Preface TO THE HOMILIES OF SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM ON JOHN.
AWe have at length reached the Homilies on the Gospel of John, where we discover an entirely new rite of preaching and an unusual method of discourse. We certainly discern the same style and entirely similar diction; we immediately recognize the same master of speech, Chrysostom: yet in order and in the logic of the argument, a great difference presents itself. For in his other commentaries on Holy Scripture, and especially in the Homilies on Matthew, after he has explained the literal meaning of individual verses, he takes an occasion from the series of the text to intersperse many matters pertaining to the instruction of morals; and at the end of the discourse he adds a very long moral exhortation, by which he censures the vices of both the noble and the common people, and adds incentives for pursuing virtue. But he proceeds in another manner of preaching in these Homilies on John. For almost everywhere, after he has presented individual verses, and especially those which certain heretics were accustomed to object against the Catholics, he arms and strengthens his hearers against their arguments and sophisms; and, as is immediately detected, he provides weapons for those who were often engaged in hand-to-hand combat against such enemies. This is the primary aim of the orator; he strains every nerve so that he might train the Christian soldier, who was frequently fighting against heretics, to repel their darts.
Furthermore, these things do not occur in all the homilies, but only in those where those places of John are explained which are either suitable for proving the equality and consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, or which were usurped by heretics to impugn it. But where the divinity and the consubstantiality of the Son are not at issue, he usually explains the letter in a few words. He also touches more rarely upon moral discipline during his preaching, and closes the discourse with a very brief moral exhortation; so that these discourses on John are, for the most part, smaller by nearly half their length than the Homilies on Matthew.
From this, surely, many questions now arise: namely, who are the heretics who were assailing Chrysostom's hearers with missiles taken from the Gospel of John; why does Chrysostom not name them; from what family did these heretics originate; [and] by what arguments in particular he teaches that the objections of the lucifugæ [light-shunners] should be refuted. It will not be tedious to weigh all these matters after we have premised something regarding the number of the Homilies on John, the city in which he preached them, the hour of the discourse, and certain other matters.
§ I. 1. Regarding the number of the Homilies on John. 2. In what city Chrysostom delivered these homilies, whether at Antioch or at Constantinople.
1. The Homilies on John are reported as eighty-eight according to Savile, but only eighty-seven according to Morel, since Morel places the first only in the place of a proem, and does not inscribe it as the first Homily, because, forsooth, nothing from the Gospel of John is explained in this discourse, and it is only, as it were, a prelude to the explanation of that same Gospel. But however that may be, this proem is no less a discourse and a homily than the other succeeding discourses. For here he addresses the people, exhorts them to virtue, restrains them from vices, and fulfills all the duties of one preaching. Wherefore Savile rightly inscribed it as the first Homily: whom it has seemed good to follow. But because the Editio Morelli, which for many years has been in everyone's hands, is for the most part brought forward by writers, and they number the homilies according to the Morellian Edition; and they inscribe as the twenty-ninth the one which according to Savile and according to the true method of numbering is the thirtieth, we have placed both numbers on the top of the page thus: Homily thirtieth, al. twenty-ninth, and so also in the others.
That this variation in numbering is not recent is suggested by Facundus of Hermiane, who in book 3, c. 3, p. 114, calls that the sixty-sixth which is truly the sixty-seventh. But another method of numbering also, which is indeed the true one, is proven to have been in use among others. For Ephraem of Antioch numbers as the eleventh the one which is now the eleventh. And the Greek manuscript codices, which it has been possible to see thus far, follow this method of numbering.
2. A second question arises, namely, whether Chrysostom delivered these homilies at Antioch or at Constantinople. In which city these many discourses were held, we have never been able to detect in the discourses themselves. For if there were any [indication] from which we might draw a conjecture, it would be from the perpetual skirmishes against those who denied that equality with the Father’s power existed in the Son, who were attacking the consubstantiality—against the Anomoeans, namely, whom he everywhere attacks. That is observed at Constantinople just as much as at Antioch. For in both cities Chrysostom preached against the Anomoeans by name, and in both there was a great number of Anomoeans B