are more doctrinal and controversial, being directed against the Anomœans (Arians).30 We
have no commentaries from him on Mark and Luke, nor on the Catholic Epistles and the
Apocalypse. The fifty-five homilies on the Acts, delivered at Constantinople between Easter
and Whitsuntide, when that book was read in the public lessons, contain much interesting
information about the manners and customs of the age, but are the least polished of his
productions. Erasmus, who translated them into Latin, doubted their genuineness. His life
in Constantinople was too much disturbed to leave him quiet leisure for preparation. The
Homilies on the Hebrews, likewise preached in Constantinople, were published after his
death from notes of his friend, the presbyter Constantine, and the text is in a confused state.
The Homilies of Chrysostom were a rich storehouse for the Greek commentators,
compilers and epitomizers, such as Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact, and Euthymius
Zigabenus, and they are worth consulting to this day for their exegetical as well as their
practical value.
The theology of Chrysostom must be gathered chiefly from his commentaries. He differs
20
from the metaphysical divines of the Nicene age by his predominantly practical tendency,
and in this respect he approaches the genius of the Western church. He lived between the
great trinitarian and christological controversies and was only involved incidentally in the
subordinate Origenistic controversy, in which he showed a charitable and liberal spirit. He
accepted the Nicene Creed, but he died before the rise of the Nestorian and Eutychian her-
esies. Speculation was not his forte, and as a thinker he is behind Athanasius, Gregory of
Nyssa, and John of Damascus. He was a rhetorician rather than a logician.
Like all the Greek fathers, he laid great stress on free-will and the cooperation of the
human will with divine grace in the work of conversion. Cassian, the founder of Semi-
Pelagianism, was his pupil and appealed to his authority. Julian of Eclanum, the ablest op-
ponent of Augustin, quoted Chrysostom against original sin; Augustin tried from several
passages to prove the reverse, but could only show that Chrysostom was no Pelagian. We
may say that in tendency and spirit he was a catholic Semi-Pelagian or Synergist before
Semi-Pelagianism was brought into a system.
His anthropology forms a wholesome contrast and supplement to the anthropology of
his younger contemporary, the great bishop of Hippo, the champion of the slavery of the
human will and the sovereignty of divine grace.
We look in vain in Chrysostom’s writings for the Augustinian and Calvinistic doctrines
of absolute predestination, total depravity, hereditary guilt, irresistible grace, perseverance
of saints, or for the Lutheran theory of forensic and solifidian justification. He teaches that
30 So called because they taught that the Son is unlike or dissimilar (‡νόμοιος) to the Father and of a different
substance, in opposition to the Nicene doctrine of equal substance (ὁμοουσία), and the semi-Arian doctrine of
like, or similar substance (ὁμοιουσία).
30
His Theology and Exegesis.