, used to say, that to assume the right to anathematise was as great a usurpation of Christ’s authority as for a subject to put on the Imperial purple. In dealing with erring brethren, the Christian should “in meekness instruct those that oppose themselves, if God, peradventure, will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” “If a man accepts your counsel and confesses his error, you have saved him, and delivered your own soul also; but if he will not, do you nevertheless continue to testify with long-suffering and kindness, that the Judge may not require his soul at thy hand. Hate him not; turn not from him; persecute him not, but catch him in the net of sincere and genuine charity. The person whom you anathematise is either living or dead; if living, you do wrong to cut off one who may still be converted; if dead, much more you do wrong; ‘to his own master he standeth or falleth;’ and ‘who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?’ You may anathematise heretical dogmas, but towards the persons who hold them show the greatest possible forbearance, and pray for their salvation.”

In the winter of 386, Chrysostom preached a sermon on Christmas Day, which, though not distinguished by any unusual merit, possesses an interest of its own. We learn from it, that this festival was not originally celebrated in the Eastern Church; it had been adopted from the West, and, in Antioch at least, less than ten years before the year of Chrysostom’s discourse. It had gradually increased in popularity, and this year Chrysostom rejoiced to observe that the church was crowded to overflowing. Rome had fixed the observance of the 25th of December, and this was the day kept throughout Christendom from Thrace to Gades; but the propriety of the date was much debated in the Eastern Churches, and the observance of the festival at all was considered by some as a questionable innovation. Chrysostom energetically vindicates the dignity of the festival and the correctness of the date.264 It was the metropolis, so to say, of all other festivals, and as such it was the most solemn and awful. For the incarnation of Christ was the necessary condition of all the succeeding events of His career on earth, and in the profundity of its mystery it exceeded them all. That Christ should die was a natural consequence of human nature once assumed; but that He, being God, should have stooped so low as to assume that nature, was a mystery unfathomable to the mind of man! “Wherefore I specially welcome and belove this day, and desire to make you partakers in my affection. I pray and implore you all to come with zeal and alacrity, every man first purging his own house, to behold our Lord wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger; for if we come with faith, we shall indeed behold Him lying in the manger; for this Table supplies the place of the manger, and here also the body of the Lord will lie, not wrapped in swaddling clothes, but invested on all sides by the Holy Spirit. The initiated (or the baptized) understand what I mean.”265 But he warns his hearers against crowding in a tumultuous and disorderly manner to partake of the holy feast. “Approach with fear and trembling, with fasting and prayer, not making an uproar, hustling and jostling one another: consider, O man, what kind of sacrifice thou art about to handle; consider that thou, who art dust and ashes, dost receive the body and blood of Christ.”266 This irreverent conduct at the reception of the Eucharist frequently provoked the indignation and censure of Chrysostom. It occurred especially at the greater festivals, because on those days multitudes received the Eucharist who did not enter the church at other times. “How,” he cries in the homily on the Epiphany, “shall we teach you what is necessary concerning your soul, immortality, the kingdom of heaven, the long-suffering and mercy of God, and a future judgment, when you come to us only once or twice in the year?” Many of those who pushed and kicked one another in the eagerness of each to get foremost to the holy Table, withdrew from the church before the final thanksgiving. “What,” Chrysostom cries, “when Christ is present, and the angels are standing by, and this awe-inspiring Table is spread before you, and your brethren are still partaking of the mysteries, will you hurry away?” Too often they who thronged the church on these great occasions led worldly and even vicious lives; they hurried away before the sacred feast was ended, like Judas, to do the devil’s work.267 Such is one among many examples which may be elicited from Chrysostom’s works of that Pagan grossness and superstition which was mingled with the faith and the most solemn observances of Christianity. The vitality of superstitious customs, the subtlety with which they have grafted themselves upon Christianity, the tenacity with which they have clung to men in spite of it late into modern times, is indeed extraordinary; but for centuries their existence and influence were not appreciably if at all affected by Christianity. A half Oriental, half Greek, partly Jewish population, like that of Antioch, whose purer feelings and nobler reason were seriously impaired by habits of licentiousness and luxury, was naturally liable to superstitious terrors, and addicted to superstitious practices of all kinds. Chrysostom is frequently reproving his people for being anxious and afraid where there was no cause, while they abandoned themselves to vice, the only worthy cause for fear, without scruple or alarm. If Christmas Day was observed as a Christian festival, though without becoming reverence, New Year’s Day was given up to riotous festivity, thoroughly Pagan in character. The houses were festooned with flowers, the inns were scenes of the most disgraceful intemperance; men and women drinking undiluted wine there from an early hour in the morning; auguries and omens were consulted by which the horoscope of the year was cast. Good luck in the coming year was supposed to depend (how is not clearly stated) on the manner in which the first day was spent. This is the theme of the preacher’s righteous indignation. The real happiness of the year was determined, not by the observation of particular feasts, but by the amount of goodness which we put into it. Sin was the only real evil, virtue the only real good; therefore, if a man practised justice, almsgiving, and prayer, his year could not fail to be propitious; for he who had a clean conscience carried about with him a perpetual holy day, and without this, the most brilliant and joyous festival was obscured by darkness. “When thou seest the year completed, thank God that He has brought thee safely to the conclusion of the cycle: prick thine heart, reckon up the time of thy life, and say to thyself, The days are hurrying along, the years are being fulfilled, I have advanced far on the road, the judgment is at the doors, my life is pressing on towards old age: well! what good have I done? shall I depart hence destitute and empty of all righteousness?”268

There is a fuller notice, in some of his homilies on the Epistle to the Ephesians, of the many gross and senseless forms of superstition which prevailed even among the communicants in the Christian Church. He laments the decay of discipline, by which a more rigorous scrutiny was once instituted into the characters of those who came to the holy feast. If any one were to examine the lives of all those who partake of the mysteries on Easter Day, he would find amongst them persons who consulted auguries, who used drugs, and omens, and incantations; even the adulterer, curser, and drunkard, dared to partake. Iniquitous men had crept into the Church, the highest places of command were bought and sold, till the pure livers had betaken themselves to the mountains to escape from the contamination.269 Some of the vulgar superstitions of the day were ludicrously puerile. “This or that man was the first to meet me as I walked out; consequently innumerable ills will certainly befall me: that confounded servant of mine, in giving me my shoes, handed me the left shoe first; this indicates dire calamities and insults: as I stepped out, I started with the left foot foremost; this too is a sign of misfortune: my right eye twitched upwards as I went out; this portends tears.”270 To strike the woof with the comb in a particular way, the braying of a donkey, the crowing of a cock, a sudden sneeze,—all these were indications of something or other. “They suspect everything, and are more in bondage than if they were slaves many times over. But let not us, brethren, fear such things, but laughing them to scorn as men who live in the light, and whose citizenship is in heaven, and who have nothing in common with this earth, let us regard one thing only as terrible,—and that is, sin.”271