From persecution to persecution

Inspiring Men of the Early Church:

St. John Chrysostom (347-407)

 

The third Christian leader takes us from the third into the fourth century.  Polycarp in the second and Gregory in the third century lived in a situation where Christianity had been a vital underdog in a world ruled by pagans.  This situation had markedly changed by the time John Chrysostom arrived on the stage of church history.  His was an entirely different world.  Christianity had become the acceptable or even recommendable thing to join.  The powers that be had joined ranks, and to pull one you would have to be one.  The emperor of ancient Rome was a Christian himself.  One generation before John’s birth the world had changed and former threats to the Church disappeared as nominal Christian governments took over. 

Many true and not so true things have been said about the change under Constantine the Great around 311 AD.  Perhaps it would be good to summarise and state that good was mixed with evil.  The new situation had its drawbacks with people seeking the faith as a means for earthly and not heavenly gain.  Hypocrisy, selfishness and power-struggle; no era in human history after Paradise has been without them.  It will come as no surprise that the times of Constantine had them too.  Nor did the Church all of a sudden change from a pure underdog minority into a bunch of corrupt power brokers. In fact, much of Roman society and law changed for the better.  The government got an eye for the weak and unprotected.  Dumping infants on the street to get rid of them, abducting girls, trade in humans, putting away one’s wife and marrying a new one; the Christian emperors put prohibitions in place against all those things and more.  The Roman Empire would have been a better place because of it.

 

But the Church was faced with new challenges indeed.  It got a new advisory role in matters of religion and ethics.  In a way it controlled the majority of the population of the empire, leading up to the medieval situation where excommunication major or minor could have grave consequences for one’s civil status.  The culmination was not there as yet, the world had just freshly emerged from good old Roman Paganism, but the seeds were present.  Ambitions and ulterior motives had so much more to strive for, and concerns for state and society were so much more pressing and relevant for the church itself.

 

John Chrysostom was born in Syria. Antioch, the lovely city at the Orontes River where followers of Jesus were first called Christians, was his home town. At some stage Antioch was the third city of the Roman Empire and a centre of ancient life.  Its present name is Antakya, but this town covers a much smaller area than the ancient city.  John’s father was an army officer who died shortly after his birth in c. 347 AD.  He also had a mother and an older sister. Like other prominent leaders of the Church in past and future, John enjoyed an education in law and rhetoric.  Around the age of twenty he came under the influence of bishop Melitius, rendered bishop Honey in a translated version.  This acquaintance resulted in John’s conversion and baptism some three years later. Despite his mother’s entreating opposition John disappears into a monastic community not too far from the city. The first ten years after his baptism would be marked by rigorous self-denial and escape from what we now call the world.

 

Let us pause here for a moment, and take the opportunity to realise the shift compared to former ages and its relevance for the next.  Whether its proponents realised this or not is a different matter, but the facts associated with monastic life suggest that its emergence and continuance are at least in part an attempt to cope with the new religious situation. Until after Decius (250) not many influential Christians felt the need to remove themselves from local congregation and city in order to attain to real spirituality and holiness.  But since the late third century and especially in John’s fourth it became an almost fashionable thing.  Intuitively many seemed to feel that the new church had embraced too much world to allow people to come really close to God.  In other words: too much compromise and accommodation, incorporating the vice of the people to stay the church of the people.  Many a sermon of John that stuns the modern western mind makes perfect sense if one listens while being aware of this perspective.  It wasn’t just morals when John preached against women’s make-up, lack of dress etc, but a desperate fight to keep the Lord on the throne of his Church, instead of a world that was also trying to take over in the one place that should have been free.

 

But John returned to the city at last with a joyful mother to welcome him back and perhaps also to attend to his health, which was very much broken by irresponsible monastic exercise.  In 381 John was ready to take on the Church and was ordained a deacon, followed by his ordination as elder or priest in 386.  He also started to preach, sticking to explanation of Scripture’s literal meaning and applying it in a practical way, or rather suggesting these applications to the congregation.  His preaching was received with great acclaim by many, but would be put to the test within one year.  A riot broke out in Antioch during which statues of the imperial royal family were broken.  Should a similar thing happen to a queen or president in our day, they would simply shrug their shoulders; make sure the municipality carried out repairs and go on with life. This would not have been the fourth century solution.  The fashionable imperial remedy in those days was: send out an expedition army, let them loot and wipe out the place and make sure they will mock Caesar no more.  The population lived in justified fear and bishop Flavian was sent as emissary to Constantinople, the new capital, to entreat the emperor on behalf of the people.  In the meantime John was left to preach, and preaching he did: some twenty-one sermons on the statues.  This was an issue of Church and State come together, and possibly the Lord causing John to develop his thinking on the subject.  From these and his monastic experiences he would find his place in the Church that could be defined as: in the church but not of it.  If you can’t beat the system, join it for the better to do some good and build your own small monastery around you so that the principles of the world in the system cannot lay hold on you and force you to give way or back down when one should not.  Anyway, bishop Flavius obtained amnesty for the city and returned a happier man to a flock that was none the worse after twenty-one sermons.  John must have thoroughly used the situation with its fears of impending doom to stress the brevity of life and severity of God’s eternal judgements.

 

Some ten years later, in 397 the nine tailors rang for the archbishop of Constantinople, the most important see of the realm. John had become a famous preacher.  He was even nicknamed “Golden-mouth”, or Chrysostomos, as the Greek would express the same thought of a very gifted speaker.  Congregations would stand in those days, while the minister sat down and preached, just like Jesus in the New Testament.  They would encourage and applause as the sermon went on.  Amen corners happen to have an ancient origin.

 

Probably because of his acclaim as preacher emperor Arcadius in Constantinople wished John to replace deceased archbishop. To this end Arcadius committed what came close to abduction. Such was John’s popularity in Antioch that the emperor could not risk to make him leave during the daytime and openly, or he would have risked a major riot or even revolt. Just imagine such a response in one of the finest cities of the Roman Empire, risking revolt because of the transfer of a minister!  The world had changed from the days of Polycarp indeed. Only a few centuries ago one was persecuted under public pressure, now “hosannas” as a potent force and the same system swinging the other way and the public willing to riot in support of the other side.  Under cover of darkness and in the greatest secrecy John was taken to Constantinople.  He wasn’t really eager to leave and did not particularly want the job, possibly because he was so much aware of the state of both world and church and the particular dilemmas of their relationship.  He wasn’t the great bishop or patriarch of Antioch, now one step higher on the church hierarchy, but John the monastically inclined priest and popular preacher elevated to head the most important diocese of the empire.  In 398 AD John was consecrated bishop by his disappointed rival Theophilus of Alexandria. Man aims, but God decides.

 

John would last some troublesome six years, but from the first year the experienced pew-sitters of the system would be able to tell you that he would not last long.  Why not?  Because he happened to take Jesus and that Bible stuff seriously!  It was not only intended for some Jews four hundred years ago.  It was not for the common people only, but should with equal force be applied to the imperial court and the clergy as well.  So John Chrysostom was set on a course to reform the corrupt morals at court. He preached against bad behaviour, makeup and also made the clothes some noble women wore subject of chastisement in his sermons.  He was equally tough on the clergy, made many enemies because of his “tactless” disciplinary rules.  He was a spoilsport for the people, preached against races on Good Friday and stadium-games on Holy Saturday.

 

But initially the Lord seemed to offer his servant protection in a remarkable way. His main adversary was the prime minister of imperial interest, Euthropius. In 399 this man fell in disgrace, fled for his life to take asylum in John’s church, which was granted.  It was only after leaving his asylum that Euthropius was murdered. But relations with court had not improved. Empress Eudoxia did not like John, because he had offended her in numerous ways.  The climax of this confrontation was on the dedication of a silver empress statue at the Constantinople Games, perhaps their version of the modern Olympics.  Church politics came into it.  Rivals organised John’s deposition from office and punishment on a special synod called by the emperor. John was deposed and exiled, but the people protested and the Lord planned an earthquake for Constantinople so that even the empress called for John’s return.  This happened, but it would not last.  John’s offending plain speech continued to enrage.  In 404 not so holy bishop Theophilus’ schemes succeeded at last and his intrigues led to John’s removal and permanent exile: first to Caucuses in Armenia. When he continued to exercise too much influence to his letters he was taken further North to Pontus, where he collapsed by enforced travel in bad weather and died.

 

John became a martyr, acknowledged immediately by his supporters in the West, but also later in the East.  Persecution was no longer the prerogative of pagan emperors and soldiers.  John Chrysostom was the first major martyr of the Church by the Church.  Many would follow in years to come, but like Thomas Cranmer in later years, John had been the foremost bishop of the Empire. It was a remarkable development. The world taking over in the one place it had no rights, and Christians suffering from the hand that was supposed to heal. John lost his cause, but not the war. We may rejoice in his example. Polycarp shows us it is possible to rejoice despite the present day and age, this world is not our home.  Gregory shows us God is in control no matter what befalls.  Chrystostom teaches us it is possible to be a Christian despite the church.