Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 69:1 (NA 2018)
Article: Construct A Fortress Against The Devil John Chrysostom’s Plea To Build Churches In The Countryside
Author: Michael Strickland

TynBull 69:1 (2018) p. 133

Construct A Fortress Against The Devil
John Chrysostom’s Plea To Build Churches In The Countryside

Michael Strickland

([email protected])

Summary

Given Chrysostom’s famous concern for the poor, it is perhaps surprising that he made multiple appeals to rich, land-owning Christians to build churches in the countryside. In fact, Chrysostom preferred that the poor be helped by building churches for them rather than giving them gifts directly. However, it is clear that he was less concerned with architecture and aesthetics and more with evangelisation. Chrysostom saw church buildings, with ‘full-time’ ministers, as a way not only to bless the poor of the countryside, but as a means for Christian instruction. Thus, he appealed to rich Christians by challenging them to build more churches. Rather than building baths, or taverns, or hosting markets, why not build churches to establish an eternal legacy, constructing ‘a fortress against the devil, for that is what the church is’?

1. Introduction

John Chrysostom, the famed preacher of the eastern empire in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, was a relentless advocate for the poor.1

TynBull 69:1 (2018) p. 134

Perhaps no figure from the ancient church provided as many consistent and powerful admonitions to all Christians, especially the wealthy, to rid themselves of worldly treasure and its trappings by taking care of the poor. It may have surprised some in his day (as it may modern readers) that Chrysostom once advised wealthy landowners to build churches to help the rural pēoor. This essay discusses Chrysostom’s Hom. in Acts 18, where the bishop of Constantinople argues that church buildings, and the presbyters that accompany them, are the greatest gifts a Christian landowner could give to his workers and to himself.

2. Locating The Sermon In Chrysostom’s Life

While the exact occasion of Hom. in Acts cannot be stated with certainty, the weight of scholarly opinion suggests the sermons were delivered during Chrysostom’s time in Constantinople, perhaps beginning in the year 400 and continuing into 401.2 All of the sermons

TynBull 69:1 (2018) p. 135

are typical of Chrysostom’s vivid imagery and compelling argumentation, but Hom. 18 gives one a glimpse of the period of late fourth- and early fifth-century Christianity and can help readers to appreciate the concerns of the people there and then.

2.1 The Christianisation Of The E...

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