Let me begin with a caveat. “Social injustice” is a modern concept that did not exist as such in late antiquity. For the purposes of this essay, I take it to mean arbitrary and unjust inequalities that place some persons or groups of people at a disadvantage in relation to others. However, the kinds of inequalities commonly regarded as socially unjust today were sometimes regarded as just in the ancient Mediterranean world. The philosophical schools differed from each other on what justice is. Stoics believed that all humans are by nature equal, since all are endowed with logos, that is, with rationality that participates in the rationality pervading and organizing the world, making of its parts a harmonious whole. Marcia Colish summarizes their position well:
It is inconceivable for the Stoics that there could be any conflict between the good of the individual, the good of the group, and the good of the universe, for the same logos permeates and rules them all. From this premise the Stoics work out a number of distinctive ideas in the field of social and political theory. The logos of each [human being] is the logos of every [human being]. In their common possession of reason, a fragment of the divine logos, all [humans] are by nature equal. On this basis, the Stoics argue that slavery and sexual inequality are contrary to the law of nature.1
Though the later Stoics taught that people have a duty to live rationally and ethically within the roles society has allotted to them, even they considered inequalities as essentially unjust. As we shall see, Gregory of Nyssa’s view is similar, though the theological foundation is different. For him, all humans are by nature equal because all are made in the image of God.
Aristotle, on the other hand, teaches that people are by nature unequal; some are inherently better than others, and some are by nature slaves. For him, justice is proportional, that is, it distributes the good things in life to people unequally in proportion to their differing levels of value. If people are unequal, he says, unequal shares are owed to them.2 The inequalities he envisages are the differences of social class or role that exist in his classical Greek cultural world. He considers men and women, parents and children, free citizens and slaves, as by nature unequal. Again, unlike the Stoics, he even argues that the virtues proper to people in these various groups differ, and the different categories of people are capable of differing degrees of virtue. For him, only the free adult male citizen is capable of virtue in its fullness.3 Although in today’s world many would regard economic equality, equality of social or political status, or equality of opportunity as an ideal of justice toward which communities ought to strive, an Aristotelian would regard such equalities as unjust. Although Stoic ideas were common in late antiquity, hierarchies structured the entire social world in both the private realm of the household and the public realm of city and empire. Hierarchy was taken for granted as natural and normative in daily life. Many people would in practice have agreed with Aristotle’s understanding of equality and justice, whether or not they knew anything of his writings.
When we speak of Greek patristic ideas of social injustice, then, we impose a modern value judgment on an ancient culture that had social ideals different from our own. Yet the question is fruitful. Like the Stoics and Aristotle, early Christian theologians have differing ideas about whether people are, or should be, by nature equal, and what this implies for the ways individuals ought to treat their neighbors and how communities ought to be structured.
Early Christians lived in a late Roman cultural world in which the social and relational character of human existence was taken for granted. They belonged to the structured communities of household, city, and empire, as well as the church. Within these structures persons fulfilled differing and mutually interdependent prescribed roles based on gender, family, class, and regional and economic ties. Their roles were ranked hierarchically and connected by mutual responsibilities, often conceived, as in Aristotle’s ethics, in terms of authority and obedience. People saw these social structures as landmarks in an already existing landscape they inhabited and did not envisage the possibility that they could be shifted. So except when they were building radical alternative communities within the ascetical movement, Christian pastors encouraged the faithful to live within their prescribed roles and find in their daily tasks opportunities to practice virtue and treat others with love and respect. This is especially true of John Chrysostom, who emphasizes the value of the existing hierarchical order. His homilies are so practical and contextual that it is crucial to understand their aims and possible impacts within their original cultural context.
Yet Stoic ideas were also commonplace in the late antique world, particularly the understanding that humans are by nature equal in certain respects, alike in sharing such qualities as rationality, freedom of choice, the capacity for virtue, and moral responsibility. Christians agreed with the Stoics on these points; both wanted to affirm that people are fundamentally alike, equal, and dignified in their common humanity. For Christians, who believe that Christ came to extend the same offer of salvation to every person, all share the same basic bodily and emotional experiences, the same moral freedom and responsibility, the same capacities for virtue or vice and for loving relationship with God and neighbor. All are sinners like Adam and Eve, and all are capable of receiving the same salvation. Every human faces the same divine judgment and the same possibilities of eschatological condemnation or glory, since everyone is capable of entering through grace into knowledge of God, communion with the Holy Trinity, and participation in divine life.
Given their common cultural context and theological commitments, early Christian anthropologies must thus negotiate and attempt to include both human equality and inequality and show how they relate to each other. We will examine how Origen, the Cappadocians, and John Chrysostom address this issue in quite different ways. When gnostic teachers pose radical questions about how the Creator of a world where people are born into conditions of unjust inequality can be good, wise, and just, Origen responds with his theory of preexistent intelligences that were originally alike and equal to each other. Gregory of Nyssa discards his predecessor’s idea of preexistence but agrees with him that people are originally and fundamentally alike and equal. John Chrysostom, whose formation among the Antiochene exegetes differs from that of the Alexandrians and Cappadocians, believes that human community is by nature ordered hierarchically through relationships of authority and obedience, even in the original paradise. This essay describes how within their shared late antique and Christian setting, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom arrive at radically different conclusions about how “natural” equality and inequality function in grounding social and political life. Though their common cultural and imperial context limited the extent to which they could follow diverging paths in social and political practice, their differing anthropologies have significant theological and ethical implications that remain relevant today.
Origen
The Alexandrian theologian asks himself a pointed question about social injustice in First Principles 2.9. He inquires about what accounts for the wide discrepancies in people’s living conditions. This question is particularly acute when people are born into privileged or disadvantaged circumstances that they presumably could not have brought upon themselves. Writing with the prejudices of an educator of upper-class youth, one steeped in Greek cultural traditions, he first observes differences of culture and social class.
Among human beings, there are no small differences, for some are barbarians, others Greeks, and of the barbarians some are wilder and fiercer, whereas others are more gentle. Some moreover employ laws of the highest excellence, others poorer and ruder ones, while others follow inhuman and savage customs rather than laws. Some people are from the very moment of their birth in a lowly position, brought up in subjection and slavery, placed under lords and princes and tyrants; whereas others are brought up with more freedom and under more rational influences.4
Like others in the ancient world, Origen tends to think of diversities as if they can be ranked on a linear scale as better or worse, higher or lower, more or less advantageous. He is particularly concerned about differing cultural environments that vary in the resources and opportunities they provide for the development of good character and conduct. His implicit question is whether people’s moral condition, which determines their relationship with God and their hope for the next life, is molded by the culture into which they are born rather than their own free choices, a situation he would regard as profoundly unjust. A little later he returns to this issue and ranks several cultures according to their moral impact. As a believer in biblical religion, he ranks the Hebrews first, followed by the Greeks, and contrasts them with foreigners, whom his culture imagined as practicing the worst moral outrages: “One is born among the Hebrews, with whom he finds instruction in the divine law, another among the Greeks who are themselves people of wisdom and no small learning, another among the Ethiopians, whose custom it is to feed on human flesh, others among the Scythians, where parricide is practiced as if sanctioned by law, or among the Taurians, where strangers are offered in sacrifice.”5
Interestingly, Origen also identifies disability as a problematic kind of diversity: “Some have healthy bodies, others from their earliest years are invalids; some are deprived of sight, others of hearing or speech; some are born in such a condition, others lose the use of one faculty or another soon after birth or else suffer a like misfortune when fully grown.”6 All these inequalities of culture, class, and ability are troubling to Origen because they appear profoundly unjust, and since many of them are present at the beginning of people’s lives, it would be easy to conclude that God created the unfair inequities. Origen takes pains to reject such reasoning and appeals to the mystery of divine judgment. Yet he does not find apophatic reserve to be a sufficient answer. His theological approach, here and elsewhere, is characteristically to ask searching questions and suggest tentative answers, taking care not to claim that they are anything more than conjectures.
In First Principles 2.9, Origen is concerned to respond to gnostic teachers like Valentinus and his follower Basilides, whom he names explicitly.7 It is they who have raised the question of unjust human inequalities. Their explanation is that souls have come into this world as a result of a subordinate deity’s mistake and a precosmic fall. They further believe that some people are born spiritual by nature, others merely carnal, and others in an intermediate condition.8 To respond, Origen has to vindicate the Creator’s goodness, power, wisdom, and justice; and he needs to reaffirm the freedom, moral capacity, and responsibility of all human beings. He proposes an alternative theory of human preexistence, as follows. God created all intellects alike, free and equal, but through inattention to God they fell by their own choice to varying degrees and became souls. God then created diverse forms of embodiment for them, a different situation for each according to their merit, both as punishment and as education, so that all could in the end return to contemplation of God.9 The Creator also organized these embodied souls into a single harmonious cosmos and history. In most cases, then, inequalities at birth result from the fallen soul’s own free choices in its preexistent state together with God’s wise but inscrutable plan for redeeming and restoring that soul in the age to come.
For Origen, the end is like the beginning; the final stage of the eschaton will restore the original state of alikeness and unity.10 From this perspective, all inequality and all diversity as such belong to a flawed and transitory phase of human identity, though they are valuable in serving God’s pedagogical purposes. However, Origen’s belief in preexistence is a double-edged sword from the viewpoint of social justice, in the same way that the theory of karma allows some people in India to make a case for the caste system. Karma means cause and effect, such that one’s condition in the present necessarily results from one’s own past action, perhaps in a previous life, and likewise one’s every action in the present will affect one’s future situation, though maybe not until a life to come. Notwithstanding his critics’ accusations, Origen rejects belief in reincarnation;11 yet his theory, like the theory of karma, affirms a continuity in personal existence from before birth through the present life into a life after death. Framing our present human experience within this larger context enables him to affirm that justice prevails in the world as a whole and in the history of each person’s whole existence. Yet such a theory can easily be used to justify unjust inequality and discrimination within this life as deserved on account of greater sin in a previous existence. Like high-caste Hindus despising “untouchables,” Valentinians could denigrate people outside their circle as by nature carnal, thus justifying disregard or mistreatment of them, or at least lack of concern for their salvation. A follower of Origen, too, could justify prejudice against foreign cultures, slaves, and the disabled on the grounds that they deserve their disadvantages because of sins they committed before their birth. At least in the text we have examined, Origen’s theological speculations have not led him to critique his own cultural prejudices. The distinguished fourth-century Origenist exegete and theologian Didymus of Alexandria lost his eyesight as a boy.12 There is no historical evidence by which we could answer this question, but I wonder what he thought of this part of Origen’s theology.
At the Oxford Patristics Conference in August 2003, Graham Gould presented a paper surveying “Moral and Ascetical Passages in Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium, Book I.” In one of the texts from his first book Against Eunomius, as Gould explains, Gregory proposes a rational argument to refute the neo-Arian’s claim that although the Son is not truly God in an orthodox sense but is created, he nevertheless has inherited the Father’s authority over all creation. Gregory’s argument that this claim is untenable is based on a political theory with two potentially radical presuppositions: (1) humans are ontologically equal and united to each other through kinship, and (2) inequalities of power must be grounded in corresponding ontological inequalities to have stability and lasting credibility. This important passage is worth quoting at length.
Suppose their [the Eunomians’] assertion is granted, that while not truly Son he has become heir to the Lord of all, and having been created and made, he governs his kindred. How, then, is it that the rest of creation will accept and not rebel at being pushed into the subordinate place by its own kin? Being in no way inferior in nature, since it is itself created just as he is, creation would then be condemned to slavery and subjection to what is akin to it. Such a thing resembles tyranny, when power is not given to a superior being, but while remaining naturally of equal honor, the creation is divided into slave and master. So one part of it rules while the other is subordinate. Yet the one who has been allotted greater honor than those like him has won this higher rank by luck as in a raffle.13
This argument is not simply an ad hoc debater’s point scored against Eunomius. It has significant parallels in Gregory’s other writings, though with one crucial difference. Here he refers to all created beings, in contrast to God, as akin and equal to each other by nature, since his context is the standard pro-Nicene ontological division between Creator and creation. Yet the political illustration really fits more appropriately within a discussion of human social arrangements. This is a clue that Gregory may have in mind parallel ideas he expresses elsewhere in key anthropological texts.
In Against Eunomius 1, Gregory speaks of the created world as a unity; all creatures are alike and equal in their creaturehood and are united by ties of kinship. An unjust distinction between ruler and ruled arbitrarily divides this cosmic unity by violating the natural kinship and equality that hold it together. In The Creation of Humanity 16, Gregory speaks of humankind as a unity, a single nature created in God’s image, in which all members are alike and equal.
As a particular human being is enclosed by the size of his body, . . . so, it seems to me, the whole fullness of humanity was encompassed by the God of all through the power of foreknowledge, as if in one body. And the text teaches this which says, “And God created the human, . . . in the image of God he created him” [Gen. 1:27 RSV alt.]. For the image is not in [just] part of human nature, . . . but such power extends equally to all the human race. A sign of this is that . . . all have the power of rational thought and deliberation, and all the other things through which the divine nature is imaged in that which has been created according to it. The human being manifested at the first creation of the world and the one that will come into being at the [final] consummation of all are alike, equally bearing in themselves the divine image. Because of this, the whole [of humankind] was named [in Gen. 1:27] as one human being, since to the power of God nothing is either past or future; what will be is encompassed equally with what is now present by the energy that rules all. So the whole nature, extending from the first to the last, is, as it were, one image of the Existing One. The distinction between male and female was fashioned last [Gen. 1:27b], added to what was formed.14
This famous text shows how Gregory regards humankind throughout time, space, and the eschaton as a single whole whose unity is foundational and is constituted by the divine image, which all people possess equally and in the same way. For Gregory, the divine image defines what is authentic to human identity. He is saying that unity and equality are central to being human, and people are alike in possessing crucial characteristics such as reason that bind them together. The context of protology and eschatology is important. Like Origen’s intelligences, Gregory’s humans are by nature alike and equal at the beginning and at the end, though he rejects his Alexandrian predecessor’s belief in preexistence.15 Notice that just as unjust power relationships sunder the unity of creation in Against Eunomius 1, in The Creation of Humanity 16 the gender distinction sunders the unity of humankind. I have discussed Gregory’s understanding of gender elsewhere16 and will not pursue it further here. My point now is to observe a broader pattern. For Gregory, the inequalities and divisions intrinsic to social injustice are not present in the original human nature that God has created, nor will they be present in the eschatological restoration of God’s original creative plan. They have been added to the human condition subsequently and go against our original nature.17
In a famous discussion of slavery, the Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes addresses the issue of social class in a similar way. Gregory again speaks of the image of God as central to the human identity that all people share. He cites Genesis 1 to demonstrate the absurdity of owning slaves as he scolds the owner directly.
“I acquired slaves and slave girls” [Eccles. 2:7]. What are you saying? You condemn to slavery the human being, whose nature is free and self-ruling, and you legislate in opposition to God, overturning what is according to the law of nature. For upon the one who was created to be lord of the earth and appointed to rule the creation, upon this one you impose the yoke of slavery, as if he were resisting and fighting the divine precept. You have forgotten the limits of your authority, a rule limited to dominion over the nonrational animals. For Scripture says, “Let them rule birds and fish and quadrupeds and reptiles” [Gen. 1:26, my trans.]. How can you bypass the slavery within your power and rise up against the one who is free by nature, numbering one of the same nature as yourself among the four-legged and legless beasts?18
This text shows that Gregory sees his image theology as having ethical implications here and now. He is discussing not protology or eschatology but present unjust conditions. He asserts that all humans alike share the royal dignity, freedom, and equality that characterize the divine image. Following Genesis 1:27, he observes that it is natural for humans to have nonrational animals as slaves and pointedly contrasts this with the unnaturalness of humans enslaving other humans. As in The Creation of Humanity 16, the unity in question pertains to humankind rather than to creation as a whole. Yet here again he speaks of this unity as sundered in violation of nature. Again he addresses slave owners, accusing them as follows: “You have divided the nature itself, making some live as slaves and others as lords,” though God created all humans according to the divine image and likeness.19
Gregory uses the theology of the image to make a related ethical point in his second homily on Love of the Poor, where he defends the human dignity of homeless social outcasts who are disabled and disfigured by leprosy, as he reminds his audience of their duty to take care of them. In the middle of a lengthy description of such a person’s miserable bodily condition and way of life, we find the following observations: “He is a human being, created according to the image of God, appointed to rule the earth, having within his power the service of the nonrational animals. In this misfortune he has indeed been changed to such an extent that from his appearance it is doubtful whether his visible form with the identifying marks it bears is clearly that of a human being or of some other animal.”20
Just as it is scandalous for the slave to have to play the role of a nonrational animal, it is an outrage that illness and mistreatment have blurred the distinction between a human and a beast. In both cases one bearing the divine image is denied the respect intended by God. Divisions of class and social status have sundered the unity and solidarity intrinsic to the humanity shared by owners and slaves, by those secure in their houses and those wandering homeless in the countryside.
The passage in Against Eunomius 1 cited above makes the same point about the beasts too, showing, as we suggested, that the concept at issue is really more anthropological than cosmic: “The human being was not equal in honor to the inferior nature when he was allotted rule over the nonrational animals. Rather, as superior in reason he is lord of the others, promoted because his nature was advantageously different.”21 The text also offers a striking political observation based on Gregory’s anthropology: “The reason why human governments suffer frequent changes is that it is not acceptable to one of equal worth by nature to be excluded from an equal share with the superior, but there is an innate natural desire in every one to become equal to the ruling power, when it is akin to them.”22
Gregory did not envisage revolutionary changes in the social structures taken for granted in his time any more than his contemporaries did. The recognition that social structures themselves undergo transformation throughout history is a modern discovery. Yet he no doubt observed that Roman emperors and other high government officials often kept their offices for only a short time, and power frequently passed to others in disorderly ways. Perhaps he seeks an explanation for such political instability. He finds its root in inequality itself, which is unstable because it conflicts with underlying human ontology. His writings about gender, poverty, and slavery show further that he sees the essential equality of human beings as having clear ethical implications. For him, violation of humankind’s natural unity and equality results in social injustice. Political instability follows because unjust social arrangements lack grounding in authentic human nature.
John Chrysostom
Like Aristotle, however, John Chrysostom regards hierarchy and relationships of authority and obedience as foundational in human identity. He believes that when people are related to each other as equals, this causes instability and disorder, whereas clearly defined hierarchical relationships, in which one leads and the other accepts subordinate status, bring peace and harmony. He finds the same pattern in every kind of human community, in church, household, city, and empire alike.23 In Homily 20 on Ephesians he cites this theory as supporting women’s subordination in marriage. “Where there is equal authority,” he declares, “there is never peace. A household cannot be a democracy, ruled by everyone, but the authority must necessarily rest in one person.”24 He equates democracy with anarchy and chaos, and as Valerie Karras observes, “He applies monarchist political theory to the question of [women’s] submission.”25
Chrysostom explains his political theory further in Homily 23 on Romans, where he discusses Paul’s exhortation in Romans 13 to submit to civil authorities. He explains that while God does not approve of all rulers, since some are tyrannical oppressors, he does mandate that some should rule over others, and he gives them the power by which they rule. The reason for this, Chrysostom believes, is that equality results in disorder.
For that there should be rulers, and some rule and others be ruled—and that all things should not just be carried on in confusion with people swaying like waves in this direction and that—this, I say, is the work of God’s wisdom. . . . For since equality of honor often leads to fighting, [God] has made many forms of rule and subjection, such as husband and wife, child and father, old and young, slave and free, ruler and ruled, teacher and student.26
Notice how this hierarchical principle extends to all forms of human community and relationship, in the private as well as the public sphere. Chrysostom then supports his argument with two analogies between human community and other natural life systems. He first asserts that within the human body not all parts are alike: some limbs or organs rule while others are ruled. Even here, he understands diversity as necessarily entailing inequality and the corresponding relationships of authority and obedience. His second analogy is with the nonrational animals. Here, in contrast to Gregory of Nyssa, he states that humans are like rather than unlike them. Just as bees, wild sheep, birds, and fish live in groups in which all are subordinate to one that is the leader, he says, humans should do the same.
Chrysostom then makes his underlying principle explicit: “For anarchy, wherever it may be, is altogether evil, and a cause of confusion.”27 Anarchia literally means the lack of rule, hence the absence of a ruler. Without one person vested with authority over the others, Chrysostom believes, there will inevitably be disorder and conflict. He drives this point home a little later in the same homily.
[The ruler] is a benefactor to you in things of the greatest importance, since he provides peace and the civic institutions. For countless good things come to states through these rulers; and if you were to remove them, all things would go to ruin, and neither city nor country, nor private nor public buildings, nor anything else would stand, but all would be turned upside down, while the more powerful would devour the weaker.28
It appears Chrysostom cannot imagine any middle ground between monarchical authority and a complete absence of structure in community life, or foresee the possibility of other formal or informal arrangements for creating and sustaining structure. So he would not see inequalities of social or political power or status as unjust.29 He does not envisage that people can sometimes get along as equals, as brothers and sisters, though he does sometimes describe and praise ideal friendships, such as that of David and Jonathan.
Of course, Chrysostom is careful to distinguish among diverse kinds of unequal relationships. Like everyone in his hierarchically structured culture, for instance, he is well aware of the difference between an honorable Roman matron’s deference to her husband and the cowering obsequiousness of a slave living in fear of corporal punishment.30 As I have shown elsewhere in discussing his understanding of marriage,31 his ideal of human community is a complete unity of mind and purpose in household, city, church, or empire characterized by such harmony, consensus, mutual respect, and love that hierarchical structures function as free collaboration among equals. Leaders still lead and followers still obey, yet they work together on every level, so that the leaders share their dignity and mode of existence fully with the followers. In paradise, for example, Eve shares so fully in Adam’s cosmic sovereignty that through her union with him and sharing in his work, she also is fully sovereign. He remains the center and source of the authority, and she has no authority apart from him. Yet this inequality pales into insignificance because of their unity and love, and both partners benefit, together with the natural world they lovingly manage on behalf of God. This is ultimately how Chrysostom envisages hierarchical structures as enabling and supporting peace and harmony. Yet unequal human relationships remain foundational for him even when, through God’s grace and human leaders’ right use of authority, they undergird a kind of equality.
On the other hand, for him the presence of sin intensifies natural hierarchical relationships into radical inequality, as with masters and cringing slaves, wives who need to live like slaves, or authoritarian governments and their subjects. In Sermon Four on Genesis, Chrysostom observes that in a fallen world all these harsh social arrangements serve the divine will and benefit humanity because they restrain evil and preserve order.32 The chaos and conflict he fears in the absence of a ruler are surely caused by pervasive human wrongdoing. In the absence of sin, Chrysostom believes, people will defer to God and each other, so hierarchical structures will function beneficially and harmoniously.
Different Starting Points
Though they agree in many areas, on the point we are examining the divergence between Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom is striking. In terms of what is most essential to being human, Gregory sees people as inherently equal, and for him hierarchical relationships must be understood in terms of an underlying equality. For John people are inherently hierarchical, and equality must be understood in terms of inequality. Because they differ about the kinds of relationships that are most profoundly natural to human community, these two theologians have opposite understandings of what causes the political instability that so easily disrupts social harmony. Gregory says instability results when one person tries to impose unwarranted authority over his equals and they naturally resist. John says it arises when subordinates disrupt hierarchical order by refusing to obey their natural superiors.
These divergences reveal the two authors’ political and theological convictions. Yet they also reflect the fact that Gregory’s and John’s anthropological reflections start from different contexts. Gregory’s model of human community, like that of his fellow Cappadocians, is the ascetical movement, in which Christian men and women established radical forms of alternative community that sought to follow the teachings of the gospel. Ascetics emphasize the divine image and likeness common to all people and work to develop the human capacities for virtue and sanctification that all share. In this setting, differences of gender, ethnicity, wealth, ability, and social class become unimportant compared with the vocation to grow into Christlikeness, which all are called to. Hence, Gregory regards unity, equality, and alikeness as central to human identity. The exegetical starting point Gregory shares with the other Cappadocians and the Alexandrians also supports this view. Their anthropological reflection begins with the humans created in accord with Genesis 1:26–27a, who are defined by God’s image and likeness, which is equal, alike, and common to all.33
Chrysostom, like his fellow Antiochene exegetes, begins his anthropological reflection with the creation account in Genesis 2, where, in the Septuagint version, Adam is created first and then Eve is created from his side to be his helper.34 This story is important in affirming the communal dimension of human identity, but when read in isolation it depicts a community that is asymmetrical and hierarchical from the outset. Adam remains the center while Eve is oriented toward helping him. This impression of primordial inequality is diminished when Genesis 2 is read in terms of the first creation account, in Genesis 1, but the Antiochenes read Genesis 1 as summarizing in advance the creative work described in Genesis 2. Correspondingly, Chrysostom’s model for human community is not the ascetic community but the family, that is, in effect, an idealized version of the late antique household, where unequal people fulfill their hierarchically structured social roles in a spirit of love and service to others.
Eschatological Convergence
Despite their differences in theory, in practice Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom all lived and functioned in the same late antique Mediterranean world. They all took existing social structures as givens, including the civic and religious practice of philanthropy, which mandated that wealthy aristocrats provide for the poor.35
Further, they agree about the end more than they do about the beginning. Though they diverge in protology, they converge in eschatology, which may appear surprising given what we have seen thus far of their views on human identity. All three are agreed that the kinds of arbitrary inequalities people today regard as social injustice will be absent in the age to come. Origen envisages the final consummation as a restored community of intelligences who are alike and equal in their contemplation of God.36 Gregory of Nyssa hopes for a time when all evil has been purified away, when humans are alike and united in eternal growth, sharing divine life more and more and forever becoming more Christlike.37 John Chrysostom compares differences in social and economic status to masks that actors wear to identify their characters in a play. When this life is over, such inequalities drop away from human identity, just as when the play ends and the masks are removed, revealing the actors’ true faces.38 All three fathers agree that in the age to come people will differ in rank, if they do, because of their differing degrees of virtue and the rewards corresponding to them.39
John Chrysostom, who lived with monks in the caves near Antioch as a young man, admired the ascetics who lived, to the extent possible, in anticipation of the eschaton. Though the household is the model for human community in his protology, in his eschatology the monastery becomes the model, as it is throughout Cappadocian anthropology. Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom even agree that the gender distinction is absent in the soul and will be absent in the resurrection body.40
All are agreed, further, that Christians are called to model their lives to some extent in anticipation of the eschaton. Their hopes, not only their origins, shape their present moral obligations. In his homily Holy Pascha, Gregory of Nyssa speaks of how the feast’s joy is a participation in the joy of the future resurrection, which is made present liturgically. He then says that the way to celebrate the feast is to free prisoners, forgive debtors, and liberate slaves, and that those slaves who are not freed must be given honor instead of disgrace. He adds that the resurrection brings provision to the poor and healing to the disabled.41 At this point in the homily it is unclear whether he refers to the grace of the present feast, to the future resurrection, or to both. Baptism, which in the early church was frequently done at Pascha (Easter), is another occasion to anticipate that for which Christians hope. In one of his Baptismal Catecheses, John Chrysostom exhorts everyone to come to baptism, since Christ offers the same grace to all in the sacrament and thereby bestows on all the same new human identity.
Come to me, he says, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens [Matt. 11:28]. What a gracious invitation, what ineffable goodness! Come to me all, not only rulers but also those ruled, not only rich but also poor, not only free but also slaves, not only men but also women, not only young but also old, not only those with healthy bodies but also the maimed and those with mutilated limbs, all of you, he says, come! For such are the Master’s gifts. He knows no distinction of slave and free, nor of rich and poor, but all such inequality is cast aside. Come, he says, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens!42
Ultimately, Christ is the one who makes people what they are meant to be and orders their community life with compassion, justice, and boundless generosity. The honor he bestows on every human person is what judges all forms of social injustice in our sinful world and mandates that communities in all cultures move toward the justice of God’s eternal kingdom.
1. Marcia Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 1:36–37.
2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5.3.
3. Aristotle, Politics 1.12–13.
4. Origen, First Principles (= Princ.) 2.9.3, SC 252:356; G. W. Butterworth, trans., Origen: On First Principles (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 131, alt.
5. Origen, Princ. 2.9.5, SC 252:362; Butterworth, 135, alt.
6. Origen, Princ. 2.9.3, SC 252:356–58; Butterworth, 131, alt.
7. Origen, Princ. 2.9.5, SC 252:360–62. He also names Marcion, probably incorrectly.
8. For a brief description of Valentinus’s context, life, and teachings, see Everett Ferguson, ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 2nd ed. (New York: Garland, 1997), 2:1155.
9. Origen, Princ. 1.6.2, SC 252:196–200.
10. Origen, Princ. 3.6.3–4, SC 268:240–44.
11. John A. McGuckin, ed., The Westminster Handbook to Origen (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 205–7.
12. See Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late Antique Alexandria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
13. Werner Jaeger, ed., Gregorii Nysseni Opera (Leiden: Brill, 1952–), 1:178. Henceforth cited as GNO. Translations not otherwise attributed are my own. For Contra Eunomium 1, I have consulted and reworked Stuart Hall’s version in Lucas F. Mateo-Seco and Juan L. Bastero, eds., El “Contra Eunomium I” en la producción literaria de Gregorio de Nisa: VI Coloquio Internacional sobre Gregorio de Nisa (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, 1988).
14. Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Humanity 16, PG 44:185B–D.
15. Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Humanity 29, PG 44:233C–236A.
16. Verna E. F. [Nonna Verna] Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990): 441–71.
17. On the topic of Gregory of Nyssa and other church fathers on social injustice and the image of God, see also Nonna Verna Harrison, God’s Many-Splendored Image (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 89–102.
18. GNO 5:335. On the responsibility of humans, made in God’s image as stewards of God, to care for the animals and the earth’s ecosystem, see my God’s Many-Splendored Image, 123–46.
19. GNO 5:336.
20. Gregory of Nyssa, De pauperibus amandis orationes duo, ed. Arie van Heck (Leiden: Brill, 1964), 26.
21. GNO 1:178.
22. GNO 1:178–79.
23. David C. Ford, Women and Men in the Early Church: The Full Views of St. John Chrysostom (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1996).
24. PG 62:141; Catharine P. Roth and David Anderson, trans., St. John Chrysostom on Marriage and Family Life (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 53.
25. Valerie Karras, “Male Domination of Women in the Writings of St. John Chrysostom,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 36 (1991): 131–39, esp. 135.
26. PG 60:615. The first half of this translation is by J. B. Morris and W. H. Simcox, Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans, NPNF1, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 11:511, alt. The second half is my own.
27. PG 60:615.
28. PG 60:617; Morris and Simcox, Saint Chrysostom, 513. Chrysostom’s fear is echoed, probably unknowingly, by that of a later monarchist political theorist, Thomas Hobbes, who warns of “a warre . . . of every man, against every man” in the absence of absolutist authority, a condition in which human life would be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short” (Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, rev. student ed. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 88–89).
29. Chrysostom probably views economic inequalities differently, given his zealous concern for the poor.
30. On this difference, see Kate Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
31. “Women and the Image of God according to St. John Chrysostom,” in In Dominico Eloquio—In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken, ed. Paul M. Blowers et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 259–79.
32. Chrysostom, Sermon Four on Genesis, SC 433:220–38.
33. See, e.g., Basil’s two homilies on the creation of humankind, SC 160; Gregory of Nazianzus, Poem 1.1.6 On the Soul, trans. and ed. Claudio Moreschini and D. A. Sykes, in St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata Arcana (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 32–41; and Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Humanity, PG 44:125–256.
34. On the Antiochenes Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, see my “Women, Human Identity, and the Image of God: Antiochene Interpretations,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 9, no. 2 (2001): 205–49. Chrysostom’s reading of the two creation stories in his Homilies on Genesis follows the same pattern as his colleagues’ interpretations.
35. Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 71–117; Susan R. Holman, The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
36. Origen, Princ. 3.6.4, SC 268:244.
37. Gregory of Nyssa, On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, GNO 9:66.
38. John Chrysostom, Second Sermon on the Rich Man and Lazarus, PG 48:986; cf. Gregory of Nyssa, On Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, GNO 9:64–65.
39. For a thoughtful discussion of virtues and rewards, see Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 14.1–5, PG 35:860–64.
40. John Chrysostom, Homily 6 on Colossians 4, PG 62:342. Chrysostom’s Antiochene colleagues agree with him on this. See my “Women, Human Identity, and the Image of God.”
41. Gregory of Nyssa, Holy Pascha, GNO 9.1:250–51.
42. John Chrysostom, First Instruction 27, SC 50:122; Paul W. Harkins, trans., St. John Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions, ACW 31 (New York: Paulist Press, 1963), 33, alt.