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STUDIA PATRISTICA
VOL. C
Including Papers
Presented at the Sixth British Patristics Conference,
Birmingham, 5–7 September 2016
Edited by
H.A.G. HOUGHTON, M.L. DAVIES and M. VINZENT
PEETERS
LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT
2020
STUDIA PATRISTICA
VOL. C
STUDIA PATRISTICA
Editor:
Markus Vinzent, King’s College London and Max Weber Centre,
University of Erfurt
STUDIA PATRISTICA
VOL. C
Including Papers
Presented at the Sixth British Patristics Conference,
Birmingham, 5–7 September 2016
Edited by
H.A.G. HOUGHTON, M.L. DAVIES and M. VINZENT
PEETERS
LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT
2020
© Peeters Publishers — Louvain — Belgium 2020
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
D/2020/0602/69
ISBN: 978-90-429-4041-3
eISBN: 978-90-429-4042-0
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Printed in Belgium by Peeters, Leuven

Table of Contents
H.A.G. HOUGHTON, Birmingham, UK

Introduction ......................................................................................... 1
Frances YOUNG, Birmingham, UK

Teasing Out Meaning: Some Techniques and Procedures in Early
Christian Exegesis ............................................................................... 3
Jennifer STRAWBRIDGE, Oxford, UK

Taking Up Armour: The Challenges of Early Christian Exegesis of
Ephesians............................................................................................. 19
Michael DORMANDY, Cambridge, UK

‘In Every Letter’? Some Possible Evidence for the Authorship of
Ephesians............................................................................................. 39
Matthew J. THOMAS, Oxford, UK

Leading Captivity Captive: Paul in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with
Trypho and the ‘Pauline Captivity’ Narrative .................................... 51
Pui Him IP, Cambridge, UK

Athenagoras of Athens and the Genesis of Divine Simplicity in
Christian Theology .............................................................................. 61
Simeon BURKE, Edinburgh, UK

Tertullian’s Martyrological Maxim: A Case Study for the Multiple Rhe-
torical Functions of the Command to ‘Render to Caesar the Things of
Caesar and to God the Things of God’ in the Writings of Tertullian 71
Paul HARTOG, Des Moines, USA

Clement of Alexandria’s Conflicted Reception of ‘Children’ and
‘Fear’.................................................................................................... 83
Lavinia CERIONI, Nottingham, UK

‘For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face’
(1Cor. 13:12). Pauline Reception in Origen’s Commentary on the
Song of Songs ...................................................................................... 93
Giovanni HERMANIN DE REICHENFELD, Exeter, UK

‘The Material of the Gifts from God’. Is the Spirit a Creature in
Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John? .................................. 103
VI Table of Contents
Claire HALL, Oxford, UK

Origen and Astrology .......................................................................... 113
Edwina MURPHY, Sydney, Australia

Cyprian, Parenthood, and the Hebrew Bible: Modelling Munificence
and Martyrdom .................................................................................... 123
Victor A. GODOY, São Paolo, Brazil

Orthodoxy, Heresy and Episcopal Authority in the Third-Century
Church: The Debates between Cyprian of Carthage, the Laxist and
the Rigorist Clergy ............................................................................. 133
Kirsten H. MACKERRAS, Oxford, UK

Foolish Faith: Defending Christian Wisdom in Paul and Lactan-
tius ................................................................................................... 143
Wojciech RYBKA, Edinburgh, UK

Jerome’s and Ambrosiaster’s Interpretations of the Jerusalem Coun-
cil’s Prohibitions (Acts 15:20, 29) ....................................................... 155
Luise Marion FRENKEL, São Paolo, Brazil

Historiographic Narratives on the Authority of Imperial Writings in
Christian Polemics............................................................................... 165
Oliver B. LANGWORTHY, St Andrews, UK

Gregory Nazianzen’s Portrayal of Paul............................................... 173
Gabrielle THOMAS, Nottingham, UK

Gregory Nazianzen: Interpreting the Human Eikon of God Literally
as a Physical Bearer of God’s Presence .............................................. 181
Jonathan R.R. TALLON, Manchester, UK

Chrysostom, Preaching and Jigsaws: Did John Chrysostom Preach
on Scripture in Series? ........................................................................ 191
Joshua BRUCE, Edinburgh, UK

Appealing to Antichrist: A Critical Examination of Donatist Juridical
Appeals ................................................................................................ 201
Lars Fredrik JANBY, Oslo, Norway

The Cognitive Value of the Disciplines in Augustine’s Mature
Works ....................................................................................................... 209
Table of Contents VII
Gregory R.P. STACEY, Oxford, UK

Augustine on Faith and Evidence ....................................................... 217
Aäron J. VANSPAUWEN, Leuven, Belgium

Contra Domini uel Apostoli auctoritatem. The Authority of Paul in
the Polemical Treatise De Fide Contra Manichaeos of Evodius of
Uzalis ................................................................................................... 227
Paul PARVIS, Edinburgh, UK

Whistling in the Exegetical Dark: The Latin Pseudo-Origen Com-
mentary on Job .................................................................................... 237
Elena Ene D-VASILESCU, Oxford, UK

‘If you wish to contemplate God’: Pseudo-Dionysius on Will and
Love .................................................................................................... 247
James F. WELLINGTON, Nottingham, UK

The Language of Love: Pseudo-Dionysius’ Detoxification of Eros in
De Divinis Nominibus IV, 11–12......................................................... 257
Michael MUTHREICH, Göttingen, Germany

Different Accounts of the Martyrdom of St Paul and their Significance
for the Epistola ad s. Timotheum de Passione Apostolorum Petri et
Pauli Ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite ...................................... 263
Emma BROWN DEWHURST, Munich, Germany

Three Practical Ways of Thinking about Virtue in Maximus the
Confessor’s Cosmic and Ascetic Theology ........................................ 273
Arnold SMEETS, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Taming the Rhinoceros. Pauline Backings of Gregory’s Mission ..... 281
Susan CREMIN, Cork, Ireland

Christ the Physician. Affliction and Spiritual Healing in Bede’s
Homilies for Lent and Holy Week ...................................................... 291
Susan B. GRIFFITH, Birmingham, UK

‘It doesn’t say’: Metatextual Observations in Greek Patristic Com-
mentaries on Galatians ....................................................................... 303
Theodora PANELLA, Birmingham, UK

A Unique Commentary Manuscript: GA 457 and the Pauline Catena
Tradition............................................................................................... 315
VIII Table of Contents
Alisa KUNITZ-DICK, Cambridge, UK

The Fate of Jerome’s Commentary on Haggai in the Early Middle
Ages ..................................................................................................... 323
Andrés QUERO-SÁNCHEZ, Erfurt, Germany

‘The First Cause gives everything to all things, even to that which
is nothing’: Origen of Alexandria and Meister Eckhart on Rom. 4:17 335
Jeannette KREIJKES, Groningen, The Netherlands, and Leuven, Belgium

Chrysostom’s Exegesis of Galatians: A Dubious Translation Tool for
John Calvin .......................................................................................... 345
Thomas E. HUNT, Birmingham, UK

Alois Riegl, Henri Marrou, and Walter Benjamin: The Interplay of
Modernity and Late Antiquity in Patristic Studies ............................ 357
Mark HUGGINS, Edinburgh, UK

Chrysostom and Chomsky: The Message of Social Justice and Eco-
nomic Equality in the Twenty-First Century ...................................... 365
Catherine SMITH, Birmingham, UK

Introducing the ITSEE Patristic Citations Database .......................... 375
Abbreviations
AA.SS see ASS.

AAWG.PH Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen Philolo-
gisch-historische Klasse, Göttingen.
AB Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels.
AC Antike und Christentum, ed. F.J. Dölger, Münster.
ACL Antiquité classique, Louvain.
ACO Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz, Berlin.
ACW Ancient Christian Writers, ed. J. Quasten and J.C. Plumpe, Westminster
(Md.)/London.
AHDLMA Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, Paris.
AJAH American Journal of Ancient History, Cambridge, Mass.
AJP American Journal of Philology, Baltimore.
AKK Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, Mainz.
AKPAW Abhandlungen der königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, Berlin.
ALMA Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), Paris/Brussels.
ALW Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, Regensburg.
AnalBoll Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels.
ANCL Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh.
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo/New York.
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed H. Temporini et al.,
Berlin.
AnSt Anatolian Studies, London.
AnThA Année théologique augustinienne, Paris.
APOT Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, ed.
R.E. Charles, Oxford.
AR Archivum Romanicum, Florence.
ARW Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Berlin/Leipzig.
ASS Acta Sanctorum, ed. the Bollandists, Brussels.
AThANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Zürich.
Aug Augustinianum, Rome.
AugSt Augustinian Studies, Villanova (USA).
AW Athanasius Werke, ed. H.-G. Opitz et al., Berlin.
AZ Archäologische Zeitung, Berlin.
BA Bibliothèque augustinienne, Paris.
BAC Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid.
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, New Haven, Conn.
BDAG A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian
Literature, 3rd edn F.W. Danker, Chicago.
BEHE Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Paris.
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, Louvain.
BGL Benedictinisches Geistesleben, St. Ottilien.
BHG Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, Brussels.
BHL Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis, Brussels.
X Abbreviations
BHO Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis, Brussels.

BHTh Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, Tübingen.
BJ Bursians Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertums-
wissenschaft, Leipzig.
BJRULM Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
BKV Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. F.X. Reithmayr and V. Thalhofer,
Kempten.
BKV2 Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. O. Bardenhewer, Th. Schermann, and
C. Weyman, Kempten/Munich.
BKV3 Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Zweite Reihe, ed. O. Bardenhewer, J. Zel-
linger, and J. Martin, Munich.
BLE Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, Toulouse.
BoJ Bonner Jahrbücher, Bonn.
BS Bibliotheca sacra, London.
BSL Bolletino di studi latini, Naples.
BWAT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament, Leipzig/Stuttgart.
Byz Byzantion, Leuven.
BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Leipzig.
BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Berlin.
CAr Cahiers Archéologique, Paris.
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Washington.
CChr.CM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Turnhout/Paris.
CChr.SA Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, Turnhout/Paris.
CChr.SG Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca, Turnhout/Paris.
CChr.SL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout/Paris.
CH Church History, Chicago.
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin.
CP(h) Classical Philology, Chicago.
CPG Clavis Patrum Graecorum, ed. M. Geerard, vols. I-VI, Turnhout.
CPL Clavis Patrum Latinorum (SE 3), ed. E. Dekkers and A. Gaar, Turnhout.
CQ Classical Quarterly, London/Oxford.
CR The Classical Review, London/Oxford.
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Louvain.
Aeth = Scriptores Aethiopici
Ar = Scriptores Arabici
Arm = Scriptores Armeniaci
Copt = Scriptores Coptici
Iber = Scriptores Iberici
Syr = Scriptores Syri
Subs = Subsidia
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna.
CSHB Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, Bonn.
CTh Collectanea Theologica, Lvov.
CUF Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l’Asso-
ciation Guillaume Budé, Paris.
CW Catholic World, New York.
DAC Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ed. J. Hastings, Edinburgh.
Abbreviations XI
DACL see DAL

DAL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol,
H. Leclercq, Paris.
DB Dictionnaire de la Bible, Paris.
DBS Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément, Paris.
DCB Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines, ed.
W. Smith and H. Wace, 4 vols, London.
DHGE Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique, ed. A. Baudrillart,
Paris.
Did Didaskalia, Lisbon.
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washing-
ton, D.C.
DOS Dumbarton Oaks Studies, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washing-
ton, D.C.
DR Downside Review, Stratton on the Fosse, Bath.
DS H.J. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, ed., Enchiridion Symbolorum,
Barcelona/Freiburg i.B./Rome.
DSp Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, ed. M. Viller, S.J., and others, Paris.
DTC Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, and
E. Amann, Paris.
EA Études augustiniennes, Paris.
ECatt Enciclopedia Cattolica, Rome.
ECQ Eastern Churches Quarterly, Ramsgate.
EE Estudios eclesiasticos, Madrid.
EECh Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. A. Di Berardino, Cambridge.
EKK Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Neukirchen.
EH Enchiridion Fontium Historiae Ecclesiasticae Antiquae, ed. Ueding-
Kirch, 6th ed., Barcelona.
EO Échos d’Orient, Paris.
EtByz Études Byzantines, Paris.
ETL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Louvain.
EWNT Exegetisches Wörterbuch zum NT, ed. H.R. Balz et al., Stuttgart.
ExpT The Expository Times, Edinburgh.
FC The Fathers of the Church, New York.
FGH Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin.
FKDG Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Göttingen.
FRL Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments,
Göttingen.
FS Festschrift.
FThSt Freiburger theologische Studien, Freiburg i.B.
FTS Frankfurter theologische Studien, Frankfurt a.M.
FZThPh Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg/Switzerland.
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Leipzig/Berlin.
GDV Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Stuttgart.
GLNT Grande Lessico del Nuovo Testamento, Genoa.
GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Leiden.
GRBS Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, Mass.
XII Abbreviations
GWV Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Offenburg.

HbNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament. Tübingen.
HDR Harvard Dissertations in Religion, Missoula.
HJG Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, successively Munich,
Cologne and Munich/Freiburg i.B.
HKG Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Tübingen.
HNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen.
HO Handbuch der Orientalistik, Leiden.
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Cambridge, Mass.
HTR Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, Mass.
HTS Harvard Theological Studies, Cambridge, Mass.
HZ Historische Zeitschrift, Munich/Berlin.
ICC The International Critical Commentary of the Holy Scriptures of the Old
and New Testaments, Edinburgh.
ILCV Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, ed. E. Diehl, Berlin.
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau, Berlin.
J(b)AC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Münster.
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia, Pa., then various places.
JdI Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Berlin.
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies, Baltimore.
JEH The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, London.
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies, London.
JLH Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, Kassel.
JPTh Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie, Leipzig/Freiburg i.B.
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review, Philadelphia.
JRS Journal of Roman Studies, London.
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman
Period, Leiden.
JSOR Journal of the Society of Oriental Research, Chicago.
JTS Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford.
KAV Kommentar zu den apostolischen Vätern, Göttingen.
KeTh Kerk en Theologie, ’s Gravenhage.
KJ(b) Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Güters-
loh.
LCL The Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge, Mass.
LNPF A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, Buffalo/New York.
L(O)F Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Oxford.
LSJ H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, new (9th) edn
H.S. Jones, Oxford.
LThK Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Freiburg i.B.
LXX Septuagint.
MA Moyen-Âge, Brussels.
MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, London.
Mansi J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence,
1759-1798. Reprint and continuation: Paris/Leipzig, 1901-1927.
MBTh Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, Münster.
Abbreviations XIII
MCom Miscelanea Comillas, Comillas/Santander.

MGH Monumenta germaniae historica. Hanover/Berlin.
ML Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Louvain.
MPG See PG.
MSR Mélanges de science religieuse, Lille.
MThZ Münchener theologische Zeitschrift, Munich.
Mus Le Muséon, Louvain.
NA28 Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition, Stuttgart.
NGWG Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen.
NH(M)S Nag Hammadi (and Manichaean) Studies, Leiden.
NIV New International Version.
NKJV New King James Version.
NovTest Novum Testamentum, Leiden.
NPNF See LNPF.
NRSV New Revised Standard Version.
NRTh Nouvelle Revue Théologique, Tournai/Louvain/Paris.
NTA Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, Münster.
NT.S Novum Testamentum Supplements, Leiden.
NTS New Testament Studies, Cambridge/Washington.
NTTSD New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents, Leiden/Boston.
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis, Freiburg, Switz., then Louvain.
OCA Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Rome.
OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Rome.
OECS Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford.
OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Louvain.
OLP Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, Louvain.
Or Orientalia. Commentarii editi a Pontificio Instituto Biblico, Rome.
OrChr Oriens Christianus, Leipzig, then Wiesbaden.
OrSyr L’Orient Syrien, Paris.
PG Migne, Patrologia, series graeca.
PGL A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G.L. Lampe, Oxford.
PL Migne, Patrologia, series latina.
PLRE The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. A.H.M. Jones et al.,
Cambridge.
PLS Migne, Patrologia, series latina. Supplementum ed. A. Hamman.
PO Patrologia Orientalis, Paris.
PRE Paulys Realenzyklopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Stuttgart.
PS Patrologia Syriaca, Paris.
PTA Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, Bonn.
PThR Princeton Theological Review, Princeton.
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien, Berlin.
PW Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed.
G. Wissowa, Stuttgart.
QLP Questions liturgiques et paroissiales, Louvain.
QuLi Questions liturgiques, Louvain.
RAC Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome.
RACh Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Stuttgart.
XIV Abbreviations
RAM Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, Paris.

RAug Recherches Augustiniennes, Paris.
RBen Revue Bénédictine, Maredsous.
RB(ibl) Revue biblique, Paris.
RE Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, founded by
J.J. Herzog, 3e ed. A. Hauck, Leipzig.
REA(ug) Revue des études Augustiniennes, Paris.
REB Revue des études byzantines, Paris.
RED Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, Rome.
RÉL Revue des études latines, Paris.
REG Revue des études grecques, Paris.
RevSR Revue des sciences religieuses, Strasbourg.
RevThom Revue thomiste, Toulouse.
RFIC Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione classica, Turin.
RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Gunkel-Zscharnack, Tübingen
RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, Louvain.
RhMus Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Bonn.
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions, Paris.
RHT Revue d’Histoire des Textes, Paris.
RMAL Revue du Moyen-Âge Latin, Paris.
ROC Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Paris.
RPh Revue de philologie, Paris.
RQ Römische Quartalschrift, Freiburg i.B.
RQH Revue des questions historiques, Paris.
RSLR Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, Florence.
RSPT, RSPh Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, Paris.
RSR Recherches de science religieuse, Paris.
RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, Louvain.
RthL Revue théologique de Louvain, Louvain.
RTM Rivista di teologia morale, Bologna.
Sal Salesianum, Roma.
SBA Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft, Basel.
SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, Stuttgart.
ScEc Sciences ecclésiastiques, Bruges.
SCh, SC Sources chrétiennes, Paris.
SD Studies and Documents, ed. K. Lake and S. Lake. London/Philadelphia.
SE Sacris Erudiri, Bruges.
SDHI Studia et documenta historiae et iuris, Roma.
SH Subsidia Hagiographica, Brussels.
SHA Scriptores Historiae Augustae.
SJMS Speculum. Journal of Mediaeval Studies, Cambridge, Mass.
SM Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und
seiner Zweige, Munich.
SO Symbolae Osloenses, Oslo.
SP Studia Patristica, successively Berlin, Kalamazoo, Leuven.
SPM Stromata Patristica et Mediaevalia, ed. C. Mohrmann and J. Quasten,
Utrecht.
Abbreviations XV
SQ Sammlung ausgewählter Quellenschriften zur Kirchen- und Dogmenge-

schichte, Tübingen.
SQAW Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt, Berlin.
SSL Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Louvain.
StudMed Studi Medievali, Turin.
SVigChr Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Leiden.
SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim, Leipzig.
TDNT Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Mich.
TE Teologia espiritual, Valencia.
ThGl Theologie und Glaube, Paderborn.
ThJ Theologische Jahrbücher, Leipzig.
ThLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung, Leipzig.
ThPh Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg i.B.
ThQ Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen.
ThR Theologische Rundschau, Tübingen.
ThWAT Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, Stuttgart.
ThWNT Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, Stuttgart.
ThZ Theologische Zeitschrift, Basel.
TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.
TP Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association,
Lancaster, Pa.
TRE Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Berlin.
TS Theological Studies, New York and various places; now Washington, DC.
TThZ Trierer theologische Zeitschrift, Trier.
TU Texte und Untersuchungen, Leipzig/Berlin.
USQR Union Seminary Quarterly Review, New York.
VC Vigiliae Christianae, Amsterdam.
VetChr Vetera Christianorum, Bari (Italy).
VT Vetus Testamentum, Leiden.
WBC Word Biblical Commentary, Waco.
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen.
WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vienna.
YUP Yale University Press, New Haven.
ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, Berlin.
ZAM Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik, Innsbruck, then Würzburg.
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Giessen, then Berlin.
ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, Leipzig.
ZKG Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Gotha, then Stuttgart.
ZKTh Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, Vienna.
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der
älteren Kirche, Giessen, then Berlin.
ZRG Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Weimar.
ZThK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Tübingen.
Introduction
H.A.G. HOUGHTON, University of Birmingham, UK
The Sixth British Patristics Conference was held at the University of Birming-
ham from Monday 5th to Wednesday 7th September 2016. It bore witness to the
ever-increasing popularity of this conference and the international nature of the
gathering.1 As with the Fifth British Patristics Conference held in London in
2014, over one hundred delegates attended from across the world. Many of
them were doctoral students, presenting their research in an academic context
for the first time, alongside established scholars from the UK and further afield.
The programme combined almost eighty academic contributions, in three
parallel sessions, along with a series of additional events. The plenary lecturers
were Professor David Parker and Professor Frances Young from the University
of Birmingham (the present and former holder of the University’s Edward
Cadbury Chair of Theology) and the Revd Dr Jennifer Strawbridge of the
University of Oxford. Two ‘Meet the Publishers’ sessions were convened, with
representatives from Oxford University Press, Liverpool University Press and
Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark in attendance at the conference. There were visits
to Birmingham’s Barber Institute and the Cadbury Research Library, home of
the world-renowned Mingana Collection of Middle-Eastern Manuscripts. In addi-
tion, participants at the conference in the Nicolson Building enjoyed free entry
to the neighbouring Winterbourne Botanical Garden. A number of attendees
later wrote of their positive experience of the event, with one commenting that
‘The atmosphere was one of the most friendly, collegial, and generous of any
conference I have attended.’ Pictures and information from the conference are
available online with the Twitter hashtag of #patristics2016.
The conference was held in conjunction with the COMPAUL Project, funded
by a European Research Council Starting Grant awarded to Dr H.A.G. Houghton
between 2011 and 2016 (“The Earliest Commentaries on Paul as Sources for the
Biblical Text”, funded under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme
[FP7/2007–2013] under grant agreement 283302). This project involved the
examination of early Christian commentaries on the New Testament and their
biblical text, in order to determine the extent to which each represented the text
originally used by the commentator. The numerous outputs from the project,
1
The internationalisation of the British Patristics Conference was also noted (and exemplified!)
by a report on the Birmingham conference by Lavinia Cerioni, published in Bollettino di studi latini
47.1 (2017) 278–9.
Studia Patristica C, 1-2.

© Peeters Publishers, 2020.
2 H.A.G. HOUGHTON
many of which have been made available in Open Access, are listed on its
website.2
Further information about the project is also given in the preface to the
volume Commentaries, Catenae and Biblical Tradition (Piscataway NJ, 2016).
Six of the papers at the Sixth British Patristics Conference presented findings
of the COMPAUL project, and several of the other contributions took up the
invitation to focus on the significance of the Pauline Epistles or biblical manu-
scripts more generally within the study of Patristics.
The present volume provides the text of thirty-seven of the papers delivered
at Birmingham, selected from those submitted for consideration by a process
of peer-review. The contents are presented in a broadly chronological order of
topic, with two of the plenary lectures appearing first. Even though they only
represent a subset of the academic papers given in Birmingham, these contribu-
tions demonstrate the breadth of the topics treated at the conference while their
authors reflect the international affiliations of the participants. As a discipline,
Patristics appears to be in good health both in the United Kingdom and further
afield. It is worth noting that, following the inauguration of the British Patristics
Conference in Edinburgh in 2005, it has been hosted by a different British uni-
versity on each occasion. The Seventh Conference in Cardiff in 2018 continues
this trend.
The organising committee of the conference, chaired by Hugh Houghton,
consisted of Ann Conway-Jones, Catherine Smith, Susan Blackburn Griffith
and Rosalind MacLachlan. Several others provided practical assistance during
the conference, including Dora Panella, Ben Haupt and Carolin Müller. The
Anglican Chaplain at the University, the Revd Dr Sharon Jones, led daily prayers
at the conference. We should also mention the contribution of Ryan Adams at
venuebirmingham and Tamsin Cross in the School of Philosophy, Theology
and Religion. The publication of this volume has taken longer than it should
have done, for which I offer my apologies. I would like to express my thanks
to Dr Megan L. Davies and Professor Markus Vinzent for enabling it to see the
light of day, to the contributors for their patience, and to my colleagues on the
organising committee and all the participants in the conference for the happy
memories of a highly successful and enjoyable event.
Birmingham, May 2019
2
https://birmingham.ac.uk/compaul
Teasing Out Meaning:
Some Techniques and Procedures in Early
Christian Exegesis
Frances YOUNG, Birmingham, UK
ABSTRACT
This article is an attempt to observe the exegetical techniques and procedures used by
John Chrysostom to tease out the meaning of texts on which he comments, taking as
examples Homily 3 on 2Corinthians and Homily 6 on Hebrews. Discussion of authorial
intent, explanatory enlargement, sequence, excess of meaning, typology and cross-
reference is followed by exploration of the relevance of the Quaestiones tradition.
More than ten years of retirement, I hope, permit indulgence in a little retro-
spective, and a small claim to have made some progress in understanding.
My research career began back in the sixties as a student of Maurice Wiles.
He had already published The Spiritual Gospel (1960), a study of patristic
exegesis of the Johannine Gospel, and was at work on The Divine Apostle
(1967), a parallel study of how the fathers read the Pauline Epistles. So it was
perhaps hardly surprising that the topic suggested for his first ever research
student was patristic exegesis of Hebrews. My first publication was entitled,
‘Christological Ideas in the Greek Commentaries on the Epistle to the Hebrews’.1
The very title indicates that my principal interest was in doctrine – in fact,
I am not sure now that I understood then what exegesis might be. Neither,
perhaps, did my supervisor: the chapters of The Spiritual Gospel betray an
approach shaped, first, by the questions of modern historical-critical method
and, second, by a focus on the fathers’ doctrinal concerns. Wiles was a pioneer
in taking the New Testament exegesis of the fathers as an area of study, but
the issues explored and the criteria of judgement came from a mid twentieth-
century perspective. The exegetical process of teasing out the meaning of the
text was barely considered. And as for my own doctoral thesis, it was in the
end hardly about Hebrews or exegesis at all: it got side-tracked into a study
of sacrificial ideas in Greek Christian writers from the New Testament to John
Chrysostom.
1
JTS NS 20 (1969), 150-62. Republished in Jon C. Laansma and Daniel J. Treier (eds), Chris-
tology, Hermeneutics, and Hebrews. Profiles from the History of Interpretation (London, 2012).

4 F. YOUNG
Indeed, it would be the nineties before I would challenge the assumptions

and dominant terms within which patristic exegesis was then invariably dis-
cussed. My initial essay2 in this area suggested that the contrasting approaches
of rhetoric and philosophy provided the right context for understanding the
differences between these two supposed schools of Alexandria and Antioch,
and that it was anachronistic to project back the interests of the modern his-
torical critic onto the Antiochenes. From there I began to acknowledge the
common philological traditions that lay at the basis of ancient and modern
commentary, such as:
• careful attention to wording as textual, grammatical, syntactical, semantic,
even etymological, issues were addressed;
• identification of figures of speech;
• explanation of allusions to characters, events, stories;
• distinguishing between underlying meaning and the language in which it is
expressed.
All this will be familiar to readers of Biblical Exegesis and the Formation
of Christian Culture, not to mention other minor publications. Along with
important contributions from other scholars this work set patristic exegesis
more securely in its appropriate historical-cultural context, and clarified meth-
odological issues. But now, I wonder, has it really sensitised us to the actual
exegetical process, its techniques and procedures?
To demonstrate what I mean by that question let me revisit another trajectory
in my past research. For in hindsight I now see that in practice I was initiated
into what exegesis properly is back in the eighties, when working on Meaning
and Truth in 2 Corinthians, co-authored with David Ford.3 With differing the-
ological specialisms we came to the task with a common intellectual forma-
tion, both of us having read Classics as a first degree. We spent hours reading
2Corinthians together in Greek, debating its meaning at the level of the nitty-
gritty of translation, and in terms of the epistle’s overall coherence and argument.
This was ἑρμηνεία, and the double meaning was inescapable: translation was
impossible without exegesis, the teasing out of meaning whether obvious or
obscure. Theodore of Mopsuestia suggested that it was the commentator’s task
to explain words that most people find difficult and the preacher’s task to reflect
also on words that are perfectly clear and speak about them.4 The process of
2
Frances Young, ‘The Rhetorical Schools and their Influence on Patristic Exegesis’, in Rowan
Williams (ed.), The Making of Orthodoxy. Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick (Cambridge,
1989), 182-99; republished in Young, Exegesis and Theology in Early Christianity (Farnham,
2012).
3
Frances Young and David F. Ford, Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians (London, 1987).
4
Quoted by M. Wiles, ‘Theodore of Mopsuestia as representative of the Antiochene School’,
in P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans (eds), Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge, 1970), vol. 1,
491.
Teasing Out Meaning: Some Techniques and Procedures in Early Christian Exegesis 5
both explaining and enlarging upon the meaning of the text is surely what
exegesis properly is, and it has to operate not simply at the level of words and
sentences, but also at the level of the whole.
This was brought home to us at one particularly critical point where we
became convinced that John Chrysostom, not modern commentators, had read
the text correctly. A twelve-page note in JTS5 on 2Cor. 1:17b – a mere half
verse – was required to substantiate this by explaining the current consensus,
showing up its weaknesses, engaging with the range of textual and syntactical
possibilities, explaining Pauline idiom, indicating the sequence of thought, and
providing an account of its sense which could prove consistent with Paul’s
intent. This was exegesis of meaning which involved intense argumentation,
both because the text’s meaning had ceased to be obvious, and also because to
our mind it became a particularly critical point for reading the meaning of the
epistle is a whole. To find that Chrysostom took the text in the same way as
we did was particularly gratifying.
Back in the eighties, then, I began to appreciate what exegesis is by practis-
ing it. Now, however, I want to attempt an analysis of the process whereby
Chrysostom reached an understanding of that particular passage, one which we
ourselves found both difficult and crucial. Chrysostom too had to tease out the
meaning of a rather elliptical passage, although he did not have to go to all the
argumentative lengths we did. What he did have to do was to supply elusive
but implied connections, along with the implied connotations of the language
used. So first he compares 2Cor. 1:15 with 1Cor. 16:5, anxious to show that
they are not contradictory – here, he notes, Paul says ‘he was minded’, not ‘he
wrote’, indicating that he would gladly have come even before the proposed
visit. Chrysostom then turns to 2Cor. 1:17, commenting, ‘Here in what follows,
he directly does away with the charge arising out of his delay and absence.’
Chrysostom puts words in Paul’s mouth: ‘I was minded to come to you. Why
then did I not come? … Did I show fickleness? By no means. Why then did
I not come? Because the things I purpose I do not purpose according to the
flesh?’ Chrysostom then quotes the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ clause of 2Cor. 1:17b, and
indicates that he regards all this as obscure. To elucidate it he focusses on
distilling the sense of κατὰ σάρκα: where most modern commentators gloss
this phrase by referring back to ἐλαφρία in the earlier half of the verse, thus
suggesting that to make plans κατὰ σάρκα is to behave with fickleness, saying
‘yes’ and ‘no’ at the same time (though ‘at the same time’ is a point for which
there is no justification in the text), Chrysostom has apparently noticed that
for Paul κατὰ σάρκα is usually the opposite of κατὰ πνεῦμα, even though this
contrast is not overtly in play in the text here. So he opens his remarks by
defining the ‘fleshly man’ as ‘the person outside the Spirit’s operation’, ‘one
who can go off everywhere and wander where he will’, whereas ‘the Spirit’s
5
F.M. Young, ‘Note on 2 Cor. 1.17b’, JTS NS 37 (1986), 404-15.
6 F. YOUNG
attendant, led on and around by him, cannot be everywhere the master of his
own mind…’ He likens such a person to a slave, who may make promises to
fellow-slaves but then cannot fulfil them because the master’s intentions are
different. So, according to Chrysostom, what Paul means by ‘I do not make
plans at a fleshly level’ is ‘I am not independent of the Spirit’s direction’, ‘I am
under the Paraclete’s rule and subject to his commands’. He cross-references
Acts, suggesting that there it happened often:
although he made up his mind to come, the Spirit bade him go elsewhere. So, he says,
it was not because of my frivolousness or fickleness that I did not come, but rather
being subject to the Spirit, I obeyed him.
As Chrysostom then points out, this line of argument means that Paul has to
go on neatly to squash an emerging objection: if his promise to come can be
reversed, why shouldn’t his preaching be as unreliable? That is why Paul has
to go on to affirm God’s faithfulness in verse 18:
He produces an unanswerable point, referring everything to God. What he says is this:
the promise to come was mine, and I made that promise off my own bat. The gospel is
not mine, it isn’t even human, it’s God’s; and it is impossible for anything from God
to be false.
Various moves and assumptions are made to enable a reading which delivers
this sense:
• Chrysostom provides no discussion of the textual and syntactical problems
of verse 17b because, awkward though it is, he – a Greek-speaker – simply
assumes it should be read in a certain way without questioning it, unlike
modern commentators. That he read the doubled ναί and οὔ, and took the
doubling as predicative, is clear from his comments on verse 18, where,
introducing the implied objection, he says: ‘if you have promised and then
put off coming and yes is not yes with you and no is not no…’ This also
suggests that he must have taken παρ’ ἐμοί as emphatic: making plans κατὰ
σάρκα is being self-reliant, that is, ‘it is with me [up to me] that yes be yes
and no be no’. Chrysostom has also discerned that in verse 17 Paul offers
alternative hypotheses concerning his reversal of plan – fickleness is one, to
be rejected, the other is following the Spirit’s plans rather than his own; in
other words one is not epexegetical of the other, as modern commentators have
generally assumed. A particular way of taking the syntax is thus implicit in
Chrysostom’s comments.
• The word λόγος is not used until verse 18, but its presence is implied in the
verses about Paul’s intention to visit, the underlying issue being the reliabil-
ity of his word. Chrysostom notes the shift in reference in verse 18: here, he
says, it refers to the preaching. Modern commentators worry about a supposed
digression, but Chrysostom has discerned the implied objection to Paul’s
apology, and so establishes a proper sequence of thought.
• Chrysostom’s comments are shaped by a concern to uncover the intent of

the text’s author – the wording is examined for the sake of what lies behind
it, for what really matters is its purport, and its intended effect on the reader.
Chrysostom approaches 2Corinthians as a rhetorical text – indeed, as Paul’s
apology.
• The key to Chrysostom’s reading lies in drawing out things that are not
explicit in the text through cross-reference or awareness of Pauline idiom.
The whole point of the passage for Chrysostom lies in the fact that everything
is referred to God. His observations both elucidate an obscurity, and also
draw out what the argument is about.
• What Chrysostom’s discerns as the fundamental point is further drawn out
by elaborating the analogy between master, slave and fellow-slaves, with its
implicit focus on Paul’s obedience to the Spirit. Thus Chrysostom reflects
further on the meaning he has drawn out, reinforcing it by speaking on that
theme at greater length – enlarging it.
So, having essayed that initial analysis, for the rest of this lecture, I shall
attempt to return after some fifty years to Chrysostom’s Homilies on Hebrews6
with a rather different agenda – not to trace Chrysostom’s own thought so much
as to discern (1) how he engages exegetically with the text, and (2) the extent
to which he employs standard techniques and procedures evidenced in the
exegetical works of predecessors and contemporaries. Inevitably we shall only
see the tip of the iceberg in this short study, and the selections we examine will
be arbitrary. I shall not begin at the beginning because that would immediately
risk distraction back into Christology. I propose to start by providing a con-
spectus of Homily 6. The initial lemma is Hebrews 3:7-11, but the homily takes
us through to 4:11. Chrysostom begins by reminding his audience/readers that
Paul has just spoken of hope (3:6); he then notes that Paul ‘next shows we
should look forward with firmness’, observing that he proves the point from
the Scriptures. Chrysostom goes on to exhort his hearers to be attentive because
this is expressed in a somewhat difficult way not readily comprehended.
Therefore, says Chrysostom, we must first speak in our own words and briefly
explain the whole argument (ὑπόθεσις), thus to clarify the words of the epistle.
It is the apostle’s σκοπός they need to grasp and then they will not need Chrys-
ostom’s words any more.
For Chrysostom the whole point is hope for the future, and reward for those
who have struggled through life. This, says Chrysostom, he (i.e. the epistle’s
author) demonstrates from the prophet, and the lemma is read again. There are
three rests, Chrysostom explains: (1) the sabbath on which God rested from his
6
Text: Sancti Patri Nostri Joannis Chrysostomi Interpretatio omnium epistolarum Pauli-
narum, Tom. VII: Homiliae in Epistolam ad Hebraeos (Oxford and London, 1862), F. Field (ed.);
ET in NPNF, Series 1, vol. 14.
8 F. YOUNG
works; (2) that of Palestine, where the Jews were to receive rest from hardship
after the Exodus; and (3) the true rest – the kingdom of heaven. Chrysostom
now enquires why the author mentioned all three when he was really focused
on this last. The answer is that he needed to show that the prophet was not
speaking about the first or the second but the third. But, says Chrysostom, to
make the argument clearer, the whole history needs to be rehearsed. So next
we get a potted history of the Exodus and the explanation that later David’s
warning (i.e. the words of the Psalm quoted in the lemma from Hebrews) was
given in light of the fact that they all perished in the wilderness, and therefore
the remaining rest must be the kingdom of heaven of which the sabbath was an
image and type. The warning lemma is repeated again, followed by Heb. 3:12,
and the danger of hardened and unbelieving hearts is enlarged with a medical
analogy – calloused bodies which refuse to yield to a physician. Chrysostom
suggests that arguments from past events are more persuasive than reference to
the future, and so he (the author) reminds them (his readers, assumed by
Chrysostom to be Hebrews) of the ἱστορία in which they had lacked faith:
if your fathers lacked hope when they should have hoped, he says, how much
more you! For the word is for them, too, says Chrysostom; for ‘today’ is
always, as long as the world lasts. Quoting Heb. 3:13 he underlines the exhor-
tation to edify one another daily, lest any be hardened by the deceitfulness of
sin. A battery of quotations from Proverbs and the Psalms, with John 3:20 as
its climax, shows that sin is what produces unbelief. Now Chrysostom moves
on to Heb. 3:14 and enquires, ‘What is this, “we have been made partakers of
Christ”?’ He answers with another set of allusions, now to Pauline texts
concerning the body of Christ, Christ being the head and we the body, and
we being fellow-heirs with Christ. Then the phrase ἀρχὴν τῆς ὑποστάσεως
is defined in terms of the faith by which we stand.
From Heb. 3:15 Chrysostom begins to range over the text to explain what
is going on. The Psalm quotation, repeated again in this verse, he identifies as
being said καθ’ ὑπέρβατον – by way of exaggeration, and interprets that by
quoting 4:1-2, which shows it applies to ‘us’ as to them, for ‘today’ is always.
But it gave them no benefit. Why not? Because in their case faith did not
accompany hearing the word, as indicated by 3:16-9. He (the author) was
‘wishing to inspire fear in them’. Chrysostom identifies those who did not believe
and enter the rest as the Jews, deducing that hearing what is proclaimed is not
enough – they did not benefit because they did not believe. But, Chrysostom
goes on, ‘we who have believed’, he (the author) says, ‘do enter into rest’ –
Chrysostom has moved on to 4:3. The oath there is evidence, not that we shall
enter in, but that they did not; the rest remains, however, and some must enter
it, says Chrysostom, following through the text’s reference to Joshua and its
re-quotation of David. ‘How do we know a rest remains?’ Chrysostom asks,
and suggests that the very exhortations confirm it – they would never have been
given if there were no rest. Finally Chrysostom approves the conclusion of the
argument whereby sabbath-rest and kingdom are identified, since sabbath
means abstaining from evil and serving God, and the person who has entered
ceases from his own works as God did at creation.
For Chrysostom this is how the author concluded his argument. It is not,
however, the end of the homily. Invariably Chrysostom’s homilies end with a
section of exhortation to his congregation, usually moral, and it can often be
hard to see how the theme he develops relates to the biblical text which he has
been expounding. On this occasion, however, Chrysostom develops points for
his congregation from the passage he has worked through. He emphasises that
they should never be without hope, as long as there is ‘today’, that no one
should despair as long as they live. Anticipating what is still to come in the text
he quotes Heb. 4:12 concerning the Word of God, and says that ‘here he is
speaking of hell and punishment’. Returning to Heb. 3:13 and reinforcing it
with 1Thess. 5:14, he offers the congregation encouragement, warning again
of sin’s deceitfulness and bolstering them with Heb. 3:14: he suggests that
‘being made partakers of Christ’ means ‘he so loved us as to make us his body’.
Chrysostom then rehearses Heb. 3:9 again, warning against holding God to
account, or demanding proof of God’s providence; and then reflects on the rest
to come at some length, exploiting biblical texts and various analogies to con-
jure up a vision of heaven for his flock. This homily is, for Chrysostom,
remarkably consistent in its exegetical and homiletic direction.
So, let us now look back at this sample and see if we can identify techniques
and procedures whereby the exegetical outcome is achieved. I have noted seven
points:
(1) An important technique is specifying authorial intent, in the sense of iden-

tifying what the author is trying to say to his readers. This we noticed in
the example from 2Corinthians, and here it is again. At the start of Homily
6 Chrysostom names the author as Paul (from our point of view probably
erroneously), but thereafter the author is not named, nor is any other
information about him treated as relevant. What is relevant is the author’s
σκοπός or aim. In his opening preface detailing the argument of the epistle,
Chrysostom had raised the question why the Apostle to the Gentiles wrote
this Epistle to the Hebrews. His answer to that question is that believing
Jews were particularly liable to persecution, so Paul wrote to encourage
them, and one of the ways he does this is recalling what happened in the
past to their fathers. This passage in the epistle exemplifies exactly that
aim: the intent was to warn and encourage, and that is what Chrysostom
brings out in his exegesis.
Specifying the intent or subject matter was a basic element in rhetorical
training. Ancient rhetorical theory distinguished between what was to be
said and how it was to be expressed. The important thing was to determine
the most appropriate style, once the nature of the subject-matter or argument
had been discovered (a process known as εὕρεσις in Greek, inventio in
Latin). So, prior to engaging for themselves in composition, school students
10 F. YOUNG
would spend many years reading and engaging in rhetorical analysis of the
classics, attending, among other things, to the appropriateness of the
author’s wording for the sense to be conveyed. Rhetorical theory capital-
ised on the fact that language is relative, and exegesis involved spelling out
what it was that the author wished his hearers/readers to be persuaded of.
A paper of mine from the mid-eighties7 noted how Chrysostom, himself
both pastor and preacher, recognised the pastor and preacher in Paul, and
constantly read between the lines to bring out the tone of Paul’s voice and
his use of tactics to win over his hearers. Tone of voice helps to convey
what is being said and why, but in a written text it is lacking, so attribution
of motive and tone constituted an essential element in discerning intent.
Patristic exegetes had various interests in authorial intent, including the
desire to obviate heretical misunderstandings.8 Theodore of Mopsuestia, in
the passage to which reference has already been made, speaks of dealing
with verses ‘which have been corrupted by the wiles of the heretics’: both
exegete and preacher were to ensure that wrong readings were challenged
and the right reading promulgated – briefly if possible, at greater length if
necessary. Whether or not he knew of Theodore’s prescriptions, Chrysostom
clearly followed them, both in dealing with perceived obscurity and by
enlarging on the meaning discerned in the text; elsewhere he also endeavours
to obviate heretical misreadings. In Homily 3, for example, he is dealing
with the proof texts in Heb. 1:6-9: ‘Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever’
he describes as a symbol of royalty, but then comes ‘with respect to the
flesh’, ‘Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God,
even thy God, hath anointed thee’. Chrysostom asks,
What is ‘thy God’? Since he has uttered that great saying, he then qualifies it.
So he hits both Jews, and the followers of Paul of Samosata, and the Arians, and
Marcellus, and Sabellius and Marcion.
7
‘John Chrysostom on first and second Corinthians’, SP 18 (1986), 349-52.
8
To take an example more or less at random, an instance is provided by Cyril of Alexandria
on John 1:13:
Note how cautious the blessed Evangelist is in his choice of words. His caution was necessary,
for he was intending to say that those who have believed have been born of God, and he did not
want anyone to think that they were literally produced from the essence of God the Father, thereby
making them indistinguishable from the Only-begotten one… Once the Evangelist had said that
power was given to them to become children of God by him who is Son by nature, and had
therefore implied that they became children of God ‘by adoption and grace’, he could then proceed
without danger to add that they were born of God… (ET Russell).
Our immediate reaction might be to say that attributing fifth century orthodoxy to the author
of John’s Gospel is anachronistic, but it is worth recalling that it was assumed that the sense or
intent behind the wording could be traced, and that the literary criticism of antiquity universally
failed to distinguish between the sense traced by the interpreter from the meaning the author had
in mind. If we look back at Cyril’s argument he actually draws out the sense by attending to the
text, its context, and parallel biblical motifs.
‘How?’ asks Chrysostom, and answers, ‘The Jews, by showing two prosopa,
both God and Man’; and the others, ‘by thus discoursing on his eternal
existence and uncreated essence’. He adds, ‘Observe how with the doctrine
concerning his uncreated nature he always joins also that of the economy.
What can be clearer than this?’ The point to notice here is not simply the
way he reads Hebrews’ Christology in terms of the two natures, divine and
human, at issue in his own time, but that he consistently attributes these
meanings to the author. This is the intent, the subject-matter, the mind or
sense behind the wording. Tracing that intent is fundamental to the patristic
exegetical enterprise.
(2) Given the recognition that it is possible to say the same thing in different
ways, one might assume that paraphrase or the use of synonyms would be
a frequent technique. We certainly find Chrysostom defining the meaning
of particular words and expressions by providing alternatives: in our pre-
liminary example, as well as spelling out his understanding of κατὰ σάρκα,
he offered a synonym for ἐλαφρία (though nothing was made of that point
earlier). In Homily 6 on Hebrews he asks what is ἀρχὴν τῆς ὑποστάσεως
and his full response is: ‘The faith by which we stand, and have been
brought into being and were made to exist, as one might say.’ He also
offers explanatory substitutes for ‘being made partakers of Christ’: ‘We
partake of him; we were made one, we and he, since he is head and we the
body, fellow-heirs and of the same body; we are one body, of his flesh and
of his bones.’ On the whole, however, paraphrase is used less than this kind
of explanatory enlargement, and the technique of offering analogies or
parables to illustrate a point is another noticeable way of providing that
enlargement. We observed Chrysostom’s comparison with master, slave
and fellow-slaves in our preliminary example, and in Homily 6 the use of
that medical analogy for hardened hearts – namely, calloused bodies. Again,
the Homily’s final exhortation tries out a number of ways to capture the
astonishing difference between the rest in heaven and conditions on earth,
with protestations that it is impossible because language is too weak, and
eye has not seen nor ear heard the things God has prepared for those who
love him. Chrysostom imagines a royal babe in the womb suddenly in full
possession of everything, or a captive who has been through terrible suf-
ferings all at once caught up to the royal throne. He conjures up the
excitement of going to see a military encampment and perhaps even seeing
the king himself, and trumps it with seeing the tents of the saints, along
with the angels and archangels. Imaginative enlargement on the text is
undoubtedly a rhetorical technique exploited in homiletic exegesis.
(3) Reading Chrysostom is not at first sight very straightforward. Lemma and
brief comment often leaves a distinctly staccato effect which initially fails
to convey any sense of continuity. However, the concern with intent already
12 F. YOUNG
considered does mean that proper attention to sequence, both Chrysostom’s

attention to sequence in the text and one’s own attention to sequence in
Chrysostom, reveals a deeper coherence. In the preliminary example from
the homilies on 2Corinthians we observed how his comments revealed his
perception of the sequence of Paul’s argument. In Homily 6 we noticed
how first came his identification of the apostle’s σκοπός and specification
of the three rests implied by the passage as a whole. The extent to which
he repeatedly goes back to the text to reinforce the direction of argument is
also a significant feature. Elsewhere in the Hebrews homilies it is noticeable
how he keeps alerting his audience to what is going on by using imperatives,
such as, ‘See’, ‘Note’, ‘Observe’, ‘Consider’. In Homily 1, for example,
Chrysostom thus draws attention to how he (the apostle) begins, how con-
siderately he has spoken, how he leads them step-by-step; just as, in our
example, he indicates how well he concludes his argument. That the Antio-
chenes were particularly concerned to honour the ἀκολουθία of the text is
clear from Eustathius, Adrianos, and passages on methodology from other
sources which I have discussed in previous publications.9 Here we can see
that characteristic concern for coherence at work in the exegetical process.
(4) Another classic Antiochene term is found in this passage, namely, καθ’
ὑπέρβατον. Rejecting allegory, this figure of speech they would identify
in scriptural texts so as to justify reading them as not merely relevant to
their own context but as prophetic – this ‘exaggeration’ pointed to an
excess of meaning. Chrysostom notes this figure in the Psalm quote in
Heb. 3:15. The quote is, of course, attributed to David, who was univer-
sally counted among the prophets in this period. Chrysostom finds the
apostle’s understanding of the prophetic meaning in Heb. 4:1-2, inferring
that it applies to us as well as to them. That Chrysostom does not clearly
distinguish between the ‘us’ of the epistle, namely its author and readers,
and the ‘us’ of himself and his congregation is perhaps confirmed by the
final section of this homily, where we saw him replaying selections of the
text to address the congregation directly. Perhaps we might put it like this:
no hermeneutical gap is perceived within the ‘new covenant’ – the herme-
neutical issue lies between the two covenants. Hebrews itself, with its
extended typological engagement with the ‘old scriptures’, provided patris-
tic exegetes, including Chrysostom, with categories for dealing with that
issue. For them, the parallels and contrasts between the former dispensa-
tion and what was to come was summed up in the description of the law
(Heb. 10:1) as having a shadow of the good things to come not the very
image of those things. On that Chrysostom says (Homily 17):
9
Especially, ‘Rhetorical Schools’ and ‘The fourth century reaction against allegory’, SP 30
(1997), 103-20; republished in Exegesis and Theology.
That is, not the very reality. For as in a painting, so long as one draws just outlines,
it is a sort of ‘shadow’, but when one has added bright paints and laid in the
colours, then it becomes an ‘image’. Something of this kind also was the law.
Here it is impossible and perhaps unnecessary, to explore further the result-

ing exegetical procedure whereby patristic exegetes consistently read the
scriptures of the old covenant as providing a pattern fulfilled in the new,
though remaining a mere type or shadow beside the reality revealed in Christ.
It is a large area, already well travelled. Whether or not the patristic exegetes
really understood what Hebrews was about here is another question.
(5) One fairly extensive feature of Homily 6, mentioned earlier but not spelt out
in detail, is what I called Chrysostom’s potted history of the exodus. It is
worth underlining this for several reasons: First, we observe here the way
in which τὸ ἱστορικόν actually works – the allusion in the text to a story
well-known to the original author and readers is filled out for Chrysostom’s
less well-informed audience. Identified as a characteristic exegetical activity
in the rhetorical schools, especially on the basis of Quintilian’s account,
τὸ ἱστορικόν is found exemplified in all patristic exegetical material,
sometimes indeed becoming a distracting lengthy discourse on a largely
irrelevant matter, as in the case of Origen’s long digression on pearls when
commenting on the pearl of great price in his Commentary on Matthew.
Chrysostom’s outline of the exodus story is, of course, more pertinent to
explaining the text on which he is commenting. As he himself says, ‘It is
necessary to unfold the history to make the argument clearer.’ The reluc-
tance of the ungrateful and senseless Jews to enter the promised land, not
trusting God in spite of all God’s former blessings, including the rescue
from the Egyptians and other perils, all amplified by Chrysostom here,
meant that God swore that that generation should not enter the rest. That is
the background to David’s later comment, and to the point vis-à-vis the
Hebrews text. Thus, we observe the proper exegetical use of τὸ ἱστορικόν.
Secondly, we can see how Chrysostom’s summary of the story makes it
directly relevant to the aim of the text’s author, namely, his exhortation and
warning: it is part of using what happened in the past to their fathers to
reinforce the message – by implication for Chrysostom’s congregation as
well as the readers addressed by the apostle. We might describe this tech-
nique as a form of typology as it draws audience/readers into the text.
Thirdly, we note how this coheres with the concern of the Antiochenes in
general and Chrysostom in particular, to take seriously the whole story of
the Bible, from beginning to end, with God’s providential dealings with his
people becoming a story into which all are drawn. The seven homilies on
Hebrews 11 (Homilies 22-8) spell out the apostle’s examples of faith for
exactly the purpose of encouraging Chrysostom’s congregation to fix their
eyes on what is promised in the future and persevere in the struggle, as these
14 F. YOUNG
great biblical examples did. In other words, they reinforce further the mes-
sage Chrysostom has discerned in the Hebrews’ text covered in Homily 6.
(6) That discussion naturally leads into Chrysostom’s use of cross-reference.
Our sample, Homily 6, is, of course, discussing a Hebrews passage which
itself involves cross-reference at a double level: the Psalm and what lies
behind the Psalm. Chrysostom naturally enlarges on that. In addition,
Homily 6 offers the following examples:
• Exploring the history behind the Psalm text quoted by Hebrews Chrys-
ostom alludes to Num. 14:3 – where they ought to have trusted God, they
were scared, imagining God had brought them out so as ‘to slay us with
our children and wives’.
• The phrase the ‘deceitfulness of sin’ in verse 13 triggers a number of
biblical cross-references: phrases from Prov. 18:3, proving that wicked-
ness and unbelief are connected, demonstrate how one who comes to ‘the
depth of evils becomes contemptuous’, and so, Chrysostom suggests,
avoids fear and says, ‘The Lord will not see, nor the God of Jacob observe’
(now quoting Ps. 93:7 LXX), a sentiment reinforced with quotations
from Ps. 11:5 (LXX), ‘Our lips are our own: who is Lord over us?’,
Ps. 9:34 (LXX), ‘Wherefore has the wicked man provoked God to wrath’,
Ps. 13:1 (LXX), ‘The fool has said in his heart, there is no God’, Ps. 35:2
(LXX), ‘There is no fear of God before his eyes’ and Jn. 3:20 ‘everyone
that does evil hates the light and comes not to the light’.
• Commenting on the phrase about being made ‘partakers of Christ’
(Heb. 3:4), Chrysostom compounds Eph. 4:15-6 (‘he the head and we
the body’), Eph. 3:6 (‘fellow heirs and of the same body’) and Rom. 12:5
(‘we are one body’, adding ‘of his flesh and of his bones’, which is an
intriguing addition to the Pauline conception, apparently drawn from the
frequent LXX references to bones and flesh (e.g. Gen. 29:14, Judges 9:2,
2Kgs. 5:1, 19:12, 1Chron. 11:1, etc.). Returning in his final exhortation
to this theme of being partakers of Christ, Chrysostom quotes 2Tim. 2:12,
‘If we suffer, we shall also reign with him’. In his final paragraph he
quotes 1Cor. 2:9: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it arisen in
any human heart what God has prepared for those who love him.’ Allusion
to Paul is only made explicit when he mentions Paul writing to the
Thessalonians (1Thess. 5:14), ‘Warn them that are unruly, comfort the
feebleminded, support the weak, be patient with all!’
• The final exhortation not only picks over phrases from the Hebrews
lemma, but imports other LXX allusions: Isa. 35:10 indicates that rest
is indeed where pain, sorrow and sighing have fled away; it is the oppo-
site of Gen. 3:16-9: no longer ‘in the sweat of your brow you will eat
bread’, nor will there be ‘thorns and thistles’; no longer ‘in sorrow you
will bring forth children…’ Later Lk. 16:9, ‘they shall receive you into
their eternal tabernacles’ confirms the picture of the tents of the saints
pitched in heaven.
We could, of course, multiply examples by looking at other homilies but let

that suffice.
Surveying these cases alone we may observe that:
(i) Chrysostom’s assumption of Pauline authorship has not made cross-
reference specifically to Paul’s epistles particularly dominant; our first
example from 2Corinthians, however, did imply cross-reference to
Pauline idiom, and a quick look across the rest of the Hebrews homilies
reveals allusion to Pauline material at some point in every one.
(ii) Much of it reflects an almost unconscious use of biblical language,
rather than explicit quotation – Chrysostom talks in LXX phrases
rather as an evangelical preacher would pray and speak in phrases of
the AV. This conforms to ancient conventions with respect to the use
of quotation and allusion, as demonstrated in Chapter 5 of my book,
Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture: the usual
approach was to adopt and adapt reminiscences of classical texts so as
implicitly to claim their authority.
(iii) This compounding of biblical cross-references rests on the assumption
that the biblical canon is coherent and consistent, thus reinforcing the
proper reading and interpretation of the particular text under scrutiny.
The ‘mind’ or ‘intent’ of the author was to point to a truth found else-
where in the biblical canon, and the meaning would become clearer or
stronger through this reinforcement.
(iv) The allusion to Genesis makes implicit the whole overarching story of
Fall and Redemption which was, for the fathers in general and the
Antiochenes in particular, the key to the Bible.
(7) I have left to the climax the thing that most forcibly struck me on turning
once more to Chrysostom’s Homilies on Hebrews, namely, the constant
posing of questions. Homily 6 is not the most fruitful example, but even
here there is quite a lot: in the exegetical section we find some twelve
questions:
What does he say? τί φησιν; × 2
How…? πῶς…; × 4
Why…? τίνος ἕνεκεν…; × 2
Who… or what…? τίς…; τί…; τίνων…; × 5
Whence…? πόθεν…; × 1
And twice we find ὅρᾳς ὅτι…, ambiguously ‘See…’ or ‘Do you see…?’
If we take at random another homily, no. 3, we can catalogue more of the
same, as well as other ways of asking questions.
16 F. YOUNG
τί…; and διὰ τί…; pose ‘why’ questions 6 times

τί…; τίνες…; etc., ask ‘who…?’ or ‘what…?’ some 9 times
πῶς…; appears 9 times
The ambiguous ὅρᾳς ὅτι… again occurs twice
We also find other ways of introducing questions: ποίου δὴ τοῦτον; and
ἆρα οὖν ἄγγελοι μονον;
A total of some twenty-eight questions in all.
Chrysostom is addressing a mass congregation and offers his own answers,
but it is easy to imagine how such questions might derive from cross-question-
ing a class reading texts in school. This constant procedure, however, made me
wonder about the relationship between Chrysostom’s use of this technique and
the Quaestiones tradition, which has recently caught the interest of classicists,
as well as scholars of Jewish, patristic and Byzantine literature. Clearly I can only
offer a brief conspectus in the space remaining.
It seems that a ‘Question and Answer’ genre can be traced continuously from
Hellenistic times to the Byzantine period. Defining the genre clearly is not easy,
as is demonstrated by the collection of studies edited by Annelie Volgers and
Claudio Zamagni, entitled, Erotapokriseis. Early Christian Question and Answer
Literature in Context.10 It was Byzantine grammarians of the twelfth century
who invented the term, Erotapokrisis: older Greek terminology includes
ζητήματα, ἀπορίαι καὶ λύσεις, or προβλήματα, while Latin equivalents were
Quaestiones or Quaestiones et Responsiones. In the fourth and fifth centuries
the form was adopted by Eusebius, followed by such others such as Theodoret,
Ambrosiaster and Augustine.
Behind works taking the specific question-and-answer form is a wide range
of material. The oral roots of the literary form can be discerned in Plutarch’s
Table Talk, where literary puzzles figure alongside philosophical topics in
open-ended discussion of various solutions. Questions in classrooms, however,
could be simply didactic in purpose, as is evidenced by a papyrus (PSI 19) cited
by Marrou11 in which questions are used to reinforce rote learning, e.g.:
Q: Who are the gods favourable to the R: Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo,
Trojans? Artemis, Leto and Skamandros.
Q: Who was the king of the Trojans? R: Priam.
Q: Their general? R: Hector.
And so it goes on… Clearly we have here questions with standard answers
to be learned and regurgitated.
10
Annelie Volgers and Claudio Zamagni (eds), Erotapokriseis. Early Christian Question and
Answer Literature in Context (Leuven, 2004).
11
PSI 19 (Schwartz), quoted by Christian Jacob, ‘Questions sur les Questions’, in A. Volgers
and C. Zamagni (eds), Erotapokriseis (2004), 37, referencing H.-I. Marrou, Histoire de l’éducation
dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 1981, 1st ed. 1956; ET New York, 1956), 252.
From Aristotle’s Aporemata Homerica through to the Homeric Scholia,

however, critical questions can be traced, especially in Alexandria, questions
which arose from inconsistencies and improbabilities found in the Homeric
epics. This problematised the text, proposing emendations or a variety of solu-
tions, in what may be described as intellectual gymnastics. The impact of this
on Jewish biblical scholarship in Alexandria is evident from the works of Philo,
and has been explored in Maren Niehoff’s fascinating study, Jewish Exegesis
and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria.12 Philo, she shows, offers generally
hostile reports of anonymous colleagues and predecessors who offered critical
and comparative analysis of myths in the holy books, pointed to differences
between the primitive practices of the patriarchs and the later Mosaic legislation,
and engaged in textual and stylistic criticism of the books of Moses – in other
words, those who problematised the biblical literature in ways that can be par-
alleled in Homeric scholarship. Philo, himself, however, deployed awareness
of the questions not to denigrate or laugh at the holy books, but to lead on to
consistent and theologically acceptable meanings through allegory. This is clear
in his Allegorical Commentary, which is addressed to an academic audience
engaged with the issues. The work of his which takes the shape of the Quaes-
tiones literature, the Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus, does not,
however, belong to open-ended enquiry, but rather provides definitive answers
from an authoritative teacher in a didactic context.
Adoption of the tradition, if not the genre, can be traced in early Christianity.
Judith Lieu has convincingly argued that Marcion’s critical engagement with the
scriptures belonged to this ζητήματα tradition.13 Origen’s treatment of ἀπορίαι
in scriptural texts clearly owes much to Philo’s approach. Eusebius initiated use
of the specific genre, and his work has stimulated debate as to whether this be
treated as didactic or apologetic – a way of providing answers to objections raised
by Porphyry, say, or of harmonising the Gospels, or what? If Marcion problema-
tised the text, clearly others used the technique to defend it. Theodoret sums
this up in his Preface to the work known as The Questions on the Octateuch:14
Previous scholars have promised to resolve apparent problems (ζητήματα) in Holy
Scripture by explicating the sense (νοῦς) of some, indicating the background (αἰτίας)
of others, and, in a word, clarifying whatever remains unclear to ordinary people…
[But] you should know that not all inquirers share the same purpose. Some inquire
irreverently, believing they find Holy Scripture wanting; in some cases, not teaching
right doctrine, in others, giving conflicting instructions. In contrast others, longing to
find an answer for their question, search because they love learning.
12
Maren Niehoff, Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge, 2011).
13
Judith M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic. God and Scripture in the Second
Century (Cambridge, 2015).
14
Theodoret of Cyrus, The Questions on the Octateuch, ed. John F. Petruccione, ET Robert
C. Hill (Washington DC, 2007).
18 F. YOUNG
Theodoret affirms that what he seeks to do is to demonstrate the consistency of

Scripture and the excellence of its teaching, providing solutions to the difficulties.
What, then, of Chrysostom’s use? Almost all his questions, it seems to me,
are ways of generating answers which elucidate the text, what the author is
trying to say, how one thing connects with another, why this or that is said.
Chrysostom is far from defensive: the questions are neither problematising nor
apologetic, though they clearly belong to a culture shaped by an enquiring
approach. So I go back to my initial suggestion: Chrysostom simply reflects
the technique of the rhetorical reading of texts in the classroom. This is not just
the rote learning procedure offered by the papyrus cited earlier, and still found
in the typical catechism: quick authoritative answers to basic questions to be
memorised and regurgitated. Rather it is asking pupils to think about what the
author is really getting at and inviting them into that engagement, even if in the
homiletic context it essentially becomes the offering of an authoritative reading
to a passive crowd only half attending.
Conclusion
Seven techniques and procedures have been identified. But what has this
perhaps rather pedestrian survey delivered? It has, I suggest, confirmed the
now generally accepted view that early Christian exegesis of Scripture owed
much to the practices of ancient schools both grammatical and rhetorical. It has
also, I think, shown that the demands of teasing out meaning required and
require the same basic techniques of engaging with vocabulary, syntax, idiom,
figures of speech and reference – issues such as what lies behind this allusion,
what was the author responding to here, etc. On the whole, in the Homily on
which we chose to focus, Chrysostom’s recognition in the passage before him
of what is going on and why, is not that different from any modern exegete’s
reading of the passage, not because he and they espouse a literal reading, but
because these philological techniques are perennial.
The differences between ancient and modern exegesis lie, I suggest, in what
are perceived to be valid cross-references, and what issues are paramount. The
interest of the interpreter brings something quite fundamental to the exegetical
process: what connections are made, what questions are asked of the text – these
shape the meaning teased out. Over the Hebrews homily series, it is evident that
Chrysostom cares about the theological and Christological implications of the
text, and this generates questions and answers directly apposite to the contro-
versies of his time. As we have seen, he makes assumptions about the coherence
and consistency of Scripture which permit a far wider use of cross-reference to
illuminate the text than a modern exegete would countenance. Modernity dis-
owned both the unity of Scripture and the fathers’ doctrinal reading of it. Maybe,
however, a recovery of some aspects of their perspective is exactly what is
needed for specifically Christian theological reading of scripture.
Taking Up Armour:
The Challenges of Early Christian Exegesis of Ephesians
Jennifer STRAWBRIDGE, University of Oxford, UK1
ABSTRACT
This article concentrates on a scriptural passage especially favoured by exegetes both
ancient and modern: Eph. 6:10-17. With a focus on the early Christian writings of
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius, as well as modern interpreters such as Gustav
Aulén, Walter Wink, and Thomas Neufeld, questions about divine and human agency and
the identity of spiritual forces of wickedness (Eph. 6:12) are engaged. A number of doc-
trines and ideas emerge from the wide-ranging interpretation and use of this Pauline
pericope, including the ideas of the Divine Warrior and Christus Victor. Ultimately, the
driving question of this article is whether ante-Nicene use of Ephesians 6 challenges
modern interpretation of this same passage and the conclusion is that, indeed, it does.
The Ephesian epistle divides biblical scholars. For some, it is a letter with
‘no setting and little obvious purpose’,2 a pseudepigraphal text composed after
the death of the Apostle. For others, the Ephesian letter represents the quin-
tessence of Pauline thought as ‘one of the most influential documents in the
Christian church’.3
Within early Christian writings4 Ephesians is the first New Testament book
to be called ‘Scripture (scripturis)’, given this designation by the second-
century bishop Polycarp.5 At least five early commentaries on this letter were
written – six if we include the later text of Jerome – and portions of three
1
Portions of this article are drawn from work published as a chapter in The Pauline Effect, SBR 5
(Berlin, 2015). I am grateful to colleagues at the Sixth British Patristics Conference for their com-
ments and feedback after a form of this article was presented as one of the conference’s plenaries.
2
John Muddiman, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, Black’s New Testament
Commentaries (London, 2001), 12. To be clear, Muddiman does not follow this line of argument.
3
Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, 2002), 1. See
also Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible Reference Library
(New York, 1997), 620.
4
In this article, ‘early Christian writings’ are pre-Nicene writings. Such a limitation is not to
suggest that the Council of Nicaea brings the period of early Christianity to a close; rather, rec-
ognizing the surge of Christian texts after this period, 325 AD serves as a necessary, though
artificial, end point in this time of momentous change for Christianity in the Roman Empire.
5
Polycarp, Epistula ad Philippenses, 12.1, in The Apostolic Fathers, Vol. I: I Clement, II Clement,
Ignatius, Polycarp, Didache. ed. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 24 (Cambridge, 2003).

20 J. STRAWBRIDGE
remain extant today.6 For Origen, Ephesians is ‘the pinnacle of the Pauline
epistles’7 containing ‘solid food’8 as opposed to the ‘milk’ of other letters like
1Corinthians.9 And, unlike the divisions in modern scholarship about this
letter’s authorship and its purpose, early Christians from Polycarp and Irenaeus
to Tertullian and Origen assume Paul penned this letter.10
Nevertheless, the focus of this article is not on the purpose or authorship of
Ephesians. Rather, this article examines questions about why this letter is a
favourite amongst scholars both ancient and modern and how one portion of this
controversial letter is interpreted by both. More specifically, this article focuses
primarily on a passage especially popular amongst early Christian writers – the
latter portion of Ephesians 6 – and the central doctrines and ideas that emerge
from its interpretation. Eph. 6:10-17 is laden with images and actions, con-
taining the great commands to ‘put on the armour of God’, to stand firm
against the ‘fiery darts of the evil one’, and to wrestle not against ‘flesh and
blood’ but against ‘powers, principalities, authorities, and the spiritual forces
of wickedness in the heavenlies’.
If we were to consult a more recent commentary on Ephesians, we would
find that discussion of armour occupies a significant amount of space. If we
look up ‘armour of God’ in a university library, we might find at least forty
items with this phrase in the title. If we search for this phrase on Google, we
find not only books, articles, blogs and sermons, but also classes on how to
acquire this armour. Even Origen apologises for how much space his discus-
sion of this portion of Ephesians 6 takes up in his commentary, begging
forbearance of his readers, ‘in view of the difficulty of the passage itself and
6
Commentaries with portions still extant include those by Origen, Marius Victorinus, and
Jerome. Those now missing are the commentaries of Apollinarius, Ambrosiaster, and Didymus.
Elaine Pagels argues for the existence of a Valentinian commentary on Ephesians; however,
evidence of such a work is, at best, limited (see Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis
of the Pauline Letters [Philadelphia, 1992], 115). See also Ronald E. Heine, The Commentaries of
Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New
York, 2002), 3.
7
See Francesca Cocchini, Il Paolo di Origene: Contributo alla Storia della Recezione delle
Epistole Paoline nel III Secolo, Verba Seniorum 11 (Rome, 1992), 88.
8
Origen, Contra Celsum, 3.20 in Contre Celse. Livres III et IV: Tome II, trans. Marcel Borret,
SC 136 (Paris, 1968).
9
See also Origen, Homiliae in Ezechiel, 7.10 in Homélies sur Ézéchiel, trans. Marcel Borret,
SC 352 (Paris, 1989); De Principiis, 3.2.4 in Origenes Werke, ed. Paul Koetschau, et al., GCS 22
(Leipzig, 1913); R.E. Heine, Commentaries (2002), 48; and Judith Kovacs, ‘Echoes of Valentinian
Exegesis in Clement of Alexandria and Origen: The Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 3.1–3’, in
Lorenzo Perrone (ed.), Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition: Papers of the
8th International Origen Congress, Pisa, 27–31 August 2001 (Leuven, 2004), 317-29, 327.
10
See Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 5.2.3; 1.3.1; 1.8.4-5; Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, 5.17;
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 4.65; Paedagogus, 1.18; Origen, Cels, 3.20. Because of this,
I will refer to this text as Paul’s letter, which recognises that Ephesians is either written or strongly
influenced by the Apostle.
Taking Up Armour: The Challenges of Early Christian Exegesis of Ephesians 21
of the character of the Ephesians’.11 To place this statement more clearly in its
patristic context, Eph. 6:10-17 is one of the top ten Pauline passages used by
early Christian writers.12
How do we account for this fascination with Ephesians 6 and especially
its language of armour? To answer this question, this article focuses on two
central questions that the phrases of Eph. 6:10-17 are used to address, asked
both by early Christian writers and by today’s exegetes. The first question is:
what does Paul mean by evil forces, and more specifically, by the spiritual
forces of wickedness that attack the Christian? The second question is:
how are Christians to respond to such attack? In other words, what does one
do with this armour of God and what place is given for human and divine
agency?
How Ephesians 6 is interpreted and adapted into one’s theology affects the
answers to these questions immensely. Therefore, as we examine these two
questions, one overarching question drives this article: does early Christian use
of Ephesians 6 challenge modern scholars’ use of the same?
1. Spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places
Forces of evil occupy a central place in many recent discussions of Ephe-

sians 6. While some argue that the location of these powers in the ‘heavenlies’
(Eph. 6:12) precludes the interpretation that Paul is describing political, social,
or religious structures,13 most modern interpretation of this passage emphasises
some level of demythologisation. In Robert Moses’ excellent overview of dif-
ferent approaches to powers in recent scholarship, he identifies four distinct
approaches to understanding the powers in the writings of Paul. Moses moves
from Clinton Arnold, who he places at the ‘traditional’ extreme which ‘takes
seriously the “real” existence of a spiritual realm’ to Rudolf Bultmann who rein-
terprets this view, accepting ‘the fact that the early Christian writers believed in
the existence of spiritual entities; but … [dismiss] this belief as “mythical”.’14
Moses then examines the writings of Hendrik Berkhof who is clear that ‘Paul
in particular, attempted to demythologise the prevailing view of the powers …
that [they] are personal spiritual beings’ and he concludes with Walter Wink,
who offers a ‘structural interpretation of the powers’ but with the caveat that
11
R.E. Heine, Commentaries (2002), 260.
12
See J.R. Strawbridge, Pauline Effect (2015), 11 n. 38.
13
See Sook Young Kim, The Warrior Messiah in Scripture and Intertestamental Writings
(Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010), 185; H.W. Hoehner, Ephesians (2002), 276-80; Peter Thomas O’Brien,
‘Principalities and Powers: Opponents of the Church’, in D.A. Carson (ed.), Biblical Interpretation
and the Church: Text and Context (Exeter, 1984), 110-50, 130.
14
Robert Ewusie Moses, Practices of Power: Revisiting the Principalities and Powers in the
Pauline Letters (Minneapolis, 2014), 36.
22 J. STRAWBRIDGE
‘ancient writers could not conceive of a spiritual realm … independent of the

physical realm.’15
These four approaches outlined by Moses help us to grasp how widely varied
the spectrum of interpretation of Pauline powers is in contemporary exegesis;
however, when we turn our focus from powers in Paul more broadly to powers
in Ephesians 6, we see a significant shift towards the demythologising end of
Moses’ spectrum.16 Thus, for George Caird, these powers ‘stand … for the
political, social, economic and religious structures of power … of the old world
order which Paul believed to be obsolescent.’17 Gustav Aulén also concludes
that ‘in speaking of powers and principalities [Paul] does not envisage super-
human hypostases trotting about in the world, but uses the language to express
metaphorically moral realities that would otherwise defy expression.’18 Wink’s
exegesis of Ephesians 6 especially depends on demythologising the powers so
that even if spiritual, they still represent ‘actual physical, psychic, and social
forces at work in us, in society, and in the universe’19 at the heart of corporate
and religious institutions.20 While Yoder Neufeld recognises that these inter-
pretations ‘[expand] the meaning of powers’ so that the heavenly take on an
‘earthly manifestation’,21 this does not preclude him from doing the same. Thus,
for Neufeld, these forces include ‘human potencies and institutions’ while also
recognising that Ephesians 6 ‘intends to evoke the full range of demonic forces
with which the saints have to do battle.’22
These understandings of the powers in Ephesians 6 set up the exegetical
consequence that such powers, physically manifest in the institutions and people
15
Ibid. 37.
16
Moses, interestingly, focuses on Romans, 1 and 2Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, and
2Thessalonians in his study. He does not, therefore, spend much time on the language of Ephe-
sians 6 (more space is given to Ephesians 2 and the place of these powers ‘in the heavenlies’). Thus,
even when looking at the practices Paul commends to believers to counter the powers, ‘armour
of God’ is not mentioned in his book. In this light, this article expands the conclusions of Moses
by looking not simply at the language of powers in Ephesians 6, but also at the practice of putting
on armour and wrestling that Paul commends his followers to do take up and practice against the
forces of evil.
17
George B. Caird, Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia, 1980), 242.
18
Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of
the Atonement, trans. A.G. Hebert (London, 1931), 67.
19
Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Phila-
delphia, 1984), 62.
20
Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination
(Minneapolis, 1992), 6. Arnold pushes back against this reading of Ephesians 6 (as do Hoehner
and Lindemann), arguing that Wink takes his agenda of demythologisation too far. See Clinton
E. Arnold, Ephesians, Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in Light of Its
Historical Setting, SNT Monograph Series 63 (Cambridge, 1989), 84; Andreas Lindemann, Der
Epheserbrief, ZBK 8 (Zurich, 1985), 113.
21
Thomas R. Neufeld, ‘Put on the Armour of God’: The Divine Warrior from Isaiah to Ephesians
(Sheffield, 1997), 121 n. 95.
22
Ibid. 122.
around us, need to be fought. The language of Ephesians 6 to take up the

armour of God and to withstand these forces, therefore, is not commanding a
defensive stance but advocating an engagement with and aggression towards
these physical forces. This leads rather neatly into the next question of how
these powers are to be countered. Within recent scholarship, Christological
concerns undergird the answer to how Christians respond to such an attack by
these forces. More specifically, the history of interpretation of Ephesians 6
leads to the ideas of Christ as a Divine Warrior and of Christus Victor.
2. Christ as Divine Warrior
The idea of a Divine Warrior derives from what John Collins calls the ‘con-
ventional view’ of the messiah which assumes that Jewish people in antiquity
were waiting for a great and militant king to defeat the powers of the world.23
This view looks to references in the writings of Josephus, the War Scroll of
Qumran, and other (pseudepigraphal) writings.24 While a number of recent
scholars have argued against this view,25 the understanding of the messiah as
a warrior persists, supported by images of Christ challenging demons and by
the armour-laden language of Ephesians 6. Neufeld, for example, claims a clear
trajectory from Isaiah 59 – with its admonitions to take up armour – to Ephe-
sians 6 where the goal is total obliteration of evil.26 Here, Ephesians 6 repre-
sents the climax not only of the epistle, but also of the Divine Warrior motif
where putting on the armour of God calls for ‘the imitation of God as Divine
Warrior’.27 While Neufeld recognises that the context of Ephesians 6 is differ-
ent from that of another key passage, Col. 2:15, where triumph has already
been achieved; nevertheless, he is clear that ‘Ephesians summons the church
to take up the role of the Divine Warrior’28 where even the command to stand
firm (Eph. 6:13) requires an aggressive tone as ‘the stance of victory at the end
of the evil day’.29 Noting that this aggressive view is not as popular amongst
early Christian commentators on this Ephesian passage,30 Neufeld counters
that standing firm must be ‘more than a defensive stance of faithfulness’31 for
23
See John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
Other Ancient Literature (New York, 1995), 13 and 68.
24
See Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, 2.71-75; 1QM 1.10-15; 4Ezra 13.4, 9-10; 1Enoch 62.2.
25
See James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and
Christianity (Minneapolis, 1992), xii-xvi; R.A. Horsley, ‘Popular Messianic Movements around the
Time of Jesus’, CBQ 46 (1984), 471-95, 471.
26
T.R. Neufeld, Divine Warrior (1997), 118. See also S.Y. Kim, Warrior Messiah (2010), 187.
27
T.R. Neufeld, Divine Warrior (1997), 105.
28
Ibid. 126.
29
Ibid. 131.
30
Ibid. 140.
31
Ibid. 120-1.
24 J. STRAWBRIDGE
‘defense is precisely not the point’ and even faith ‘is part of the arsenal of
attack’.32 Thus, those who find the image of a Divine Warrior supported by
the words of Ephesians 6 are clear that the Christian is called actively to put
on the armour of God in order to take an aggressive stance against the forces
of wickedness, imitating the ultimate example of the Divine Warrior: Christ.
3. Christ as Victor
If the imitation of Christ as Divine Warrior feels like an extreme interpreta-

tion of Ephesians 6, Aulén offers a different perspective where it is not the
Christian taking up arms to fight the powers but Christ who does the vanquishing.
The language of Christus Victor and Aulén are almost synonymous in many
theological circles. Aulén is clear that his classic idea33 is a reaction against
what he calls the Latin legalism of Tertullian and Cyprian and a recovery of
the soteriology of his preferred early Christian writers: Irenaeus and Origen.34
This view is based not only on Aulén’s understanding of patristic theology but
also on the writings attributed to Paul where, in passages from Ephesians 6 and
Colossians 2, ‘[Paul] speaks of a great complex of demonic forces … which
Christ has to overcome in the great conflict.’35 Christus Victor is therefore an idea
based on a divine conflict and victory where Christ fights against the forces of
evil ‘under which [hu]mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in [Christ]
God reconciles the world to himself’.36 God in Christ is the primary, and per-
haps only, actor in this understanding of how forces of evil are countered.
With a particular focus on the writings of Irenaeus and Col. 2:15, Aulén argues
that his classic view of Christus Victor was the dominant soteriological under-
standing held by early Christian writers.37 This is an essential point to note
because Colossians 2, on which Aulén focuses, and Ephesians 6, which early
Christians use to a significant degree, offer very different eschatological
emphases.38 In Colossians 2, Christ has already triumphed over the powers and
principalities; in Ephesians 6, this victory is not yet and the battle continues
with the admonition to put on armour and prepare for attack.39
32
Ibid. 139.
33
Aulén is clear that Christus Victor is an idea and not a theory.
34
G. Aulén, Christus Victor (1931), 81.
35
Ibid. 67.
36
Ibid. 4.
37
Ibid. 70.
38
See Jeff M. Brannon, ‘“The Heavenlies” in Ephesians: A Lexical, Exegetical, and Conceptual
Analysis’ (University of Edinburgh, 2010), 207; Andrew T. Lincoln, ‘A Re-Examination of “the
Heavenlies” in Ephesians’, NTS 19 (1973), 468-83, 475-82. We will expand upon the significance
of the different eschatological emphases of these two Pauline texts below.
39
See Geurt Hendrik van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context: The Image of God, Assimi-
lation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity,
WUNT 2.232 (Tübingen, 2008), 192.
What is perhaps most significant for the conclusions of scholars who use
Pauline phrases to develop the ideas of Christ as Divine Warrior and Christ as
Victor is that many of these scholars claim that their exegesis of Ephesians 6
can be traced directly to early Christian writers. However, when we look at how
early Christians used this Ephesian text, do they reach the same conclusions?
What do early Christian writers, including Irenaeus and the Latins who Aulén
dismisses, make of questions about the forces of evil and how one is to withstand
them? Do early Christians prioritise the already victorious eschatology of
Colossians 2 as understood by the classic Christus Victor idea, or do they prefer
the ongoing-battle eschatology of Ephesians 6?
4. Early Christians and Ephesians 6
The good news, as suggested in this article’s introduction, is that we have a

lot of evidence in early Christian writings to explore these questions since this
Ephesian pericope is one of the most frequently used Pauline texts in early
Christian writings. Excerpts from Eph. 6:10-17 are used more than 450 times
by at least forty different authors in works that are primarily exhortatory such
as homilies, treatises, and the few extant commentaries.40 This use makes
sense in a cultural context saturated with military language and images, and, at
times, overshadowed by the threat of persecution. In this context, the images
and exhortations of Ephesians 6 provide an obvious reference point to encourage
those enduring hardship on both a personal and cosmic level.
Nevertheless, early Christian writers were not fools and realised that interpret-
ing and adapting the language of Ephesians 6 into their own arguments was not
an easy task, even though it was a necessary one. According to Jerome, who is
possibly copying Origen’s words into his commentary’s preface, one must focus
on Ephesians and especially Ephesians 6 in order ‘to show why the Apostle has
heaped up more obscure ideas and mysteries unknown to the ages in this epistle
than in all the others and has taught about the dominion of sacred and hostile
powers, what demons are, what they are capable of, what they were previously
and how they have been overthrown and destroyed after the advent of Christ.’41
So, what are these ‘hostile powers’ according to early Christian writings?
4.1. Spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places

While recent scholarship on forces of evil in Ephesians 6 is divided between
whether these forces should be demythologised or not, early Christian writers
do not make such a clear distinction. Thus, the images of spiritual forces
(Eph. 6:12) combined with fiery darts of the evil one (Eph. 6:16) are used to
40
See J.R. Strawbridge, Pauline Effect (2015), 58.
41
See R.E. Heine, Commentaries (2002), 33-4.
26 J. STRAWBRIDGE
describe the many kinds of assault – both superhuman and inner-human (but
not institutional, interestingly) – that a Christian might face. More specifically,
early Christian writers connect spiritual forces of wickedness with temptation,
passions, persecution, misuse of Scripture, and martyrdom and the location of
the battlefield on which such forces are found – both within and without –
depends greatly on context.
Clement of Alexandria, for example, uses excerpts from Ephesians 6 to

equate spiritual forces of wickedness with passions and the spiritual threats
that act within a person and lead to disobedience and sin. This battle is both
inner-human and superhuman as the forces remain outside humankind while
also threatening to harm the soul.42 That these forces are spiritual forces is clear
when Clement engages the command to ‘put on the armour of God’ since, as
he writes, ‘the weapons of our warfare are not physical, but have divine power
to destroy strongholds, cast down arguments and every lofty thing which
exalts itself against the knowledge of God.’43 The language of Ephesians 6,
with a little bit of 2Corinthians, offers Clement a category – spiritual forces of
wickedness – with which he can emphasise the serious spiritual threat passions
pose to the soul.
For Tertullian, spiritual forces of wickedness are present in those he deems
to be heretical and who tamper with the words of Scripture. He sees the forces
of evil described in Ephesians 6 in his opponents who pose as potent a threat
to faith as the passions described by Clement. Thus, for Tertullian, Marcion
who ‘cut the scriptures to suit his argument’ and Valentinus who invented
‘argument to suit the scriptures’ by ‘taking away the proper meaning of each
particular word’ both embody with their actions the ‘natures of the spiritual
wickednesses with which we wrestle’.44
For Origen, the Christian is one who constantly resists spiritual forces of evil
which, similar to Clement, assume both an inner-human and superhuman form
so that ‘the battle of the Christian is twofold’. As he continues,
for those who are perfect such as Paul and the Ephesians … it was not a battle against
flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of darkness here
in this world, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenlies (Eph. 6:12).
But for those who are weak and those not yet mature, the battle is still waged against
flesh and blood, for they are still assaulted by carnal faults and weaknesses.45
42
See Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Demonic Desires: “Yetzer Hara” and the Problem of Evil in Late
Antiquity (Philadelphia, 2011), 38. See also Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2.20.109 and 7.3.
43
Note here that Clement has combined Eph. 6:11 with 2Cor. 10:3-5. See Clement, Strom,
2.20.109.
44
Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum, 38-9, in Traité de la prescription contre les
hérétiques, ed. François Refoulé, SC 46 (Paris, 1957).
45
Origen, Homiliae in Josue, 11.4 in Homélies sur Josué, trans. Annie Jaubert, SC 71 (Paris,
1960).
While Origen with the help of 1Corinthians describes two different kinds of
opponents – spiritual forces of wickedness and flesh and blood – all of these
forces, both visible and invisible, are tangible for each has the power to exploit
the soul.46 Within this scheme, ‘struggles against the temptation of the flesh are
more elementary than struggles against demonic temptation’.47 But these exter-
nal forces do not result in an external battle with superhuman powers but an
internal battle within the body and the soul. For Origen, the ultimate struggle
is one in which ‘spirit contends against spirit, according to the saying of Paul
that our overarching struggle is against principalities and powers and the rulers
of darkness of this world (Eph. 6:12)’.48
Yet Origen also characterises spiritual forces by their ability to wound a
person, and he often attaches the language of suffering to the forces of wicked-
ness, describing how they take control like an illness. Connecting the inflam-
mation of leprosy to the fiery darts of evil, Origen concludes that a soul which
is not inflamed with faith is infected by sin and other forces of evil.49 Ephesians 6
and its images add a dramatic element to Origen’s declaration that those who
succumb to the attack of evil forces are spiritually unhealthy. Because the
spiritual forces of wickedness – which, for him, range from fornication and
greed to boasting and vainglory – are the primary cause of sin and human suf-
fering, they must be resisted. And the only way to resist these evil powers and
the wounds caused by them is to be free from passions, protected by the shield
of faith, and ‘healthy in temperance and the other virtues’.50
From this brief sample, we see that the images of Ephesians 6 offer a cate-
gory of interpretation by which early Christians could discuss the struggles
encountered both within and without. And yet, the struggles without are not
with institutions and hierarchies but the tangible forces of temptation and sin
as well as cosmic spiritual forces that threaten the soul. The forces of evil
described in Ephesians 6 are rarely demythologised in early Christian writings,
although Tertullian could be seen to tread a fine line with his equation of spir-
itual forces of evil with heretics. Nevertheless, the common thread linking early
Christian writers is that forces of evil are real and can cause serious harm to
46
Origen, De principiis, 3.2.1-2, in Traité des principes, tome III. Livres III et IV: Introduc-
tion, texte critique de la Philocalie et de la version de Rufin, traduction, ed. Henri Crouzel and
Manlio Simonetti, SC 268 (Paris, 1980).
47
Judith Kovacs, ‘Servant of Christ and Steward of the Mysteries of God’, in Paul M. Blowers,
Angela Russell Christman, David E. Hunter and Robin Darling Young (eds), In Dominico Elo-
quio, in Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honour of Robert Louis Wilken (Grand
Rapids, 2002), 147-71, 160. See also Origen, Princ. 4.3.12.
48
Origen, Princ. 3.2.6 (SC 268).
49
Origen, Homiliae in Leviticus, 8.8.1-2, in Homilies on Leviticus, 1-16, trans. Gary Wayne
Barkley, FOC 83 (Washington DC, 1990).
50
Origen, Commentarii in Evangelium Matthaei, 13.4, in Commentaire sur l’Évangile selon Mat-
thieu, tome I. Livres X et XI, ed. Robert Girod, SC 162 (Paris, 1970).
28 J. STRAWBRIDGE
the human soul. And, whether they are superhuman or inner-human, more than
anything, they are spiritual.
Challenging the conclusions of those like Wink and Neufeld described
above, for the ancients ‘the real enemies are not human beings or human insti-
tutions but … spiritual forces (pneumatika)’.51 As Witherington describes the
situation, ‘though humans can be tempted, deceived, and even used by the dark
powers [it] is all too easy to mistake the human vessel of evil for evil itself.’52
What is clear from early Christian interpretation of the forces of evil in Ephe-
sians 6 is that the physical realities of these forces do not call for the separation
of the human from the divine, nor do they call for demythologisation which in
itself introduces an anachronistic approach. At the same time, early Christian
interpretation does not suggest that the battle against the powers remains solely
in the divine realm. Rather, the tangibility of these forces and their possible
effect on the soul calls for tools to withstand them. And for these tools, early
Christians turned to the other significant images in this Ephesian passage.
But even this move is not without a challenge: if within the earliest Christian
writings the form of these forces varies so widely – from sin and passions to
cosmic powers and principalities – are early Christians just as varied in what
it means to combat such forces? More specifically, does standing firm mean
an offensive stance of attack or a defensive stand of holding one’s ground?
4.2. Standing firm against spiritual forces of wickedness

How the forces of evil are withstood entails two approaches for early Chris-
tians, just as it does for Paul. Rather than single out the armour of God as the
only way to counter these forces, early Christians also adopt the language of
wrestling by which Paul describes the struggle not against flesh and blood, but
the spiritual forces of wickedness (Eph. 6:12). We thus note immediately the
complication this adds to our question about countering these forces, since the
images of wrestling and armour are both active and passive, aggressive and
defensive, as Christians are commanded to wrestle with the forces and at the
same time to withstand them clad in panoply made up, as we will discuss in a
moment, almost entirely of defensive elements. So the question remains: how
are these forces defeated and, bearing in mind the ideas of Christ as Divine
Warrior and as victor, who does the defeating? Is the agency human or divine?
4.2.1. Wrestling
At first glance, the image of wrestling appears to be straightforward. Wrestling
is an individual endeavour, depending entirely on strength and training, and
51
Ben Witherington III, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-
Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, 2007), 350.
52
Ibid. 350.
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H.A.G. HOUGHTON, Birmingham, UK

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AA.SS see ASS.

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DACL see DAL

GWV Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Offenburg.

MCom Miscelanea Comillas, Comillas/Santander.

RAM Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, Paris.

SQ Sammlung ausgewählter Quellenschriften zur Kirchen- und Dogmenge-

H.A.G. HOUGHTON, University of Birmingham, UK

Studia Patristica C, 1-2.

Birmingham, May 2019

Frances YOUNG, Birmingham, UK

Studia Patristica C, 3-18.

Indeed, it would be the nineties before I would challenge the assumptions

• Chrysostom’s comments are shaped by a concern to uncover the intent of