Preaching and Exegesis: St. John Chrysostom
St. John Chrysostom was, above all, a preacher and an interpreter of Scripture — the greatest expositor of the early Church and the most prolific of the Greek Fathers. This section treats the exegetical tradition he embodied (the Antiochene school) and the vast body of homilies he left behind.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Chrysostom’s claim on the Church rests less on doctrinal innovation than on exposition. He fought no great christological battle and authored no systematic theology; his genius was for opening the biblical text to ordinary congregations, week after week, with a combination of philological care, theological depth, moral urgency, and sheer rhetorical power that has never been surpassed in the Greek tradition. His extant works outnumber those of any other Eastern Father (Quasten, Patrology III, 424).
Two files develop this. The first treats the Antiochene exegetical method he learned at the asketerion of Diodore: its attention to the historical sense (historia), its disciplined spiritual reading (theōria), its principle of divine “considerateness” (synkatabasis), and its much-discussed contrast with the Alexandrian tradition — a contrast that modern scholarship has substantially softened. The second surveys the great homily series themselves: the cycles on Matthew, John, Romans, Genesis, and the Pauline corpus, together with the practical realities of how they were preached and preserved.
Navigation
| File | Subject |
|---|---|
| Antiochene Exegesis | Historia, theōria, synkatabasis; the Antioch–Alexandria contrast drawn fairly |
| The Homily Series | Matthew, John, Romans, Genesis, the Pauline corpus; preaching practice and the scale of the corpus |
See Also
- Antioch: Youth and Formation — where Chrysostom learned the Antiochene method
- The Ascetic Years — the formation that gave his preaching its moral authority
- Homilies on the Statues — his most famous Antiochene preaching crisis
- The Church Fathers — Chrysostom among the Fathers
- Holy Scripture — the Orthodox doctrine of Scripture his exegesis serves
References
- Kelly, J. N. D. Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
- Mayer, Wendy, and Pauline Allen. John Chrysostom. London: Routledge, 2000.
- Hill, Robert C., trans. St. John Chrysostom: Homilies on Genesis. Fathers of the Church 74, 82, 87. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986–1992.
- Quasten, Johannes. Patrology, vol. 3. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1960.