Why Reading John Chrysostom Through the Council of Trent Is Anachronistic

A common move in contemporary apologetics is to grant that John Chrysostom uses the phrase faith alone, sometimes affirmatively and sometimes critically, and to conclude from the critical instances that his affirmative use of the phrase must be read in a sense compatible with the Council of Trent. One proponent of this move, whom I will refer to here as Bass rather than by name, divides Chrysostom's statements into two categories: those that could be read in either a Protestant or a Catholic sense, and those that admit only the Catholic sense. Bass argues the second category is at least as large as the first, and offers two texts as his strongest examples of it, a comment on Ephesians warning that election is not for faith alone but for a holy and blameless life, and the well-known passage from Homily 31 on the Gospel of John denying that faith alone suffices for salvation. From these two texts Bass concludes that Chrysostom did not hold, and cannot be enlisted for, the kind of sola fide condemned at Trent.

This article argues that the conclusion does not follow, for two reasons. First, Trent's own definition of what it condemns is narrower and more specific than Bass's argument treats it as being, and Chrysostom's homilies on Romans and Acts describe exactly what that narrower definition excludes. Second, Bass's own two-category taxonomy is incomplete: a third category exists, statements that are compatible only with a reading Trent explicitly anathematizes, and Chrysostom's double treatment of the penitent thief belongs to it.

What Trent actually condemns

The ninth canon of Trent's decree on justification does not condemn the claim that faith alone justifies as such. It condemns the claim that faith alone justifies in such a way that nothing else is required to cooperate in obtaining the grace of justification, and that the sinner's own will need not be prepared and disposed beforehand. The fourteenth canon separately condemns grounding assurance of justification in the sinner's own belief that he is justified. Both canons presuppose a structure in which some preparatory disposition of the will precedes and cooperates with the reception of justifying grace. This is the specific target, and it is the specific claim that has to be found in Chrysostom, or not found in him, for the question of anachronism to be settled either way.

What Bass's survey leaves out

Bass's two texts do not address this question directly, because neither describes the moment at which salvation is first received. The Ephesians comment addresses what the elect were chosen for, not how they came to be chosen, and Homily 31 on John, read in its own context, distinguishes the reception of eternal life through belief from its preservation through a corresponding manner of life, a distinction this series has already traced through Chrysostom's own gloss on the passage. Neither text touches Canon IX's actual requirement, a disposed and cooperating will prior to grace.

Chrysostom's homilies on Romans 10 do touch it, directly, and Bass does not address them. Commenting on verse 9, Chrysostom states that no journey, no crossing of seas, no ascent of mountains lies between a sinner and salvation, since the word of salvation already sits in his own mouth and heart, so much so that a man may be saved while seated at home. Commenting on verse 14, he traces salvation through an unbroken chain running from calling to believing to hearing to preaching to being sent, with no step in the chain describing a prior disposition of the will independent of the calling itself. In his tenth homily on the Acts of the Apostles, he urges his hearers to call directly upon God for the salvation of their own souls, offering Stephen, the wife of Elkanah, and Moses as models, each one calling upon God in the moment of need rather than through any antecedent preparation. None of this is the language of a will being readied over time for the reception of grace. It is the language of grace received on request.

The same substance without the same words

Chrysostom teaches this same immediacy in passages that never use the phrase faith alone at all, which matters because it shows the doctrine does not depend on a single contested phrase. Commenting on Romans 3:24-25, in his seventh homily on Romans, he states that God has shown his power not merely by saving but by justifying outright, without any need for works, looking to faith only, and calls this a blessing in two respects, because it is easy and because it is open to everyone. Commenting on Romans 1:17, in his second homily, he states that righteousness is not achieved by toil or labor but received as a gift, the believer contributing one thing only, namely believing, and illustrates this with Rahab the harlot alongside Abraham, both justified, in his account, on the same terms. Neither passage describes a will being disposed or prepared. Both describe an instantaneous transfer of status on the condition of belief.

Reconciling the judgment texts

Elsewhere Chrysostom does warn that a final tribunal will examine deeds, not faith alone. In his fifth homily on Romans, commenting on the promise of glory, honor, and immortality to those who continue patiently in well-doing, he states plainly that it is not right to trust in faith only, since deeds too will be examined at that tribunal. Read alongside the passages above, this is not a retraction of immediate justification but a description of what happens afterward. The believer described in Homily 2 and Homily 7 receives righteousness the moment he believes; the believer described in Homily 5 is warned that this same status will be tested against his subsequent conduct at a final judgment. Both statements can be true of the same person without contradiction, exactly as this series has argued with respect to Homily 31 on John: reception now, examination later.

Is the sit at home passage merely rhetoric

One might object that the claim a person can be saved while seated at home is Greco-Roman rhetorical flourish rather than a considered theological claim, or a covert reference to baptism rather than to an unmediated calling upon Christ. Neither reading survives contact with the rest of the corpus. The same substantive claim, that salvation is obtained by a verbal calling upon Christ requiring no journey, no ritual, and no preparatory work, recurs independently in the homily on Acts 7 through 10, in the chain of causation traced through Romans 10:14, in the exposition of Isaiah's short word in Homily 16 on Romans, and in both versions of the penitent thief. A claim repeated across five independent homiletic contexts, on five different scriptural texts, is not an isolated rhetorical flourish, and nowhere in any of these five contexts does Chrysostom introduce baptism as the referent of the calling in question.

The thief on the cross and the third category

The clearest test of Bass's taxonomy is the penitent thief, treated twice by Chrysostom, once in the Catena Aurea on Luke 23:42-43 and once in his homily on Genesis, on pages 612 and 613 of the Patrologia Graeca, volume 54. In both versions Chrysostom states that the thief performed no labor, no righteous deed, and no visible fruit, that he did not fast, weep, tear his garments, or undergo any period of repentance, and that he entered Paradise before the apostles themselves on the strength of a single sentence. Chrysostom names this explicitly as faith alone, and identifies its purpose as ensuring that no later sinner would despair of entrance, precisely because the thief brought nothing to the transaction but the word itself.

This passage cannot be sorted into either of Bass's two categories. It is not compatible with a Protestant reading alone, since Chrysostom elsewhere insists that continuance in a right life is required to keep what faith received. But neither is it compatible with the Catholic reading Bass proposes for his second category, since Canon IX requires precisely the disposition and preparatory cooperation of the will that Chrysostom explicitly denies the thief possessed or needed. A dying man's single sentence, uttered without repentance rehearsed over time, without a disposed will readied through preceding grace, and without any accompanying work, is the specific case Trent's ninth canon was written to exclude. Bass's own dichotomy has no room for a passage that satisfies neither of its branches, and this is such a passage.

The Council of Trent formalized a doctrine of justification built on debates, categories, and philosophical vocabulary that developed over the eleven centuries separating Chrysostom's pulpit from Trent's sixteenth session, categories Chrysostom had no access to and no occasion to address on their own terms. The same is true, in the other direction, of any attempt to read him as a Calvinist or as a modern Orthodox theologian of theosis: all three systems postdate him by centuries and answer questions he was not yet being asked. What survives contact with his own texts is a simpler and older structure, salvation received completely and without antecedent merit through faith and a verbal calling upon Christ, and salvation subsequently placed at risk by a life inconsistent with that faith. This is not a system Chrysostom borrowed from the future. It is a system John Wesley, thirteen centuries later, borrowed without knowing it from him.

Principal sources

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

- John Chrysostom, Homily 5 on Romans (on Romans 2:6-10)

- John Chrysostom, Homily 7 on Romans (on Romans 3:21, 3:24-25)

- 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 10 on the Acts of the Apostles

- John Chrysostom, Homily 31 on the Gospel of John

- John Chrysostom, Catena Aurea on Luke 23:40-43, Matthew 13:45-50, Matthew 6:9, Matthew 13:10-16, Luke 15:17-24, and Luke 16:22-24

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

- Council of Trent, Session Six, Canons 1, 9, and 14

- John Wesley, The Means of Grace

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