Providence and Narrative in The Theology of John Chrysostom Robert Edwards All Chapter

Providence and Narrative in the
Theology of John Chrysostom Robert

Edwards
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Providence and Narrative in the Theology of John Chrysostom
This book is the first major study of providence in the thought of John
Chrysostom, a popular preacher in Syrian Antioch and later archbishop
of Constantinople (ca.  350 to 407). While Chrysostom is often
considered a moralist and exegete, this study explores how his theology
of providence profoundly affected his larger ethical and exegetical
thought. Robert G. T. Edwards argues that Chrysostom considers
biblical narratives as vehicles of a doctrine of providence in which
God is above all loving towards humankind. Narratives of God’s
providence thus function as sources of consolation for Chrysostom’s
suffering audiences and may even lead them now, amid suffering, to the
resurrection life – the life of the angels. In the course of surveying
Chrysostom’s theology of providence and his use of scriptural narra-
tives for consolation, Edwards also positions Chrysostom’s theology
and exegesis, which often defy categorization, within the preacher’s
immediate Antiochene and Nicene contexts.
 . .  is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the

University of Göttingen, Germany. He is a translator of John
Chrysostom’s works and has published widely on early Christian
theology and exegesis in leading academic journals.
Published online by Cambridge University Press

Theology of John Chrysostom
ROBERT G. T. EDWARDS
University of Göttingen

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: Edwards, Robert G. T., author.
: Providence and narrative in the theology of John Chrysostom / Robert Edwards,
University of Goettingen, Germany.
: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University
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For Kerensa

He loves us exceedingly, with an extraordinary love: a love that is
passionless, but also most ardent, vigorous, genuine, indissoluble –
a love that cannot be quenched.
John Chrysostom, On the Providence of God

Contents
Preface page ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
1 Stories of Suffering and Providence 1

John’s Vision of Providence and Biblical Narrative 6
The Contribution 11
What Is Providence? 18
Chapter Outline 27
2 Divine and Human Activity in Biblical Narrative 29
Turning to Biblical Narrative for Consolation 32
History and Narrative 38
The Subject Matter of Biblical History 43
The Exegetical Relationship between Providence and
‘What Is Up to Us’ 51
Conclusion 57
3 Narrative Clusters, Providential Habits, and
Typological Exegesis 59
Clusters 61
Deep Structures: Change of Circumstances 66
Providential Habits: Time for Repentance 73
Virtue and Narrative Structure? 79
Typological Interpretation 81
Conclusion 91
4 Proofs of Providence and God’s Philanthropic Character 93
A Series of Proofs of Providence 96
Creation and Fall 102
The Incarnation 112
vii

viii Contents
Christ’s Power and Philanthropy Narrated 119

Conclusion 123
5 True Judgements and Consolation 126
Changing Judgements with Consolation 127
The Providential Good of Affliction 131
The Apparent Evil of Affliction 134
Moral Evil and the Danger of Misjudging Providence 138
Incomprehensible Providence 144
Consolatory Judgements in Biblical Narratives:
John Chrysostom vs. Gregory of Nyssa 149
Conclusion 153
6 The Virtue of Yielding to Providence 155
Scripture’s Exemplary Characters 156
Character and Characterization 162
Yielding to Providence 166
Suffering and the Life of the Angels 180
Conclusion 185
7 Conclusion 187
Bibliography 193
Scripture Index 213
Subject Index 215

Preface
To many in our age, providence surely seems an old-fashioned notion.

The word itself evokes various impressions: perhaps it calls to mind the
deeply misled idea that military and economic supremacy comes as a
result of God’s provision for a nation or empire – resulting sometimes
in the relentless pursuit of colonialism. Alternatively, it might call to mind
a pre-scientific explanation for physical processes, both large and small –
from animal and human physiology to the movement of the stars. In this
sense, providence may seem to be merely a word for ‘simple’ folk who
don’t have more sophisticated explanations for the changes and chances
of this world. Providence might also be deployed to set aside the serious-
ness of human suffering and evil: when all disastrous events are ascribed
to God’s providence, divine providence ends up looking a lot like divine
capriciousness. These are, of course, caricatures of what might arise in the
mind of someone living in the modern ‘West’, and yet I think they are not
too far off the mark.
Today, in the post-Enlightenment and now post-Christian North
American and European contexts in which I have lived, other ideas of
historical and cosmic order are, of course, predominant. Among those
who spend any time at all thinking about the arrangement of the whole, it
is not uncommon to find the idea that chaos and suffering are everywhere
(an idea that I will not try to deny!), and therefore, one must live one’s
‘best life’ – whatever that may be. This is a worldview that is without
providence. Another commonly held worldview – also without provi-
dence – is a highly individualistic one, which disregards the question of
the order of things altogether: whether the world is chaotic or orderly is
irrelevant, since I am in control of my own destiny! Undoubtedly, such a
ix
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009220941.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

x Preface
view is easier to hold among more prosperous populations, which have

ready access to modern medicine and in which suffering is so often simply
ignored. Certainly, from these perspectives, the idea that God (however
conceived) oversees the whole physical world, ranging from the move-
ments of the stars to physiological processes, is unfathomable, while the
idea that God guides human history – of the individual and all humanity –
is altogether laughable. Particularly in light of the depths of human
suffering, such perspectives are wholly understandable, and very
tempting, even for those of us who prefer to believe in a good providence
that governs the world.
Even if the ‘official story’ is that the idea of a loving providence
prevailed in pre-modern times, other more pessimistic perspectives seem
to have been no less tempting or common prior to the Scientific
Revolution and Enlightenment. John Chrysostom’s sermons reveal this
much. Preaching in the fourth and fifth centuries in Syrian Antioch and
Constantinople (both of which are situated in opposite extremes of
modern-day Turkey: Antakya and Istanbul, respectively), John frequently
speaks about providence, apparently because so many of those to whom
he was preaching had different ideas. Certainly, his audiences were not
full of atheists in the modern sense of the term, but divine powers were
often understood to be unconcerned with humanity and therefore capri-
cious; or, even if people held to the idea that there is a cosmic order, it did
not care for human affairs. Then, as now, human suffering caused many
to question – even to laugh at – the idea that a loving providence could
ever be in charge of the universe.
John Chrysostom thinks that those who hold to such perspectives,
however, are grievously mistaken. If someone interprets events in this
manner, it is because they are not reading all the evidence; and the
evidence that they do read, they are misreading. For John, if one reads
the evidence properly, God’s philanthropic providence – providence that
is loving towards humankind – can be appreciated as the cause of all
things. Indeed, even experiences of suffering come from God’s loving
providence. However, the preacher also recognizes that it is hard to see
things this way. He therefore spends much of his time not only attacking
these incorrect views but especially speaking about God’s good provi-
dence for all humankind and particularly for the saints. I will not claim
that John Chrysostom’s ‘solution’ to the questions of human suffering
and his perspective on providence are perfect. That is not the point of this
book. Nevertheless, it was apparently a compelling vision of providence,

Preface xi
with which many of his audiences in Antioch and Constantinople could

identify.
For those who have had leisure to read the sermons of John
Chrysostom, it is often difficult to square their repetitious and moralizing
nature with the fact that he was so immensely popular a preacher in his
own age: why, if his preaching was so repetitive and accusatory, was it so
beloved? Several scholars have recently provided helpful answers to this
question: John was tapping into an already-existing ‘medical’ discourse –
a therapy of the emotions – which people could understand culturally; he
had a profound understanding of human emotion and the power of
narrative, and he used this knowledge to shape his audience; moral
upbraiding was expected and appreciated from teachers in antiquity –
and Chrysostom fulfils this role with ease. These are all, I think, good
answers to the question. However, I also believe that John’s idea of God’s
loving providence was one of the aspects of his preaching that so captiv-
ated his audience. In this book, I seek to show why that vision was so
forceful – even while, undoubtedly, many continued to reject the idea.
Here I briefly anticipate some of the aspects of Chrysostom’s teaching
on providence that make it so compelling. First, it takes seriously the
depths of human suffering and evil while also maintaining the goodness of
God’s created order, which stems from divine love for humanity
(philanthrōpia). While John does maintain that suffering is to the spiritual
benefit of those who receive it rightly, at no point does he downplay the
grievousness of the suffering of his flock. Second, Chrysostom’s view of
providence acknowledges simultaneously the limits of human knowledge
of God’s plans and the individual’s ultimate control over his or her own
choices. That is, while I cannot always know precisely why God has so
ordered the events of my life, no capricious force has any power over me.
Rather, I am empowered to choose whether I live the good life of virtue –
what Chrysostom calls the ‘life of the angels’ – or the opposite. Finally,
and perhaps most compelling is not Chrysostom’s doctrine of providence,
but his use of stories of providence in his consolation of those who are
suffering and who are at risk of rejecting the idea of God’s loving care.
Chrysostom uses the stories of Scripture to help his flock tell their own
stories – so often filled with suffering – in accord with the view that God
does everything out of his love for humankind.
This study, which began as a doctoral thesis at the University of Notre
Dame, has benefitted from the help of so many – most directly from the
expertise of my doctoral committee. David Lincicum taught me to reflect
much more deeply on biblical reception; John Cavadini, having taught his

xii Preface
doctoral seminar to ‘think (and speak) in Augustinian’, helped me in this

dissertation to ‘speak in Chrysostomian’; John Fitzgerald generously joined
the committee at a late hour and offered his expertise in the long philo-
sophical tradition to which John Chrysostom belongs. Many thanks are
due to them all but especially to my adviser, Blake Leyerle, whose generos-
ity, thoughtfulness, rigour, and good humour have not only been deeply
appreciated but have also given me something to aspire to as a teacher and
scholar. She introduced me to Chrysostom and his oeuvre, and – as will be
seen in the following pages – I owe much of my own interpretation to her.
I am also grateful to Kacie Klamm, Kirsten Anderson, Grant Gasse,
and Jeremiah Coogan, each of whom read chapters of this book at an
early stage and offered valuable feedback. Kathleen Shain-Ross under-
took the Herculean task of reading through the whole manuscript, and
her feedback helped me to see the forest for the trees. Naturally, all
mistakes that remain are my own.
When I could locate no suitable cover image or this book, the iconographer
James Blackstone (of dunstanicons.com) came to the rescue. The image is
modelled on an image in the Menologion of Basil II and depicts John
Chrysostom on his way into exile – the saint’s own experience of suffering
and providence. It is also fitting to thank those who (it seems many years ago
now) taught me to read Greek, especially Bruce Clausen and Shelley Reid. I was
one of many students to whom they gave an immeasurable gift of reading this
beautiful language. It has brought me great joy. Finally, at an institutional level,
thanks are also due to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada, which helped fund the last few years of my PhD and thus the initial
research for this book, as well as the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation,
which funded my research while I completed the book manuscript.
Finally, thanks are due to my family and friends – who (thanks be to
God) are too many to mention! I especially extend my gratitude to those
who know me best and who are therefore the most long-suffering of
individuals. To my parents: thank you for your unfailing support in every
season; I have had the good fortune of never doubting that you are proud
of me. To Eliza and Margot, who sat upon each knee as I wrote this book:
thank you for keeping me from working too hard. To Kerensa: you are
my fiercest supporter and wisest counsellor; thank you for the loving care
you show to me, our daughters, and so many others, and for the vision of
providence and love (not to mention your charm and wit!) that you bring
to us all. To you I dedicate this book.

Abbreviations
Where possible, abbreviations from The SBL Handbook of Style (2nd

edition; Atlanta: SBL, 2014) have been used for both primary and sec-
ondary literature. I have not included in this list my abbreviations for
John Chrysostom’s commentaries and longer series of biblical homilies,
for which I use the conventional abbreviations included in the SBL
Handbook (e.g., Comm. Gal. for the Commentary on Galatians; Hom.
Gen. for the Homilies on Genesis). Where abbreviations for John
Chrysostom’s works are insufficiently clear in the SBL Handbook,
I have included in square brackets the abbreviations suggested by
Wendy Mayer (http://alc.academia.edu/WendyMayerFAHA). For con-
venience, abbreviations used in this book are listed below.
Primary Sources
John Chrysostom
Adfu. Adversus eos qui non adfuerant
Adv. Iud. Adversus Judaeos
Anom. [De incompr. hom.] Contra Anomoeos 1–5 = De
incomprehensibili dei natura
Anom. 8 [Pet. Mat. fil. Zeb.] Contra Anomoeos 8 = De petitione
matris filiorum Zebedaei
Anom. 12 [De christ. div.] Contra Anomoeos 12 = De Christi
divinitate
Ant. exsil. Sermo antequam iret in exsilium
xiii

xiv List of Abbreviations
Cat. ill. Catecheses ad illuminandos

Cum exsil. Sermo cum iret in exsilium
Dav. De Davide et Saule
Diab. De diabolo tentatore
Ep. Olymp. Epistulae ad Olympiadem
Exp. Ps. Expositiones in Psalmos
Fem. reg. Quod regulares feminae viris cohabitare
non debeant
Freq. conv. Quod frequenter conveniendum sit
Grat. Non esse ad gratiam concionandum
Hom. 1 Cor. 10:1 [Nolo vos In dictum Pauli: Nolo vos ignorare
ign.]
Hom. 2 Cor. 4:13 [Hab. eund. In illud: Habentes eundem spiritum
spir. hom.]
Hom. 2 Tim. 3:1 [Hoc scit. In illud: Hoc scitote quod in novissimis
quod in nov. dieb.] diebus
Hom. Act. 9:1 [Mut. nom. De mutatione nominum
hom.]
Hom. Isa. 45:7 [Ego dom.] In illud Isaiae: Ego Dominus Deus feci
lumen
Hom. Jo. 5:17 [Pater m. usq. In illud: Pater meus usque modo
mod. op.] operatur
Hom. Jo. 5:19 [Fil. ex se nihil In illud: Filius ex se nihil facit
fac.]
Hom. Matt. 26:9 [Pater, si In illud: Pater, si possibile est, transeat
poss.]
Hom. Rom. 16:3 [Prisc. et In illud: Salutate Priscillam et Aquilam
Aquil. serm.]
Inan. glor. De inani gloria et de educandis liberis
Laed. Quod nemo laeditur nisi a se ipso
Laud. Paul. De laudibus sancti Pauli apostoli
Laz. De Lazaro
Oppugn. Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae
Paenit. De paenitentia
Paralyt. In paralyticum demissum per tectum
Pasch. In sanctum pascha
Pecc. Peccata fratrum non evulganda
Pent. De sancta pentecoste
Proph. obscurit. De prophetarum obscuritate

List of Abbreviations xv
Res. Chr. Adversus ebriosos et de resurrectione

domini nostri Jesu Christi
Rom. mart. In sanctum Romanum martyrem
Saturn. Cum Saturninus et Aurelianus acti essent
in exsilium
Serm. Gen. Sermones in Genesim
Scand. Ad eos qui scandalizati sunt (De
providentia Dei)
Stag. Ad Stagirium a daemone vexatum
Stat. Ad populum Antiochenum de statuis
Virginit. De virginitate
Other Ancient Sources

Aristotle, Eth. nic. Ethica nicomachea
Aristotle, Poet. Poetica
Basil of Caesarea, Eun. Contra Eunomium
Basil of Caesarea, Hex. Homiliae in Hexaemeron
Cicero, Nat. d. De natura deorum
Epictetus, Diatr. Diatribai (Dissertationes)
Eusebius of Caesarea, Praep. Ev. Praeparatio evangelica
Eusebius of Caesarea, Dem. Ev. Demonstratio evangelica
Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. Orationes
Gregory of Nyssa, Eun. Contra Eunomium
Gregory of Nyssa, Trid. spat. De tridui spatio = In Christi
[Res. 1] resurrectionem I
Josephus, Ant. Antiquitates judaicae
Marcus Aurelius, Med. Meditationes
Palladius of Hierapolis, Dial. Dialogus de vita Joannis
Chrysostomi
Plutarch, Stoic. rep. De Stoicorum repugnantiis
Nemesius of Emesa, Hom. nat. De hominis natura
Seneca, Prov. De providentia
Socrates of Constantinople, Hist. Historia ecclesiastica
eccl.
Sozomen, Hist. eccl. Historia ecclesiastica
Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Graec. Graecarum affectionum curatio
affect. cur.
T.Job Testament of Job

xvi List of Abbreviations
Secondary Sources
ACW Ancient Christian Writers
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte und
Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung. Part 2,
Principat. Edited by Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang
Haase. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1972–
AThR Anglican Theological Review
ByzZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
CH Church History
CP Classical Philology
CPG Clavis Patrum Graecorum. Edited by Maurice Geerard. 5
volumes. Turnhout: Brepols, 1974–1987.
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
DTC Dictionnaire de théologie catholique. Edited by Alfred Vacant
et al. 15 volumes. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1908–1950.
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
FOTC Fathers of the Church
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten [drei]
Jahrhunderte
GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera. Edited by Werner Jaeger, et al.
Leiden: Brill, 1952–2014.
GOTR Greek Orthodox Theological Review
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
HTR Harvard Theological Review
ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JLA Journal of Late Antiquity
JR Journal of Religion
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LS The Hellenistic Philosophers. Edited by A.A. Long and D.N.
Sedley. 2 volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987–1989.
MScRel Mélanges de science religieuse
NTS New Testament Studies
OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica
PG Patrologia Graeca
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien
RevScRel Revue des sciences religieuses

List of Abbreviations xvii
RSR Recherches de science religieuse

SacEr Sacris Erudiri
SC Sources Chrétiennes
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology
StPatr Studia Patristica
SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Edited by Hans Friedrich
August von Arnim. 4 volumes. Leipzig: Teubner,
1903–1924.
TS Theological Studies
VC Vigiliae Christianae
ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient
Christianity

1
Stories of Suffering and Providence
The final turbulent decade of John Chrysostom’s life is, in basic outline,
well established: coming from Syrian Antioch, John was consecrated
bishop of Constantinople in  397; after having served in this capacity
for seven years, he was sent into exile by his erstwhile patrons, the
imperial family, with the support of Theophilus, the bishop of
Alexandria. A few years later, in 407, he died while he was on his way
into even deeper exile. Despite these well-rehearsed events, from shortly
after John’s death, there was substantial disagreement over how to nar-
rate them, with defenders and detractors alike seeking to provide the
definitive account of John’s downfall. Among the earliest accounts is that
of Palladius of Helenopolis, which was written within just a few years of
John’s death.1 While Palladius purports in his Dialogue on the Life of
John Chrysostom to state ‘just the facts’,2 he ends up writing a sort of
martyr narrative. John stands in the tradition of the apostle Paul and even
of Christ himself, contending against Satan and his earthly representa-
tives: Theophilus the bishop of Alexandria and those of his party.3 In
1
For the dating of this work, see Demetrios S. Katos, Palladius of Helenopolis: The
Origenist Advocate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 27–29; Peter Van
Nuffelen, ‘Palladius and the Johannite Schism’, JEH 64, no. 1 (2013): 9–10. Also very
early is Pseudo-Martyrius’ Funeral Oration. See Florent van Ommeslaeghe, ‘La valeur
historique de la Vie de S. Jean Chrysostome attribuée à Martyrius d’Antioche (BHG 871)’,
StPatr 12 (1975): 478–83.
2
Katos, Palladius of Helenopolis, esp. 33–61, has argued that the dialogue as a whole
represents a courtroom defence of John.
3
In the line of Paul, see Palladius, Dial. 8.79–81 (SC 341, 162); Dial. 8.99–105 (SC 341,
164–66); Dial. 8.114–15 (SC 341, 166); and Dial. 10.55–56 (SC 341, 208). In the line of
Christ, see especially Palladius, Dial. 9.147 (SC 341, 194); Dial. 10.24–28 (SC 341, 204).

2 Stories of Suffering and Providence
contrast, Socrates of Constantinople, who wrote his Church History

several decades later, presents a less positive picture of John.4 While
Socrates concedes that John’s various opponents – both imperial and
ecclesiastical – are undoubtedly in the wrong, it is ultimately
Chrysostom’s unyielding personality that is to blame for both his earlier
successes and his later failures:5 if he had only been more tactful and
politically minded, his problems would have been solved.
Notably, in their narratives of the end of John’s life, Socrates and
Palladius relate many of the same events; they even share in similar
(uniformly negative) assessments of John’s Alexandrian opponent, the
bishop Theophilus. Where they differ is in their assessments of the causes
of John’s downfall. For Socrates, it is John’s pride; for Palladius, his
saintliness. And while both of these have become familiar ways of narrat-
ing the turbulent events at the end of the bishop’s life,6 John himself traces
On the hagiographical nature of even these early accounts of John’s exile and death, see
especially Wendy Mayer, ‘The Making of a Saint: John Chrysostom in Early
Historiography’, in Chrysostomosbilder in 1600 Jahren: Facetten der
Wirkungsgeschichte eines Kirchenvaters, ed. Martin Wallraff and Rudolf Brändle
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 39–59.
4
 443 is the usual date given for Socrates’ Church History and Sozomen’s somewhat
later; see Glenn F. Chesnut, The First Christian Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen,
Theodoret, and Evagrius (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), 167. But see the reassessment in
Charlotte Roueché, ‘Theodosius II, the Cities, and the Date of the “Church History” of
Sozomen’, JTS 37, no. 1 (1986): 130–32. On Socrates’ negative assessment of John, see
Martin Wallraff, Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates: Untersuchungen zu
Geschichtsdarstellung, Methode und Person (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1997), 72–74; Peter Van Nuffelen, Un héritage de paix et de piété: étude sur les histoires
ecclésiastiques de Socrate et de Sozomène (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 26–36.
5
He is described as stern and severe throughout, but see especially Hist. eccl. 6.3.13 (SC
505, 268); Hist. eccl. 6.21.2 (SC 505, 346).
6
While the portrayal of Chrysostom in the work of Palladius and other ‘Johannite’ sympa-
thizers has prevailed in the hagiographical tradition, Socrates’ account of John’s personal-
ity and downfall predominates modern scholarship. For critical accounts of John’s years in
Constantinople, see Claudia Tiersch, Johannes Chrysostomus in Konstantinopel
(398–404). Weltsicht und Wirken eines Bischofs in der Hauptstadt des Oströmischen
Reiches (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); as a counterpoint, Justin M. Pigott, ‘Capital
Crimes: Deconstructing John’s “Unnecessary Severity” in Managing the Clergy at
Constantinople’, in Revisioning John Chrysostom: New Approaches, New Perspectives,
ed. Chris de Wet and Wendy Mayer (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 733–78; and his fuller treatment
in New Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day: Rethinking Councils and Controversy at Early
Constantinople 381–451 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). On the various political ‘spins’ put
on John’s life in the decades following his death, see Mayer, ‘Making of a Saint’; ‘Media
Manipulation as a Tool in Religious Conflict: Controlling the Narrative Surrounding the
Deposition of John Chrysostom’, in Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to the Rise
of Islam, ed. Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), 151–68.

Stories of Suffering and Providence 3
a different aetiology. In John’s estimation, the cause of his suffering is

neither his brusque personality nor his laudable piety – nor even the
venom of Theophilus. Rather, everything he has suffered is a result of
God’s providence. As he sees it, providence is the reason for his successes
and sufferings and is therefore the principle that governs his narration of
his own life. Although John composed no detailed account of his final
years,7 throughout his exiles he maintained an intimate correspondence
with his friend and patroness, Olympias. And in these letters, in which
John tells Olympias of his various trials, we can hear what he thinks is the
cause of the very same events related in Socrates’ and Palladius’ accounts.
Writing to console Olympias, and perhaps also himself, he finds that all
the trials that he and his supporters have suffered come from God’s
providence. Drawing from the narratives of Scripture, he learns to tell
his own story – and teaches Olympias to do the same – with divine
providence as the cause of all events, especially his sufferings.
In one of these letters, John responds to Olympias’ grief over his
sufferings by suggesting that it is all to God’s glory: ‘Perhaps it seemed
good to God that I be placed on a longer race, twice as long, so that the
crowns might also become brighter.’8 As the letter proceeds, John nar-
rates his specific sufferings in keeping with the idea that they have all been
for good: after a lengthy narration of the sufferings he endured in
Caesarea at the beginning of his exile, he assures Olympias that these
sufferings are ‘able to do away with many of my sins and to furnish a
great occasion for [God’s] good favour’.9 In this letter as in the others,
John continually weaves together his own story – and that of Olympias –
with the narratives of Scripture’s suffering saints. Indeed, it is often
through telling scriptural stories that he furnishes himself and Olympias
with the criteria for interpreting adverse events. Thus, in reference to
Joseph he writes, ‘his brother did not plan this, but everything happened
from God’s providence’.10 So also, John suggests, should Olympias con-
sider that all afflictions in her life have occurred from God’s providence.
But providence plays a larger role than acting as the lens through
which Chrysostom interprets individual events of suffering in his and
Olympias’ lives. John also shapes his personal narrations around the
7
He does, however, send a letter in 404 with a brief account of his deposition to Pope
Innocent (Letter to Innocent 1), which also survives inserted in Palladius’ Dialogue. See
Anne-Marie Malingrey, Palladios. Dialogue sur la vie de Jean Chrysostome, vol. 2, SC
342 (Paris: Cerf, 1988), 47–95.
8 9
Ep. Olymp. 9.1a (SC 13bis, 218). Ep. Olymp. 9.3e (SC 13bis, 230).
10
Ep. Olymp. 10.14b (SC 13bis, 300).

narrative structures that he finds in Scripture’s stories of providence. In his

seventh letter to Olympias, after describing God as a skilled helmsman
(a commonplace image for divine providence by Chrysostom’s time), he
spells out for Olympias one of these narrative structures of God’s provi-
dential work:
But if [God] doesn’t [ease the storm] at the beginning and immediately, such is his
custom: not to resolve terrors at the beginning, but when they have increased, and
come to completion, and most are in despair, then he works wonders and acts
contrary to expectation, demonstrating his own power, and training in patience
through what has occurred.11
Following this generic narrative outline, John furnishes many biblical

narratives to show that God has consistently operated in this manner
throughout history, as he has providentially cared for the saints. Finally,
he concludes this long letter by saying that all these sufferings – of the
biblical saints and Olympias alike – are ‘ineffable proofs of God’s great
providence and succour’.12
Chrysostom fully expects things to work out in his and Olympias’ lives
according to this narrative structure. Indeed, in the letter before this he
had narrated his own misfortunes according to the same pattern. At least
twice in the opening of this letter, John quickly mirrors this narrative of
extreme suffering with sudden and unexpected resolution: ‘We could
hardly catch our breath when we arrived in Cucusus – where we are
writing from – and we could hardly see clearly. . .. [But] now, since the
painful things have passed, we are narrating them to your Piety.’13
Directly following this statement, he lists his various distresses in
Cucusus with great specificity, finally writing, ‘but now all these things
have come to naught. For, when we got to Cucusus, we put aside every
sickness, even its remnants, and we are in the best of health. We were
delivered both from the fear of the Isaurians . . . and from having to be
prepared for [their assault]. An abundance of necessities flows to us from
every direction, and everyone has welcomed us with all affection’.14 And
finally, he closes the same short letter in a similar vein: ‘So far we are
enjoying the benefit of great relaxation here, such that in two days every
unpleasantness that happened on the way has washed away.’15
11
Ep. Olymp. 7.1b (SC 13bis, 134, 28–33). See my article, ‘Healing Despondency with
Biblical Narrative in John Chrysostom’s Letters to Olympias’, JECS 28, no. 2 (2020):
203–31. These passages are discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.
12 13
Ep. Olymp. 7.5d (SC 13bis, 154). Ep. Olymp. 6.1a (SC 13bis, 126).
14 15
Ep. Olymp. 6.1a–b (SC 13bis, 126). Ep. Olymp. 6.1e (SC 13bis, 130).

Stories of Suffering and Providence 5
Chrysostom thus continually narrates his own life in keeping with

God’s providence; not only does he employ providence as the interpret-
ative lens for individual events – whether sufferings or successes – but he
also uses it to shape the entire narratives he tells himself and Olympias.
And this way of interpreting and narrating his life brings him – and
should bring Olympias – no small comfort: for God who has provided
so richly for them in the past and present will continue to do so
into eternity.
On the basis of these letters, we can imagine that if John had written a
full account of the last decade of his life, full of the many sufferings related
by both Socrates and Palladius, such a work would have been an elegant
encomium to God’s providence. Although he would have related many of
the same events as these other writers did, the guiding feature of his
narration would be neither his abrasive personality nor his saintliness
but God’s providential care. As with all other events in sacred history, his
exile should be attributed to God’s providence: it has served to refine his
followers in Constantinople and has proved their virtue and endurance in
the face of trial; it has prepared both them and him for the age to come.
Likewise, if John were able posthumously to narrate his re-inscription in
the diptychs and the return of his relics to Constantinople – events that
Socrates includes in his history – he likewise would have attributed these
not to his own piety nor even to his support base in Constantinople but to
God’s providence. As we have seen in the narrative structure described
above, this is so often how God’s providence works: when the saints are
nearly in despair of God’s help, then God intervenes for a reversal of
fortunes. Thus, Palladius’ account of John’s last words – ‘Glory to God
for all things’ – seems to capture John’s feelings about his trials: his
sufferings are from God’s loving providence and are thus worth praising
God over.16
Another thing that John shares with Socrates and Palladius is his
recognition of the power of narrative. But while Socrates and Palladius
wield this power for primarily apologetic or polemical purposes, John
relies on it for consolation – for healing (θεραπεία). As we have seen hints
of in his Letters to Olympias, John finds that by rightly narrating the
16
Palladius, Dial. 11.140 (SC 341, 226). Palladius refers to this as John’s habitual saying,
and John himself confirms this in a letter to Olympias: ‘I won’t stop uttering this always in
everything that happens to me: “Glory to God for all things”’ (Ep. Olymp. 4.1b; SC
13bis, 118). Katos too notes that John’s dying words were an affirmation of divine
providence (Palladius of Helenopolis, 33).

events in one’s life, one can be consoled and led to perfect virtue. This
consolation does not come in the form of a banal ‘everything happens for
a reason’, nor does it allow one to see ‘in eternal perspective’. The
consolation that comes from providential narration is so powerful
because (like the narratives of Socrates and Palladius) it is concrete: by
turning to the narratives – the historiai – of Scripture, Chrysostom points
to actual circumstances, on a small scale (within a human lifetime), in
which God has proved his care for his saints. In the concrete narratives of
Scripture, John finds many discrete instances of God’s providential care,
which together furnish an overarching vision of how God has always
cared and will always care for humanity.
’      

Therefore, while I have focused so far on John’s and Olympias’ personal
narratives, more significant for Chrysostom’s exposition of divine provi-
dence are biblical narratives. Indeed, John’s vision of God’s providence
over his own life is shaped profoundly by what he reads in Scripture,
especially its narratives. He sees the narratives of Scripture as windows
onto divine providence, through which human beings may correct their
vision of events and thereby be consoled and led to virtue. The recogni-
tion that God’s goodness and providence govern over our experiences,
and the knowledge of what is in our own limited human power, play a
significant role in forming the virtuous self. Because John himself has
done the hard work of correcting his own vision through his reading of
Scripture, such that he interprets adverse events in the light of God’s good
providence, in his pastoral office he seeks to do the same for his flock. For
John’s goal in his preaching and teaching is to paint – even to etch – the
narratives of Scripture, and their virtuous characters, onto the walls of his
listeners’ minds.17
As we have already seen him do in his Letters to Olympias, John most
often discusses providence and interprets biblical narratives of providence
when he is writing or preaching to console those who are suffering. In
fact, he is remarkably consistent in his consolation and comfort: he
usually turns straightaway to Scripture – and, more specifically, to biblical
narrative, or historia. Chrysostom approaches consolation in such a
manner because, as he sees it, biblical narrative gives insight into God’s
17
See Laz. 4.2 (PG 48, 1008–9).

providential plan or arrangement of things (οἰκονομία προνοίας).18 This

providential oikonomia is how Chrysostom refers to God’s way of relat-
ing to humanity throughout history. The history of God’s working for the
benefit of the saints serves to pull the reader out of the pit of despondency
and despair, since it demonstrates that God continually works, even
today, for the same salvation of humanity.
In other words, Chrysostom finds in biblical narratives God’s charac-
teristic ways of working in the world. Scholars have often referred to
John’s use of scriptural stories as exempla (παραδείγματα): proofs to
demonstrate a point or actions to be emulated.19 But they are much more
than this. By reading biblical narratives, John comes to understand God’s
characteristic providential way of acting in the world. He applies narrato-
logical interpretations to these scriptural narratives (ἱστορίαι), learned in
the course of his grammatical and rhetorical education, and readily
adapts them to his understanding of biblical poetics and theology. By
reading biblical narratives in such a way, he learns, and can teach his
congregation, God’s customary way of relating to human beings. The
central claim of this book is that for Chrysostom biblical historia is
fundamentally about God’s providence. And this is why biblical narrative
is so helpful for consoling the suffering: because it shows that God
arranges everything out of his providence and love for humankind.
Individual narratives testify to this vision of God’s providence, as does
the whole historia of Scripture. Chrysostom envisions divine providence
as God’s continual act of love for humankind, from beginning to end,
which is seen especially in the greatest proofs of providence: creation and
the incarnation. His understanding of providence, then, shapes his read-
ing of individual narratives as well as Scripture as a whole: the former,
because no single narrative ought to be read outside of the context of
God’s continual love for humanity, in which there are recurring narrative
patterns of saving providence; the latter, because the differences between
biblical ages or covenants are downplayed in favour of God’s continuous
care, characterized by God’s love for humanity (φιλανθρωπία), which is the
same before the Law as it is under grace. Chrysostom’s understanding of
providence therefore has much to tell us about Chrysostom’s exegesis and
biblical theology.
Biblical narratives, in their vision of God’s providential care for
humankind, also serve a dual function: they speak to God’s character
18
For this specific phrase, see Stag. 1.7 (PG 47, 441); Hom. 1 Cor. 34.4 (PG 61, 291).
19
See Chapter 6.

and to human experience. Thus, while the certainty of God’s providential

love and mercy consoles the suffering, biblical narratives of suffering also
provide exemplary human characters who have virtuously withstood and
endured suffering, holding fast to the providence of God and hoping in
the salvation to come. Chrysostom’s discussions of providence are there-
fore not merely exegetical-theological exercises but are also pastoral
therapies: John attempts to answer the intellectual question of how God
governs the world because he is concerned to explain profound, personal
human suffering. In this we see how Chrysostom’s consolatory and
hortatory (pastoral) work is inextricable from his exegetical and theo-
logical work. His pastoral care in situations of suffering is founded upon a
thoroughgoing exegesis of biblical narrative that leads him to a robust
theology of providence. In other words, John’s pastoral goals are brought
about through his exegetical and theological demonstration of the truth
of God’s providence even in the midst of suffering.
The consolation that a knowledge of providence offers, however, is not
just aimed at making one ‘feel better’ but is meant to lead one to perfect
virtue – what Chrysostom refers to as the ‘life of the angels’. To be sure,
the exposition of biblical narratives of divine providence and human
virtue do serve as emotional therapies: they are meant to make one
emotionally resilient in the face of adversity. Emotional resilience is not,
however, the ultimate goal. Rather, Chrysostom is concerned to have his
flock read their own suffering in the light of God’s ever-present provi-
dence so that they might be formed as virtuous persons. More than this,
he would have them slough off the passions, attending not to this world,
but to the age to come, and thus to become like the angels. If one learns to
read suffering the right way – as an occasion of God’s providence –
suffering becomes a vehicle of God’s transformation into the life of the
angels. Suffering not only serves to refine the sufferer, thus forming the
virtuous self, but even leads the sufferer to the glory of the one who
suffered for us and was raised. By suffering, one may attain to the
resurrection even in this age. Thus, by God’s providential design,
the suffering self may become simultaneously the glorified, resurrected,
and angelic self.20
Because of the ubiquity of scriptural narratives of providence in
Chrysostom’s sermons, commentaries, letters, and treatises, this book
explores the intersection of pronoia and historia: what does it mean that,
20
See Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early
Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995).

in Chrysostom’s eyes, biblical history is about providence? And how is the

providence seen in biblical history meant to lead the preacher’s audiences
to a life of virtue? Although pronoia and historia could each be studied in
its own right, the two belong together in this study because they so often
appear together in Chrysostom’s teaching itself.
While present throughout Chrysostom’s extensive literary corpus, the
joint themes of pronoia and historia are found especially in the three
works that represent the core of this study: the Consolation to
Stagirius,21 the Homilies on the Statues22 and On the Providence of
God.23 In each of these works, Chrysostom consoles his suffering audi-
ences by offering exegetically driven judgements about providence, but in
slightly different ways, as he speaks to a variety of situations and audi-
ences. The Consolation to Stagirius is a treatise in three books and is
framed as a consolation to a young monk who suffers from epilepsy
and depression and was probably written during Chrysostom’s diaconate
(ca. 381–386).24 John attempts to treat Stagirius’ depression by offering,
in the first book, a thoroughly exegetical vision of divine providence; in
21
Ad Stagirium a daemone vexatum (CPG 4310). There are two modern translations of this
work that I know of: one is the French dissertation, Élisabeth Mathieu-Gauché, ‘La
Consolation à Stagire de Jean Chrysostome: Introduction, traduction et notes’ (PhD diss.,
Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2003). The other is in Italian: Lucio Coco, Johannes
Chrysostomus: A Stagirio tormentato da un demone (Rome: Città Nuova, 2002).
22
Ad populum Antiochenum de statuis (CPG 4330). Especially the first eight sermons.
23
Ad eos qui scandalizati sunt (CPG 4401). In most of the Greek manuscripts, this treatise
has the title ‘To those who have been scandalized’. However, Anne-Marie Malingrey, in
her critical edition, chose to use part of the title that is found in only a few manuscripts:
‘On the Providence of God’. Although less often attested as a title, as Malingrey says, it
does accurately reflect the subject matter of the treatise. See Anne-Marie Malingrey, Jean
Chrysostome. Sur la providence de Dieu, SC 79 (Paris: Cerf, 2000), 36–37. In my study,
I disregard the series of five homilies, De fato et providentia (CPG 4367). While there
does exist an unpublished critical edition (F. Bonniere, ‘Jean Chrysostome – Édition de De
fato et providentia, introduction, texte critique, notes et index’ [PhD diss., Université
Lille, 1975]), this series of orations is much more problematic than the others because the
early modern editors of Chrysostom dubbed them either dubious or spurious. See J. A. De
Aldama, Repertorium Pseudochrysostomicum (Paris: CNRS, 1965). Whereas Thomas
Halton, ‘Saint John Chrysostom, “De Fato et Providentia”: A Study of Its Authenticity’,
Traditio 20 (1964): 1–24, has argued that the work is authentic, and several others treat it
as if it is authentic (e.g. Domenico Ciarlo, ‘Sulla teoria e la prassi della “providentia Dei”
in Giovanni Crisostomo’, Atti della Accademia Pontaniana (n.s.) 56 [2007]: 87–93;
Antonios K. Danassis, Johannes Chrysostomos: Pädagogisch-psychologische Ideen in
seinem Werk [Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1971]), a shadow nevertheless
hangs over it. More to the point for my considerations, it is neither consolatory nor
occasional, which is further evidence of likely spuriousness.
24
For the dating of this treatise, see J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John
Chrysostom – Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 39–44.

the second and third books, he narrates the stories of exemplary figures
who, in the midst of grievous suffering, nevertheless trusted in divine
providence. The more famous Homilies on the Statues were delivered in
early 387 to console the Antiochene populace, which was rightly terrified
of the emperor Theodosius’ wrath: a number of Antioch’s more
unsavoury citizens had gone about destroying the statues of the emperor
throughout the city. This capital offense led Antioch’s populace to be in
dread for their lives. Throughout this particularly tense Great Fast,
Chrysostom preached about these events, while introducing biblical
material. Some is drawn from the lectionary and some not, but all of
Scripture is a demonstration of God’s providence and thus a comfort.25
Finally, in 407, John found himself in exile. In this final situation of
personal suffering, he wrote On the Providence of God. The goodness
of divine providence is, Chrysostom thinks, the most convincing consola-
tory argument, and the bulk of the treatise is taken up with his
re-narration of biblical stories. In this treatise, John attends to the con-
solation not of the despondent, necessarily, but of those suffering from
moral lapse or scandal. Why this requires consolation becomes clearer
when this treatise is brought into conversation with Chrysostom’s other
writings from this same exile: like the Letters to Olympias,26 the treatise
No One Can Be Harmed27 and On the Providence of God were written
to aid those – including Olympias – who were suffering in the aftermath
of John’s departure from Constantinople. These works too are full of
demonstrations of God’s providence in biblical historia.
While these three works are therefore deeply consonant with one
another, the differences between them build confidence that this selection
of works provides a representative picture of Chrysostom’s thought on
providence, narrative, and suffering. First, each work responds to a
different mode of suffering. For Stagirius, the suffering was personal,
physical, and ever-present. For the people of Antioch, the suffering was
communal and caused by the dread of future events. Olympias’ grief was
well-founded; and, unlike that of Stagirius, it was not in itself physical,
but emotional or psychological. Second, these works span almost the
whole of Chrysostom’s pastoral career: the first was written during his
25
For a detailed study of these homilies, see Frans van de Paverd, St. John Chrysostom, The
Homilies on the Statues: An Introduction (Rome: Orientalium, 1991).
26
CPG 4405. Anne-Marie Malingrey, Jean Chrysostome. Lettres à Olympias. Seconde
édition augmentée de la Vie anonyme d’Olympias, SC 13bis (Paris: Cerf, 1968).
27
CPG 4400. Anne-Marie Malingrey, Jean Chrysostome. Lettre d’exil. À Olympias et à
tous les fidèles (Quod nemo laeditur), SC 103 (Paris: Cerf, 1964).

The Contribution 11
diaconal ministry (ca. 381–386), the second was preached during his
sacerdotal ministry (387), and the third was written during his episcopal
ministry, from exile (407). Finally, each represents a different genre: the
Consolation to Stagirius is a kind of extended letter to a specific addressee
with a specific problem; On the Statues is a series of homilies before a
large audience; and On the Providence of God is a treatise with no
specified addressee or occasion. Despite this diversity, these works share
a common mode of consolation: they rely on proofs of divine providence
as revealed in biblical history. Relying as I do on this set of works, we
come to a broad, representative picture of the intersection of historia and
pronoia in Chrysostom’s thought.
 
Despite how important a topic providence is for John Chrysostom, it has
received very little attention, with the relationship between pronoia and
historia receiving even less. In 1936, Henri-Dominique Simonin, who
referred to Chrysostom as ‘le grand théologien de providence’,28
described over the course of only a few pages Chrysostom’s theology of
providence as the continuity of divine action in history, with the final
judgement as a corollary of the goodness and justice of the providential
plan. Simonin also noted that Chrysostom makes use of biblical exempla
because these persons exemplify trust in God’s providence.29 While in
1975, George Dragas developed Simonin’s analysis, he neither offered a
unified place for providence within Chrysostom’s thought nor discussed
where or how Chrysostom locates divine providence in Scripture.30
Around the same time, Edward Nowak also briefly discussed
Chrysostom’s teaching on providence, as well as related ethical
28
H.-D. Simonin, ‘La providence selon les Pères Grecs’, in DTC 31.1 (1936): 941–60.
29
Simonin, ‘Pères Grecs’, 954.
30
George D. Dragas, ‘St. John Chrysostom’s Doctrine of God’s Providence’, Ekklesiastikos
Pharos 57 (1975): 375–406. Christopher Hall and Domenico Ciarlo both subsequently
offered similarly descriptive accounts of Chrysostom’s view of providence, which, while
nuancing some of Dragas’ points, offer few new insights: Christopher A. Hall, ‘John
Chrysostom’s On Providence: A Translation and Theological Interpretation’ (PhD diss.,
Drew University, 1991); Christopher A. Hall, ‘Nature Wild and Tame in St. John
Chrysostom’s On the Providence of God’, in Ancient and Postmodern Christianity:
Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Thomas C. Oden, ed.
Kenneth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 25;
Ciarlo, ‘Sulla teoria e la prassi’.

teachings.31 Despite his comment that ‘Chrysostom was undoubtedly

inspired by the Scriptures’,32 Nowak rarely speaks about how Scripture
might figure into Chrysostom’s theological or ethical teaching.33 Finally,
Theresia Hainthaler has recently offered a summary of pronoia and
hypomonē (patience) in On the Providence of God and especially the
Letters to Olympias.34 This is the extent of scholarly reflections on
providence and narrative in Chrysostom’s works.
As my above descriptions of Chrysostom’s works should show, the
primary task of this study – elucidating Chrysostom’s theology of provi-
dence and exegesis of narrative – does not eliminate the need to consider
the less purely theological aspects of his work. Chrysostom’s discussions
of providence are rhetorical and are deeply rooted in his pastoral or
therapeutic project. My hope, therefore, is not to separate his pastoral
care, exegesis, and theology but instead to bring together these various
aspects of the sprawling and varied landscape of Chrysostom studies as
they relate to his teaching of providence. In what follows, I lay out some
of the relevant contours specific to the field of Chrysostom studies, in
order to explain where my own project falls.
My study of Chrysostom’s thought speaks into an enduring picture of
Chrysostom as a stern, cheerless moralist. Chrysostomus Baur, in his
influential (now century-old) Heilige Johannes Chrysostomus und seine
Zeit, is an exemplar of this tradition. In his chapter on Chrysostom as a
moralist, Baur writes that he is a ‘preacher and teacher of morals . . . .
Whether he wrote a consolatory composition or preached a sermon,
whether he expounded Holy Scripture or wrote letters, always and above
all he constantly slips into the sphere of moral teaching and asceticism’.35
31
Edward Nowak, Le chrétien devant la souffrance: Étude sur la pensée de Jean
Chrysostome (Paris: Beauchesne, 1972).
32
Nowak, Chrétien devant la souffrance, 153: ‘[Chrysostome] s’inspirait sans doute
de l’Écriture’.
33
For several short discussions of Chrysostom’s use of Scripture as it relates to suffering, see
Nowak, Chrétien devant la souffrance, 213–18 and brief notes on pp. 78, 97, 136, and
224 n. 6.
34
Theresia Hainthaler, ‘Pronoia bei Johannes Chrysostomus in De providentia und seinen
Briefen an Olympias’, in Pronoia. The Providence of God. Die Vorsehung Gottes.
Forscher aus dem Osten und Westen Europas an den Quellen des gemeinsamen
Glauben: Studiendtagung Warschau, 30. August – 4. September 2017, ed.
T. Hainthaler, F. Mali and M. Lenkaityte Ostermann (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 2019),
145–61.
35
Chrysostomus Baur, Heilige Johannes Chrysostomus und seine Zeit, 2 vols. (Munich:
Hueber, 1929–30); citations taken from the English translation: John Chrysostom and
His Time, 2 vols., trans. M. Gonzaga (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1959–60), 1:373.

The Contribution 13
Even Baur himself, though, is participating in a longer continental schol-

arly tradition in this respect.36 In Anne-Marie Malingrey’s survey of this
tradition, she demonstrates that this tradition was alive and well up until
the 1990s and it has certainly continued since then.37
Recently, however, Wendy Mayer has offered a more sophisticated
view of Chrysostom’s ethical program.38 She suggests that we ought to
think of John as a ‘philosopher’ who participates in the ancient rhetorical
tradition of ‘medico-philosophical psychic therapy’.39 Mayer thus places
Chrysostom’s work within a larger Greco-Roman tradition in which
philosophers treat human passions therapeutically, in medical terms.
This shift in studying Chrysostom’s rhetoric and pastoral care corres-
ponds to a turn in Classics in which discussions of therapy, and indeed
philosophy as therapy, have come to replace discussions of moral phil-
osophy.40 Within this larger context, it can be seen that Chrysostom is not
interested merely in policing human behaviours but in a deeper therapy
36
On French scholarship on Chrysostom from the nineteenth century, see Anne-Marie
Malingrey, ‘Saint Jean Chrysostome Moraliste?’, in Valeurs dans le stoïcisme: du
Portique à nos jours. Textes rassemblés en hommage à Michel Spanneut, ed.
M. Soetard (Lille: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 177–78. She points especially
to Paul Albert, St Jean Chrysostome considéré comme orateur populaire (Paris: Hachette,
1858); Amédée Thierry, St Jean Chrysostome et l’impératrice Eudoxie: la société
chrétienne en Orient (Paris: Perrin, 1872); Aimé Puech, Un réformateur de la société
chrétienne au IVe siècle: St Jean Chrysostome et les moeurs de son temps (Paris:
Hachette, 1891).
37
Malingrey, ‘Chrysostome Moraliste’, 171: ‘Il n’est guère d’article de dictionnaire ou
d’étude sur l’oeuvre de Jean Chrysostome qui ne la présente comme celle d’un prestigieux
orateur et d’un moraliste sévère.’
38
Wendy Mayer advises us not to think too narrowly about pastoral care, since the modern
category does not line up neatly with the roles of the priest or bishop in Antioch and
Constantinople: see Wendy Mayer, ‘Patronage, Pastoral Care and the Role of the Bishop
at Antioch’, VC 55, no. 1 (2001): 58–60.
39
Wendy Mayer, ‘Shaping the Sick Soul: Reshaping the Identity of John Chrysostom’, in
Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium: Studies Inspired by
Pauline Allen, ed. Geoffrey Dunn and Wendy Mayer (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 143–45.
40
This approach has been made popular by the likes of Michel Foucault, Pierre Hadot,
Martha Nussbaum, Richard Sorabji and others. See Konrad Banicki, ‘Therapeutic
Arguments, Spiritual Exercises, or the Care of the Self: Martha Nussbaum, Pierre
Hadot and Michel Foucault on Ancient Philosophy’, Ethical Perspectives 22, no. 4
(2015): 601–34. Richard Sorabji has also been central in understanding therapeutic
practices, and the emotions, among ancient philosophers: Richard Sorabji, Emotion
and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000). Mayer herself follows a strand of this that focuses on ancient
medical discourse, especially Christopher Gill, ‘Philosophical Therapy as Preventative
Psychological Medicine’, in Mental Disorders in the Classical World, ed. William
V. Harris (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 339–60.

and transformation of the human person. Nevertheless, this perspective

on Chrysostom’s work remains fundamentally interested in ethical, rather
than dogmatic or theological questions.
Related to the prioritization of Chrysostom’s moral teaching is the
tendency to separate discussions of exegesis, theology, and ethics. Baur
downgrades Chrysostom’s exegesis, in keeping with Chrysostom’s pas-
toral aims: ‘one must admit that the good aim, to edify and to make the
Holy Scripture as dignified and holy as possible to the readers or listeners,
led our exegete occasionally beyond the bounds of actual fact’.41 Edward
Nowak treats Chrysostom’s philosophy, theology, and ethics separ-
ately.42 Mayer’s recent work shows the same tendency; she writes, for
example:
If we stripped out the copious scriptural exempla adduced throughout [On the
Providence of God] and substituted another concept of the divine for the Christian
God, what we have here is a treatise on correcting the errors and passions of the
soul that could have been written equally by Galen or one of the Stoic-Epicurean
practical-ethical philosophers.43
While Mayer does comment that exegesis is one component that contrib-
utes to the therapy of the passions,44 her statement serves to divide out the
exegetical (‘copious scriptural exempla’), the theological (‘the Christian
God’) and the pastoral (‘correcting the errors and passions’). In each of
these cases, the elevation of Chrysostom’s moral or therapeutic agenda
can serve to marginalize his work as a theologian or an exegete. This
common parcelling out of pastorale, from exégèse, from theologie is
something that would have been foreign to Chrysostom, for whom these
three were all intimately, and inextricably, connected. Certainly, Baur,
Nowak, and Mayer have not been alone in this enduring scholarly
tradition; they serve rather as exemplary voices for it. However, one of
the goals of this book is to read these aspects of John Chrysostom’s
writings together in an integrated manner.
Despite calls for studies of Chrysostom’s theology in
the twentieth century,45 such studies have remained
41 42
Baur, Chrysostom and His Time, 1:321. Nowak, Chrétien devant la souffrance.
43 44
Mayer, ‘Shaping the Sick Soul’, 153. Mayer, ‘Shaping the Sick Soul’, 143–44.
45
See especially Robert Carter, ‘The Future of Chrysostom Studies’, StPatr 10 (1970):
14–21; a few years later, Robert Carter, ‘The Future of Chrysostom Studies: Theology
and Nachleben’, in Symposion: Studies on St. John Chrysostom, ed. Panayotis Christou
(Thessaloniki: Patriarchikon Hidryma Paterikon Meleton, 1973), 129–36. Carter argued
that the study of Chrysostom’s manuscripts and theology ought to be the two great
priorities of Chrysostom studies. In her sequel to Carter’s articles, Mayer noted that his

The Contribution 15
sparse.46 In recent decades, things have improved a little.47 However,

even when theology has been considered, few have attempted to conceive
of the relationship between John’s theological work and his dominant
moral or therapeutic teaching. Several scholars have, however, taken
pains to demonstrate that he is a theological thinker. Charles
Kannengiesser lamented the idea that Chrysostom should ever be referred
to as merely a moralist – which would be a ‘heart-breaking banality’48 –
and argued with particular vehemence for Chrysostom as a theologian,
especially applauding the preacher’s ability to make the already estab-
lished orthodoxy real or intimate to his hearers.49 David Rylaarsdam has
recently explored the unity of Chrysostom’s moral teaching and theology,
in his study on God’s adaptability or condescension (συγκατάβασις).50
Rylaarsdam shows that Chrysostom brings the rhetorical goal of speak-
ing in a way appropriate to one’s audience to bear on his reading of
call to study Chrysostom’s theology had been heeded, apparently having in mind
Chrysostom’s thought more broadly and not limited to strictly theological topics. See
Wendy Mayer, ‘Progress in the Field of Chrysostom Studies (1984–2004)’, in Giovanni
Crisostomo. Oriente e occidente tra IV e V secolo. XXXIII Incontro di studiosi
dell’antichità christiana. Roma, 6–8 maggio 2004 (Rome: Augustinianum, 2005), 24.
James Daniel Cook agrees with Mayer in this regard: Preaching and Popular Christianity:
Reading the Sermons of John Chrysostom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 8.
However, Carter had in mind studies of such properly theological topics as divine
incomprehensibility and philanthrōpia, while Mayer seems to consider more broadly
studies of Chrysostom’s thought, which have not often been theological in a
strict sense.
46
See especially Melvin E. Lawrenz, The Christology of John Chrysostom (Lewiston:
Mellen, 1996); Jean Daniélou, ‘L’incompréhensibilité de Dieu d’après saint Jean
Chrysostome’, RSR 37 (1950): 176–94; Camillus Hay, ‘St John Chrysostom and the
Integrity of the Human Nature of Christ’, Franciscan Studies 19, nos. 3–4 (1959):
298–317.
47
See Thomas R. Karmann, ‘Johannes Chrysostomus und der Neunizänismus: eine
Spurensuche in ausgewählten Predigten des antiochenischen Presbyters’, SacEr 51
(2012): 79–107; Raymond J. Laird, ‘John Chrysostom and the Anomoeans: Shaping an
Antiochene Perspective on Christology’, in Religious Conflict from Early Christianity to
the Rise of Islam, ed. Wendy Mayer and Bronwen Neil (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013),
129–49.
48
Charles Kannengiesser, ‘Le mystère pascal du Christ mort et ressuscité selon Jean
Chrysostome’, in Jean Chrysostome et Augustin: Actes du Colloque de Chantilly 22–24
Septembre 1974, ed. Charles Kannengiesser (Paris: Beauchesne, 1975), 245 (‘une banalité
navrante’).
49
See especially Charles Kannengiesser, ‘“Clothed with Spiritual Fire”: John Chrysostom’s
Homilies on the Letter to Hebrews’, in Christology, Hermeneutics, and Hebrews: Profiles
from the History of Interpretation, ed. Jon C. Laansma and Daniel J. Treier (London:
Bloomsbury, 2012), 82.
50
David M. Rylaarsdam, John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of His
Theology and Preaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

Scripture and his theology of the incarnation: God reveals himself to

humanity and saves, through Scripture and in the incarnation, by making
himself comprehensible and adapting himself to humanity – just as the
good rhetorician does with his audience. At the same time, we are begin-
ning to see scholars attempt in other ways to consider the agreement
between Chrysostom’s exegetical and moral projects: for example,
recently Pierre Molinié and Wendy Mayer have each explored how the
opening exegetical section of Chrysostom’s typical exegetical sermon
relates to the following moral section.51
In the light of these scholarly trends, my goal is to portray Chrysostom’s
discussion of human suffering and divine providence in due proportion. He
is a pastor, philosopher, and rhetorician whose work is also profoundly
theological and exegetical. Although Chrysostom does frequently speak
about ideal and actual human behaviours, actions, and habits, it is not at
all uncommon for him also – and sometimes in one breath – to speak about
divine activity. And he mostly speaks about God’s activity in terms of
divine providence. As we will see throughout this study, divine activity
and human activity are intertwined in complex relationships that can only
be understood with reference to scriptural histories. At the same time,
exegetical discussions of providence are very often found within the context
of Chrysostom’s pastoral care, and therapeutic treatment, of the suffering
saints. In this context as in others, Chrysostom the pastor cannot really be
understood without reference to his exegesis and theology.
This study also speaks to broader scholarly discussions of early
Christian exegesis, especially the exegetical employment and understand-
ing of historia – which I have so far referred to as narrative. While my
focus is, of course, on the exegesis of John Chrysostom himself, I will also
occasionally offer comparisons of John’s exegesis to that of the other
major Antiochene, Theodore of Mopsuestia, in order to question some
entrenched assumptions about the ‘school of Antioch’ and its interest in
and use of historia. First, we find that Chrysostom is not so easily
inscribed within an Antiochene school of exegesis.52 It is usually claimed
51
Pierre Molinié, Jean Chrysostome exegete: Le commentaire homilétique de la Deuxième
épître de Paul aux Corinthiens (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2019), 436–57,
621–59; Wendy Mayer, ‘The Homiletic Audience as Embodied Hermeneutic: Scripture
and Its Interpretation in the Exegetical Preaching of John Chrysostom’, in Hymns,
Homilies and Hermeneutics in Byzantium, ed. Sarah Gador-Whyte and Andrew Mellas
(Leiden: Brill, 2020), 11–28.
52
This, despite the unquestioned scholarly consensus. See especially the influential Theodor
Foerster, Chrysostomus in seinem Verhältniss zur antiochenischen Schule: Ein Beitrag zur

The Contribution 17
that if Chrysostom deviates from the school’s norm, this is due to his
homiletical context.53 His preaching merely represents a ‘milder’ or ‘mod-
erate’ variety of Antiochene exegesis – in each case, Chrysostom being
measured against (the ‘extreme’) Theodore of Mopsuestia, the exemplar
of the school.54 Not only do I doubt that any of Chrysostom’s contem-
porary ecclesiastics (let alone the imperial family) would have referred to
him or his preaching as moderate or mild, but I will also show that
Chrysostom’s exegesis differs in some fundamental (and not merely
superficial) ways from that of Theodore. Second, this reassessment of
Antiochene exegesis especially concerns the related ideas of historia and
typological exegesis. Examining Chrysostom’s works, we find that he is
much less interested in the factuality of biblical narratives than is often
claimed and that his use of typology therefore functions differently than it
does for Theodore. We will therefore shed light both on Chrysostom in
his own right and on the Antiochene school of exegesis as a whole. While
a fair amount of work has already been done to question the historical
scholarly assumptions about the ‘Alexandrian school’ of exegesis,55 much
Dogmengeschichte (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1869); Baur, John Chrysostom

and His Time. On the other hand, F. H. Chase, Chrysostom: A Study in the History of
Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co., 1887), impressively takes
Chrysostom on his own terms but still turns him into more of a scholar than he is. On
this point, see Bradley Nassif, ‘Antiochene Θεωρία in John Chrysostom’s Exegesis’, in
Ancient & Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century: Essays in
Honor of Thomas C. Oden, ed. Kenneth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall (Downer’s
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 49–67.
53
Foerster, Chrysostomus in seinem Verhältniss, 13. Also see Manlio Simonetti, Biblical
Interpretation in the Early Church: An Historical Introduction to Patristic Exegesis,
trans. John A. Hughes, Anders Bergquist, Markus A. Bockmuehl, and William
Horbury (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 74.
54
Foerster, Chrysostomus in seinem Verhältniss, 14. D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian
Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), sees Antiochene exegesis as a spectrum in which Theodore is
‘extreme’ and Chrysostom ‘moderate’. Also see Nassif, ‘Antiochene Θεωρία in John
Chrysostom’s Exegesis’ (2002), 53; Sten Hidal, ‘Exegesis of the Old Testament in the
Antiochene School with Its Prevalent Literal and Historical Method’, in Hebrew Bible/
Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation. Volume I, From the Beginning to the
Middle Ages (until 1300). Part 1: Antiquity, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1996), 562.
55
Peter Martens has been active in this work recently, mostly on Origen: ‘Revisiting the
Allegory/Typology Distinction: The Case of Origen’, JECS 16, no. 3 (2008): 283–317;
Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2012); ‘Origen against History? Reconsidering the Critique of Allegory’, Modern
Theology 28, no. 4 (2012): 635–56. Also see David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and
Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

less has been done on its Antiochene counterpart.56 This research there-
fore represents a significant step towards reconceiving of the Antiochene
school of exegesis. Thus, whereas in this study I am the first to put
forward pronoia as a serious category of Chrysostom’s thought, I offer
a reinterpretation of historia on the basis of Chrysostom’s own writings,
rather than in keeping with an older narrative of a monolithic Antiochene
school of exegesis.
  ?
While we will go into much more detail in the following chapters, it is
worth furnishing at the outset a short summary of Chrysostom’s own
understanding of providence, as well as some of its philosophical and
theological context. For, although the preacher’s treatment of providence
is not deeply engaged in philosophical debates, it is philosophically coher-
ent. Furthermore, Chrysostom’s teaching on providence is situated within
a larger intellectual context – one in which Christian philosophers under-
stood their own doctrine of providence to be distinct from those of other
philosophical schools. Therefore, I here introduce Chrysostom’s under-
standing of providence within its immediate Christian philosophical con-
text (especially in agreement with Nemesius of Emesa and Theodoret of
Cyrrhus), as well as the relationship that this Christian philosophical
tradition has to its close philosophical relative, Stoicism.
56
Frances Young is largely the exception to the rule: Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of
Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 168–75; ‘The
Rhetorical Schools and Their Influence on Patristic Exegesis’, in The Making of
Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. Rowan Williams (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 182–99. In the latter, Young contrasts the influence
of rhetorical schools in Antioch with the debt of Alexandrian interpreters to philosophical
schools but later comes to see this as a false dichotomy: ‘Interpretation of Scripture’, in
The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and
David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 848. Also see Christoph
Schäublin, Untersuchungen zu Methode und Herkunft der antiochenischen Exegese
(Cologne: P. Hanstein, 1974); John J. O’Keefe, ‘“A Letter That Killeth”: Toward a
Reassessment of Antiochene Exegesis, or Diodore, Theodore, and Theodoret on the
Psalms’, JECS 8, no. 1 (2000): 86. Also see Margaret Mitchell’s work on Chrysostom’s
exegesis of the apostle Paul: The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of
Pauline Interpretation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000); ‘“A Variable and Many-Sorted
Man”: John Chrysostom’s Treatment of Pauline Inconsistency’, JECS 6, no. 1 (1998):
93–111; ‘The Archetypal Image: John Chrysostom’s Portraits of Paul’, JR 75, no. 1
(1995): 15–43. Also worthy of note on Theodore of Mopsuestia’s exegesis is Hauna
T. Ondrey, The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore
of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

What Is Providence? 19
Although Chrysostom speaks continually about providence and finds

it in every letter of Scripture, he never defines the term. Not only does he
leave his audience to deduce its meaning, but, as is typical for John, he
employs no single technical term for it. The noun pronoia, which occurs
nearly 1,000 times across his many works, is only one among a constella-
tion of terms that denotes the idea of providence. Very close synonyms
include kēdemonia (‘providential care’; occurring about 500 times), as
well as boētheia (‘aid’; about 400), epimeleia (‘care’; fewer than 400). The
additional terms sophia and oikonomia can also sometimes fit comfort-
ably within the semantic range of pronoia. This variety of terms goes
some way towards demonstrating how broad an idea providence is for
Chrysostom. George Dragas recognizes its breadth in John’s preaching
but also sees a coherence to the idea: ‘[Providence] is . . . associated with
several aspects of God’s revelation, and thus acquires various nuances,
contents and intentions. Basically, it means God’s Acts, or Activity, by
which He designs, executes and directs the process of Creation,
Preservation and Salvation.’57
Dragas’ rough definition agrees with Chrysostom’s own general state-
ments on providence. In a homily on John 5:17 (‘My father is working
until now and I too am working’), Chrysostom writes:
If you want to learn what work (ἐργασίαν) the Father is working (ἐργάζεται), and
which the Son is too, I would say that it is the providence, control, and care for the
things that exist (τὴν πρόνοιαν . . . τῶν ὄντων, τὴν διακράτησιν, τὴν κηδεμονίαν). For
everything that appeared came to be in six days. And God rested on day seven. But
[God’s] providence for them did not stop. Therefore Christ calls this providence
‘work’ (ἐργασίαν), saying, ‘My Father works, so I also work’, meaning, providing,
caring, controlling, holding together, allowing nothing to waste away (προνοῶν,
κηδόμενος, διακρατῶν . . . συνέχων, οὐδὲν ἀφιεὶς διαῤῥυῆναι).58
Chrysostom describes God’s activity in similar terms in On the

Providence of God. Even if the following is not put forward explicitly
as a definition of providence, it provides a good sense of Chrysostom’s
understanding of the term:
[God] is the beginning and the cause and the source of all goods (αὐτὸς ἀρχὴ καὶ
αἰτία καὶ πηγή πάντων τῶν ἀγαθῶν); he is the creator, he brought forward the
things that did not exist; and he supports, regulates, and maintains what he
brought forward, as he wishes (διακρατεῖ καὶ διακοσμεῖ καὶ διατηρεῖ ὡς βούλεται).59
57
Dragas, ‘Doctrine of God’s Providence’, 376.
58
Hom. Jo. 5:17 [Pater m. usq. mod. op.] (PG 63, 516,33–42).
59
Scand. 2.9 (SC 79, 64).

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Chapter VII. Music and Plastic. (1) The Arts of Form 217
Music one of the arts of form, p. 219. Classification of the arts impossible
except from the historical standpoint, p. 221. The choice of particular arts
itself an expression-means of the higher order, p. 222. Apollinian and
Faustian art-groups, p. 224. The stages of Western Music, p. 226. The
Renaissance an anti-Gothic and anti-musical movement, p. 232. Character
of the Baroque, p. 236. The Park, p. 240. Symbolism of colours, p. 245.
Colours of the Near and of the Distance, p. 246. Gold background and
Rembrandt brown, p. 247. Patina, p. 253.
Chapter VIII. Music and Plastic. (2) Act and Portrait 257
Kinds of human representation, p. 259. Portraiture, Contrition, Syntax, p. 261.
The heads of Classical statuary, p. 264. Portrayal of children and women,
p. 266. Hellenistic portraiture, p. 269. The Baroque portrait, p. 272.
Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo overcome the Renaissance, p. 273.
Victory of Instrumental Music over Oil-Painting, corresponding to the victory
of Statuary over Fresco in the Classical, p. 282. Impressionism, p. 285.
Pergamum and Bayreuth, p. 291. The finale of Art, p. 293.
Chapter IX. Soul-image and Life-feeling. (1) On the

Form of the Soul 297
Soul-image as function of World-image, p. 299. Psychology of a counter-
physics, p. 302. Apollinian, Magian and Faustian soul-image, p. 305. The
“Will” in Gothic space, p. 308. The “inner” mythology, p. 312. Will and
Character, p. 314. Classical posture tragedy and Faustian character
tragedy, p. 317. Symbolism of the drama-image, p. 320. Day and Night Art,
p. 324. Popular and esoteric, p. 326. The astronomical image, p. 329. The
geographical horizon, p. 332.
Chapter X. Soul-image and Life-feeling. (2) Buddhism,

Stoicism, and Socialism 339
The Faustian morale purely dynamic, p. 341. Every Culture has a form of
morale proper to itself, p. 345. Posture-morale and will-morale, p. 347.
Buddha, Socrates, Rousseau as protagonists of the dawning Civilizations,
p. 351. Tragic and plebeian morale, p. 354. Return to Nature, Irreligion,
Nihilism, p. 356. Ethical Socialism, p. 361. Similarity of structure in the
philosophical history of every Culture, p. 364. The Civilized philosophy of
the West, p. 365.
Chapter XI. Faustian and Apollinian Nature-

knowledge 375
Theory as Myth, p. 377. Every Natural Science depends upon a preceding
Religion, p. 391. Statics, Alchemy, Dynamics as the theories of three
Cultures, p. 382. The Atomic theory, p. 384. The problem of motion
insoluble, p. 388. The style of causal process and experience, p. 391. The
feeling of God and the knowing of Nature, p. 392. The great Myth, p. 394.
Classical, Magian and Faustian numina, p. 397. Atheism, p. 408. Faustian
physics as a dogma of force, p. 411. Limits of its theoretical (as distinct
from its technical) development, p. 417. Self-destruction of Dynamics, and
invasion of historical ideas; theory dissolves into a system of morphological
relationships, p. 420.
Index Following page 428
Tables Illustrating the Comparative At end of volume

Morphology of History
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
I
In this book is attempted for the first time the venture of
predetermining history, of following the still untravelled stages in the
destiny of a Culture, and specifically of the only Culture of our time
and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfilment—the
West-European-American.
Hitherto the possibility of solving a problem so far-reaching has
evidently never been envisaged, and even if it had been so, the
means of dealing with it were either altogether unsuspected or, at
best, inadequately used.
Is there a logic of history? Is there, beyond all the casual and
incalculable elements of the separate events, something that we
may call a metaphysical structure of historic humanity, something
that is essentially independent of the outward forms—social, spiritual
and political—which we see so clearly? Are not these actualities
indeed secondary or derived from that something? Does world-
history present to the seeing eye certain grand traits, again and
again, with sufficient constancy to justify certain conclusions? And if
so, what are the limits to which reasoning from such premisses may
be pushed?
Is it possible to find in life itself—for human history is the sum of
mighty life-courses which already have had to be endowed with ego
and personality, in customary thought and expression, by predicating
entities of a higher order like “the Classical” or “the Chinese Culture,”
“Modern Civilization”—a series of stages which must be traversed,
and traversed moreover in an ordered and obligatory sequence? For
everything organic the notions of birth, death, youth, age, lifetime are
fundamentals—may not these notions, in this sphere also, possess a
rigorous meaning which no one has as yet extracted? In short, is all
history founded upon general biographic archetypes?
The decline of the West, which at first sight may appear, like the
corresponding decline of the Classical Culture, a phenomenon
limited in time and space, we now perceive to be a philosophical
problem that, when comprehended in all its gravity, includes within
itself every great question of Being.
If therefore we are to discover in what form the destiny of the
Western Culture will be accomplished, we must first be clear as to
what culture is, what its relations are to visible history, to life, to soul,
to nature, to intellect, what the forms of its manifestation are and how
far these forms—peoples, tongues and epochs, battles and ideas,
states and gods, arts and craft-works, sciences, laws, economic
types and world-ideas, great men and great events—may be
accepted and pointed to as symbols.
II
The means whereby to identify dead forms is Mathematical Law.
The means whereby to understand living forms is Analogy. By these
means we are enabled to distinguish polarity and periodicity in the
world.
It is, and has always been, a matter of knowledge that the
expression-forms of world-history are limited in number, and that
eras, epochs, situations, persons are ever repeating themselves true
to type. Napoleon has hardly ever been discussed without a side-
glance at Cæsar and Alexander—analogies of which, as we shall
see, the first is morphologically quite inacceptable and the second is
correct—while Napoleon himself conceived of his situation as akin to
Charlemagne’s. The French Revolutionary Convention spoke of
Carthage when it meant England, and the Jacobins styled
themselves Romans. Other such comparisons, of all degrees of
soundness and unsoundness, are those of Florence with Athens,
Buddha with Christ, primitive Christianity with modern Socialism, the
Roman financial magnate of Cæsar’s time with the Yankee.
Petrarch, the first passionate archæologist (and is not archæology
itself an expression of the sense that history is repetition?) related
himself mentally to Cicero, and but lately Cecil Rhodes, the
organizer of British South Africa, who had in his library specially
prepared translations of the classical lives of the Cæsars, felt himself
akin to the Emperor Hadrian. The fated Charles XII of Sweden used
to carry Quintus Curtius’s life of Alexander in his pocket, and to copy
that conqueror was his deliberate purpose.
Frederick the Great, in his political writings—such as his
Considérations, 1738—moves among analogies with perfect
assurance. Thus he compares the French to the Macedonians under
Philip and the Germans to the Greeks. “Even now,” he says, “the
Thermopylæ of Germany, Alsace and Lorraine, are in the hands of
Philip,” therein exactly characterizing the policy of Cardinal Fleury.
We find him drawing parallels also between the policies of the
Houses of Habsburg and Bourbon and the proscriptions of Antony
and of Octavius.
Still, all this was only fragmentary and arbitrary, and usually
implied rather a momentary inclination to poetical or ingenious
expressions than a really deep sense of historical forms.
Thus in the case of Ranke, a master of artistic analogy, we find
that his parallels of Cyaxares and Henry the Fowler, of the inroads of
the Cimmerians and those of the Hungarians, possess
morphologically no significance, and his oft-quoted analogy between
the Hellenic city-states and the Renaissance republics very little,
while the deeper truth in his comparison of Alcibiades and Napoleon
is accidental. Unlike the strict mathematician, who finds inner
relationships between two groups of differential equations where the
layman sees nothing but dissimilarities of outward form, Ranke and
others draw their historical analogies with a Plutarchian, popular-
romantic, touch, and aim merely at presenting comparable scenes
on the world-stage.
It is easy to see that, at bottom, it is neither a principle nor a sense
of historic necessity, but simple inclination, that governs the choice of
the tableaux. From any technique of analogies we are far distant.
They throng up (to-day more than ever) without scheme or unities,
and if they do hit upon something which is true—in the essential
sense of the word that remains to be determined—it is thanks to
luck, more rarely to instinct, never to a principle. In this region no one
hitherto has set himself to work out a method, nor has had the
slightest inkling that there is here a root, in fact the only root, from
which can come a broad solution of the problems of History.
Analogies, in so far as they laid bare the organic structure of
history, might be a blessing to historical thought. Their technique,
developing under the influence of a comprehensive idea, would
surely eventuate in inevitable conclusions and logical mastery. But
as hitherto understood and practised they have been a curse, for
they have enabled the historians to follow their own tastes, instead of
soberly realizing that their first and hardest task was concerned with
the symbolism of history and its analogies, and, in consequence, the
problem has till now not even been comprehended, let alone solved.
Superficial in many cases (as for instance in designating Cæsar as
the creator of the official newspaper), these analogies are worse
than superficial in others (as when phenomena of the Classical Age
that are not only extremely complex but utterly alien to us are
labelled with modern catchwords like Socialism, Impressionism,
Capitalism, Clericalism), while occasionally they are bizarre to the
point of perversity—witness the Jacobin clubs with their cult of
Brutus, that millionaire-extortioner Brutus who, in the name of
oligarchical doctrine and with the approval of the patrician senate,
murdered the Man of the Democracy.
III
Thus our theme, which originally comprised only the limited
problem of present-day civilization, broadens itself into a new
philosophy—the philosophy of the future, so far as the
metaphysically-exhausted soil of the West can bear such, and in any
case the only philosophy which is within the possibilities of the West-
European mind in its next stages. It expands into the conception of a
morphology of world history, of the world-as-history in contrast to the
morphology of the world-as-nature that hitherto has been almost the
only theme of philosophy. And it reviews once again the forms and
movements of the world in their depths and final significance, but this
time according to an entirely different ordering which groups them,
not in an ensemble picture inclusive of everything known, but in a
picture of life, and presents them not as things-become, but as
things-becoming.
The world-as-history, conceived, viewed and given form from out
of its opposite the world-as-nature—here is a new aspect of human
existence on this earth. As yet, in spite of its immense significance,
both practical and theoretical, this aspect has not been realized, still
less presented. Some obscure inkling of it there may have been, a
distant momentary glimpse there has often been, but no one has
deliberately faced it and taken it in with all its implications. We have
before us two possible ways in which man may inwardly possess
and experience the world around him. With all rigour I distinguish (as
to form, not substance) the organic from the mechanical world-
impression, the content of images from that of laws, the picture and
symbol from the formula and the system, the instantly actual from
the constantly possible, the intents and purposes of imagination
ordering according to plan from the intents and purposes of
experience dissecting according to scheme; and—to mention even
thus early an opposition that has never yet been noted, in spite of its
significance—the domain of chronological from that of mathematical
number.[1]
Consequently, in a research such as that lying before us, there
can be no question of taking spiritual-political events, as they
become visible day by day on the surface, at their face value, and
arranging them on a scheme of “causes” or “effects” and following
them up in the obvious and intellectually easy directions. Such a
“pragmatic” handling of history would be nothing but a piece of
“natural science” in disguise, and for their part, the supporters of the
materialistic idea of history make no secret about it—it is their
adversaries who largely fail to see the similarity of the two methods.
What concerns us is not what the historical facts which appear at this
or that time are, per se, but what they signify, what they point to, by
appearing. Present-day historians think they are doing a work of
supererogation in bringing in religious and social, or still more art-
history, details to “illustrate” the political sense of an epoch. But the
decisive factor—decisive, that is, in so far as visible history is the
expression, sign and embodiment of soul—they forget. I have not
hitherto found one who has carefully considered the morphological
relationship that inwardly binds together the expression-forms of all
branches of a Culture, who has gone beyond politics to grasp the
ultimate and fundamental ideas of Greeks, Arabians, Indians and
Westerners in mathematics, the meaning of their early
ornamentation, the basic forms of their architecture, philosophies,
dramas and lyrics, their choice and development of great arts, the
detail of their craftsmanship and choice of materials—let alone
appreciated the decisive importance of these matters for the form-
problems of history. Who amongst them realizes that between the
Differential Calculus and the dynastic principle of politics in the age
of Louis XIV, between the Classical city-state and the Euclidean
geometry, between the space-perspective of Western oil-painting
and the conquest of space by railroad, telephone and long-range
weapon, between contrapuntal music and credit economics, there
are deep uniformities? Yet, viewed from this morphological
standpoint, even the humdrum facts of politics assume a symbolic
and even a metaphysical character, and—what has perhaps been
impossible hitherto—things such as the Egyptian administrative
system, the Classical coinage, analytical geometry, the cheque, the
Suez Canal, the book-printing of the Chinese, the Prussian Army,
and the Roman road-engineering can, as symbols, be made
uniformly understandable and appreciable.
But at once the fact presents itself that as yet there exists no
theory-enlightened art of historical treatment. What passes as such
draws its methods almost exclusively from the domain of that
science which alone has completely disciplined the methods of
cognition, viz., physics, and thus we imagine ourselves to be
carrying on historical research when we are really following out
objective connexions of cause and effect. It is a remarkable fact that
the old-fashioned philosophy never imagined even the possibility of
there being any other relation than this between the conscious
human understanding and the world outside. Kant, who in his main
work established the formal rules of cognition, took nature only as
the object of reason’s activity, and neither he himself, nor anyone
after him, noted the reservation. Knowledge, for Kant, is
mathematical knowledge. He deals with innate intuition-forms and
categories of the reason, but he never thinks of the wholly different
mechanism by which historical impressions are apprehended. And
Schopenhauer, who, significantly enough, retains but one of the
Kantian categories, viz., causality, speaks contemptuously of history.
[2]
That there is, besides a necessity of cause and effect—which I
may call the logic of space—another necessity, an organic necessity
in life, that of Destiny—the logic of time—is a fact of the deepest
inward certainty, a fact which suffuses the whole of mythological
religions and artistic thought and constitutes the essence and kernel
of all history (in contradistinction to nature) but is unapproachable
through the cognition-forms which the “Critique of Pure Reason”
investigates. This fact still awaits its theoretical formulation. As
Galileo says in a famous passage of his Saggiatore, philosophy, as
Nature’s great book, is written “in mathematical language.” We await,
to-day, the philosopher who will tell us in what language history is
written and how it is to be read.
Mathematics and the principle of Causality lead to a naturalistic,
Chronology and the idea of Destiny to a historical ordering of the
phenomenal world. Both orderings, each on its own account, cover
the whole world. The difference is only in the eyes by which and
through which this world is realized.
IV
Nature is the shape in which the man of higher Cultures
synthesizes and interprets the immediate impressions of his senses.
History is that from which his imagination seeks comprehension of
the living existence of the world in relation to his own life, which he
thereby invests with a deeper reality. Whether he is capable of
creating these shapes, which of them it is that dominates his waking
consciousness, is a primordial problem of all human existence.
Man, thus, has before him two possibilities of world-formation. But
it must be noted, at the very outset, that these possibilities are not
necessarily actualities, and if we are to enquire into the sense of all
history we must begin by solving a question which has never yet
been put, viz., for whom is there History? The question is seemingly
paradoxical, for history is obviously for everyone to this extent, that
every man, with his whole existence and consciousness, is a part of
history. But it makes a great difference whether anyone lives under
the constant impression that his life is an element in a far wider life-
course that goes on for hundreds and thousands of years, or
conceives of himself as something rounded off and self-contained.
For the latter type of consciousness there is certainly no world-
history, no world-as-history. But how if the self-consciousness of a
whole nation, how if a whole Culture rests on this ahistoric spirit?
How must actuality appear to it? The world? Life? Consider the
Classical Culture. In the world-consciousness of the Hellenes all
experience, not merely the personal but the common past, was
immediately transmuted into a timeless, immobile, mythically-
fashioned background for the particular momentary present; thus the
history of Alexander the Great began even before his death to be
merged by Classical sentiment in the Dionysus legend, and to
Cæsar there seemed at the least nothing preposterous in claiming
descent from Venus.
Such a spiritual condition it is practically impossible for us men of
the West, with a sense of time-distances so strong that we habitually
and unquestioningly speak of so many years before or after Christ,
to reproduce in ourselves. But we are not on that account entitled, in
dealing with the problems of History, simply to ignore the fact.
What diaries and autobiographies yield in respect of an individual,
that historical research in the widest and most inclusive sense—that
is, every kind of psychological comparison and analysis of alien
peoples, times and customs—yields as to the soul of a Culture as a
whole. But the Classical culture possessed no memory, no organ of
history in this special sense. The memory of the Classical man—so
to call it, though it is somewhat arbitrary to apply to alien souls a
notion derived from our own—is something different, since past and
future, as arraying perspectives in the working consciousness, are
absent and the “pure Present,” which so often roused Goethe’s
admiration in every product of the Classical life and in sculpture
particularly, fills that life with an intensity that to us is perfectly
unknown.
This pure Present, whose greatest symbol is the Doric column, in
itself predicates the negation of time (of direction). For Herodotus
and Sophocles, as for Themistocles or a Roman consul, the past is
subtilized instantly into an impression that is timeless and
changeless, polar and not periodic in structure—in the last analysis,
of such stuff as myths are made of—whereas for our world-sense
and our inner eye the past is a definitely periodic and purposeful
organism of centuries or millennia.
But it is just this background which gives the life, whether it be the
Classical or the Western life, its special colouring. What the Greek
called Kosmos was the image of a world that is not continuous but
complete. Inevitably, then, the Greek man himself was not a series
but a term.[3]
For this reason, although Classical man was well acquainted with
the strict chronology and almanac-reckoning of the Babylonians and
especially the Egyptians, and therefore with that eternity-sense and
disregard of the present-as-such which revealed itself in their
broadly-conceived operations of astronomy and their exact
measurements of big time-intervals, none of this ever became
intimately a part of him. What his philosophers occasionally told him
on the subject they had heard, not experienced, and what a few
brilliant minds in the Asiatic-Greek cities (such as Hipparchus and
Aristarchus) discovered was rejected alike by the Stoic and by the
Aristotelian, and outside a small professional circle not even noticed.
Neither Plato nor Aristotle had an observatory. In the last years of
Pericles, the Athenian people passed a decree by which all who
propagated astronomical theories were made liable to impeachment
(εἰσαγγελία). This last was an act of the deepest symbolic
significance, expressive of the determination of the Classical soul to
banish distance, in every aspect, from its world-consciousness.
As regards Classical history-writing, take Thucydides. The mastery
of this man lies in his truly Classical power of making alive and self-
explanatory the events of the present, and also in his possession of
the magnificently practical outlook of the born statesman who has
himself been both general and administrator. In virtue of this quality
of experience (which we unfortunately confuse with the historical
sense proper), his work confronts the merely learned and
professional historian as an inimitable model, and quite rightly so.
But what is absolutely hidden from Thucydides is perspective, the
power of surveying the history of centuries, that which for us is
implicit in the very conception of a historian. The fine pieces of
Classical history-writing are invariably those which set forth matters
within the political present of the writer, whereas for us it is the direct
opposite, our historical masterpieces without exception being those
which deal with a distant past. Thucydides would have broken down
in handling even the Persian Wars, let alone the general history of
Greece, while that of Egypt would have been utterly out of his reach.
He, as well as Polybius and Tacitus (who like him were practical
politicians), loses his sureness of eye from the moment when, in
looking backwards, he encounters motive forces in any form that is
unknown in his practical experience. For Polybius even the First
Punic War, for Tacitus even the reign of Augustus, are inexplicable.
As for Thucydides, his lack of historical feeling—in our sense of the
phrase—is conclusively demonstrated on the very first page of his
book by the astounding statement that before his time (about 400
B.C.) no events of importance had occurred (oὐ μεγάλα γενέσθαι) in
the world![4]
Consequently, Classical history down to the Persian Wars and for
that matter the structure built up on traditions at much later periods,
are the product of an essentially mythological thinking. The
constitutional history of Sparta is a poem of the Hellenistic period,
and Lycurgus, on whom it centres and whose “biography” we are
given in full detail, was probably in the beginning an unimportant
local god of Mount Taygetus. The invention of pre-Hannibalian
Roman history was still going on even in Cæsar’s time. The story of
the expulsion of the Tarquins by Brutus is built round some
contemporary of the Censor Appius Claudius (310 B.C.). The names
of the Roman kings were at that period made up from the names of
certain plebeian families which had become wealthy (K. J.
Neumann). In the sphere of constitutional history, setting aside
altogether the “constitution” of Servius Tullius, we find that even the
famous land law of Licinius (367 B.C.) was not in existence at the time
of the Second Punic War (B. Niese). When Epaminondas gave
freedom and statehood to the Messenians and the Arcadians, these
peoples promptly provided themselves with an early history. But the
astounding thing is not that history of this sort was produced, but that
there was practically none of any other sort; and the opposition
between the Classical and the modern outlook is sufficiently
illustrated by saying that Roman history before 250 B.C., as known in
Cæsar’s time, was substantially a forgery, and that the little that we
know has been established by ourselves and was entirely unknown
to the later Romans. In what sense the Classical world understood
the word “history” we can see from the fact that the Alexandrine
romance-literature exercised the strongest influence upon serious
political and religious history, even as regards its matter. It never
entered the Classical head to draw any distinction of principle
between history as a story and history as documents. When, towards
the end of the Roman republic, Varro set out to stabilize the religion
that was fast vanishing from the people’s consciousness, he
classified the deities whose cult was exactly and minutely observed
by the State, into “certain” and “uncertain” gods, i.e., into gods of
whom something was still known and gods that, in spite of the
unbroken continuity of official worship, had survived in name only. In
actual fact, the religion of Roman society in Varro’s time, the poet’s
religion which Goethe and even Nietzsche reproduced in all
innocence, was mainly a product of Hellenistic literature and had
almost no relation to the ancient practices, which no one any longer
understood.
Mommsen clearly defined the West-European attitude towards this
history when he said that “the Roman historians,” meaning especially
Tacitus, “were men who said what it would have been meritorious to
omit, and omitted what it was essential to say.”
In the Indian Culture we have the perfectly ahistoric soul. Its
decisive expression is the Brahman Nirvana. There is no pure Indian
astronomy, no calendar, and therefore no history so far as history is
the track of a conscious spiritual evolution. Of the visible course of
their Culture, which as regards its organic phase came to an end
with the rise of Buddhism, we know even less than we do of
Classical history, rich though it must have been in great events
between the 12th and 8th centuries. And this is not surprising, since
it was in dream-shapes and mythological figures that both came to
be fixed. It is a full millennium after Buddha, about 500 A.D., when
Ceylon first produces something remotely resembling historical work,
the “Mahavansa.”
The world-consciousness of Indian man was so ahistorically built
that it could not even treat the appearance of a book written by a
single author as an event determinate in time. Instead of an organic
series of writings by specific persons, there came into being
gradually a vague mass of texts into which everyone inserted what
he pleased, and notions such as those of intellectual individualism,
intellectual evolution, intellectual epochs, played no part in the
matter. It is in this anonymous form that we possess the Indian
philosophy—which is at the same time all the Indian history that we
have—and it is instructive to compare with it the philosophy-history
of the West, which is a perfectly definite structure made up of
individual books and personalities.
Indian man forgot everything, but Egyptian man forgot nothing.
Hence, while the art of portraiture—which is biography in the kernel
—was unknown in India, in Egypt it was practically the artist’s only
theme.
The Egyptian soul, conspicuously historical in its texture and
impelled with primitive passion towards the infinite, perceived past
and future as its whole world, and the present (which is identical with
waking consciousness) appeared to him simply as the narrow
common frontier of two immeasurable stretches. The Egyptian
Culture is an embodiment of care—which is the spiritual
counterpoise of distance—care for the future expressed in the choice
of granite or basalt as the craftsman’s materials,[5] in the chiselled
archives, in the elaborate administrative system, in the net of
irrigation works,[6] and, necessarily bound up therewith, care for the
past. The Egyptian mummy is a symbol of the first importance. The
body of the dead man was made everlasting, just as his personality,
his “Ka,” was immortalized through the portrait-statuettes, which
were often made in many copies and to which it was conceived to be
attached by a transcendental likeness.
There is a deep relation between the attitude that is taken towards
the historic past and the conception that is formed of death, and this
relation is expressed in the disposal of the dead. The Egyptian
denied mortality, the Classical man affirmed it in the whole
symbolism of his Culture. The Egyptians embalmed even their
history in chronological dates and figures. From pre-Solonian Greece
nothing has been handed down, not a year-date, not a true name,
not a tangible event—with the consequence that the later history,
(which alone we know) assumes undue importance—but for Egypt
we possess, from the 3rd millennium and even earlier, the names
and even the exact reign-dates of many of the kings, and the New
Empire must have had a complete knowledge of them. To-day,
pathetic symbols of the will to endure, the bodies of the great
Pharaohs lie in our museums, their faces still recognizable. On the
shining, polished-granite peak of the pyramid of Amenemhet III we
can read to-day the words “Amenemhet looks upon the beauty of the
Sun” and, on the other side, “Higher is the soul of Amenemhet than
the height of Orion, and it is united with the underworld.” Here indeed
is victory over Mortality and the mere present; it is to the last degree
un-Classical.
V
In opposition to this mighty group of Egyptian life-symbols, we
meet at the threshold of the Classical Culture the custom, typifying
the ease with which it could forget every piece of its inward and
outward past, of burning the dead. To the Mycenæan age the
elevation into a ritual of this particular funerary method amongst all
those practised in turn by stone-age peoples, was essentially alien;
indeed its Royal tombs suggest that earth-burial was regarded as
peculiarly honourable. But in Homeric Greece, as in Vedic India, we
find a change, so sudden that its origins must necessarily be
psychological, from burial to that burning which (the Iliad gives us the
full pathos of the symbolic act) was the ceremonial completion of
death and the denial of all historical duration.
From this moment the plasticity of the individual spiritual evolution
was at an end. Classical drama admitted truly historical motives just
as little as it allowed themes of inward evolution, and it is well known
how decisively the Hellenic instinct set itself against portraiture in the
arts. Right into the imperial period Classical art handled only the
matter that was, so to say, natural to it, the myth.[7] Even the “ideal”
portraits of Hellenistic sculpture are mythical, of the same kind as the
typical biographies of Plutarch’s sort. No great Greek ever wrote
down any recollections that would serve to fix a phase of experience
for his inner eye. Not even Socrates has told, regarding his inward
life, anything important in our sense of the word. It is questionable
indeed whether for a Classical mind it was even possible to react to
the motive forces that are presupposed in the production of a
Parzeval, a Hamlet, or a Werther. In Plato we fail to observe any
conscious evolution of doctrine; his separate works are merely
treatises written from very different standpoints which he took up
from time to time, and it gave him no concern whether and how they
hung together. On the contrary, a work of deep self-examination, the
Vita Nuova of Dante, is found at the very outset of the spiritual
history of the West. How little therefore of the Classical pure-present
there really was in Goethe, the man who forgot nothing, the man
whose works, as he avowed himself, are only fragments of a single
great confession!
After the destruction of Athens by the Persians, all the older art-
works were thrown on the dustheap (whence we are now extracting
them), and we do not hear that anyone in Hellas ever troubled
himself about the ruins of Mycenæ or Phaistos for the purpose of
ascertaining historical facts. Men read Homer but never thought of
excavating the hill of Troy as Schliemann did; for what they wanted
was myth, not history. The works of Æschylus and those of the pre-
Socratic philosophers were already partially lost in the Hellenistic
period. In the West, on the contrary, the piety inherent in and
peculiar to the Culture manifested itself, five centuries before
Schliemann, in Petrarch—the fine collector of antiquities, coins and
manuscripts, the very type of historically-sensitive man, viewing the
distant past and scanning the distant prospect (was he not the first to
attempt an Alpine peak?), living in his time, yet essentially not of it.
The soul of the collector is intelligible only by having regard to his
conception of Time. Even more passionate perhaps, though of a
different colouring, is the collecting-bent of the Chinese. In China,
whoever travels assiduously pursues “old traces” (Ku-tsi) and the
untranslatable “Tao,” the basic principle of Chinese existence,
derives all its meaning from a deep historical feeling. In the
Hellenistic period, objects were indeed collected and displayed
everywhere, but they were curiosities of mythological appeal (as
described by Pausanias) as to which questions of date or purpose
simply did not arise—and this too in the very presence of Egypt,
which even by the time of the great Thuthmosis had been
transformed into one vast museum of strict tradition.
Amongst the Western peoples, it was the Germans who
discovered the mechanical clock, the dread symbol of the flow of
time, and the chimes of countless clock towers that echo day and
night over West Europe are perhaps the most wonderful expression
of which a historical world-feeling is capable.[8] In the timeless
countrysides and cities of the Classical world, we find nothing of the
sort. Till the epoch of Pericles, the time of day was estimated merely
by the length of shadow, and it was only from that of Aristotle that the

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Providence and Narrative in the

Theology of John Chrysostom Robert

 . .  is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 . .  is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

Published online by Cambridge University Press

 . .  is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment,

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

Published online by Cambridge University Press

1 Stories of Suffering and Providence 1

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Christ’s Power and Philanthropy Narrated 119

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To many in our age, providence surely seems an old-fashioned notion.

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009220941.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

view is easier to hold among more prosperous populations, which have

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009220941.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press

with which many of his audiences in Antioch and Constantinople could

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doctoral seminar to ‘think (and speak) in Augustinian’, helped me in this

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Where possible, abbreviations from The SBL Handbook of Style (2nd

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Cat. ill. Catecheses ad illuminandos

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Res. Chr. Adversus ebriosos et de resurrectione

Other Ancient Sources

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RSR Recherches de science religieuse

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Stories of Suffering and Providence

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contrast, Socrates of Constantinople, who wrote his Church History

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a different aetiology. In John’s estimation, the cause of his suffering is

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narrative structures that he ﬁnds in Scripture’s stories of providence. In his

Following this generic narrative outline, John furnishes many biblical

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Chrysostom thus continually narrates his own life in keeping with

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’      

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providential plan or arrangement of things (οἰκονομία προνοίας).18 This

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and to human experience. Thus, while the certainty of God’s providential

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