Dialogue on the Life of John Chrysostom 18

Deacon: You have comforted me, honoured Father, by telling me about everything with such pains, in agreement with the earlier report, and seasoning what you said with a certain grace. But this I say: the bishop's food would not have burdened the Church at all, if the holy John had taken his share from the Church, as he said who said, ‘For the worker is worthy of his food’; and again, ‘Who shepherds a flock and does not eat of the milk of the flock? Or who plants a vineyard and does not partake of its fruit?’

Are these not words of Scripture, and many like them?

[Bishop: Rightly and intelligently have you sp]oken, Theodore; but add to what has been said the words that follow. For when authority had been given by the sacred law for those who perform the sacred services to eat from the temple, what does Paul, greedy for good things, add? ‘I did not make use of this authority in bodily things, so that I might become a partner in the Gospel in spiritual things’, not becoming a stumbling block to the weak, according to him who said, ‘For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, reclining …, will not his conscience, since he is weak, be built up to imitate what is weak?’ If matters stopped with us, and no one after us were to succeed to the care of the people, one could say, [‘Let us live as we please, making use] of worldly affairs’; but since those who come after us use us as teachers, putting forward our rule and custom, we must live not for ourselves only but for him who died and rose for us, and, [bearing] the weakness of the people, [lead them] to greater self-control and virtue, as he says: ‘Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will give him a law in the way he has chosen.’ For the Master gives laws to the rash and pitiable who sin heedlessly, since they embrace the spirit of slavery, according to David the singer: ‘The Lord will give a law to those who sin in the way’; and he will punish transgressors. But the righteous man, going beyond the measures of the law of slavery because he loves the Master, and hastening to the portion of adoption, becomes his own lawgiver; as Job both did and said: ‘I made a covenant with my eyes, and I will not look upon a virgin.’ What was the covenant? That, if they became disorderly, they should be cut out for the sake of chastity. Likewise David says, ‘I have sworn and confirmed it, to keep the judgements of your righteousness’, fettering with an oath the wavering and doubleness of his mind. John, an imitator of these fathers as their genuine son and no bastard, longing to bring the herd of men, straying in various desires, to the stricter part of life, became his own judge and lawgiver, [withdrawing from banquets and idle company and arming] the eye of his soul with the armour of the Spirit, lest folly, finding a way in through a banquet or an untimely word, should destroy self-control, according to him who said, ‘Bad company corrupts good morals.’ That is why they plotted against him; for he was a burden to them even to look at, like a lamp to diseased eyes.

Such was the compassionate Jeremiah, who lamented with tears the unbelief of the rulers and the priests, adding: ‘Who will give water to my head and fountains of tears to my eyes? And I will weep for this people day and night’; and again: ‘Who will give me a lodging at the far end of the desert? And I will leave my people and go away from them, because they are all adulterers’, calling the gathering of the false prophets and priests a synod of the faithless; as elsewhere too he addresses God, not as though God did not know, but as we ought to imitate: ‘Lord, [I did not sit] in the assembly … before your face; I sat alone, because I was filled with bitterness.’ In agreement with these David says, ‘I did not sit with the council of vanity, and I will not go in with transgressors’; and he adds: ‘and I will not sit with the ungodly; I will wash my hands in innocence’ (that is, the powers of action) ‘and I will go round your altar, O Lord.’ But those who care less for the altar, and turn their backs on it, not only in purpose but in the way they live, trample [it] with feet not only unwashed [and bloody, through bribes and] false writings, but muddy; hinting at whom the prophet Ezekiel says: ‘He brought me to the porch of the court, and I looked, and behold, a hole in the wall. And he said …, and I looked, and behold, a door. And he said to me, Go in and see the evil lawlessness that they are doing here. And I went in, and behold, every likeness of reptile and beast, and vain idols, abominations. And he said to me, Have you seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in …? For they said, The Lord does not see us; the Lord has abandoned the land. And he said to me, You will see still greater lawlessness that these are doing. And he brought me into another place and showed me; and behold …’ And again: ‘He brought me into the inner house of the Lord; and behold, there were twenty-four elders, with their faces turned away and their backs to the altar. And he said to me, Are these small things that the house of Israel is doing?’ We have been compelled to recall the prophet's passage because of the more reckless of those who think themselves something, who confound both themselves and the peace of the Church by turning their backs on the Lord's table; ‘whose condemnation is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber’; ‘who set their minds on earthly things’; of whom Jude, the brother of James, says: ‘These are [blemishes at your love feasts], feasting without fear, shepherding themselves; … wandering stars, for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept for ever.’ Where he called them clouds, he hinted at their evil hail, the enemy of the vine; where he called them wandering stars, he hinted at their treachery to the ship; and the ship and the vine is the Church.

What will of necessity befall such men? Hear again the same prophet Ezekiel: ‘And he showed me, and behold, men came out from the way of the high gate that faces north, and each had an axe in his hand. And one man was in their midst, clothed in a long robe, with a girdle of sapphire on his loins. And [they came in] and stood beside the bronze altar; and the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherubim, where it was over them, to the court of the house. And he called the man clothed in the long robe, who had the girdle on his loins. And the Lord said to him: Go through the midst of the city, Jerusalem, and put the mark on the foreheads of the men who groan and lament over all the lawless deeds done in their midst. And to them he said’ (that is, to the six who had the axes) ‘in my hearing: Go into the city after him’ (that is, after the one putting the marks on the foreheads) ‘and strike, and do not spare; old man, young man and virgin, infants and women, kill them to utter destruction; but do not come near any on whom is the mark; and begin from my holy places. And they began with the elders who were in the house of the Lord.’ If anyone thinks these things were prophesied about events in Judaea, he seems not to know of the Saviour's coming either; for Ezekiel did not serve as priest before the captivity. He was carried into captivity while still a boy, by God's dispensation, with the tribe of Levi, and in the thirtieth year he was granted the vision of things to come, serving as priest in captivity, as he himself explains: ‘And it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth of the month, and I was in the midst of the captivity by the river Chebar.’ And again a little later: ‘The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the son of Buzi, the priest, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar.’ But if someone, hard pressed by this, says to us that the Saviour went first and gave the sign of the cross on the foreheads, and that [the slaughter] followed when the Saviour was disbelieved, when the Roman empire under Vespasian cut down, in the fortieth year, the synagogue that had done the lawless deeds, we accept the one who understands it so; but we urge him, as a son of the New Covenant, to obey Paul, the initiate in such matters, who says of all such books: ‘These things happened to them as types; but they were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come.’ I say this not praying that an iron sword may come upon the enemies of God (away with the thought!); for the prophet is not speaking of an iron sword, but of some other power of punishment, of which the same Ezekiel says: ‘A land on which I bring a sword’ (‘I bring’ meaning ‘I permit’), ‘and the people of the land take one man and set him as a watchman for themselves, and the watchman sees the sword coming and blows the trumpet and warns the people, and one who hears hears and does not take heed, and the sword comes and takes someone, his blood I will require from him, because he did not heed the sound of the trumpet.’ And again: ‘But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and does not warn the people, and the sword comes and takes someone, his blood I will require from the hand of the watchman, because he saw the sword and did not sound the trumpet.’ Having this danger before his eyes, not sleeping the sleep of unbelief nor sluggish with the sluggishness of love of pleasure, the blessed John cried out louder than a trumpet, giving not an uncertain sound but clear knowledge of the devil's sword, and urged everyone to flee. And all who had a pure conscience, like a mark on the forehead of the soul, were saved by the grace of God together with you, the faithful Romans; while all who had a defiled one inflamed the people and the priests to contend with one another, so that in the common evils they might … their own.

[Deacon:] It is admitted that it is impossible for a man to be found blameless and perfect in this earthly life, since Scripture says in many ways, ‘Who will boast that he has a pure heart? Or who will claim with confidence that he is clean from sin?’ Nevertheless the blessed John did not know how to make use of the occasion; for one ought not to interfere with those in power.

Bishop: You seem to me, good Theodore, to be a cunning man. From the start you showed sympathy to us, as befitted you, with a certain compunction, but little by little you turn out to be fond of mockery; for not even his supposed enemies [speak] so harshly of his affairs.

[Deacon: What did you hear] that is so [shocking, truth-loving] Father? That I said, ‘The blessed John did not pay attention to the occasion’? [Is it not] Scripture's saying, ‘Do not stand in the places of the powerful’; and again, ‘Redeeming the time’, especially in dealing with those who do not accept advice or help?

[Bishop:] Blessed are you who interpret the Scriptures in this way! For ‘Do not stand in the places of the powerful’, in Ecclesiastes, is said to those who are unworthy of the priesthood and incapable of it, so that they may not seize it. For it calls ‘powerful’ the teachers of virtue: first the apostles, who were powerful, clothed with the Spirit of power; then their imitators. And ‘redeeming the time’ means this: not that we should play the hypocrite, running with thieves and putting our portion with adulterers, but that, at the time of sin, we should buy up the time by virtue and not sell it to sin. And he who little by little redeems the time in this way has redeemed his whole life, giving up the pleasures of life to find what is beyond life; as the martyrs did, who gave up the life of blood and properly redeemed the time [for] incorruption. If this is not how these things are understood, then Moses, Elijah, Micaiah, Daniel, John the Baptist, Isaiah, Peter and Paul, not to name more, will all have been ignorant of their own time. For the one secured his safety by flight because of his rebuke of a man, pasturing a pagan's sheep in the mountains; the other, overcome by stupor and grief, fell asleep, finding the shade neither of a wall nor of a rock, but under a juniper, which itself gives only dim shade; another was sawn asunder; another was let down into a den of lions for his piety; another was kept bound in a prison, that is, in some dungeon, condemned to receive bread of affliction and water of distress, so that, wasting away for a long time, he might be forced to break off his life because of his freedom of speech toward a certain king. And what will you tell me about John, who has no equal among those born of women? Did he not know how to use the occasion, since he was beheaded for his unshadowed rebuke of Herod's adultery, caring for Herod as a doctor for a patient with an incurable disease, by cauterizing or cutting? By the same reasoning our John too, out of pity or love, rebuked those who were sick. If the Baptist did not know the time, how did he recognize the craftsman and maker of the ages, saying, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’? And how did Paul and Peter not know the time, the pillars of the Church, who even after death shut and open the times of repentance for those who wish and knock? For the one is crucified feet upward, signifying the journey to heaven, and the other is beheaded for his freedom of speech in Christ, so as not to lose the true head. Do not, then, accept those who [mock the freedom of the saints]; for this is the custom of [pagans] and of those wise in their own eyes, who love their lives and mock the fearlessness of the martyrs. A sword ought not to be blunt, nor freedom of speech ineffective. And as fragrance is inseparable from perfume, so is goodwill from freedom of speech. If the rebukes were made in private before servants or friends or relatives, before whom even blushing is a burden, the one speaking freely might perhaps be to blame, as knowing neither the time nor the place; but if in the Church, as in a market, both the praise of those who do well and the blame of the negligent are given, why are we exasperated by rebukes that are made to us without naming names and for our benefit, feeding our faults, and not obeying him who said, ‘[Eat whatever is sold in the market,] asking no questions’? Otherwise the saints too will be found to have scandalized some cities or countries by their rebukes and made others conceited by their praises. First the holy Job, slandering a certain country, Phoenicia, as he says: ‘The nations of the Phoenicians divide him up.’ Then Moses and the prophets, slandering Egypt and calling it an iron furnace and darkness, and praising Palestine and calling it the land of promise; whereas Egypt is found to be a land of promise to the zealous, and Palestine to the careless not only an iron furnace but outer darkness, through unbelief; since it is not places that are to be blamed or praised, but ways of life. Why should I draw out my speech, and not [take the case] of [Paul], calling the Cretans [liars], the Galatians foolish, the Corinthians puffed up, and others other things: did he know these passions to be in them only, bringing the rebuke on them alone, or on all? Or conversely, when he calls the Romans faithful and the Ephesians initiates, to whom he writes more loftily, [and the Thessalo]nians …, did he confine the praises to them alone? By no means; but, as one who bore the Spirit, he set down both blame and praise, so that the one worthy of praise, recognizing it, might be braced in his zeal, and the other, reading it, might be pained by the reminder and wipe away the cause of the blame. So neither are the Galatians alone foolish, nor the Cretans alone liars, nor the Corinthians alone proud; for all things are found everywhere, since the nature that sins and the nature that does right is one, and both the one and the other occur in it by its own choice. In this way, then, John spoke freely in the Church; or rather he dealt out virtue like meat to the hungry, ostracizing sin by open rebukes, obeying him who said, ‘Rebuke the one who sins before all, so that the rest also may have fear.’ But if some, sick with arrogance or folly in the extreme, want even their pleasures to be praised, the servants of God do not have that custom. For those who are indignant at the blame of greed and sexual immorality and any other foul pleasure are in effect saying nothing else than that these deadly things ought to be accepted.