Friday 10 December 2021

St. Chrysostom on the Testimony of Scripture

It would be anachronistic and just plain wrong to call any Church Father an advocate of sola scriptura. However, there are certainly analogues in their writings which correspond with the idea of that doctrine. St. Chrysostom writes the following in his 17th sermon on the Gospel of John:

Must not this deserve excessive wrath, when Christ is shown to be less honorable in your estimation than a dancer? Since you have contrived ten thousand defenses for the things they have done, though more disgraceful than any, but of the miracles of Christ, though they have drawn to Him the world, you cannot bear even to think or care at all. We believe in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the Resurrection of bodies, and in Life everlasting. 

If now any heathen sayWhat is this Father, what this Son, what this Holy Ghost? How do you who say that there are three Gods, charge us with having many Gods? What will you say? What will you answer? How will you repel the attack of these arguments? But what if when you are silent, the unbeliever should again propose this other question, and ask, What in a word is resurrection? Shall we rise again in this body? Or in another, different from this? If in this, what need that it be dissolved? What will you answer? And what, if he say, Why did Christ come now and not in old time? Has it seemed good to Him now to care for men, and did He despise us during all the years that are past? Or if he ask other questions besides, more than these? For I must not propose many questions, and be silent as to the answers to them, lest, in so doing, I harm the simpler among you. 

What has been already said is sufficient to shake off your slumbers. Well then, if they ask these questions, and you absolutely cannot even listen to the words, shall we, tell me, suffer trifling punishment only, when we have been the cause of such error to those who sit in darkness? I wished, if you had sufficient leisure, to bring before you all the book of a certain impure heathen philosopher written against us, and that of another of earlier date, that so at least I might have roused you, and led you away from your exceeding slothfulness. For if they were wakeful that they might say these things against us, what pardon can we deserve, if we do not even know how to repel the attacks made upon us? For what purpose have we been brought forward? Do you not hear the Apostle say, Be ready to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you1 Peter 3:15 And Paul exhorts in like manner, saying, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Colossians 3:16 What do they who are more slothful than drones reply to this? Blessed is every simple soul, and, he that walks simply walks surely. Proverbs 10:8 For this is the cause of all sorts of evil, that the many do not know how to apply rightly even the testimony of the Scriptures

          https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/240117.htm

In this section Chrysostom is rebuking his congregation. He asks them how they would respond to the challenging questions of the heathen? He concludes that not knowing how to apply rightly the testimony of the Scriptures is a cause of all sorts of evil.

See how Chrysostom appeals to the testimony of the Scriptures as the way to rightly answer the heathen? He encouraged his congregation to be familiar with this testimony which would seem to contradict all we are told about the world in his time. We are told that many people were illiterate, books were expensive, and only the rich could have books which were oftentimes lengthy scrolls or thick codices unlike the kinds of books we have today. 

Is this sola scriptura? No. But it's not much different. The core idea is similar and that idea is, as Irenaeus writes, the Scriptures are the ground and pillar of our faith. And yet the Orthodox Church's Confession of Dositheus forbids the common man to read them. That is a very different doctrine than the one held by Chrysostom.