EPIPHANY · 27 JANUARY & TRINITY · 27 JUNE Archbishop & Bishop · Doctors of the Church
John Chrysostom & Cyril of Alexandria
Archbishop & Bishop · Doctors of the Church · d. 407 & 444
Chrysostom — KRIS-os-tom · Antiochene — an-tee-OK-een · Eudoxia — yoo-DOK-see-a · Olympias — oh-LIM-pee-as · Theotokos — thee-OH-tok-os · Nestorius — nes-TOR-ee-us · Ephesus — EF-eh-sus · Cyril — SIR-il · Hypatia — hy-PAY-shee-a
O God, who gavest to thy servant John a golden mouth to proclaim the demands of thy Gospel upon the rich and powerful, and to thy servant Cyril a sure mind to defend the mystery of thy Son born of a woman; Grant that thy Church may speak with equal plainness and think with equal precision, knowing that the Word who was made flesh has hallowed both our speech and our thought; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Eastern Church produced, in the generation between the Cappadocians and the Council of Chalcedon, two bishops of such contrasting temperament and method that it is tempting to read them as theological opposites. John Chrysostom (KRIS-os-tom — the golden-mouthed, a nickname given him after his death) was the greatest preacher of the ancient world: direct, pastoral, merciless in his exposure of the gap between Christian profession and Christian practice, beloved by the poor and deeply inconvenient to the powerful. Cyril of Alexandria (SIR-il) was the most formidable ecclesiastical politician of the fifth century: systematic, implacable, theologically precise to a degree that could harden into inflexibility, and politically effective in ways that occasionally shade into something darker. Yet they were working the same vineyard. Chrysostom was asking: what does the Incarnation demand of us in the street, the market, and the household? Cyril was asking: what is the Incarnation, exactly, and what is at stake if we get it wrong? The preacher and the theologian, the Antiochene (an-tee-OK-een) and the Alexandrian, the man of the people and the man of the council — together they complete the Eastern tradition’s engagement with the single most important Christian doctrine: that God was made man in Jesus Christ, and that this fact changes everything.
John Chrysostom was trained at Antioch in the school of biblical interpretation that read scripture historically and literally, attending to the plain sense of the text, the human circumstances of its authors, and its direct application to daily life. He spent six years as a hermit in the Syrian desert, nearly destroyed his health with excessive asceticism, returned to Antioch, was ordained, and became the most celebrated preacher in the Greek-speaking world. His homilies on Matthew, John, Paul’s letters, and the Acts of the Apostles are still among the most penetrating commentaries ever written — not because they are academic exercises but because they are pastoral encounters, the preacher pressing the text against the texture of his congregation’s actual lives with a persistence that leaves nowhere to hide. Do you wish to honour the body of the Saviour? he asks in one of his most famous passages. Do not despise him when he is naked. Do not honour him here in church with silken garments while neglecting him outside when he suffers cold and nakedness. When he was made Archbishop of Constantinople (kon-stan-tih-NOH-pul) in 398 he brought this same directness to the imperial capital, sold off the episcopal luxuries accumulated by his predecessors, established hospitals, reformed the clergy, and made a mortal enemy of the Empress Eudoxia (yoo-DOK-see-a) by preaching — some said specifically about her — against the vanity of the rich. He was exiled twice, the second time to the remotest corner of the Black Sea coast, and died on a death march in 407 at the age of about sixty, his last recorded words being thanks to God for all things. The deaconess Olympias (oh-LIM-pee-as), who had corresponded with him throughout his exiles with a loyalty and theological intelligence that matches anything in the tradition, was the closest companion of his last years. He is her saint as much as the Church’s.
Cyril of Alexandria became bishop of that great city in 412 and governed it for thirty-two years with a combination of theological brilliance and political ruthlessness that has made him one of the most contested figures in the Patristic tradition. The murder of the philosopher Hypatia (hy-PAY-shee-a) occurred in 415, carried out by a Christian mob in Alexandria; Cyril’s direct responsibility is disputed by historians but the atmosphere of sectarian violence that made it possible was not entirely unconnected to his governance. He drove the Jews from Alexandria. He conducted the campaign against Nestorius (nes-TOR-ee-us) at the Council of Ephesus (EF-eh-sus) in 431 with a speed and determination that amounted to railroading: the Nestorian bishops were still en route when the Council opened and condemned their leader. All of this is part of the record, and a meditation on Cyril that omits it is not honest. What is also part of the record is this: the theology he defended at Ephesus, and the title he insisted must be applied to Mary — Theotokos (thee-OH-tok-os), God-bearer — is correct. Nestorius had proposed Christotokos (kris-TOT-oh-kos) — Christ-bearer — as a compromise, arguing that Mary bore the human nature of Christ but not the divine person. Cyril saw instantly that this divided Christ into two persons — a human Jesus and a divine Word dwelling within him — and that such a division made the Incarnation incoherent and salvation impossible. If the one born of Mary is not fully God from the moment of conception, then the Incarnation does not unite God and humanity but only juxtaposes them. The title Theotokos is not primarily about Mary; it is about Christ. And Cyril was right.
The feast days of Chrysostom and Cyril stand five months apart in the calendar, and the space between them is the whole distance between the Antiochene and the Alexandrian visions of the Christian life. Chrysostom in January, in the Epiphany light: the preacher who makes the Word visible in its application, who will not let the comfortable forget the poor, who treats the Gospel as a set of demands rather than a set of consolations. Cyril in June, in the long Trinity green: the theologian who insists that the Word made flesh is truly God and truly man in one undivided person, and that this precision is not academic hairsplitting but the ground on which every act of charity, every sacrament, every prayer rests. Without Chrysostom’s preaching, Cyril’s theology remains an abstraction. Without Cyril’s theology, Chrysostom’s preaching has no doctrinal foundation to stand on. The golden mouth and the precise mind: between them they hold the whole Eastern tradition’s understanding of what the Incarnation is and what it requires. They are the last great Eastern pair before John of Damascus gathers everything into the final synthesis, and their complementary feasts frame the very heart of the liturgical year.
O Almighty God, who by thy servant John didst make the Word to shine in the darkness of human indifference, and by thy servant Cyril didst guard the mystery of the Incarnation against every division of the one Christ; Grant that we may both hear the Gospel with the ears of the poor and confess it with the precision of the faithful, knowing that the same Lord who was born of the Virgin is present in the hungry face of every child; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.