Did John Chrysostom Believe in Faith Alone? A Study of Initial Justification in the Antiochene Tradition

The claim that John Chrysostom denied justification by faith alone is common enough to need a direct answer, and the answer requires first being precise about what is being denied. The Catholic Catechism distinguishes justification, the beginning of salvation, from salvation in its completed sense, and holds that justification requires the will's own disposition and cooperation, not faith unaccompanied by anything else. The Council of Trent states this more sharply. Its ninth canon condemns anyone who says that the impious are justified by faith alone in such a way that nothing else need cooperate and that no disposition of the will is required. Its fourteenth canon condemns anyone who says that a man is justified simply because he believes himself justified, and that faith alone perfects both absolution and justification. Measured against these two canons, Chrysostom's own homilies describe something Trent explicitly rules out: an immediate, undisposed, unprepared reception of complete justification through faith and nothing else.

Immediate justification in the homilies on Romans

Commenting on Romans 1:17, in his second homily on Romans, Chrysostom explains that the righteousness Paul describes is not achieved through toil or labor but received as a gift from above, the believer contributing one thing only from his own resources, namely believing. He calls faith the mother of all blessings and illustrates the point with two examples chosen for their moral extremity rather than their piety, Abraham on one side and Rahab the harlot on the other, both justified, he says, by faith and nothing else, the harlot as much as the patriarch. Commenting on Romans 3:21, in his seventh homily, Chrysostom states the same conclusion even more directly: once the law had shown its own inability to justify anyone, faith accomplished what the law could not, and, in his own words, when a man is once a believer, he is straightway justified. The Greek concept behind straightway carries the sense of immediacy that the rest of the sentence supports. Nothing in either homily describes a disposition of the will preparing the sinner for grace, or a process of infused righteousness developing over time. Justification, on Chrysostom's own account, is instantaneous and complete on the occasion of believing.

The same immediacy appears outside Romans. In his thirty-second homily on the Acts of the Apostles, commenting on Peter's speech at the Jerusalem council, Chrysostom explains that God gave the Holy Spirit to Gentile believers on the strength of faith alone, purifying their hearts by faith and putting no difference between Jew and Gentile. He draws the lesson explicitly: this teaches even the objecting Jewish believers that faith only is needed, not works nor circumcision. The purification described here is not gradual. It is presented as having already occurred, on the sole condition of faith, prior to and apart from any subsequent conduct.

Calling upon Christ and the penitent thief

Chrysostom's homilies on Romans 10 describe the same immediacy from a different angle. Commenting on verse 9, he states that no journey, no crossing of seas, no ascent of mountains stands between a sinner and salvation, since the word of salvation already lies in that sinner's own mouth and heart, so much so that a person may be saved without leaving the house. Commenting on verses 11 through 13 in the same homily, he identifies two witnesses Paul calls forward, one to faith and one to its confession, and finds in both the same universal accessibility, extended equally to Jew and Gentile. In his sixteenth homily, commenting on Isaiah's prophecy of a short word made upon the earth, he identifies that short word with the confession of Romans 10:9 and states that this short word holds salvation within a few syllables, requiring no circuitous performance of the law.

Chrysostom returns to the same theme in his double treatment of the penitent thief, once in the Catena Aurea on Luke 23:42-43 and once in his homily on Genesis, preserved in Migne's Patrologia Graeca, volume 54, Pages 612-613. In both versions the argument is identical. The thief performed no labor, no righteous deed, no visible fruit of any kind. He did not fast, weep, tear his garments, or undergo a period of repentance. On the strength of a single sentence, Chrysostom writes, the thief entered Paradise before the apostles themselves, proof that the power at work was Christ's mercy rather than the thief's own merit. Chrysostom explicitly identifies this as an instance of faith alone, and just as explicitly denies that any prior disposition or preparatory work accompanied it.

The complicating texts

Two further passages appear to contradict everything above. In his fifth homily on Philippians, commenting on Paul's call to be of one mind and one love, Chrysostom cautions his hearers not to let their unity be simply about faith alone, but to extend it to every other virtue as well. And in the Catena Aurea on Matthew 13:47-50, commenting on the parable of the net, Chrysostom states plainly that Christ added this fearful parable so that hearers would not trust in preaching only, nor think that faith alone is sufficient for salvation, since those gathered by the net who lead an evil life, despite possessing the knowledge of God, cannot be saved.

Read by the Heschmeyer principle, that a reading forcing a father to contradict himself is probably a bad reading, these two passages cannot simply cancel the immediate justification described above. Chrysostom's own wording in the Matthew 13 passage supplies the resolution: those condemned in the parable are condemned because of their evil life, not because their initial faith failed to justify them. The parable addresses what happens after the net has already gathered them in, that is, after the knowledge of God, and by extension the faith described in the Romans homilies, has already been received. The Philippians passage makes the identical move on a smaller scale, warning against limiting Christian unity to a shared confession of faith while neglecting its consequences in a shared life. Neither passage relocates the moment of justification. Both describe what must follow it.

Neither Trent nor theosis

This structure fits neither of the two frameworks against which Chrysostom's soteriology is most often measured. It is not Tridentine initial justification, since Trent's ninth canon requires that the will be disposed and prepared before justifying grace is given, and Chrysostom instead describes justification as accomplished the instant belief occurs, with no antecedent disposition mentioned or required, in the case of the harlot Rahab or the thief on the cross least of all. It is equally not the Orthodox doctrine of theosis, since theosis by definition unfolds gradually over a life of deepening conformity to Christ, and Chrysostom's chosen illustration, a man who dies within the hour of believing, cannot illustrate a process that requires decades to complete.

What remains is the structure John Wesley would later give a name. Commenting on Romans 10:12, Wesley writes that the truth already established in the preceding verses, that whosoever calls upon Christ shall be saved, is not merely a description of what happens to be true of some but a statement of God's own will that all should savingly call upon him. In The Means of Grace, Wesley grounds the reception of salvation in asking, seeking, and knocking, means through which grace already offered is received rather than earned. And in Serious Thoughts Upon the Perseverance of the Saints, Wesley states the other half of the structure: those indued with a heart-purifying faith, grafted into the true vine, sanctified by the blood of the covenant, may nevertheless so fall from God as to perish everlastingly, and the one who stands should take heed lest he fall.

Conclusion

Chrysostom's homilies, read across Romans, Acts, Philippians, and the Gospel commentaries preserved in the Catena Aurea, describe a single consistent structure rather than a set of contradictions. Salvation is received immediately and completely through faith and the calling upon Christ that accompanies it, without prior disposition, merit, or labor, as the case of the penitent thief demonstrates in its most extreme form. That reception can subsequently be forfeited by a life inconsistent with the faith that received it, as the warning in the parable of the net and the exhortation to the Philippians both insist. This is neither the initial justification of the Council of Trent, which requires a disposed will before grace is given, nor the theosis of Eastern Orthodoxy, which requires a lifetime for salvation to be completed. It is, in substance if not in later terminology, the conditional security John Wesley would formalize thirteen centuries afterward.

Principal sources

- John Chrysostom, Homily 2 on Romans (on Romans 1:17)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 7 on Romans (on Romans 3:21)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 17 on Romans (on Romans 10:9, 10:11-13)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 18 on Romans (on Romans 10:14-15)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 16 on Romans (on Romans 10:22-23)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 32 on the Acts of the Apostles (on Acts 15:8-11)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 10 on the Acts of the Apostles

- John Chrysostom, Homily 5 on Philippians (on Philippians 2:1-2)

- John Chrysostom, Catena Aurea on Matthew 13:47-50, Matthew 6:9, Matthew 13:10-16, Luke 15:17-24, Luke 16:22-24, and Luke 23:40-43

- John Chrysostom, Homily on Genesis, in Patrologia Graeca, vol. 54, Pages 612-613

- Council of Trent, Session Six, Canons 9 and 14

- Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1992

- John Wesley, notes on Romans 10:12

- John Wesley, The Means of Grace

- John Wesley, Serious Thoughts Upon the Perseverance of the Saints