When contemplating the suffering of Job, John Chrysostom asks, “Do you not see, beloved, that those who are cut cry aloud? And do we therefore rebuke them? Not at all. Rather, we pardon them.”1 Many in the culture of Chrysostom’s day, in reflecting upon how one should react to suffering, would have had recourse to a Stoic understanding of the inevitability of misfortune and tragedy. They would have extolled the one who maintains equanimity amid the vicissitudes of life. Chrysostom himself follows this line of thinking to an extent,2 but when he interprets Job’s plight, he finds such unflinchingness and self-restraint ultimately inadequate and, frankly, inhumane. In contrast, he sets forth a philosophy, a life, lived according to the teachings of the gospel. With regard to suffering, this philosophy exhibits a truly humane character, compassionately taking into account human weakness and consequently requiring those who would philosophize to comfort those who suffer.
In this essay I explore how John Chrysostom interprets the figure of Job in his commentary. In particular, my investigation focuses on the correct reaction to suffering and how this is determinative for true philosophy. For Chrysostom, philosophy must exhibit sensitivity to human nature. Job’s human nature, in fact, is central to his example of philosophy. The philosopher is marked by the traits of sympathy and philanthropy. Because Job exemplifies these qualities, he anticipates the highest ethical teachings of the law and the gospel and thus represents a unique example for the members of Chrysostom’s congregation to emulate.
The analysis begins by introducing Chrysostom’s little-known commentary on Job. We then explore the first reason for Job’s excellence in Chrysostom’s eyes: his humanity. A comparison with some other contemporary reactions to suffering helps throw the uniqueness of Chrysostom’s interpretation into relief. Following this comparison, the essay examines the substantive character of Job’s excellence as a moral exemplar. Finally, I try to place Chrysostom’s Commentary on Job into its broader theological and exegetical context. Chrysostom situates the book of Job in an Old Testament hermeneutical project intended to show the historical trajectory of God’s love for humankind, his philanthropy, and his caring accommodation for human weakness as evidenced in Scripture and ultimately in the incarnation. As a figure whose simultaneously philosophical and humane reaction to suffering anticipates the teachings of the gospel, Job figures significantly into Chrysostom’s Old Testament exegetical strategy. Perhaps more importantly, Job finds a place in the larger project of which scriptural exegesis is the essential part: the pastoral formation of the Christian community.
Background to Chrysostom’s Commentary on Job
Chrysostom’s Commentary on Job has come down to us in an unfinished form and a somewhat rough style, probably as notes meant for a series of future sermons.3 The text evidently was either composed by Chrysostom himself in draft form or drawn together by his assistants from shorthand notes he left behind.4 For many years its authenticity was questioned, but the work of Léon Dieu5 and its editor Henri Sorlin has well established Chrysostom’s authorship, based on external attestation as well as internal features (thematic and exegetical parallels as well as stylistic idiosyncrasies).6
The commentary is significant because it represents one of the few extant works of Antiochene exegesis on the sapiential books of the Hebrew Bible and has been relatively neglected by the scholarly community.7 Furthermore, it is of great interest to any student of Chrysostom’s thought. Numerous themes and figures to which Chrysostom devotes much attention in his other, more well-known works feature prominently in the commentary: for example, Job’s wife, the devil, human nature, suffering, detachment from worldly goods, sympathy, wealth and poverty, the education and upbringing of children, sin, free will, the nature of friendship, the angels, the divine nature, and divine providence.8
And, of course, there is the figure of Job. As Sorlin observes, we can find in Chrysostom’s corpus “vraiment . . . un thème de Job,”9 truly, Job is a theme. Of all the figures of the Hebrew Bible, Job earns the most mention in Chrysostom’s works.10 Yet within Chrysostom’s vast homiletic oeuvre, there is, according to Sorlin, only one other homily that explicitly takes Job as its topic of interest: An Exposition concerning the Struggles and Contests of the Blessed and Just Job.11 Consequently, the Commentary on Job emerges as an important single work on this figure of pivotal interest to Chrysostom.
The importance of Job to Chrysostom is evident at the very outset of his commentary. Chrysostom’s Greek text of Job reads: “There was a certain man in the land of Ausis, whose name was Job” (Job 1:1a). Chrysostom comments: “See the first praise: he was a human. For this is certainly not meager praise, to be a human.”12 Such a striking opening underscores the importance of Job for understanding Chrysostom’s theological anthropology. It is Job’s humanity that makes his victory over Satan so glorious, and it is this humanity that makes Job an example for others to follow. Job suffers greatly, but he is able to temper the emotions he feels with philosophical restraint. He exhibits detachment from worldly goods yet shows at the same time a genuine concern for others. Because these virtues reveal his true humanity, Job can serve as a model for Chrysostom’s congregation.
One reason why Job’s human nature features so prominently in Chrysostom’s commentary is his typically Antiochene optimism concerning human nature and its potential for good.13 Commenting on the biblical text, which states that Job is “blameless, just, true, God-fearing, keeping himself from every evil deed” (Job 1:1b LXX), Chrysostom points out Job’s virtue and his own conviction of human nature’s inherent goodness. “Where are those,” Chrysostom asks, “who say that nature inclines more toward evil?”14 The source of Job’s virtue is his fear of God. Like Job, true humans fear God and strive after true things rather than the fleeting elements of this world. Chrysostom argues, “The one who does not fear God is not a human, but rather a false human being.”15 True humanity is shown not only in words but also in deeds.16 The connection between one’s way of life and the knowledge of God is decisive for an appreciation of Job’s example of philosophy: “Then [Scripture] says that the cause of all [Job’s] good traits was that he feared God. Because of those good traits Job came to know God. For a good life leads to the recognition of God, just as a careless life leads to the opposite. The knowledge of God is discovered through one’s way of life and becomes the guardian of that way of life.”17 For Chrysostom, virtue, rather than mere speculation, leads the way to knowledge of God and to true humanity. Job exemplifies this path of steadfast and pious virtue.
Job’s human perfection is manifested in his suffering and finitude. The theme of human weakness dominates much of the book of Job and, accordingly, a great deal of Chrysostom’s commentary. It furnishes Chrysostom with the means whereby he can make sense of Job’s seemingly contradictory reactions to his plight: on the one hand, constant trust in God’s providence and detachment from all worldly things; on the other, the forlorn cries of a soul struggling to understand why he suffers. The focus on human weakness and the appropriate response to it enables Chrysostom to interpret Job as a true philosopher: one who is indeed human, yet who realizes and fulfills that human nature by fearing God and imitating divine compassion (philanthrōpia) through his acts of charity toward others.
Job epitomizes philosophy in his practice of virtue. Before exploring Chrysostom’s development of this theme, we should first determine how Chrysostom generally employs the term philosophia in his works and what its range of meaning includes.
Philosophia in Chrysostom
The term philosophia and its related forms exhibit a wide range of meanings in Chrysostom’s works.18 On the one hand, the concept of philosophy is often used by Chrysostom and other Christian authors to refer to pagan Greek philosophy. This sense is particularly clear in his early work Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae (Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life), where he praises some pagan philosophers for their practice of reason and virtue. On this rare occasion in which Chrysostom speaks of the pagan philosophers in favorable terms,19 it becomes apparent that philosophy is never something abstracted from one’s way of life. Thus the ascetic or monastic life can also be described as philosophical.20 This narrower use of the term may have been, in part, the result of the younger Chrysostom’s desire to withdraw from the world and live as an ascetic. His later engagement as a pastor in Antioch and Constantinople broadened his understanding of Christian philosophy to include those living in the world as well.21 This later inclusiveness is evident, as auf der Maur observes, in the diverse group of biblical figures whom Chrysostom sets forth as examples of the philosophical life, a group that includes both Old and New Testament figures, men and women, Samaritans, and even the good thief who was crucified alongside Jesus.22 Thus, while philosophy is usually a way of life informed by Christian principles, Chrysostom can use the term to describe Jews and pagans. Its use corresponds, roughly, with a life lived in accordance with solid values and right purpose.
Philosophy, then, entails the cultivation of self-restraint and strength of soul. The philosopher is one who abstains from seeking transitory worldly goods and pleasures. But such abstention, however indispensable, only constitutes what Chrysostom calls external philosophy, a way of life equally accessible to pagans and Jews as well as Christians. Philosophy also has an internal dimension. One must rein in errant or disordered passions and desires, thus seeking to maintain equilibrium of soul amid the vicissitudes of life. For the Christian, such philosophical self-control is guided, if not made possible, by the correct knowledge of God and his ultimate rewards and punishments. This is the second part of Christian philosophy for Chrysostom. Truly to philosophize means to meditate upon God, Christ, death, the resurrection, and the afterlife, and to bring them to bear on one’s life. These two moments in Chrysostom’s understanding of philosophy play a decisive role, as we will see, in his positive interpretation of Job.
But there is more to say about Chrysostom’s nuanced use of philosophy. In several places he argues that philosophy (i.e., self-restraint and detachment) must be practiced in moderation.23 Both too little and too much are deleterious. This critique of philosophy practiced immoderately (pera tou metrou) relates directly to Chrysostom’s efforts to advance a philosophy compatible with gospel teachings and the pastoral needs of his congregation. Elsewhere, Chrysostom employs the verb philosophein to signify a sort of useless chattering,24 which in many instances can cause pain precisely by its display of indifference and accusatory speculation.25 These seem to be the meanings Chrysostom has in mind when he has Job accuse his friends of philosophizing in the face of another’s sufferings.
Chrysostom’s praise of philosophical restraint is thus tempered by sensitivity to human vulnerability. This desirable sensitivity is manifested in “love of humanity” (philanthrōpia), “sympathy” (sympatheia), “pity” (eleos), and “sharing in suffering,” or “showing compassion” (synalgein). Job’s excellence, for Chrysostom, manifests itself in the proper combination of philosophy and sympathy for human nature. Job deserves praise for enduring a horrific situation in which “no one is sympathetic [sympathēs], no one takes pity [eleēmōn], no one shares in [his] suffering [synalgōn].”26 A brief comparison with other contemporary responses to suffering reveals the unusual properties of Chrysostom’s exegesis. We turn first to Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Saint Macrina.
Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Saint Macrina
The issues of Christian philosophy and the role of grief loom large in Gregory of Nyssa’s Vita sanctae Macrinae (Life of Saint Macrina). Nyssen labels the way of life led by his sister Macrina and those women who join her in communal ascetic practice as “philosophical” and “unworldly.”27 In their practice of virtue, they strove to replicate the angels by freeing themselves from worldly concerns. J. Warren Smith notes that Nyssen uses the term “philosophy” in the same sense as Plato does in his Phaedo.28 In that work philosophical practice is characterized as a preparation for death, when the soul is freed from the body. The philosopher strives for a foretaste of this freedom by turning the mind from the needs of the body in the practice of sōphrosynē.29 In Nyssen’s case, however, the philosophical practice of virtue is less about readying oneself for liberation from the body than about anticipation of eschatological glory and incorruption.30
In the pursuit of virtue, reason (logismos) must be master over the drives (pathē) issuing from the lower nonrational parts of the soul or from wrong judgment. Whenever passion overwhelms reason, it disrupts the proper functioning of both soul and body.31 Such disorder obtains, for instance, when Gregory’s mother, Emmelia, grieves after learning of her son Naucratius’s death in a hunting accident. With Emmelia’s “reason giving way to passion,” “nature won out even over her.”32 She lost her breath and fainted. Smith argues that Nyssen here “means that it was [Emmelia’s] natural revulsion of death, which deprives us of loved ones and of life itself, that felled her.”33
Macrina, by contrast, maintains her composure during the time of mourning. Through rational dialogue, patient endurance, and the introduction of an ascetic regimen, she helped stabilize and coach her mother on the path to virtue. Macrina too was faced with the death of a loved one, but she transcended the weakness of her nature and helped rid her mother of the disruptive passion of grief.34 In a passage of interest to us, in view of Chrysostom’s Commentary on Job, Gregory reports that Macrina kept her mother from yielding to grief’s natural impulse: she did not “cry out against the evil or tear her clothes or lament over her suffering or stir up a threnody of mournful melodies.”35 The main problem with grieving over the dead, in Nyssen’s view, is that it betrays a loss of hope in the immortality and resurrection of the soul and the body.36
Yet when Nyssen describes Macrina’s resistance of grief, it is not, as Smith observes, in terms of “the stoic sage whose disinterest in the world has exempted her from experiencing any emotional turmoil.”37 Christian philosophy, as exemplified by Macrina, does not entail utter insensitivity. At the news of her brother Basil’s death, Macrina’s soul was affected emotionally.38 But this, along with the deaths of her other brother and mother, purified her soul and made manifest the greatness of her reasoning faculty (dianoia),39 the part of the soul that constitutes the image of God and is thus completely rational and not subject to pathos. Macrina’s victory consisted in keeping in check each pathos she experienced.40 Her reasoning was impassible.41 Macrina is here compared to Job, who despite the illness covering his body, “by means of his power of reasoned reflection did not allow his perception to incline towards his pain, but kept the faculty which felt the pain in the body, and would neither blunt the edge of his concentration upon his own proper activity nor interrupt the conversation when it embarked on higher matters.”42 Both Macrina and Job still felt pathē, but they turned their reasoning consciousness away from the pain and sickness of their shriveling bodies and toward the things of heaven.43
By drawing this parallel, Nyssen reads Job in light of a philosophy that, through its ascetic practice of virtue and the contemplation of heavenly things, seeks to move beyond human nature (anthrōpinēs physeōs) and the pathē.44 He describes Macrina in her last moments of life as having “transcended the common nature”45 to such a degree that it “was as if an angel had by some providence taken on human form, an angel who had no relation with or similarity to the life of the flesh and for whom it was not at all unreasonable to remain detached since the flesh was not part of her experience.”46 Nyssen can ultimately speak this way of Macrina because his purpose is to portray her as a holy woman whose life of philosophy, indeed whose very presence, conveys a sense of hope in the resurrection and humankind’s future angelic existence. Macrina has overcome the weakness of human nature and become akin to humankind in its resurrected state. She not only exemplifies but actually mediates a foretaste of humanity’s future impassibility.47
Philosophy for Gregory of Nyssa, as manifest in his Life of Saint Macrina, makes no room for grief, a disordered passion. Hence we see an explicit condemnation of such visible displays of grief as the rending of one’s garment. Consolation should raise one above common human nature, which fears death and loss and thus impedes hope in the resurrection. Nonetheless, Nyssen’s depiction of philosophy does not preclude emotional sensibility, as long as it is governed by reason.
In contrast to Nyssen’s depiction of Macrina, whose very presence seems almost sacramental in the salutary effect she wields upon those around her, Chrysostom focuses on scriptural figures as moral exemplars worthy of imitation. This is perhaps why, although Chrysostom, like Nyssen, considers it necessary that reason (dianoia, logismos) govern the emotions, he considers it so important to highlight Job’s humanity—as evidenced by his emotional displays of grief—and hence his imitability. Job is a philosopher in part because he so obviously shares in our common human nature.
Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistle 165 to Stagirius
Chrysostom’s view of philosophical moderation, that neither irrational emotion nor rational, philosophical restraint should exceed their limits, is not without precedent.48 Another of the Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus, expresses this position aptly in a letter to the Sophist Stagirius:
I learn that you are acting unphilosophically [aphilosophōs] with regard to misfortune, and I do not extol this. For it is necessary to write the truth, especially to a man who is a friend and makes a pretense of the good and beautiful. . . . I praise neither extreme lack of feeling [to lian apathēs] nor excessive affectivity [to agan peripathēs], since the former is inhumane [apanthrōpon], and the latter unphilosophical [aphilosophon]. The one treading the middle way ought rather to appear more philosophical [philosophōteron] than those who are utterly ungovernable [tōn agan aschetōn] and more humane [anthrōpikōteron] than those who philosophize without measure [tōn philosophountōn ametrōs].
Had I written to some other person, I might perhaps have had need of a lengthier discussion. It would have been necessary to offer sympathy [sympathein] in some things, exhortation in others, perhaps even reproach. For showing compassion [synalgein] is suitable for consolation, and a state of sickness requires treatment by someone healthy.49
In the remainder of the letter, Gregory argues that proper philosophy in the face of suffering strives to raise itself above attachment to the fleeting pleasures of this world and to recognize that God allows sufferings as a means to a salutary end. As we will see, Chrysostom expresses much the same view in his Commentary on Job. With these two examples of contemporary Christian responses to suffering in mind, let us turn to Chrysostom’s explication of Job as a philosophical exemplar.
Job’s Excellence as a Model for Others
A Balance between Philosophy and Emotion
With mighty rhetorical force, Chrysostom recounts the disasters that befall Job in quick succession. Finally, after receiving news of the deaths of his children, Job stands up and tears his cloak (Job 1:20a). Whereas Gregory of Nyssa, through Macrina, would forbid such a display of grief, Chrysostom offers a compassionate explanation: “Do not consider this matter to be a defeat, beloved. This shows most of all the victory. For if he had done nothing, he would have seemed to be without sympathy, but now he is at once a philosopher, a father, and a God-fearing man.”50 Job’s submission to God’s will immediately afterward, when he falls to the ground and claims that, as he came naked into the world, so will he exit it (Job 1:20b–21), confirms for Chrysostom the appropriateness of Job’s twofold reaction of grief and philosophical restraint: “Do you see how the magnitude of the misfortune does not overwhelm the God-fearing man? . . . He showed emotion [pathos]; he showed piety. And it was impossible that he, being human, not be pained at what had happened, just as it was impossible that he, being Job, be embittered. And in the former case he showed his nature, in the latter his devotion.”51
Chrysostom dwells on Job’s immense pain at his loss. He does not exhort his listeners to suppress feelings of sorrow and mourning during times of tragedy but insists that these feelings be expressed with the proper attitude of piety. Chrysostom observes that people often allow the blow of tragedy and the ensuing despondency (athymias) to seize their tongues, with the result that they blaspheme in spite of reason’s (dianoias) protests.52 With Job such is not the case. Chrysostom concludes that, when a person harbors bad thoughts about God, the cause is not the circumstances, be they fortune or misfortune, wealth or poverty, but rather a bad state of mind and purpose (dianoias ponēras).53
Chrysostom thus stresses the need to probe not just the words that one utters but also the state of mind from which they emerge. And this he does when Job, having been reduced to a horrifying state of illness, curses the day of his birth (Job 3:1–3). He calls attention to Job’s human nature: “Do you not see, beloved, that those who are cut cry aloud? Do we then rebuke them? Not at all. Rather, we pardon them. If he had not cried out these things, he would have seemed not to share in our common [human] nature.”54 This, it is worth noting, stands in contrast to Gregory of Nyssa’s impression of Macrina before her death, when she no longer seemed to him to share in the common nature. Nyssen would have considered an outburst on Macrina’s part as a failure of the tests she faced, whereas Chrysostom views Job’s forlorn cries as part of the educational process leading to victory. Just as a doctor inflicts pain during an operation in order to help the patient heal,55 so God, in testing Job, allows for extremely painful measures. It is natural that Job should cry out. Indeed, it is imperative that Job should cry out, for if he did not, he would not appear human. If that were the case, his victory over Satan in this trial would not be so glorious,56 nor would he be an example that Chrysostom’s listeners could follow.
Chrysostom then examines the source of Job’s curse (Job 3:1–3). These words derive, he says, from despondency, not from some evil or blasphemy.57 He reaches this conclusion by observing first and foremost that God has pronounced Job just.58 Job curses not God or God’s act of creation but only the day of his birth,59 a day that cannot be destroyed because it lies in the past and is consequently nonexistent.60 These are not accusatory words but words of one who is suffering and searching for the reason for his pain.61 Additionally, Chrysostom does not fault one who, amid such pain, longs for death as a final respite.62 To be sure, Job’s piety is even more evident in that he does not defy God’s commandment and kill himself.63 Indeed, the words that betray Job’s yearning for death reveal Job’s philosophia, since he recognizes the limits of human nature. When Job muses how in death he would lie next to the wealthy and powerful kings and lords of the earth (3:13–15), Chrysostom praises him: “See that even in misfortune [Job speaks] philosophical words. In no way did wealth assist them. In nothing did power benefit them. Death prevails over all.”64 And when Job cries out that what he had feared has now befallen him (3:25), Chrysostom exclaims: “And it is certainly amazing that with a pure and untouchable life he expected the opposite [i.e., misfortune], and not only expected, but feared it, keeping in mind what had happened in the past as with Abraham. But should we who every day pass our lives in evil not expect the opposite [i.e., misfortune]? See how even before his trial Job philosophized!”65 Even in good times, according to Chrysostom, Job avoided an inflated and naive confidence, since he understood that human life and worldly things are transitory. Job kept in mind God’s power and justice.
Through his emphasis on Job’s nature, then, Chrysostom can hold together Job’s emotion and his reasoning. The obvious displays of grief on Job’s part, such as tearing his cloak, imbue his example of philosophy with credibility. They show that God did not create him insensitive (anaisthēton) to pain. God permits Job to be overcome by emotions (ta pathē) in order that we might see how well he restrains himself while suffering.66 The depth of his agony is incontestable. Job’s sensitivity to pain, his human vulnerability, only underscores the greatness of his nature. It is all the more amazing that Job has learned about God and brought that knowledge to bear on his life through only the illumination of his natural reason (tēs physeōs tous logismous lampontas).67 Job’s human nature, as it manifests itself in his grief and suffering, is thus essential for his claim to philosophy. His vigilant mind-set, piety, and humility helped rein in potentially errant thoughts and words, so that an otherwise understandable sense of despondency did not issue in blasphemy. Precisely in this crucial juncture of sympathy, wisdom, and virtue lies Job’s philosophy.
The Elements of Bad Philosophizing
Chrysostom’s characterization of Job as a philosopher occurs in the context of criticizing other types of philosophizing. He takes issue with a Stoic attitude68 that would open the door to those who accuse God of capricious injustice. Job first attributes all things to God, who can accordingly give and take as he sees fit. Only afterward does he say, “Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). If Job had begun his speech with the doxology, Chrysostom contends, then it would have seemed as if Job were “simply philosophizing,”69 that is, as if Job would endure whatever God does, be it just or not. As it is, however, Job does not “simply” philosophize; rather, he presents right and just arguments for God’s actions and providence in the world, thereby silencing those who would accuse God of injustice. One must recognize all that one has been given as a gift from God, even if possession of that gift is brief.70 Hence we see that for Chrysostom, philosophy entails more than just enduring what one cannot control. It also includes exhibiting trust and faith in God’s wisdom and justice, and in his love of humankind manifest in the tests by which he strengthens people in virtue.71
As we have seen, however, trust in God does not preclude lamentation.72 Had Job not cried out and torn his garment when he learned of the collapse of his wealth and the deaths of his children, he would have seemed to be without feeling. Chrysostom goes to great lengths to describe the depth of Job’s suffering, but he concedes that, to measure accurately the magnitude of another’s suffering, one must experience such a trial oneself.73 Job’s friends come to visit under the pretext of wanting to comfort him, but their accusatory speeches only exacerbate Job’s pain and intensify his feelings of isolation. Like a well-trained doctor who cuts open wounds, one needs the proper expertise in order to behave in a manner fitting to the misfortune. Many, like Job’s companions, only make matters worse out of either malice or ignorance.74
When Job responds to his friends in 16:3–5, Chrysostom interprets him as saying: “I wished . . . that your situation was like mine and that you were in my place. And I would be able to shake my head and do these things which you do to me. Then you would learn not to philosophize before the misfortunes of another.”75 What exactly is the problem with the friends’ philosophizing? As the Septuagintal text reads, “You tread upon me without pity” (Job 6:21a), Chrysostom adds: “Without sympathy [asympathōs], . . . reprovingly, accusingly.”76 The friends miss the point that suffering need not be the consequence of sin but can be a test intended to strengthen faith; their speeches are deleterious because they develop into an indifferent philosophy, speculation at the expense of others’ misfortune, ultimately devoid of sympathy.77
Chrysostom further views sensitivity to suffering as part of a philosophy practiced in proper measure. Job was moderate, insofar as he ripped his garment only at the news of his children’s deaths. “But if one of the philosophers,” Chrysostom continues, “in making demands beyond measure, would say that he ought not do these things, let him learn that even Paul cried [Acts 21:13], and that Jesus himself shed tears [John 11:35]. Let him know what it means to mourn for children [paidōn sympatheia].”78 Chrysostom clearly considers a philosophy that seeks to suppress natural human reactions to tragedy, thus being devoid of sympathy, as excessive and incompatible with the Christian gospel.
The gospel teaches the proper balance of philosophical restraint and sympathy for human nature. Job’s example is one that anticipates these precepts and thus renders him an excellent model of virtue for Chrysostom’s Christian audience. Job proleptically fulfills the gospel in that he demonstrates restraint and the fear of God, but Christ and Paul also give evangelical warrant to Job’s sensitivity to pain and suffering. After Job declares that, just as he came naked from his mother’s womb, so he will also perish (Job 1:21), Chrysostom comments: “See how he distances himself, see how he removes himself from the mourning. . . . See the apostolic words once again fulfilled through his deeds: ‘For we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take something out [of it]’ [1 Tim. 6:7]. See such words as are spoken are of use not only to him but also to us.”79 For Chrysostom, therefore, Job is first and foremost an example of philosophy, and as such a true human being, on account of his pious response to suffering.
Job’s Virtue toward Others: His Philanthropy
This fear of God brings with it knowledge of the Creator. In fact, Chrysostom states that observation of God’s creation leads not only to mere knowledge of God but also to true philosophy.80 Yet philosophy is lived knowledge of God. For this reason, Chrysostom argues that not only from the order of creation but also from God’s very nature and deeds one must conclude that God hates evil and loves humankind (philanthrōpos). Acting out of a natural aversion to evil rather than a fear of punishment, people ought therefore to imitate God’s philanthropy.81 Moreover, the fear of God requires humility and detachment from worldly things. To Job’s question “How can a mortal be just before God?” (Job 9:2b), Chrysostom replies, paraphrasing Job’s words: “‘I know that on account of sins I suffer these things,’—do you see the philosophy, how he is not haughty?—‘and I know that there is a great distance between me and God.’”82
While Job’s detachment from worldly things helps him endure his trial, it does not prevent him from being engaged in the world. To the contrary, Chrysostom observes, it keeps him from clinging to his many possessions and enables him to share them generously with the orphan, the widow, and the sick.83 Job imitates God’s philanthropy in his humane treatment of others. With regard to the treatment of his servants, Job shows himself philanthropic (philanthrōpos) and not violent.84 In these acts of charity, Job’s humility is once again manifest, as he does not seek praise or fame and even readily confesses his sins to all people. In Chrysostom’s words: “That is the greatest philosophy, the standard of virtue, to hide one’s good deeds, but to parade in the open one’s sins. People today do the opposite.”85
The care that Job shows for others extends not merely to their bodies but also to their souls. Chrysostom argues that Job is disappointed in his wife because she has encouraged him to curse God and die, a grievous impiety that runs contrary to the way he has educated her. Job is sensitive to how much she, as a wife and mother, also suffers, and in scolding her he strives to educate her, to change the bad attitude that produced her blasphemy.86 Similarly, according to Chrysostom, Job feels pain not only because he lost his children but also because he lost “students of his piety.”87 In the same vein, when Job’s friends come to visit him, Job’s pain is greater because he realizes that word of his condition has spread far and wide. He is distressed, Chrysostom contends, not because of his longing for fame and glory, but rather because he fears that those whom he earlier helped, whom he has comforted, might become unsettled and scandalized when they hear of his plight and that he himself has no one to comfort him.88 In his tireless care for others, Job stands in stark contrast to his friends, who can only babble useless pseudo-wisdom to their suffering companion.
Thus we see that, for Chrysostom, Job exemplifies the appropriate mixture of philosophy, philanthropy, and sympathy. He is an anticipation of the gospel, of “the grace and the philanthropy of our Lord Jesus Christ,”89 so Christians are to imitate his example. Job can serve as a model because he is really human. He too suffers pain; he too has sympatheia. As a true human, he recognizes in humility the finitude and transitoriness of his condition vis-à-vis his incomprehensible creator. This realism in the face of human weakness and death is not the occasion for resignation and defeat but the opportunity to achieve true humanity through the fear of God and practice of virtue. Chrysostom points precisely to Job’s virtue of soul: “Let no one say: Such and such a one was [only] human. See, Job was also a human. Do you see the piety of nature? He was human, and he could maintain virtue faithfully. In the dwelling of clay he manifested such piety.”90
If Job could demonstrate such virtue and piety, so too could the members of Chrysostom’s congregation who shared in the same humanity. Chrysostom thus employed the figure of Job as part of his pastoral program of ethical instruction. This pastoral focus is evident in his massive homiletic output, and it consistently governed his method of scriptural commentary,91 the primary locus of which was the homily. One of Chrysostom’s primary goals in commenting on Scripture was the improvement of his congregants’ behavior. Chrysostom makes this explicit in his second homily on the obscurity of the Old Testament: “The reason we comment on Scripture is not only for you to get to know Scripture but for you also to correct your behavior: if this does not occur, we are wasting our time in reading it out, we are wasting our time in explaining it.”92 Toward that end, Chrysostom underscores Job’s excellence as a model of the proper Christian reaction to suffering. This raises the question, though, why an Old Testament figure is accorded such prominence. The answer lies, I think, in Chrysostom’s understanding of the relationship between the two Testaments of Scripture and in his consequent exegetical strategy for the Old Testament. In the final section of the essay, then, let us examine briefly how Chrysostom situates Job into his broader project of Old Testament commentary.
Job’s Excellence as an Example of Chrysostom’s Use of the Old Testament
We have begun to see how, in Chrysostom’s view, Job’s life of virtue anticipates the ethical teachings of the gospel. In what space remains, I suggest how this reading of Job fits into Chrysostom’s understanding of the Old Testament as a whole.93 It becomes clear that the practice of philosophy that we have elucidated is linked to an entire theology of Scripture, a theology that especially guides Chrysostom’s project of Old Testament commentary.
Accommodation (Synkatabasis) as the Key to Chrysostom’s Scriptural Hermeneutic
Robert C. Hill has argued that Chrysostom conceived of the Old Testament as a gesture of God’s love and care for humankind within the broader incarnational trajectory of salvation history. For Chrysostom, Hill argues, “The Scriptures, like the Incarnation, come to us as a gesture of divine considerateness,—synkatabasis—a loving gesture, with nothing patronizing about it, nothing to suggest ‘condescension.’”94 In reaching out to humankind in its limitedness, God reveals his love for humankind, his philanthrōpia. The purpose of accommodation (synkatabasis) is to guide embodied humans gradually, by means of the very materiality of scriptural language, from the material things of this world to the spiritual things of heaven. Ultimately, God’s accommodation of humankind in Scripture finds its “prime analogue . . . [in] that (other) Incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus.”95
The Obscurity of the Old Testament as Synkatabasis and the Impetus to Philosophia
In his first homily on the obscurity of the Old Testament, Chrysostom links the reading of Scripture to one’s life practice. Those who encounter difficulty in reading and applying the sacred texts are akin to those who permit “the soul to be submerged by the passions and suffer shipwreck, whereas experienced people practiced in nobly bearing such things, like a steersman at the tiller, put their mind above the passions and do not stop adopting every means until they guide the vessel towards the tranquil harbor of sound values [philosophias].”96 In these first paragraphs of his homily on the Old Testament, Chrysostom has drawn the essential connection between reading Scripture and training in philosophy.
Chrysostom provides explicit reasons for the enigmatic nature of the Old Testament. Some have to do with the nature of the text itself, others with limitations on the part of its hearers or readers.97 We will look primarily at the reasons that address the question of divine synkatabasis and the cultivation of philosophy. Chrysostom first raises the issue of obscurity by pointing to the relative clarity of doctrine in the New Testament:
The Old Testament, in fact, resembles riddles, there is much difficulty in it, and its books are hard to grasp, whereas the New is clearer and easier. Why is it, someone will ask, that they have this character, apart from the fact that the New talks about more important things, about the kingdom of heaven, resurrection of bodies and ineffable things that also surpass human understanding?98
In the second homily, however, Chrysostom advocates a theory of continuity and development between the two Testaments. Commenting on 2 Corinthians 3–4, where Paul interprets the veil covering the glory of Moses’s face with reference to the law, Chrysostom argues that the lofty teachings of the New Testament were present already in the Old but were covered over by its obscurity, as if by a veil:
Likewise the Law, too, since at that stage [the Jews were] incapable of learning the perfect doctrines characterized by sound values [philosophias], both those about Christ and the New Testament (all these being stored in the Old Scripture, as in a treasure), had a veil, out of considerateness [synkatabainōn] to them and to preserve all these riches for us, so that when Christ came and we turned to him the veil would be taken off.99
Here Chrysostom speaks explicitly of God’s synkatabasis, his considerateness toward and accommodation of the Jews, who were not yet ready to receive the truths of the New Testament. This gesture of divine accommodation forms part of a larger trajectory of God’s love for humankind in its weakness:
Since, you see, some were bound to ask, Why did Christ not come with divinity revealed instead of being clad in flesh, the explanation was given to all these in advance through the face of the servant [Moses]: if Jews could not bear to look upon the servant’s glory that came to him later, how would they have managed to look upon the divinity clearly revealed afterwards?100
The incarnation is the culmination of God’s grand gesture of accommodating love for humankind.
Chrysostom thus maintains the continuity of the law and the gospel of Christ against those who would try to set them in opposition.101 The law retains significance for the Christian community. He underscores that knowledge of the truths contained in Scripture must translate into the right practice of philosophy in one’s life. The Old Testament and its law play an indispensable role in this philosophical training: “The one [the law] shows the way to this great value system [tē megalē tautē philosophia], the other [the gospel of Christ] takes them from that point to the very summit.”102 The very “kinship of the Law with grace”103 enables Chrysostom to appropriate countless Old Testament figures as examples of a philosophical way of life in anticipation of Christ.104
Situating the Book of Job in the History of God’s Synkatabasis
God’s adaptable care and foresight for humans are clear both in the person of Job himself and in the story of his virtue. At the beginning of his Commentary on Job, Chrysostom investigates Job’s historical context. He argues that even though Job was a descendent of Esau, his ancestry in no way hindered his practice of virtue. But because he was not of the line of Jacob, he inhabited a foreign land. Thus we learn that God has “sent teachers to all people.”105 Indeed, God extended the duration of Job’s plight and made him a spectacle (theatron) for all to see, so that all people might recognize the material evidence of God’s love.106
To the question of why God would expose a just man to the whims of Satan, Chrysostom answers: “‘So that the devil might be silenced,’ God says, ‘so that the just one might appear more brightly, so that I might leave behind for those who come later the medicine of patience for affliction.’”107 The example of Job’s trial can aid all those who suffer, especially those over whom God has lovingly set the devil as a harsh and terrifying pedagogue, so that they might remain vigilant. Throughout the suffering that Satan inflicts, God strengthens those who love him.108
God’s providential care is further evident in the transmission of the story of Job. Chrysostom situates the story in Israel’s history: “When the Jews were in Egypt, and this land [Palestine] was without guides, they had the example of Job.”109 This is significant for Chrysostom because it puts Job prior to Moses and the law. Although Job was a foreigner and predated Moses, he knew about God. In fact, even Job’s friends had some idea of God. But who taught them? In accordance with his positive anthropology, Chrysostom hints at a natural knowledge of God available to all. He instructs his listeners, “Observe how from the beginning the knowledge of God was clear everywhere.”110 And then he points to the book of Job’s role in helping spread this knowledge: “For it seems to me that [Job] lived before the Law—it is immediately clear—such that one might reasonably say that this book was the first to teach and announce the knowledge of God, but clearly, to be sure, through a life of patience.”111 The knowledge of God, for Chrysostom, cannot be abstracted from one’s daily way of life. This insight is at the heart of true philosophy.
Chrysostom has thereby given us a sense of where, historically, he locates the figure of Job and the text narrating his struggles. While in his homilies on the obscurity of the Old Testament he describes how the law was God’s loving means of teaching the Jews about himself in a way commensurate to their ability to learn, he now identifies an even earlier stage of divine pedagogy. Through the story of Job, God has provided a means of coming to know him that is available to all people: the practice of the virtue of patient endurance. Despite its early place in Chrysostom’s biblical chronology, Job’s example is in no way obsolete. Rather, Job’s historical priority to the law and Christ invests his example of philosophic virtue with a unique significance in the scriptural witness to God’s accommodating love for humankind.
Conclusion: Job as a Figure of Evangelical Philosophy
In the figure of Job, therefore, Chrysostom finds a human being through whom God lovingly offers philosophy even before giving the law. Job has learned about God and brought that knowledge to bear on his life through the illumination of his natural reason.112 He had no teacher. His life of virtue and patience is a model for people of all stripes. Chrysostom exhorts his listeners: “See . . . the one who pursued virtue prior to the Law as if it were the time after the Law.”113 He cites 1 Timothy 1:9, “For the just one the Law is not established,” thereby signaling that Job’s virtue already exceeds the law. Chrysostom can thereupon ask, “Whence does he exemplify the practice of the Gospel, whence such great patience?”114 For Chrysostom, Job’s example of patience and virtue, of humane and sympathetic philosophy amid such horrific suffering, anticipates the highest ethical teaching of both the law and the gospel. Job, the man whom no one taught, is swept up into the whole continuous movement of divine pedagogy, of synkatabasis, God’s loving accommodation of weak humans so that they might know him. Job anticipates Christ’s example and teachings. “Do you see,” Chrysostom asks, “that Christ came as a teacher of nothing new or foreign?”115
The figure of Job thus appears at the heart of Chrysostom’s Old Testament exegetical strategy and, by extension, his overall pastoral program. This is indeed the significance of Job for Chrysostom: as a figure who practiced Christ’s teachings even before the law and the gospel, he represents an example open to both Jew and Christian, even, one might say, to all those outside (or prior to) the law and the gospel. Through the figure of Job, John Chrysostom shows God to be a truly humane God and the Christian gospel to be the truly humane philosophy.
The virtue evident in this philosophy, in keeping with its human character, calls not only for resilience in the face of adversity but for true sympatheia, true shared feeling with one’s fellow humans. Personal suffering demands piety and humility, a detachment from worldly things, and a faith in the God who not only punishes the wrongdoer but also tests his faithful. Those who suffer are not to be reproached when they cry out, when they shed tears, or when they mourn, but rather, they are to be comforted. Job’s friends make the mistake of thinking they understand God’s ways. But Chrysostom makes clear that they would in fact, like Job, exhibit more philosophy and more wisdom if they humbly admitted that they cannot grasp the mystery of God’s providence in the world and instead practiced virtue and cared for others. Indeed, just as God shows his love for humankind by his providential creation and governance of the universe, so, according to Chrysostom, the one practicing true human philosophy should care for others. Chrysostom can therefore contend that for his listeners and readers it is “the greatest philosophy” to have examples of God’s punishments and tests always present in their minds.116 These are instances of his love for humankind. Chrysostom upholds Job as one of the best examples of a human being, yet more than a human, a philosopher, and still more: a philosopher with sympathy for his fellow humans.
1. John Chrysostom, Commentary on Job (= Comm. Job) 51.1–3; 3.1.15–18 (SC 346:198). Translations from the Greek of Chrysostom’s Commentary on Job are my own and derive from Kommentar zu Hiob, trans. and ed. Ursula Hagedorn and Dieter Hagedorn, PTS 35 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). There is a second critical edition of the text: John Chrysostom, Commentaire sur Job, trans. and ed. Henri Sorlin, with the assistance of Louis Neyrand, SJ, SC 346 and 348 (Paris: Cerf, 1988). The first part of each parenthetical reference to a quote from Chrysostom’s commentary consists of page and line numbers and corresponds to the critical edition of 1990. The second reference is to chapter, section, and line number, respectively, of 1988. The volume and page numbers from Sorlin’s edition in Sources chrétiennes (SC) then follow in parentheses.
2. Francis Leduc, “Penthos et larmes dans l’oeuvre de Saint Jean Chrysostome,” Proche-Orient chrétien 41, no. 1 (1991): 222–23; for other parallels between the Stoics and Chrysostom with regard to suffering, see also K. Elser, “Der heilige Chrysostomus und die Philosophie,” Theologische Quartalschrift 76 (1894): 568–69; and Anne-Marie Malingrey, “Philosophia”: Étude d’un groupe de mots dans la littérature grecque, des Présocratiques au IVe siecle après J.-C., Études et Commentaires 40 (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1961), 273.
3. Sorlin, Commentaire, 35n1.
4. Hagedorn and Hagedorn, Kommentar zu Hiob, 38.
5. Léon Dieu, “Le commentaire de Saint Jean Chrysostome sur Job,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 13 (1912): 650–68.
6. See Sorlin, Commentaire, 35–69.
7. Robert C. Hill, Reading the Old Testament in Antioch, Bible in Ancient Christianity 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 106, declares, “[Chrysostom’s commentary on Proverbs] and the other sapiential commentaries deserve editing and further study.”
8. Sorlin uses some of these thematic similarities to buttress his argument in favor of the commentary’s authenticity. He provides notes on several of them; see Commentaire, 53–65, 53n2, 88n2, 98n1, 106n1, 156n1, and so forth.
9. Ibid., 58.
10. Ibid., 58–59; cf. n. 1 above.
11. In PG 63:477–86; see Sorlin, Commentaire, 70–71.
12. Comm. Job 3.11–12; 1.1.2–3 (SC 346:84).
13. Hill, Reading, 177–82, examines the “careful—if sometimes uneasy—balance of the respective roles played by divine grace and human effort in the moral life” struck by the Antiochene pastors in their Old Testament commentary. For them the fall did not damage human nature or its exercise of free will.
14. Comm. Job 3.26–27; 1.1.17–18 (SC 346:84).
15. Comm. Job 4.15–17; 1.1.35–37 (SC 346:86).
16. Comm. Job 4.11–12; 1.1.31 (SC 346:86).
17. Comm. Job 4.19–22; 1.1.39–43 (SC 346:86).
18. See the treatments of Chrysostom’s use of the term philosophia in Ivo auf der Maur, OSB, Mönchtum und Glaubensverkündigung in den Schriften des Hl. Johannes Chrysostomus, Paradosis: Beiträge zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur und Theologie 14 (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1959), 87–92; and Malingrey, “Philosophia,” 263–88 (chap. 8). See also G. J. M. Bartelink, “‘Philosophie’ et ‘Philosophe’ dans quelques oeuvres de Jean Chrysostome,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 36 (October–December 1960): 487–92. For a wider survey of early Christian use of the term philosophia, see Malingrey’s aforementioned work and Gustave Bardy, “‘Philosophie’ et ‘Philosophe’ dans le vocabulaire chrétien des premiers siècles,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 25 (April–December 1949): 97–108. For further literature regarding philosophy and the early Christian fathers, see Jean-Louis Quantin, “A propos de la traduction de philosophia dan l’Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae de Saint Jean Chrysostome,” Revue des sciences religieuses 61, no. 4 (October 1987): 187n1.
19. Malingrey, “Philosophia,” 267. For a thorough treatment of both the implicit and explicit significations of the word philosophia in Chrysostom’s Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life, especially with regard to pagan Greek thought, see Quantin, “Traduction,” 187–97.
20. Chrysostom, Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae 2.2 (PG 47:333); 2.8 (PG 47:344); 3.20 (PG 47:384).
21. Malingrey, “Philosophia,” 284–86, nonetheless notes that, even in Against the Opponents of the Monastic Life, the philosophy of Christ is available to all, ascetic or not: Adversus oppugnatores vitae monasticae 3.15 (PG 47:372).
22. Auf der Maur, Mönchtum, 89–90; as exemplars of philosophical living, Chrysostom cites Adam, Job, Abraham, Sarah, Anna, the Samaritan woman, Moses, Samuel, Saul, David, the three youths in the fire, the mother of the Maccabees, the Magi, Lazarus, the Canaanite woman, the woman with the flow of blood, and others.
23. Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam ad Romanos 14.9 (PG 60:535); 22.4 (PG 60:613); Homiliae in Acta apostolorum 43.3 (PG 60:306); Homiliae in epistulam ad Titum 6.2 (PG 62.697).
24. Chrysostom, De virginitate 35.1.17, in La virginité, ed. Herbert Musurillo, SJ, trans. Bernard Grillet, SC 125 (Paris: Cerf, 1966), 208; Homiliae in Joannem 5:19 2 (PG 56:250); cf. auf der Maur, Mönchtum, 91.
25. Cf. Chrysostom, De sacerdotio 4.9, in Sur le sacerdoce, trans. and ed. Anne-Marie Malingrey, SC 272 (Paris: Cerf, 1980), 280: “en tais allotriais philosophein symphorais [to . . . speculate upon another’s misfortunes],” in John Chrysostom, Six Books on the Priesthood, trans. Graham Neville (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 126.
26. Comm. Job 45.11–12; 2.11.15–16 (SC 346:184).
27. Gregory of Nyssa, Vita sanctae Macrinae 11.6, in Vie de sainte Macrine, trans. and ed. Pierre Maraval, SC 178 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), 174. English quotations of this work, unless otherwise noted, are taken from St. Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical Works, trans. Virginia Woods Callahan, FC 58 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967), here 170.
28. J. Warren Smith, “A Just and Reasonable Grief: The Death and Function of a Holy Woman in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 12, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 66.
29. Plato, Phaedo 63E–64A.
30. Smith, “Reasonable Grief,” 68.
31. Ibid., 69.
32. Vita sanctae Macrinae 9.17–20 (SC 178:170; Callahan, St. Gregory, 169).
33. Smith, “Reasonable Grief,” 70.
34. Vita sanctae Macrinae 10.17–24 (SC 178:174; Callahan, St. Gregory, 170).
35. Vita sanctae Macrinae 10.8–10 (SC 178:172; Callahan, St. Gregory, 170). Interestingly, the one mention of Job in The Life of Saint Macrina passes over the fact that he tears his garment and curses the day of his birth. Perhaps Nyssen does not allow Scripture to inform his understanding of philosophy as much as Chrysostom does. Nyssen’s Life of Moses similarly seems to omit the less positive parts of Moses’s biography in favor of a narrative of uninterrupted progress in virtue.
36. Smith, “Reasonable Grief,” 74.
37. Ibid., 72.
38. Thus epathe tēn psychēn, in Vita sanctae Macrinae 14.11–12 (SC 178:188; Callahan, St. Gregory, 173).
39. Vita sanctae Macrinae 14.20–23 (SC 178:190; Callahan, St. Gregory, 173).
40. Smith, “Reasonable Grief,” 72.
41. Thus en apatheia tēn dianoian, in Vita sanctae Macrinae 22.29–30 (SC 178:214).
42. Vita sanctae Macrinae 18.3–7 (SC 178:198–200); English translation from The Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Kevin Corrigan, Peregrina Translations Series 10; Matrologia Graeca (Toronto: Peregrina, 1987), 42, alt.
43. See Corrigan, Life, 70–71nn36 and 46.
44. Vita sanctae Macrinae 17.27–30 (SC 178:198; Callahan, St. Gregory, 175).
45. Vita sanctae Macrinae 22.21 (SC 178:214; Callahan, St. Gregory, 179).
46. Vita sanctae Macrinae 22.26–31 (SC 178:214; Callahan, St. Gregory, 179).
47. Smith, “Reasonable Grief,” 71–72.
48. For the issue of keeping grief within bounds, see Leduc, “Penthos et larmes,” 243–44.
49. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistula 165, in Gregory of Nazianzus, Briefe, ed. Paul Gallay, GCS 53 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1969), 119–20, with my trans.
50. Comm. Job 25.18–20; 1.21.2–5 (SC 346:136).
51. Comm. Job 26.24–25; 26.27–27.2; 1.23.6–7, 10–14 (SC 346:138–40).
52. Comm. Job 31.20–23; 1.26.13–16 (SC 346:150).
53. Comm. Job 32.28–33.21; 1.26.51–53 (SC 346:152).
54. Comm. Job 51.1–4; 3.1.15–18 (SC 346:198).
55. Hagedorn and Hagedorn, Kommentar zu Hiob, 51n79.
56. Chrysostom brings the import of Job’s victory into even greater relief by an explicit contrast with the devil’s fall: “This immediately upset the devil, that Job is called God’s servant. God thereby reproaches the devil and strives to turn him around: ‘You were also previously a servant, and you are without a body, but he has a body and is on earth, while you were in heaven’” (Comm. Job 16.25–29; 1.11.26–30 [SC 346:116]).
57. Comm. Job 51.17–19; 3.1.35–36 (SC 346:200).
58. Comm. Job 51.8–15; 3.1.24–33 (SC 346:200).
59. Comm. Job 53.22–25; 3.4.23–26 (SC 346:204–6).
60. Comm. Job 51.19–21; 3.1.36–38 (SC 346:200).
61. Comm. Job 53.15–16; 3.4.15–16 (SC 346:204).
62. Comm. Job 52.25–30; 3.3.18–23 (SC 346:202).
63. Comm. Job 53.12–14; 3.4.13–15 (SC 346:204).
64. Comm. Job 54.19–21; 3.4.48–51 (SC 346:206–8).
65. Comm. Job 58.6–10; 3.7.15–20 (SC 346:214).
66. Comm. Job 26.4–8; 1.21.14–18 (SC 346:138).
67. Comm. Job 3.2–3; prologue 4.8 (SC 346:82).
68. Here I follow the Hagedorns’ interpretive translation of “simply philosophizing” as “being of stoic impassibility” (Kommentar zu Hiob, 30).
69. Comm. Job 30.22; 1.25.44 (SC 346:148).
70. Comm. Job 30.13–28; 1.25.34–50 (SC 346:146–48).
71. See Comm. Job 15.6–7; 1.9.67–69 (SC 346:112), where God, out of his love for humankind, his philanthropy, brings good out of the trials caused by demons; similarly Comm. Job 21.1–15; 1.16.22–39 (SC 346:126), where the same love (agapēs) that led God to call Job just and blameless also leads him to permit the devil to harm him, in order that the fact of Job’s suffering might testify to his virtue.
72. “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away” (Job 1:21).
73. Comm. Job 39.26–28; 2.7.22–24 (SC 346:170).
74. Comm. Job 58.17–59.1; 4.1.3–18 (SC 346:218).
75. Comm. Job 121.15–17; 16.2.6–10 (SC 348:22).
76. Comm. Job 81.4; 6.12.2 (SC 346:270).
77. Job’s friends are mistaken when they assert that he suffers on account of his sin. Elsewhere, however, Chrysostom is clear that one ought to have compassion especially for those who suffer just punishment from God. This, he argues, is a true testament of one’s humanity and philosophy, that one can sympathize even with those who arouse the greatest revulsion in the upright heart: “We see men-slayers, wicked men, suffering punishment, and we are distressed, and grieve for them [daknometha kai algoumen]. Let us not be philosophical beyond measure [Mē hyper to metron philosophoi ōmen]: let us show ourselves full of pity [eleēmones], that we may be pitied; there is nothing equal to this beautiful trait: nothing so marks to us the stamp of human nature [ton anthrōpinon . . . charaktēra] as the showing of pity [to eleein], as the being kind to our fellow humans [to philanthrōpon einai]” (Homiliae in Acta apostolorum 43.3 [PG 60:306; NPNF1 11:266]). When set against this view of philanthropic, sympathetic philosophy, Job’s friends appear in an even more inhumane light, because they did not even know for sure that Job was guilty.
78. Comm. Job 27.7–10; 1.23.19–22 (SC 346:140).
79. Comm. Job 28.2–7; 1.23.40–45 (SC 346:142).
80. Comm. Job 163.8–9; 31.11.6–8 (SC 348:140).
81. Comm. Job 174.11–16; 34.4.6–11 (SC 348:170).
82. Comm. Job 92.10–12; 9.1.10–2.2 (SC 346:308).
83. Comm. Job 162.14–32; 31.10.1–18 (SC 348:138).
84. Comm. Job 164.12–13; 31.14.3–5 (SC 348:142).
85. Comm. Job 164.30–165.2; 31.15.18–20 (SC 348:144).
86. Comm. Job 47.17–20; 2.14.2–6 (SC 346:190).
87. Comm. Job 27.16; 1.23.29 (SC 346:140).
88. Comm. Job 49.2–20; 2.17.17–37 (SC 346:192–94).
89. Comm. Job 200.10–11; 42.9.18–19 (SC 348:240).
90. Comm. Job 17.10–13; 1.11.44–48 (SC 346:118).
91. Hill, Reading, 107, 183–92, 195–97; cf. Robert C. Hill, “St. John Chrysostom: Preacher on the Old Testament,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 46, nos. 3–4 (2001): 267–86.
92. Chrysostom, Homilies on the Obscurity of the Old Testament (= Obscurit.) 2.7.51–53, in Omelie sull’oscurità delle profezie, trans. and ed. Sergio Zincone, Verba Seniorum 12 (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1998), 148; this work is cited below as Omelie; the English translation is taken from John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Obscurity of the Old Testament, in Old Testament Homilies, vol. 3, trans. Robert C. Hill (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2003), 43.
93. Here, unfortunately, I can only gesture at the broader theological and exegetical context of his Commentary on Job, leaving aside a more detailed analysis until a later date.
94. Hill, Reading, 36–37; our treatment here of synkatabasis is unfortunately but necessarily brief. For thorough treatments of this concept in Chrysostom, see David M. Rylaarsdam, John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy: The Coherence of His Theology and Preaching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); and Margaret M. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 40 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000).
95. Hill, Reading, 39.
96. Obscurit. 1.1.24–31 (Omelie, 64; Hill, Homilies, 8–9).
97. Robert C. Hill, “Chrysostom on the Obscurity of the Old Testament,” Orientalia christiana periodica 67, no. 2 (2001): 371–83, divides them into objective and circumstantial reasons.
98. Obscurit. 1.3.6–11 (Omelie, 74–76; Hill, Homilies, 13).
99. Obscurit. 2.1.49–60 (Omelie, 110–12; Hill, Homilies, 27).
100. Obscurit. 1.6.62–67 (Omelie, 98–100; Hill, Homilies, 23).
101. Obscurit. 1.7.57–59 (Omelie, 104; Hill, Homilies, 25).
102. Obscurit. 1.7.59–61 (Omelie, 104; Hill, Homilies, 25).
103. Obscurit. 1.7.53 (Omelie, 104; Hill, Homilies, 25).
104. Robert C. Hill, “Chrysostom as Old Testament Commentator,” Estudios bíblicos 46, no. 1 (1988): 74, notes that Chrysostom often interprets Old Testament figures as moral exemplars worthy of imitation rather than as pivotal figures in salvation history. But is it not perhaps precisely their practice of philosophy, their incarnation and anticipation of the teachings of the gospel, that invests them, in Chrysostom’s view, with such significance in the trajectory of God’s incarnate love?
105. Comm. Job 2.3–4; prologue 2.5–6 (SC 346:80).
106. Comm. Job 2.11–27; prologue 3.1–20 (SC 346:80–82).
107. Comm. Job 21.3–5; 1.16.25–27 (SC 346:126).
108. Comm. Job 14.28–15.7; 1.9.58–69 (SC 346:112).
109. Comm. Job 2.28–30; prologue 4.2–3 (SC 346:82).
110. Comm. Job 2.5–6; prologue 2.6–7 (SC 346:80).
111. Comm. Job 2.7–10; prologue 2.9–12 (SC 346:80).
112. Comm. Job 3.2–3; prologue 4.8 (SC 346:82).
113. Comm. Job 2.30–3.2; prologue 4.3–6 (SC 346:82).
114. Comm. Job 2.4–5; prologue 4.10–11 (SC 346:82).
115. Comm. Job 3.7–8; prologue 4.13–14 (SC 346:82).
116. Comm. Job 130.24; 19.12.7 (SC 348:48).