Donald F. Winslow
Professor of Historical Theology
Episcopal Divinity School Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published in Published in the Nashotah Review Vol. 15 no.3 1975
(& the St Luke’s Journal of TheologyVol. XVIII no.4 September 1975
and reproduced here with the necessary permissions
Patricia Beer, in a recent book on women authors of the nineteenth century, has observed that much of the published material appearing in the last ten years on the subject of Women’s Liberation has one major shortcoming: “Whatever they may claim to do,” she writes, “in fact they treat literature as if it were a collection of tracts into which you dip for illustrations of your own polemic, falsifying and omitting as necessary, your argument being of more moment than the other person’s work of art.”(1) I take this observation as applicable to many other fields. If literature in general can be thus mistreated in the interests of a specific cause, so too can Scripture. The Christian, in his or her attempt to lend authority to a conviction already held apart from Scripture, can appeal to Scripture as an unimpeachable and objective support for an impeachable and subjective argument. So too with the writings of the Fathers. Anglicans, with their traditional love for “patristic evidences,” have resorted in their argumentation to the gentle art of “proof-texting,” thereby suggesting that the immense corpus of patristic literature is a self-contained, authoritative block of unchanged and unchanging truth with nary a shred of ambiguity in its classical architectonic grandeur. It would indeed be comforting if we could make use of the Vincentian dictum (originally directed against the “novelties” of Augustine’s teaching) that catholic “orthodoxy” rests upon discerning what has been taught “everywhere, always, and by all,” (2) and apply it to the whole of the patristic enterprise. Comforting, but deluding, since the absoluteness of truth, whether in the Fathers or elsewhere, exists in philosophical theory only, while all attempts to articulate that truth are necessarily subject, ultimately, to ambiguity at best or to utter contradiction at worst.
This essay, then, will not (and cannot) be an attempt to search the post-Nicene Fathers for a consensus on a particular issue, especially since the issue at hand—that of the ordination of women to the priesthood—is surrounded by a host of questions that the Fathers did not (and could not) ask. There is even an element of implicit absurdity in going to the Fathers for help on a question of this nature, not unlike asking a fish for advice as to what kind of dry-fly is most effective for catching trout. I intend, therefore, to take Patricia Beer’s warning seriously and not dip into the literature of the patristic era for illustrations of my own polemic. Nor will I, conversely, attempt to spy out, in the writings of the Fathers, views antithetical to my own and conclude that the Fathers were therefore ignorant, unenlightened, or misguided. This means, in effect, that this essay, to the extent that it is an essay in patristics, will not address itself directly to the question: “Should women be ordained to the priesthood?” It might be wise, at the outset, to be immediately forthright on this subject and state unambiguously that, were we to address this question to the Fathers, they would all of them respond with a resounding “NO!” (I almost wrote “Nyet!”) Let John Chrysostom’s (3) “golden” word, then, provide our freely admitted starting point and represent the church of the post-Nicene period. There are many aspects of the Christian ministry, he wrote, which can be undertaken by women as well as by men, but, when it comes to the exercise of the Priesthood (i.e., presiding over the church and being entrusted with the care of many “souls”), then “let all womankind give way before the magnitude of the task—and indeed most men.”(4)
Chrysostom’s “No!” stems from many factors, none of them, as we shall see, explicitly theological. Echoing Gregory of Nazianzus, who wrote an extensive treatise on the priesthood before him, (5) and foreshadowing Pope Gregory’s well-known discourse on the same subject,(6) Chrysostom continually underlined the “magnitude” and thus the inherent difficulty of the task in such a way as to indicate that only the most able could be worthy of or aspire to the office. Since women, therefore, were naturally perceived in the patristic period to be less able than men, the thought of their being ordained would have struck him as preposterous. In fact, one of the chief difficulties facing the priest, and one which added greatly to the “magnitude” of his task, was that he had women in his congregation! We sense in Chrysostom a profound yearning to be done with so troublesome a lot and be allowed to perform his priestly duties unhindered by the women of his flock. “I cannot enumerate all the anxieties caused by virgins,” he expostulates. “The fact is that when they are enrolled they cause extraordinary trouble to the man who is entrusted with [their care] .(7) Virgins require extreme watchfulness, so easy and unsuspecting a prey they are to the wiles and temptations of the Devil. Should a virgin fall (“which God forbid!”), the priest will have to answer for her soul. And in the case of “widows” the anxiety is no less. They are given to gossip and vilification, they “loiter about the market place,” they come from “broken homes and wrecked marriages,” they steal and commit disgraceful offenses; due to their class and their poverty, they are subject to the cruel manipulation of society; and “due partly to their sex,” their speech is unbridled, they are fault-finders and complainers. What a chain around the neck of him who is responsible for their oversight. (8)
We can only conclude that, if we may use the vernacular, since women were for Chrysostom so much of the priest’s problem, they could in no way share in the “priestly” solution. This applies, in his case, not only to the officially enrolled “virgins” and “widows,” but also to women in general. His judgment is most severe when directed against those women in the church whom he believes to be acting in an unwomanly manner, especially when they manifest ambition or behave in an aggressive fashion. With the majority of the Fathers, Chrysostom regarded any person who was covetous of the priestly office as ipso facto disqualified for it. No wonder, then, that he was angered by those women who, in spite of (or perhaps because of) their being “excluded by the divine law” from the priesthood, forcibly pushed themselves in and sought to manipulate church affairs or who had the brashness to attempt to influence priestly and episcopal appointments. Such characteristics would be bad enough if found in men; so much the worse were they then when found in women, all the more so since it was St. Paul himself who had expressly forbidden women even to “speak in church.”(9)
Chrysostom’s scorn for women who, because of their sex belong to a lower social order (perhaps even a lower order of creation), is best understood, however, not as an isolated attitude but as part of a wider phenomenon clearly articulated by many of the post-Nicene Fathers, namely, the prevailing view which so stressed the “dignity” of the priestly office that it clearly warrants the charge of what today might be called hierarchical elitism. Women’s subordination to men (by virtue of their sex) appears as an instance of the wider subordination of all lay-persons to the clergy (by virtue of their “class”). If “virgins” or “widows,” or aggressive women in general were a thorn in Chrysostom’s side, the “magnitude” of his priestly responsibilities was further heightened by the fact that the laity were by and large an “unruly” lot, that is, difficult to rule. The majority of them were untutored in doctrine, careless in piety, and reluctant to respond positively to the “Pauline” admonition to “obey them that have the rule over you and submit to them.”(10) “It is impossible for a whole congregation,” Chrysostom wrote, “to be made up of men of distinction; and it generally happens that the church consists of ignorant people.” (11) In an arresting image, he compares the priest to an artist whose painting is executed with consummate skill but who finds his art scoffed at by ignorant people who know nothing of real art. (12) And the failure of the laity to render due respect to the clergy arises, again, if not out of ignorance, certainly out of ambition for or envy of an office which is endowed with so much authority, so much dignity, and so much power.
It becomes apparent that Chrysostom’s views on the priesthood were to a large extent controlled by what can be called a “double hierarchy.” Priests rule over people; men rule over women. These are the unquestioned “givens” which necessarily inform his understanding of the priestly office. The very exercise of this priestly office is both ordered by this double hierarchy and at the same time made more difficult by it. Which is to say, if I may revise my earlier observation, the “solution” is now seen to be part of the “problem.” We must look therefore more closely at what is meant by the dignity of the priesthood if we are to ascertain the wider dimensions of the issue being addressed. Why, for instance, is it a dignity so subject to ambition on the one hand and to envy on the other? Part of its dignity, according to Chrysostom (and to many of the post-Nicene Fathers) lies in the great risk a person incurs when undertaking the office. The dignity is so great that failure on the part of the priest to live up to it or to be worthy of it results in a punishment far worse than the punishment due those who fail to live up to or be worthy of a lesser dignity. It is a dignity, in fact, the inherent dangers of which are even extended beyond the priest to the members of his family. “Even the daughters of priests, who are of no significance for the priestly office,” Chrysostom warned, “incur a far more severe penalty than others for the same sins, because of their father’s dignity.” (13) Negatively, then, the dignity is so great that, within the double hierarchy of men-over-women/priests-over-people, only those who possess the requisite qualifications and are willing to undertake the enormous risk can be viewed potential candidates for ordination. Thus all women and most men are excluded. Positively, the dignity is such that it includes those who, if they are to teach the ignorant, must themselves be wise; if they are to heal the sick, must themselves be whole; if they are to admonish sinners, must themselves be righteous; if they are to prevent others from heresy, must themselves be scrupulously orthodox. The list could be extended almost infinitely. How can a priest lead others to God if he himself is not godly? How can he reach those in darkness except he be in the light? How to assist those who falter, except he persevere? In the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, “A man must himself be cleansed before cleansing others; himself become wise that he may make others wise; become light and then give light; draw near to God and so bring others near; be hallowed and then hallow them.” (14)
In general, purity of life and purity of doctrine (piety and orthodoxy) appear to be the two major headings under which the qualifications for priesthood can best be subsumed. They are both the glory of the office and the patent symbol of its impossibility. Chrysostom expresses this with alarming clarity in his description of the priest as he presides over the eucharist:
He must so far surpass all those for whom he intercedes in all qualities as one in authority ought properly to surpass those under his charge. But when he invokes the Holy Spirit and offers that awful sacrifice and keeps on touching the common Master of us all, tell me, where shall we rank him? What purity and piety shall we demand of him? Consider how spotless should the hands be that administer these things, how holy the tongue that utters these words.(15)
It is no surprise then that the priestly office elicits such ambition or envy on the part of those who do not hold it; no surprise either that ambition and envy are attitudes which immediately disqualify a person for the office. It is interesting to discover, in this context, that both Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom composed their treatises on the priesthood initially as apologiae for their refusal, at first, to accept the office. The dignity is too high, the authority too great. Who then is worthy? Is there, in fact, anyone who possesses the requisite qualifications? The only possible answer – and an ambiguous one at that – was that the “worthiness” of the priest must be, not by nature, but by grace. It was for this reason that the post-Nicene Fathers looked for the authority of the priesthood, not in the office itself, but beyond it. The priest receives his authority from Christ and the grace to administer it from the Holy Spirit. The authority to remit sins (Mt. 18:18; Jn. 20:23) is a case in point; it comes directly from the Father to the Son, from the Son to the Apostles, and from them tc bishops and priests. It is the greatest authority on earth, far superior to that of a king over his subjects, of a master over his slaves, or of parents over their children. Parents, for instance, have the power to bring new life into this world, but only priests have the power which determines those who will inherit life in the world to come. (16) And it is precisely through the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist – and “through no other agency except their sacred hands” – that the priests exercise this power. (17) The authority of the priest is an authority as high as heaven is above the earth or as the soul is over the body; it is an authority the succession and exercise of which is “ordained” by the Holy Spirit who allows some men, while even in the flesh, to “represent the ministry of angels.” (18)
It is clear that we are embarking upon new territory here, or, if you will, discovering a new kind of “hierarchy.” As it was the double hierarchy of sex and class that excluded all women and most men from the priesthood, it is the “heavenly hierarchy” which included a few men and made their priesthood possible. This is because the qualifications requisite for the exercise of priesthood were seen to be super-human and impossible of human fulfillment were it not that their source was in heaven (through God by grace). Chrysostom in fact, saw the priest as one who was lifted up, as though he had already been “translated to heaven” and had “transcended human nature.” Again, “the work of the priesthood is done on earth, but it is ranked among the heavenly ordinances.” (19) The dignity of the priesthood, then, resides in a configuration of qualifications which are impossible of human attainment; therefore, the priest, if he is to be faithful to the dignity of his office, must see himself as elevated to the heavenly realm while even still “in the flesh,” and only from that realm can he exercise a priestly authority which by all other standards belongs to God alone. Two passages from Gregory of Nazianzus’ De fuga make this even more explicit:
Before a man has, as far as is possible, gained . . . superiority and sufficiently purified his mind, and far surpassed his fellows in nearness to God, I do not think it safe for him to be entrusted with the rule over souls or the office of mediator (for such, I take it, a priest is) between God and man.(20)
Who can mould, as clay-figures are modelled in a single day, the defender of the truth, who is to take his stand with angels, and give glory with archangels, and cause the sacrifice to ascend the altar on high, and share the Priesthood of Christ, and renew the creature, and set forth the image, and create inhabitants for the world above, aye and, greatest of all, be God, and make others to be God?(21)
Women were excluded from the priestly office by virtue of their sex. Today, we would call this “sexism,” but I believe the term is inappropriate if applied to the patristic era. Most men were excluded from the priestly office by virtue of their class. Today, we would call this “clericalism,” but again this term is inappropriate. Those who were included, in spite of the humanly impossible qualifications required of them, exercised their priesthood with, as it were, one foot in heaven and one foot on earth. Their dignity was a heavenly dignity, their authority was of God, and their piety and orthodoxy imputed by grace. Yet it is precisely here that we encounter a puzzling inconsistency. Neither the double hierarchy of men-over-women/priests-over-people, which excluded all women and most men from the priesthood, nor the heavenly hierarchy which did include some men – neither of these hierarchies help us in understanding why it was that the Fathers could so freely assign to Christian women attributes of holiness that were at least parallel to and in many cases far superior to those attributes of holiness required for the priest. On the basis of the evidence, it appears that the Fathers saw in “holy women” a higher degree of “purity of life and doctrine” which, because it did not fall within ecclesiastical boundaries, posed no immediate threat to them and therefore did not become, on the part of the Fathers, an object of ambition or of envy. I am tempted to suggest that the very qualifications obtainable by a priest only by grace were available to the devout lay-woman by nature (but I see this as only a passing temptation and will not give in to it!). (21a) But it is still puzzling that the encomia written by the Fathers praising holy women, eulogizing their saintly virtues, for the most part far surpass those written on saintly men—most of them priests or bishops—at least in terms of their rhetorical outbursts of enthusiasm.
A colleague of mine once suggested that I write a book entitled “The Mothers of the Fathers.” When one thinks, for instance, of the importance of Chrysostom’s mother Anthusa (in whose memory, interestingly, he wrote his six books on the priesthood), the nature and intent of this suggestion is rescued from being merely a flippant or humorous remark. (22) Gregory of Nazianzus’ mother Nonna also comes to mind, as does Emmelia, the mother of Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea. All of these mothers exercised an inestimably important religious influence upon their sons, as did Monica, perhaps the most famous of all the mothers of the Fathers, upon her son Augustine. Patristic literature, in the East as well as in the West, is replete with passages manifesting admiration for these holy women. Nor is it just to the mothers of the Fathers that such praise is addressed; the sisters of the Fathers receive their share of panegyrics and, what is most important, women in general are perceived as possessing qualities which make the stated qualifications for priesthood look humanly possible, relatively speaking. A sampling from Gregory of Nazianzus’ description of his sister Gorgonia may be allowed to serve as representative of this genre:
Gorgonia’s native land was Jerusalem above .. . whose citizen Christ is, and whose fellow citizens are the assembly and church of the first born who are written in heaven, and feast around its great Founder in contemplation of His glory, and take part in the endless festival. Her nobility consisted in the preservation of the Image, and the perfect likeness to the Archetype.
One red tint was dear to her, the blush of modesty.
[She] oftentimes entertained Christ in the persons of those whose benefactress she was.
She longed for her dissolution, for indeed she had great boldness towards him who called her, and preferred to be with Christ, beyond all things on earth.
[She sought to] escape from the mire in which we spend our lives, and to associate in purity with Him Who is Fair, and entirely to behold her Beloved, Who is, I will even say it, her Lover . . .
While she received regeneration [baptism] from the Holy Spirit, its security was hers by virtue of her former life. And in her case almost alone, I will venture to say, the mystery [sacrament] was a seal rather than a gift of grace. (23)
Apart from general ascriptions of “heavenly” virtues, the Fathers were also pleased to ascribe to women functions which, if undertaken officially, would have to be designated as functions of the priesthood. Monica, for instance, was chiefly responsible, through the strength of her intercessions, for the conversion of her son Augustine. (24) Macrina is warmly portrayed as the teacher of her brother, Gregory of Nyssa, as she instructed him in the doctrines of the soul and of the resurrection. (25) The power of Nonna’s prayers was so effective that it stilled the waves of a storm, hundreds of miles away, which threatened the life of her son Gregory of Nazianzus. (26) It was Nonna, too, who led her husband, the elder Gregory, out of his heretical involvements with the “Hypsistarii” into true Nicene orthodoxy. (27)
Similar examples are found in almost all of the post-Nicene Fathers, Greek and Latin. Yet, as we read these glowing accounts, one thing stands out in bare relief. Women are indeed praised for their virtue or for their piety, and they are lauded for their acts of salvific efficacy, but never (to my knowledge) are they congratulated because of their sex. As a matter of fact, it appears that the holiness of these women was directly dependent on the extent to which they were able, in their lives of virtue, to transcend their sex (some would say “deny” it). The great number of treatises and homilies on the subject of virginity is a case in point. Marriage is, indeed, legitimate, but not preferred: it serves to produce holy children for holy families (or, in the case of Jerome, marriage has as its one saving virtue the ability to produce virgins!). And the glory of Anthusa’s widowhood lay in the fact that she remained a widow and did not remarry, which elicited from Chrysostom’s teacher, Libanius, the remark, “0 what women there are among the Christians!” (28)
As with the priesthood, then, holiness for women belongs to the “heavenly” hierarchy, and to have one’s citizenship in heaven is to have transcended the distinctions of sex. Gregory of Nazianzus says as much of his sister: her womanly nature was able to overcome the nature of man “in the common struggle for salvation” because, by her virtue, she had demonstrated that the “distinction between male and female is one of body and not of soul.” (29) This suggests that for the Fathers, or at least for Gregory, salvation is a matter of freeing the soul from the body; such, however, was not the case. The post-Nicene Fathers could not, and did not, attempt to do away with the concept of the resurrection of the body. But Gregory, and many of the Fathers (Chrysostom included), did perceive holiness in asexual categories, whether it be the holiness of a male priest or of a virtuous laywoman. Salvation was a process of approaching God, or as so many of them put it, of “deification.” It is natural then that in heaven there be no distinction between Jew and Greek or between male and female (Gal. 3:28), since such distinctions, as Gregory says, are “marks of the flesh.” (30) God did take upon himself the full dimensions of humanity in the particularized maleness of Jesus, but he did so, as Athanasius asserted, in order that “man might become God.” (31) If holiness is godliness, and if salvation consists of ultimate godliness, then, since God is without “body, parts, or passions,” true piety must include the ability to transcend sexual differentiation. The Fathers freely admitted that this was possible for women. It was also, as we have seen, a necessary qualification for male priesthood.
If, for the Fathers, women shared with male priests the capacity for a heavenly transcendent holiness, part of which included doing away with the categories of sexuality, why were women excluded from the priesthood? What we have called the “heavenly hierarchy” would theoretically, at least, seem to argue for their inclusion. It must be that the “earthly hierarchies” of men over women (sex) and of priests over people (class) were so powerful and so ingrained that it was in fact impossible for them to recognize the inconsistency of their position. The “natural” inferiority of women in a patriarchal society appears to have been the final barrier which prevented the Fathers, not just from answering the question “Should women be ordained to the priesthood?” in the affirmative, but even from asking the question itself with any seriousness.
We do not today accept the patristic view of sexuality; we have learned to accept the distinction between male and female and to see that distinction as one to be concretely affirmed. We cannot (and need not), therefore, take issue with the Fathers on that basis. Yet, even if we were to accept the patristic view of sexuality, the inconsistency of their position still remains, and it remains specifically in the christological arena. If the Fathers (as I am sure many of them were tempted) had presented a view of the Person of Jesus Christ which was so totally “otherworldly,” so utterly transcendent in its “heavenly” portraiture, we might the more easily understand how the “earthly hierarchies” continued to exercise so powerful an influence upon them. But the ministry and priesthood of Christ was for them a ministry and priesthood exercised here on earth. The Fathers took the incarnation with utmost seriousness and fought for centuries to prevent the church’s christology from slipping into a hazy kind of crypto-docetism. The birth of Christ was real, as was his death; his tears and his wounds were not imaginary. As the fullness of the deity of the eternal Word had been upheld against the Arians, so the fullness of Christ’s humanity (“consubstantial with ours”) was argued for against the Apollinarians and Eutychians. In spite of the oft-repeated eschatological goal of “deification,” the primary events of salvation were undertaken “in the flesh.” The “flesh” was for many of the Fathers an embarrassment, but the “flesh” and “humanity” of Jesus Christ were of central importance to their doctrine. It is difficult to reconcile this conviction with their exclusivistic, transcendent concept of the priesthood. Sharing the importance the Fathers assigned the incarnation, but differing with them in their perceptions of sexuality, we of a later generation have, I am happy to say, a splendid opportunity, namely, to get our canons and our christology onto the same track. Arguments from tradition (we have always done it this way), or arguments from the “maleness of Christ” (a point never raised by the Fathers) are no longer relevant. And it is the Fathers themselves who teach us that doctrine is wedded to practice, that theoria and praxis must work hand in hand. An acceptance of the full humanity of the incarnate Word allows us, in a way not possible for the Fathers, to see dimensions to the priesthood which have been, for a variety of reasons, too long overlooked. The Fathers insisted on a true incarnation because of their concern for the salvation of the whole person. They did not perceive, as we do, that sexuality was an integral part of the whole person. It follows that to deny full participation in the life of the church to some persons (women) is both to deny the reality of their full baptism into the one, fully human articulation of God in Jesus Christ as well as to deny the full “assumption” of humanity of the incarnate Word. To ordain women in Christ’s church, is not therefore so novel an undertaking. It is rather a new understanding of and appropriation of what is implicit in that doctrine which has always, in a variety of formulations, been central to the Christian faith, namely, the incarnation. The Fathers themselves were constantly aware of new implications of old doctrines and seldom hesitated to work out those implications in practise. Anglicanism too has, in its braver moments, been willing to risk acting on new perceptions of old truths. In the last century, Bishop Gore, who was certainly conservative in his ecclesiology, was also free enough to assert that there was a continual necessity for the church to “re-express its theological mind, as it has so often already done, in view of fresh developments in the intellectual, moral and social life” of mankind. (32)
We need not feel disappointed, therefore, if the corpus of patristic literature fails to provide us with an answer to our question, Should women be ordained to the priesthood? But the Fathers do provide us, as we have seen, with the necessary tools always to be alert to new possibilities inherent in our faith, tools whereby we can, in each successive generation, learn more creatively and ask new questions more responsibly. (33) Neither the church, nor its doctrine, nor its forms of ministry can exist apart from (or survive above) a necessary element of change. As Maurice Wiles has argued, there is always that “necessarily continuous process of remaking by which alone Christian doctrine can flourish as a living and constructive activity.” (34) If this is true of doctrine, as we continually reassess our understanding of the great assertions of the Christian faith, it must also be true of the church’s canons and polity, especially in respect to the new opportunities which face us in respect to the fullness of the Christian ministry.
We need not, therefore, as I suggested at the outset, resort to the ploy of “dipping into the Fathers” for illustrations which support our own polemic or, upon not finding such support, castigate the Fathers for their stupidity or lack of enlightenment (neither of which charges does justice to the Fathers or, I must add, to the historian of Christian thought and practice). The Fathers do stand, however, as giants in the long and never-ending process of coming to terms with the never fully articulated or adequately comprehended wider dimensions of a faith which sees in Jesus Christ the compassionate and fulfilling saving work of the humanity of God. (35) We may do no more than the Fathers in this respect, but we can attempt at least to do as much.
Footnotes
1. Patricia Beer, Reader, I Married Him (London: Macmillan, 1974), p. ix.
2. Vincent of Lérins, Comm. 2.3.
3. For reasons of economy I have undertaken in this paper to concentrate on John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nazianzus as representative of the post-Nicene church rather than be swamped myself or swamp my reader with a host of views from the countless writers of the period.
4. Chrysostom, De sac., 2.2 (PG 48.633), trans. Graham Neville, Saint John Chrysostom: Six Books on the Priesthood (London: SPCK, 1964).
5. Greg. Naz., De fuga = Oration 2 (PG 35.408-513). English translations of Gregory are by C. Browne and J. Swallow in Schaff and Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), vol. 7.
6.Greg. I, Regulae pastoralis liber (PL 77.13-128).
7.Desac. 3.17 (PG 48.658).
8. Ibid. 3.16 (PG 48.655).
9. Ibid . (48.646) cf. 1 Cor. 14:34.
10. Heb. 13:17.
11.Desac. 5.6 (PG 48.676).
12. Ibid.
13. 6.11 (PG 48.687). Chrysostom adds (3.14) that people tend to measure sin “not by the size of the offence, but by the standing of the sinner.”
14. Or. 2.11 (PG 35.480).
15. De sac. 6.4 (PG 48.681); cf. Greg. Naz., Or. 2.111 (PG 35.500).
16.De sac. 3.6 (PG 48.644).
17. Ibid. 3.5 (PG 48.643).
18. Ibid. 3.4 (PG 48.642). In the same passage, however, Chrysostom states that the authority given by God to priests is one not given to angels or to archangels.
19. Ibid
20.Or. 2.91 (PG 35.493).
21. Ibid. 73 (PG 35.481).
21a. But see the passage quoted below at note 23.
22. The words of Chrysostomus Baur are characteristic: Anthusa “deserves an honored place in the gallery of Christian wives and mothers, whom our own age and later ages have to thank, whom the Christian Church has to thank, for great and eminent men.” (!) John Chrysostom and His Time (London: Sands, 1959) 1: 4.
23. Or. 8.6, 10, 11, 20 (PG 35.796, 801, 812).
24. See especially the Confessions, Bks. 6 and 10.
25. Greg. Nys., De anima et resur. and De vita Macrinae.
26. 0r. 18.31 (PG 35.1023), etc.
27. Ibid. 5 (PG 35.992).
28. Cited by Baur, John Chrysostom, p. 22.
29. Or. 8.14 (PG 35.805).
30. Or. 7.23 (PG 35.785)
31. Athanasius, De incarnatione 54 (PG 25.192).
32. C. Gore, Dissertations on Subjects connected with the Incarnation (N.Y.: Scribner, 1895), p. 213.
33. The late Robert F. Evans has made this point well: “Careful study and comparison of what the great fathers wrote and did leads to the conclusion that on the whole they knew implicitly that new occasions teach new duties and that time makes ancient good uncouth. The astonishing thing about the fathers is the resolution with which they introduce and rationalize novelty in spite of what we would call their frequently unhistorical assumptions concerning the unchanging character of Christian truth ” (One and Holy [London: SPCK, 1972], p. 161).
34. Maurice Wiles,The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (London: SCM, 1974), p. 104.
35. The saving work of the “humanity of God” is a phrase which is first used, to my knowledge, by Gregory of Nazianzus,
Or. 45.22 (PG 36.653).