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The influence of John Chrysostom's hermeneutics on John Calvin's exegetical approach to Paul's Epistle to the Romans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2010

Najeeb George Awad
Najeeb George Awad*
Affiliation:
Seminar Hermannsburg Mission, Missionsstr 3-5, 29320 Hermannsburg, Germanyn.awad@missionsseminar.de
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Abstract

In this article, I look at the possible impact of John Chrysostom's exegetical approach upon John Calvin's biblical interpretation. I detect the traces of Chrysostom's hermeneutical approach to Paul's Letter to the Romans in John Calvin's reading of the same epistle. Why Paul's literature? Because both Chrysostom and Calvin are very fond of Paul and his thinking and consider him the major voice in the Bible. Why the Epistle to the Romans specifically? Because they both believe that this epistle is valuable for the church at all times. According to them, it is the first door to the understanding of the Good News of God's salvation as proclaimed in the Bible. I make this comparison on the basis of the following foundational thesis. If the first Protestant reformers were reliant on the church's exegetical tradition, and if they believed in the affinity of their biblical reading to a long tradition of reading conducted before them, the impact of the church fathers' exegetical methodology on the reformers' biblical interpretation should be part and parcel of any scholarship we do on the Reformation's hermeneutics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , November 2010 , pp. 414 - 436
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2010

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References

1 John Thompson, for instance, believes that Calvin's interest in, and indebtedness to patristic interpretation is characteristic of his theological career at both its early and later stages: Thompson, John L., ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 58–73, 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ‘Calvin laconically indicates . . . that he highly values the biblical work of his ancient predecessors. The inference is borne out not only by what we suspect of Calvin's earlier training but also by his widespread reading and copious use of the church fathers’ throughout his later career.’

2 I discuss the Reformation's understanding of sola scriptura and criticise the postmodernist attempt to replace it with a sola traditio principle, as if the first is meant as an anti-tradition principle, in ‘Should we Dispense with “Sola Scriptura”? Scripture, Tradition and Postmodern Theology’, Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 47/1 (2008), pp. 64–79.

3 Chrysostom, John, Homilies on the Epistle to Romans, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff, Philip (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1889), prefaceGoogle Scholar.

4 Ibid., Hom. IX, Rom. 9:23.

5 Ibid., Hom. IX, Rom. 9:2.

6 Ibid., preface: ‘the date of the epistles contributes no little to what we are looking after’. ‘I find no other reason for this difference [in Paul's different ways of speaking about the same subject] than the time of the transaction.’

7 Thiselton, A., New Horizons in Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), pp. 191–2Google Scholar.

8 Thus Chrysostom, Romans, Hom. IX, Rom. 4:10–11.

9 Romans, Hom. I.

10 Ibid., Hom. III.

11 In his commentary on Rom. 5:12, Hom. X, Chrysostom describes Paul's style of argument as follows: ‘as the best physician always takes great pains to discover the source of diseases, and go to the very fountain of the mischief, so does the blessed Paul also’. Chrysostom then shows that Paul's strategy of argument in Romans is two-fold: (1) relying on textual and extra-textual sources, and (2) contrasting opposite notions to clarify their meaning in comparison to each other.

12 Ibid., Hom. III, Rom. 1:23.

13 Ibid., Hom. VI, Rom. 2:21–3.

14 Gorday, Peter, ‘Principles of Patristic Exegesis: Romans 9–11’, in Origen, John Chrysostom and Augustine (New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983), p. 107Google Scholar.

15 Mitchell, M. M., The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation, (London and Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002), p. 381Google Scholar. This is why Chrysostom's portrait of Paul is shaped by elements derived from the rhetorical culture of late antiquity, as Mitchell claims.

16 Ibid., p. 382. Mitchell argues that ‘the Paul whom Chrysostom paints here has a striking resemblance to John himself . . . hence the Paul he viewed as a powerful but ambivalent rhetorician served as a model for John, the Christian orator; Paul the man of sufferings and sorrows yet beloved of God a template of his own life struggles; Paul the urban pastoral ascetic the precise paradigm of his own vocation’. Mitchell concludes from this that ‘the multiplicity of Pauline portraits reflects also the multi-faceted identities of the portraitist himself’. Ibid., p. 383.

17 At the end of his homily on Rom. 9, Chrysostom says to his audience the following telling words: ‘is then the language used made plain to you? Or does it still want much in clearness? I think indeed that, to those who have been attending, it is easy to get a clear view of it, but if it has slipped anybody's memory, you can meet in private and learn what it was. And this is why I have continued longer upon this explanatory part of the discourse, that I might not be compelled to break off the continuity of the context and so spoil the clearness of the statements’: Chrysostom, Romans, Hom. XVII, Rom. 9:33. Read also his words in Hom. XIX, Rom. 11:7–9.

18 Thiselton, New Horizons, p. 173.

19 Chrysostom, Romans, Hom. XIII, Rom. 7:14.

20 Ibid., Hom. XIII, Rom. 8:8.

21 Gorday, Principles of Patristic Exegesis, pp. 130–1.

22 Ibid., p. 133. For a similar opinion, see Lossky, V., The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clark & Co. 1957), pp. 104, 106Google Scholar.

23 Gorday, Principles of Patristic Exegesis, p. 134.

24 Thus Mitchell, Heavenly Trumpet, p. 5. ‘Chrysostom's interpretation of Paul and his letters is of monumental importance, both for what it teaches us of trends and idea in Pauline interpretation in the patristic age, and because of its pervasive and enduring influence on the subsequent history of interpretation.’

25 Ibid., pp. 6–7.

26 The only comprehensive study we have about this possibility is J. R. Walchenbach, ‘John Calvin as Biblical Commentator: An Investigation into Calvin's Use of John Chrysostom as an Exegetical Tutor’, Ph.D. diss. University of Pittsburgh, 1974. One can benefit also from briefer studies like Steinmetz, David C., ‘Calvin and the Patristic Exegesis of Paul’, in Steinmetz (ed.), The Bible in the Sixteenth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 100–18, 231–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bousma, William J., John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 65. Thompson, nevertheless, warns that Calvin often relies on his memory and not on a first-hand citation from the patristic sources. This, according to Thompson, makes Calvin's sources and citing method hardly traceable.

28 Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, p. 63.

29 Ian Hazlett, P., ‘Calvin's Latin Preface to his Proposed French Edition of Chrysostom's Homilies: Translation and Commentary’, in Kirk, James (ed.), Humanism and Reform: The Church in Europe, England and Scotland, 1400–1643 (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), p. 133Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 130. For the estimated date of this preface's composition, see pp. 132–3.

31 Ibid., p. 134.

32 Ibid., p. 139, n. 2.

33 Ibid., p. 140.

34 Ibid., pp. 140–1. See also on this point Zachman, Randall C., ‘Do you Understand What you are Reading? Calvin's Guidance for the Reading of Scripture’, Scottish Journal of Theology 54/1, (2001), pp. 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Ibid., p. 141.

36 Ibid., p. 142.

37 Ibid. Hazlett points out Calvin's indebtedness to Erasmus’ appraisal of Chrysostom in this regard. Calvin, according to Hazlett, adopts Erasmus’ claim in his preface to Chrysostom's writings of 1530 ‘for all [Chrysostom's] great erudition and eloquence, there is in almost everything he wrote an incredible concern to be helpful; he adapted to the ears of the people, with the result that he brought the essence of a sermon down to the level of their comprehension, as if he were a schoolteacher speaking child talk with an infant pupil’. Ibid., p. 142, n. 23.

38 Ibid., p. 143.

39 Ibid., pp. 145–6.

40 Ibid., pp. 146ff. One of the main issues on which Calvin theologically disagrees with Chrysostom is the importance of man's role in divine justification. Calvin believes that Chrysostom ‘attempts to link election to some consideration of our works’, and ‘divides the credit of our calling between God and ourselves’. Against this, Calvin believes that there is no scriptural evidence of this approach. On the contrary, in the scriptures ‘the Lord everywhere deprives us of all capacity of doing good, and leaves us with no virtue other than what he himself supplies through his Spirit’. Ibid., pp. 146–7.

41 Holder, R. Ward, ‘Calvin as Commentator on the Pauline Epistles’, in McKim, Donald K. (ed.), Calvin and the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 224–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Calvin, John, ‘To Simon Grynaeus, a Man Worthy of All Honor’, in John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, John Calvin, trans. MacKenzie, Ross, ed. Torrance, D. W. and Torrance, T. F. (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), p. 2Google Scholar.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., p. 3.

45 Ibid., p. 5. The same judgement is expressed elsewhere, as in Rom. 7:8–12 (pp. 143ff.), or Rom. 12:1, where Calvin points to Paul's use of ‘synechdoce’ expressions (p. 264).

46 Ibid., p. 123. In his commentary on Rom. 6:13, Calvin considers Paul's usage to be metaphorical and attempts to extract its meaning out of its symbolic gesture (ibid., p. 129). See a similar approach in, for example, Chrysostom, Romans, Hom. X, Rom. 5:15–19.

47 Ibid., p. 124.

48 Ibid., pp. 157–9, Rom. 8:1–4.

49 David C. Steinmetz, ‘John Calvin as an Interpreter of the Bible’, in Calvin and the Bible, p. 283. Italics are mine.

50 Ibid., p. 285.

51 Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, 15, where Calvin states that he tries in his interpretation of the words of Romans to ‘get rid of the mistaken impression of those who indulge in needless speculation about the words’, and obscure the words of the text in a manner that ‘suits the context’.

52 See also what Calvin says when he interprets Rom. 7:1. He relies on Paul's disputation with the Jews to explain what Paul means by saying ‘I speak to men that know the law’ (ibid., pp. 137–8). Compare with Chrysostom's commentary in Romans, Homs. XVI–XIX.

53 Ibid., p. 124, Rom. 6:5. Compare with Chrysostom, Romans, Hom. IX, Rom. 10:1.

54 This is what drives Calvin to retain Paul's saying ‘in Christ Jesus’ in Rom. 6:11 as it is rather than follow Erasmus’ revision of this phrase into ‘by Christ Jesus’ (ibid., p. 128).

55 In his commentary on Rom. 9:2–3, Hom. XVI, Chrysostom urges his audience not to take Paul's words on the Law and on the Jews at face value. He invites them to look closely into the ‘causes’ of his words ‘and to bring together the cause, and the intention, and the time and all that makes in behalf of what is so done, and in this way let us investigate the actions’.

56 Thus Thiselton, New Horizons, pp. 190–1. ‘Like Chrysostom, Calvin was concerned to understand and to expound “the mind of the biblical author” (mens auctoris)’.

57 Kearsley, Roy, ‘Calvin and the Power of the Elder: A Case of the Rogue Hermeneutic?’ in Lane, A. N. (ed.), Interpreting the Bible: Historical and Theological Studies in Honor of David F. Wright (Leicester: Apollos/InterVarsity Press, 1997), p. 113Google Scholar. Kearsley argues that limiting the scope of Calvin's exegetical approach to the sixteenth-century humanist method of investigation turns Calvin into another ‘dispassionate systematizer’ and treats him as more mind than a living personality (p. 114). He says this referring to Bouwsma, William J., John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 2Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., p. 115, and Torrance, Thomas F., The Hermeneutics of John Calvin (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988), pp. 70–3Google Scholar.

59 Thus, for instance, claims Coertzen, P., ‘Presbyterial Church Government: Ius Divinum, Ius Ecclesiasticum or Ius Humanum?’, in Spijker, W. Vant (ed.), Calvin: Urbe und Auftrag (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1991), pp. 329–42Google Scholar. Roy Kearsley is also in favour of such a claim as he says that Calvin picks up texts and leaves others aside on the basis of the requirement of the struggle he faces. This not only tailors Calvin's choice of texts, Kearsley says, but also his selective use of available interpretations: Kearsley, ‘Calvin and the Power of the Elder’, p. 128.

60 Look, for example, at Chrysostom's commentary on Rom. 9:15, Hom. XVI, where he invites people to investigate Paul's words further, lest the meaning become obscure for today's context.

61 Parker, T. H. L., John Calvin, (Harts and Sutherland: Lion Publishing and Albatross Books, 1982), p. 92Google Scholar.

62 Calvin, ‘To Simon Grynaeus’, p. 1.

63 See on this, for example, Burnett, Richard, ‘John Calvin and the Sensus Literalis’, Scottish Journal of Theology 57/1 (2004), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who refers among the scholars who stress this link to Hans Frei and his claims in Frei, Hans W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and in McConnell, F. (ed.), The Bible and the Narrative Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 94–152Google Scholar, and in Hunsinger, George and Placher, William C. (eds.), Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 153–66Google Scholar.

64 Burnett, ‘Calvin and Sensus Literalis’, p. 2.

65 Ibid., p. 3. Scholars recently argue, however, that despite his rejection of allegorism, Calvin maintains a positive attention to the rhetorical expressions of the texts and the social background of the author. A careful reading of his biblical exegesis from the perspective of his systematic, doctrinal thinking indicates, according to these scholars, that Calvin relies on a form of reading which extends the written texts to nature and history. See, on this allegation, H. J. Bernard Combrink, ‘The Contribution of Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation to the Reformed Interpretation of Scripture’, in Wallace M. Alston and Michael Welker (eds.), Reformed Theology, Identity and Ecumenicity, vol. 2, Biblical Interpretation in the Reformed Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007), pp. 91–106; and ‘History, Historiography and Reformed Hermeneutics at Stellenbosch: Dealing with a Hermeneutical Deficit and its Consequences’, ibid., pp. 157–71.

66 Both Burnett and Frei perceive Calvin's adoption of this patristic conviction. They both maintain that ‘there was a fit or correspondence between text and truth, between signa and res, between what is written and what is written about. And it is the nature of this fit, this correspondence, in Calvin's exegesis that is interesting’: Burnett, ‘Calvin and Sensus Literalis’, p. 5; and Frei, ‘Conflicts in Interpretation: Resolution, Armistice, or Co-existence?’ in Theology and Narrative, pp. 153–66.

67 Burnett, ‘Calvin and Sensus Literalis’, p. 5

68 For example, Stroup, George W., ‘Narrative in Calvin's Hermeneutics’, in George, Timothy (ed.,), John Calvin and the Church: A Prism of Reform (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

69 Thus Thompson, ‘Calvin as a Biblical Interpreter’, p. 65; borrowing this argument from Lane, A. N. S., John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (London and Grand Rapids, MI: T&T Clark and Bakers, 1999), p. 15Google Scholar.