John Chrysostom

Life, ministry and reception

John’s approximate chronology differs between witnesses: Benedict XVI gives birth about 349 and baptism in 368; the Orthodox Church in America gives about 347 and 367. Both place his early life in Antioch. Benedict identifies rhetorical education with Libanius, biblical formation with Diodore, and ordination as deacon in 381 and priest in 386. His account connects ascetic study with pastoral preaching. These dates and educational claims remain attributed accounts, not a new critical biography. [1] [3]

Benedict’s second audience places his appointment to Constantinople in 397 and describes reform, poor relief, conflict with Theophilus and Eudoxia, and condemnation in 403. It recounts the attempted appeal to Innocent of Rome and death at Comana on September 14, 407. Its intervening exile dates do not fully match the first audience, so they are not silently harmonized here. This Catholic account portrays a pastor caught in ecclesial and imperial conflict; it is not a neutral judgment on every opponent’s motive. [2]

The OCA commemorates John on November 13 and among the Three Hierarchs, remembering his teaching and suffering as saintly witness. Benedict’s audiences likewise recognize him as a saint and emphasize the bond between doctrine and conduct. “Chrysostom” names this preacher’s reputation for eloquence. Read these Catholic and Eastern Orthodox accounts for their particular forms of reception; the OCA’s marvels remain reported traditions, and a sermon’s theological authority requires attention to its own argument and use. [3] [1] [2]

Read the complete Romans Homily X

The complete sermon runs from its Romans 5.12 heading to the final exhortation and all sixteen notes, numbered 1339–1354. Open Homily X on Romans. Follow the argument through its exposition and moral appeal. This Homily X is distinct from the similarly numbered sermon on Acts and from the entire Romans commentary. [4]

The opening compares Paul’s argument to a physician tracing illness to its source. Chrysostom asks how death entered and prevailed, and how Christ’s saving action answers it. He understands Adam’s fall as bringing mortality even to people who did not eat from the tree. The quotation includes a marker leading to later editorial discussion; that note should be read as another voice. [4, lines 9–20]

As the best physicians always take great pains to discover the source of diseases, and go to the very fountain of the mischief, so doth the blessed Paul also. Hence after having said that we were justified, and having shown it from the Patriarch, and from the Spirit, and from the dying of Christ (for He would not have died unless He intended to justify), he next confirms from other sources also what he had at such length demonstrated. And he confirms his proposition from things opposite, that is, from death and sin. How, and in what way? He enquires whence death came in, and how it prevailed. How then did death come in and prevail? "Through the sin of one." But what means, "for that all have sinned?" This; he having once fallen, even they that had not eaten of the tree did from him, all of them, become mortal. [1339]

Read the quotation with its context

His discussion of Romans 5.13 tests different readings of the period before the Law. He reasons from death before Moses to a cause deeper than transgression of Mosaic commands. The editor does not merely gloss this reasoning: note 1341, signed G.B.S., objects that Paul distinguishes sin from transgression, and invokes moral law apart from written commands. Reading the disagreement alongside the homily makes interpretation visible as an argument across historical layers. Stevens’s explanation must not be quoted as Chrysostom’s conclusion. [4, lines 22–48 and note 1341]

Adam becomes a type of Christ because one person’s action affects others. Yet the analogy is not an equation: sin and grace, death and life, differ in power and outcome. Chrysostom repeatedly attends to Paul’s emphasis on the one, using it to defend the intelligibility of salvation through Christ. His imagined Jewish interlocutor belongs to his Christian homiletic presentation. It does not supply an independent Jewish account of the objection, nor establish what all Jewish hearers believed. [4, lines 50–101]

For Romans 5.16–17, grace answers more than the single ancestral offence: it addresses subsequent sins and gives righteousness and participation in life. The sermon accumulates images of adoption, incorporation and abundant gifts rather than treating salvation as a balanced transaction. Its analogy of a small debt and immense royal generosity presses this asymmetry upon the hearer. The second quotation comes from that account of benefits; it should be read with the preceding argument, not as an isolated list detached from Paul’s comparison. [4, lines 103–173]

What he says, amounts to this nearly. What armed death against the world? The one man's eating from the tree only. If then death attained so great power from one offence, when it is found that certain received a grace and righteousness out of all proportion to that sin, how shall they still be liable to death? And for this cause, he does not here say "grace," but "superabundance of grace." For it was not as much as we must have to do away the sin only, that we received of His grace, but even far more. For we were at once freed from punishment, and put off all iniquity, and were also born again from above (John iii. 3) and rose again with the old man buried, and were redeemed, justified, led up to adoption, sanctified, made brothers of the Only-begotten, and joint heirs and of one Body with Him, and counted for His Flesh, and even as a Body with the Head, so were we united unto Him! All these things then Paul calls a "superabundance" of grace, showing that what we received was not a medicine only to countervail the wound, but even health, and comeliness, and honor, and glory and dignities far transcending our natural state. And of these each in itself was enough to do away with death, but when all manifestly run together in one, there is not the least vestige of it left, nor can a shadow of it be seen, so entirely is it done away. As then if any one were to cast a person who owed ten mites (obolous) into prison, and not the man himself only, but wife and children and servants for his sake; and another were to come and not to pay down the ten mites only, but to give also ten thousand talents of gold, and to lead the prisoner into the king's courts, and to the throne of the highest power, and were to make him partaker of the highest honor and every kind of magnificence, the creditor would not be able to remember the ten mites; so hath our case been. For Christ hath paid down far more than we owe, yea as much more as the illimitable ocean is than a little drop. Do not then, O man, hesitate as thou seest so great a store of blessings, nor enquire how that mere spark of death and sin was done away, when such a sea of gifts was brought in upon it. For this is what Paul intimated by saying that "they who have received the abundance of the grace and righteousness shall reign in life." And as he had now clearly demonstrated this, he again makes use of his former argument, clenching it by taking up the same word afresh, and saying that if for that offence all were punished, then they may be justified too by these means. [1344] And so he says,

Read the second quotation in the homily · Compare these two passages

When discussing those made sinners through one man’s disobedience, Chrysostom asks how another person’s act could itself make someone a sinner. He explains the word in terms of liability to punishment and death, then admits that Paul does not pursue every question about why this happens. This distinction matters for later debates over inherited guilt and mortality. The homily is an individual exegetical witness; a reader should not turn its restricted explanation into the complete teaching of every Eastern Christian tradition, or use it to erase differences with other authors. [4, Romans 5.19 exposition]

The sermon then asks whether mortality can become an occasion for disciplined life. Its answer uses examples of martyrs and biblical figures, and describes present difficulties as instruction toward future life. That is Chrysostom’s pastoral interpretation of adversity, not a recommendation to cause suffering or a demonstration that every loss is beneficial. His argument retains both grace’s initiative and the hearer’s responsibility to respond. The text’s movement from Pauline explanation to exhortation is essential to its genre. [4, lines 190–230]

The final exhortation contrasts vigilance with negligence. Scriptural examples are brought together to urge care in responding to temptation, hostility and apparent advantage. Job, Judas, Adam and Jephthah function within that moral argument, rather than forming a modern historical investigation of their narratives. The polemical treatment of Jews and other opponents remains part of the source’s rhetoric and is preserved as evidence, not endorsed by this profile. A faithful reading neither removes the difficult language nor adopts its judgments as a description of present communities. [4, closing exhortation, lines 430–535]

Major writings and further reading

The historical English Romans homily

The Romans sermons follow NPNF First Series XI, supplied by CCEL. The Romans wrapper credits J. B. Morris and W. H. Simcox with translation and George B. Stevens with revision and notes, without allocating Homily X between the translators. The Acts translation in the same volume has its own credits. [5]

The historical editor places the Romans homilies before Chrysostom’s episcopate at Constantinople, on evidence within the sermons. Treat that dating as the editor’s reconstruction. Homily X on Romans is the complete sermon hosted here; the rest of the Romans series and the separate Acts series in the parent volume are not included. [5, Romans preface]

All sixteen notes follow the homily. Stevens signs 1339, 1341, 1344 and 1346, including contributions that disagree with Chrysostom. Other notes’ individual authorship remains uncertain. The contents separate these editorial contributions from the sermon’s headings, prose and verse cues. [4, apparatus] [5, American preface]

Other preaching, treatises and correspondence

Benedict points toward biblical commentaries, baptismal catecheses, On the Priesthood, Homilies on the Statues and exile correspondence. These offer routes beyond the homily held here. A biblical sermon follows an interpretive argument, a treatise develops an extended discussion, and a letter addresses a particular relationship and occasion. Each deserves attention to its identity and extent when pursuing further reading. [1]

The wider writings invite study through critical Greek editions and accounts of manuscript variation and attribution. A familiar “Chrysostom” label cannot alone settle authorship, and a text’s absence here cannot establish that it is lost. The reader offers one complete historical English homily as a starting point. [5]

The historical edition’s rights information and CCEL’s provider policy should be consulted when reusing this translation. They concern this particular edition and do not establish rights to modern translations or material on other sites. [5] [6]

Continue reading

Read the heading and contents, then follow the mortality argument and the abundance of grace. Finally compare the editor’s objection in note 1341 with the sermon’s explanation of law and sin. These steps keep quotation, context and attribution together. The related topics Grace and the first good will and Church, Scripture and interpretation offer further witnesses with different genres and purposes; this one homily does not decide those entire disputes. [4]

Sources and further reading

Texts and editions

5. CCEL, NPNF1-11, Homilies on Acts and Romans. Retained header lines 1–16; American apparatus notice 82–135; Romans translator wrapper 30997–31024; Romans preface 31026–31162. Historical edition, not a modern critical Greek text.
6. CCEL Copyright Policy. Educational-use and republication qualifications; no general rights claim for later translations.

Catalogues and scholarship

4. John Chrysostom, Homily X on Romans, complete scoped historical English reading unit. Parent volume lines 36869–37483; local lines 1–615 plus terminal split line. All attached notes 1339–1354 preserved. Morris/Simcox Romans translation; Stevens revision/apparatus distinguished from author prose.

Life and reception

1. Benedict XVI, General Audience, September 19, 2007, Saint John Chrysostom (1). Catholic biography, works and teaching reception; approximate dates remain attributed.
2. Benedict XVI, General Audience, September 26, 2007, Saint John Chrysostom (2). Constantinople, conflict, exile and Catholic reception; intervening chronology is not harmonized with the first audience.
3. Orthodox Church in America, Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, November 13. Eastern Orthodox commemoration and hagiographical account, not independent verification of narrated marvels.

Back to Fathers & Saints

In her essay on Chrysostom’s preaching, historian Blake Leyerle explains how his retelling of biblical stories sought to engage listeners’ emotions, memory and daily conduct. This scholarly perspective helps connect the sermon’s rhetoric with its pastoral purpose.