Christian History Magazine Collection

His fearless eloquence won him the title “golden mouth” but also got him exiled.

by Robert A. Krupp from Christian History magazine no. 44

John Chrysostom had little patience with sins of any sort, but he was especially piqued at the misuse of wealth:

“It is foolishness and a public madness,” he once preached, “to fill the cupboards with clothing and allow men who are created in God’s image and our likeness to stand naked and trembling with the cold so that they can hardly hold themselves upright…. You are large and fat, you hold drinking parties until late at night, and sleep in a warm, soft bed. And do you not think of how you must give an account of your misuse of the gifts of God?”

This type of preaching—eloquent and uncompromising—would eventually earn John of Antioch the name by which he is now distinguished: Chrysostomos, “the golden mouth.” It would also contribute, though, to his exile and premature death.

Pleading Mother

Anthusa, a pious Christian woman, gave birth to her only son near the middle of the fourth century in Antioch, the city where the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians.” Her husband, Secundus, a senior government official, died when she was about 20, leaving her with John and a daughter, both quite young. Shunning remarriage, Anthusa devoted the rest of her life to her children.

John was given the best education available in Antioch, a leading intellectual center of the day. He studied under Libanius, the famous pagan rhetorician. Rhetoric—the practice of public address used in the courts and politics—was the leading science of the era; teachers of rhetoric were the pride of every major city. Libanius had traveled the world, having been a professor in Athens and Constantinople; he believed in the pagan cults and disdained Christianity.

John apparently was planning a career in law. But sometime in the years of his formal education, he determined to give himself to the service of God, first by going into monastic seclusion. Like many in his day, he longed for a time apart from the world to grow closer to God. But his mother begged him to wait.

She took him to the room where he was born and in tears told him the one thing that made her widowhood easier was that John resembled his father. She reminded him that the young have their lives in front of them but that she would soon face death. She asked him to spare her a second loneliness and not leave her before she died.

“When you have committed me to the ground and united me with your father’s bones,” she pleaded, “then set out on your long travels and sail whatever sea you please. Then there will be nobody to hinder. But until I breathe my last, be content to live with me.”

John relented and put off his plans for a few years.

Dodging Responsibility

In the early 370s, after his mother died, John entered monastic seclusion. He studied under the monk Diodore for a time and then lived as a hermit. John’s ascetic rigors were so strenuous they damaged his health for the rest of his life. Still, this period hardened his spiritual resolve and focused his calling. In addition, he memorized large passages of Scripture, and his ability to quote passages from memory would empower his later sermons.

Though John eventually rejected monastic life for service in the church, he always prized contemplation. In one later sermon, he asked, “For what purpose did Christ go up into the mountain? To teach us that loneliness and retirement is good when we are to pray to God…. For the wilderness is the mother of quiet; it is a calm and a harbor, delivering us from all turmoils.”

Before he had left for seclusion in the nearby hills, John had been ordained a “lector,” a minor church official responsible for reading Scripture in worship. When he returned, he became active in the church of Antioch, serving under Meletius and then Flavian, successive archbishops. Both had suffered for their orthodoxy when Arians (who denied the divinity of Christ) had controlled church and state.

During this time, John and a close friend named Basil heard they were being considered for the ministry. Both felt inadequate for the heavy responsibility, but Basil finally agreed to be ordained when John implied they would do so together. Basil went forward with ordination—unaware that John had gone into hiding. John feared the demanding responsibility of the priestly office, but he did not want to deprive the church of Basil.

This act of duplicity led John to write one of his most famous works, On the Priesthood, a justification of his deception and his dodging of the office he esteemed. It also contains glimpses of his core values and a mature philosophy of ministry—though John wrote it in when only in his twenties. For example: “I do not know whether anyone has ever succeeded in not enjoying praise. And if he enjoys it, he naturally wants to receive it. And if he wants to receive it, he cannot help being pained and distraught at losing it…. Men who are in love with applause have their spirits starved not only when they are blamed offhand, but even when they fail to be constantly praised.”

Eventually, John was ordained a deacon (381) and finally a priest (386). Basil probably became bishop of a rural town in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). John, though, would eventually minister in one of the largest churches in Christendom.

Painfully Specific

First, however, John spent twelve years in Antioch, a city of great wealth and the capital of Syria. It was known for its Olympic games, theatrical presentations, and festivals. It was also the city where Chrysostom’s preaching began to be noticed, especially after the infamous Affair of the Statues.

In the spring of 388, a rebellion erupted in Antioch over the announcement of increased taxes. Statues of the emperor and his recently deceased wife were desecrated. Officials of the empire then began punishing city leaders, killing some, for the uprising. While Archbishop Flavian rushed to the capital in Constantinople 800 miles away to beg for clemency, John preached to a city in turmoil:

“Improve yourselves now truly, not as when during one of the numerous earthquakes or in famine or drought or in similar visitations you leave off your sinning for three or four days and then begin the old life again…. Stop evil slandering, harbor no enmities, and give up the wicked custom of frivolous cursing and swearing. If you do this, you will surely be delivered from the present distress and attain eternal happiness.”

After eight weeks, on the day before Easter, Flavian returned with the good news of the emperor’s pardon.

John preached through many of Paul’s letters (“I like all the saints,” he said, “but St. Paul the most of all—that vessel of election, the trumpet of heaven”), the Gospels of Matthew and of John, and the Book of Genesis. Changed lives were his goal, and he denounced sins from abortion to prostitution and from gluttony to swearing.

He encouraged his congregation not only to attend the divine service regularly but also to feed themselves on God’s written Word. In a sermon on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, he said, “Reading the Scripture is a great means of security against sinning. The ignorance of Scripture is a great cliff and a deep abyss; to know nothing of the divine laws is a great betrayal of salvation.”

His applications could be forceful. About people’s love of horse racing, he complained, “My sermons are applauded merely from custom, then everyone runs off to [horse racing] again and gives much more applause to the jockeys, showing indeed unrestrained passion for them! There they put their heads together with great attention, and say with mutual rivalry, This horse did not run well, this one stumbled,’ and one holds to this jockey and another to that. No one thinks any more of my sermons, nor of the holy and awesome mysteries that are accomplished here.”