Saint John Chrysostom, the early church father and Archbishop of Constantinople, was widely lauded for his legendary oratorical skills and prolific writings.

In this two part series of essays, written to fulfil the taught portions of the Master of Arts degree programme (2015) in Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK, I unpack some of his thinking.

In part one, I explore Chrysostom’s thoughts on how those aspiring to enter the priesthood of his time should think about the value of receiving a quality pagan education.

St John Chrysostom’s Thoughts on the Value of Classical Paideia for the Priesthood

Saint John Chrysostom, who is most well-known for being the Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, has been widely revered in the history of Christendom for his eloquence. Under his mother’s connections, he acquired this eloquence from the classical Paideia (education) received under Libanius, a famed Greek-speaking teacher of rhetoric at Antioch. [1] However, his early ascetic orientation, his strong conviction in the authority of the scriptures in his writings [2], and his high view on the incomprehensible nature of God may cast doubt on just how much he would value this classical Paideia for other individuals training to occupy various positions in the ecclesial orders. These tensions in his thinking, manifest in his writings, find a focal point in his portraits and interpretations of St Paul, whom he confesses to love the most of all the saints. [3] Chrysostom concedes that Paul was probably not educated with the classical Paideia of Paul’s time, [4] and yet he exercised a discerning and fruitful ministry and wrote epistles with the kind of rhetorical skill that could only have been the result of some requisite knowledge of classical Paideia. He resolves this problem by claiming that whatever deficiencies in rhetorical prowess that Paul could not attain from his training under Gamaliel were supplemented by the supernatural work of God in his life. Chrysostom uses his rhetorical prowess, via encomium, to paint a portrait of Paul as being in a higher plain than, and therefore incomparable to, all other contemporary Christians of his time. This essay will put forward the contention that in so doing, his ensuing rhetorical call for his audiences to imitate Paul, especially in the context of the Priesthood, reveals his strong recommendation that they receive some form of classical Paideia as part of their training so that they may approximate Paul’s effectiveness. Furthermore, because Chrysostom himself puts forward this case by using his rhetorical skill gained from his training in classical Paideia, he commends, in his own life and work, a Christian Paideia, which, when understood in combination with his close identification with his beloved Paul, also issues in an implicit call for his audiences to imitate him as well.

Soon after his schooling with Libanius, Chrysostom served as an aide to bishop Meletios for three years. And after Meletios’ exile to Armenia because of Emperor Valens’ presence at Antioch, reinforcing the ‘decree of 5 May 365 expelling the bishops whom Julian the Apostate had permitted to regain their sees’, which left an ecclesial vacuum, Chrysostom was appointed lector who would read ‘the Old Testament and epistle lessons during worship’. It was at this time that his book On the Priesthood, defending his flight from forced ordination to pursue an ascetic life, is set. He writes that at the time, his friend Basil, and himself, heard a rumour that ‘the responsible church authorities were planning to seize them both and have them ordained under duress’. In response, he abandons his friend and runs away to pursue ‘a more rigorous ascetic life in the mountains that abutted the city’, which J. N. D. Kelly identifies as Mount Silpios. [5] After the four years spent there, he spends another two ‘continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and learning the Old and New Testaments by heart’. [6] Concerning his book On The Priesthood, it has been noted that, in contrast to the sensibilities of the other church fathers or prominent Christian thinkers of his time, like Basil of Caesarea, [7] he quotes almost exclusively from the scriptures (which would include what would now be considered Apocrypha in some Christian denominations) and never from Fathers, councils, or other authorities. For Chrysostom, ‘the Holy Scriptures are God’s supreme and sole law in the Church, and the clergy are entrusted with power to interpret, defend and enforce that law in the name of God’. [8]

Later in his career as Presbyter in Antioch from 386, after being ordained as a deacon ‘to the priesthood by Meletius’ successor, Flavian’, [9] a form of Arianism upheld by the Anomoeans had been gaining popularity from the 350s, which had been problematically supplemented by ‘the brilliant logician Eunomios (d. 395) into a rationalistic system of which the center-piece was the complete knowability of God’. In response, Chrysostom produced five addresses ‘delivered […] at mass on Sundays between September 386 and early 387’ commending the ‘the limits of human understanding and its inability to apprehend the essence of God’. Chrysostom’s refutations include Paul’s exhortation that God ‘dwells in unapproachable light’ and that his discourse on the unfathomable riches of Christ indicates that ‘he who gave the gift of the riches’ must himself be unfathomable. [10] In what would now be recognized as characteristically Eastern in theology, Chrysostom argues that the knowledge of God’s essence is not available to humans, but only ‘knowledge that he exists and knowledge of his action in the world’. [11] This theology is again echoed in his later homily on Eutropius wherein he argues that human language is inherently feeble and that it is God’s power and condescension that can allow insufficient human illustration concerning his nature to ‘suffice for the infirmity of the hearer’. [12] It seems therefore that his early attraction to asceticism in the form of monastic contemplative living, his commitment to the sole authority of the scriptures, and his high view on the incomprehensible nature of God’s essence suggests that he would not likely value nor commend any form of classical Paideia for individuals preparing for the Priesthood, since they are, strictly speaking, extraneous to theology. This essay will now turn to select aspects of his writings, including his encomiums and interpretation of Paul, to argue, in support of this essay’s thesis, that he does strongly recommend classical Paideia, both implicitly and explicitly, for individuals aspiring to enter the priesthood.

In his book On the Priesthood, which was written somewhere between 390-391 [13] and which possessed rather similar subject matter to two other roughly contemporaneous treatises on the Priesthood, Gregory Nazianzen’s De Fuga and Pope Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule, in which their authors were all initially unwilling ‘to accept ecclesiastical office’, [14] Chrysostom presents his case for the awesome honour and skill required for the priesthood [15] within the interesting literary frame of justifying his flight from it and deception to his friend Basil, who was ordained thinking that Chrysostom had followed suit. [16] Chrysostom writes, concerning the responsibilities of a priest, and in support of the proposition that he should receive some rhetorical training via classical Paideia, that ‘it is permitted to Christians, less than any, to correct by force the faults of those who sin’, and that much art is needed to persuade ‘an unwilling man’. A priest must also have great patience and goodwill to withstand ‘contempt, insolence, harsh speeches, and sarcasms from inferiors […] and rebukes vainly and idly spoken by rulers and the ruled’. He must be able to preach with great rhetorical skill, refute heresies, and stop the flock from provoking God. He argues that without the rhetorical skills that training in classical Paideia can provide, ‘having nothing to say to those who contradict, [the priest’s hearers] would lay the blame of his defeat, not upon his weakness, but on the unsoundness of his doctrine; and thus by unskillfulness of one, much people is brought down to utter ruin’. Chrysostom notes that the priest might have the right knowledge, but because he ‘stumbles and falters, and through lack of words is forced to blush, the benefit of what is spoken is utterly lost’. Basil responds by arguing that Chrysostom’s hero Paul himself claimed to be unskilled in speech in his letter to the Corinthians. [17] Chrysostom replies with a two-fold answer. First, he argues that Paul is above ‘all the men of our day’. He writes that if ‘all the men of our day were to come together with countless prayers and tears, they could not do what the aprons from Paul once effected’. He goes on to write that Paul could raise the dead and ‘wrought other life miracles so that he was even thought by the strangers to be a god […] He was counted worthy to be caught up to the third heaven, and to receive words which it is not lawful for human nature to hear’. He is therefore incomparable in that regard. His second answer is a direct refutation of Basil’s claim concerning Paul’s lack of eloquence or rhetorical skill: While Paul may not have been officially trained in Paideia, he was nevertheless famed for his eloquence and skill in writing. Chrysostom then provides a laundry list of accounts in the Book of Acts and the excellence of his epistles to prove his point. [18]      

In Margaret’s Mitchell’s study of Chrysostom’s art of Pauline Interpretation, whose purpose is to ‘show how Chrysostom […] adopted and adapted the conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric for verbal depiction of a person – epithets, encomia, ekphraseis– in order to create literary portraits by which he might lionize his favorite apostle’, she argues convincingly that Chrysostom utilizes the encomiastic art as a rhetorical strategy to praise Paul. In the 4th homily of his de laudibus sancti Pauli, she writes that Chrysostom juxtaposes Paul’s lowliness in education and job as a tentmaker with conquering imagery:

In a parabolic simile he casts Paul as a poor, naked and solitary man […], who, without so much as a javelin in his hand or a garment covering his body, had the strength to conquer the barbarians […] a task that had previously proved impossible even for the emperor with his full military forces and armaments.

This allows Chrysostom to say that ‘it was through “being apprenticed by the Holy Spirit” that the tentmaker became a rhetorician’. He does this again concerning Paul’s epistles, beginning by claiming that Paul only reads Hebrew and then expounding on the ‘rhetorical dexterity’ of his Greek epistles. Concerning On the Priesthood, Mitchell points out that ‘Chrysostom wishes to place Paul on an entirely different level from contemporary people and thus to eschew comparison with him entirely’. She notes that Chrysostom also reminds his audience that Paul’s epistles themselves ‘speak for [his] recommendation, by using imperatives for priests to learn, to study and employ words to combat adversaries’. [19] Consequently when one connects these with Chrysostom’s recommendation for individuals called to the priesthood to imitate Paul, who are unlike the incomparable Paul, who wielded rhetoric without training because God exceptionally gifted him, this reveals his explicit recommendation that they should receive some form of classical Paideiaif they wish to approximate Paul’s effectiveness. [20]       

Edward Jay Watts provides information on what encompasses Paideia. This system of education in the Late Roman society trains individuals to be knowledgeable about ‘the words, ideas, and texts of classical antiquity’. Carol Harrison provides a list of texts that they would have to read, which include ‘Cicero (the historian, philosopher, and rhetor), Virgil (the poet), Sallust (the historian), and Terence (the dramatist). […] Seneca, Apuleius, Ovid, Catullus, Juvenal, Horace, Lucian, Persius, and Varro’. [21] Watts writes that at the more advanced tier,

the student would then move to more advanced study with the rhetorician in which the literary allusions mentioned by the grammarian were expanded and their moral and historical significance was re-emphasized. […] When they left school, it was assumed that students would be perfectly able to apply the morals of these short stories to their daily conduct. As the student progressed in the rhetorician’s school, he was expected to produce his own full-length compositions of increasing difficulty. Each of these was done according to the specifics of each rhetorical genre’.

The inculcation of a code of conduct among others similarly educated also ‘became a tool for distinguishing the elite of Roman society from the average man’. Watts writes that the administration of the empire rested on the connections between these cultured men. It also had an important function of teaching moral virtues, and in these cases would include Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics as well as Plato’s Law and Republic. In the East, Christian reliance on classical Paideia is evidenced by Basil of Caesarea’s exhortations for ‘Christians “to apply themselves especially to such literature” […] and from this “trace out a kind of rough sketch of what virtue is”. There was also an expectation that Christians were to ‘keep their emotions in check and not display them publicly’, and the fact that ‘educated Christians were often selected to serve their cities by going on embassies’, these being parallel to the expectations and tasks of the cultured men who were identified by their common educational heritage. At the end of his chapter on Paideia, he writes that throughout late antiquity, there was an almost ‘constant mainstream Christian support for traditional education’ [22] even though some may have had reservations concerning its pagan religious elements. [23]

One of those elements may well have been tacit support for deception when undertaken with good intentions. Chrysostom justifies this contention in his defense against the accusation that he had lied to his friend Basil in the literary frame of his On the Priesthood. Chrysostom writes that motives count toward a deception being considered a good or bad act. He provides examples from the strategies of military commanders, the white lies of physicians, and the Book of Samuel wherein David’s wife Michal lies on his behalf to her father Saul, so that David can escape with his life. He writes that ‘he that has been prompted to act in a straightforward manner, has often done great mischief to the man whom he has not deceived’. He implicitly justifies this as legitimate pastoral practice by arguing that the ‘distance between the pastor and his charge be as great as the difference between rational men and irrational creatures’. Though a direct connection cannot be made to Chrysostom’s thinking, a clear parallel can be found in Plato’s The Republic. At the end of Book 3, Socrates, in dialogue with Glaucon, argues that a stable and just city can be founded on a gennaion pseudos (a noble lie) which provides ‘a mythical basis for fraternity among citizens’, and would ‘prevent the consequential threat of fratricide’. [24] Similarly, Chrysostom argues that he had deceived Basil with good intentions because he meant it to serve a good cause, that is, so that the Church would not be deprived ‘of a young man so good, and so adapted to preside over men’.         

Most significantly, Chrysostom argues that his beloved Paul also engaged in like deception. He writes that

in this way the blessed Paul attracted those many myriads of Jews; with this intention he circumcised Timothy, who yet admonished the Galatians that Christ will profit nothing such as are circumcised, and for this cause he became subject to the law, who accounted the righteousness which is by the law, a loss when one has faith in Christ. [25]

In Malcolm Heath’s article on Chrysostom and his writings of Galatians, he details Chrysostom’s argument that Paul’s rhetorically charged epistle is complicit with his secret ‘consultation with the leaders in Jerusalem concerning the law’ wherein ‘the agreed upon solution was to wean [Jewish Christians] off the law slowly’. Because this agreement was secret so as to benefit the people to whom the solution was meant for, Chrysostom argues that Paul faces two difficulties. The first concerns the potential problem of outsiders wondering: ‘if the apostles approved [of Paul’s calls to abolish the Jewish law], why did they not abolish circumcision? […] The only solution would be to reveal the strategic accommodation; but that is precisely what Paul cannot do without subverting it’. In response, Paul speaks ambiguously about the Jerusalem consultation, saying ‘but from those reputed to be something—whatever they were makes no difference to me: God is not a respecter of persons’. In effect, he sidesteps the issue. The second difficulty arises from the fact that Peter’s sudden non-adherence to the law when he was in Antioch—which is consistent with their agreed-upon strategy—would have been frowned upon by Jerusalem Christians. And because ‘Paul would probably not have got far if he had tried to reason directly with the newcomers’, he believed that ‘it would be more effective if they saw their supposed leader being openly rebuked by Paul, and having nothing to say in reply’. Chrysostom identifies this rhetorical strategy as figured speech [26]. Here Chrysostom, using the example of Paul, gives vivid examples of how Paul’s rhetorical knowledge and prowess vitally supplemented his ministry.

Going back to Mitchell’s thesis that Chrysostom’s biographically centered method of Pauline interpretation was done to create portraits of him that would ‘bring the saint to life in the presence of his congregational audience’, she goes on to write that his epistles ‘must also be understood as an element of ancient Greco-Roman epistolary theory [… wherein lies] the idea of the letter as conveying a portrait of the soul of its author’. [27] These rhetorical moves are meant to call audiences to identify with and imitate these portraits. Just as through ‘paideia Greek gentlemen were taught to ‘install Demosthenes in their souls’, Chrysostom’s portraits of Paul are not only produced with the intention of praising his abilities and juxtaposing them against his humble background via encomium, but are also a clarion call to imitate him. [28] And because Chrysostom already places Paul at an incomparably higher level than the budding Christian leaders of his time, who are not miracle workers, and who do not have a similar special relationship with God, the direct implication is that they would need to receive this Paideia from a more traditional source, that is, through the tedious and long process of pagan learning and instruction.

Furthermore, as this essay has endeavoured to show, Chrysostom subordinates his training in classical Paideia to his theology, using the former to support the latter. This is very clearly evidenced in his Homilies on the Statues which he composed in response to the riot following the edict sent in February 387 to Antioch ‘announcing the imposition of an unusually heavy tax […] directed at all classes of the city’ which caused a massive and destructive riot, and which amounted to treason. The news was sent to Emperor Theodosius in Constantinople, and the first sets of judgments included Antioch’s deprivation of her title of metropolis, and the closing of the ‘hippodrome, theaters and baths’. At this time, he composed his homilies, arguing that Christian virtue rather than pagan learning is what truly ‘forms people in the virtues most necessary for public life’. This is significant because it challenged the common view that the moral instructions enclosed in the Greek works of classical Paideia were the instruments through which individuals would be nurtured in moral virtue. [29] He argues that unlike the founding myths put forth by the Greeks to maintain a just and stable society, whose falsity has been presently proved by ‘the failure of pagans in the present crisis’ who did nothing except flee, the truth of the Christian message of resurrection for those who believe in Christ have enabled Christians to truly live life ethically and in concord with the well-being of the state. He provides the example of the monks who intervened for the people ‘before the tribunal at Antioch’ about the riots because ‘they already had readied themselves for death’. [30] It is clear, therefore, from his preaching that Chrysostom does not subordinate his belief in the value of Christian moral formation to the propositional and moral content enclosed within the Greek texts of classical Paideia. Consequently, Chrysostom’s quintessential Christian-ness, which the beginning of this essay has laid out, is not diminished by his use and support of the skills he attained from Paideia. Rather, he integrates his Christian and pagan learning in such a way that the methods of Paideia are subordinated to Christian theology, wherein only the latter retains its claim to provide an ethical life suitable for civic society. To give it a name, this essay will call Chrysostom’s approach a form of Christian Paideia. And because this Christian Paideia is manifest in his life and work as a presbyter and later as Archbishop of Constantinople, his call to imitate Paul via encomium, which he very evidently applies to himself, is also a call to those who are aspiring to the priesthood, to approximate to his own Christian Paideia, by receiving the relevant pagan training and subordinating it to Christian theology. [31] In these ways, Chrysostom, through his encomiums and interpretation of Paul, commends classical Paideia for all who would seek after the Priesthood.

The value of Chrysostom’s call for priests to be well educated can be secondarily evidenced by an earlier decree given by Emperor Julian during his reign from 361-363 which ‘required all those engaged in secondary education first of all to register with the local magistrates, to make sure that they reached the required standard of moral probity’. This reason behind the decree is explained in ‘the imperial rescript’ [32] and a separate letter titled “Against the Galileans”, the latter of which is preserved in fragments. In a nutshell, Julian argued that a teacher, who must be honest, must believe in what they teach, and since classical Paideia is inextricably infused with pagan religion, Christian teachers of Paideia will de facto be unable to honestly believe in what they teach. Some Christian sources purport that this decree also prevented young Christian children from receiving Paideia as well. [33] If true, this would mean that Julian wanted all Christians to be excluded from teaching and learning Paideia. Karl Olav Sandnes argues, quite astutely, that Julian issued the decree because he feared the possibility of the eventual replacement of ‘Homer with the Bible’ and the ‘conquering [of] Greek culture from within’. [34] This would reflect the fact that ‘his reason for excluding Christians from the knowledge of the Greek literature was [his fear] that they through such studies would acquire rhetorical skills and persuasive power’ who would then turn around and wield it against the world views based on ‘the foundational writings of the oikoumene’s common Greekness and Romanness, the universal foundation of Rome’s greatness’ [35] and so destroy Rome’s great pagan heritage. Therefore, in this context, Chrysostom’s calls for his audiences, and by extension, those aspiring to the priesthood, to imitate Paul and himself, is also a call to recognize the value of appropriating Paideia in the service of Christianity.

Endnotes

1. Averil Cameron, ‘Education and literary culture’, in The Cambridge ancient history: Vol. XIII The late empire, A.D. 337–425, ed. by Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 668.
2. ‘John Chrysostom was much less favourable to any form of Hellenism and opted for a more purely biblical form of the faith’, Anthony Meredith, Porphyry and Julian against the Christians, ANRW II.23.2, p. 1140.
3. Margaret Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), p. 38. She is quoting from his in illud: utinam sustineretis modicumand homiliae in sanctum Matthaeum apostolum et evangelistam.
4. Mitchell lists his De laudibus sancti Pauli Homily 4 and 5 as instances wherein Chrysostom notes that Paul lacked education, Margaret Mitchell, ‘The Archetypal Image: John Chrysostom’s Portraits of Paul’, The Journal of Religion, 75 1 (1995), p. 38.  
5. J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom – Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 24, 25, 28.
6. Wendy Mayer and Paul Allen, John Chrysostom (Psychology Press, 2000), pp. 5, 6, 6, 6.
7. See Edward Jay Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria(University of California Press, 2006), p. 15.
8. Chrysostom, On the Priesthood In Six Books, trans. by Benjamin Harris Cowper (Memphis: General Books, 2012), p. 3, 3.
9. Mayer, John Chrysostom, p. 6. 
10. Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, trans. by Paul W. Harkins (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), pp. 118, 120. See I Timothy 6.16.
11. Kelly, Golden Mouth, pp. 60, 61, 61, 62.
12. Chrysostom, ‘Eutropius, and the Vanity of Riches. On The Myriad Names of the Church And on the Economy of Divine Speech’. Homily II.
13. Kelly, Golden Mouth, p. 83. 
14. Neville, Graham, ‘Introduction’, in John Chrysostom, Six Books On The Priesthood, trans. by Graham Neville, (USA: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), pp. 18, 20.
15. Chrysostom’s definition of the priesthood would not have only included bishops, but also priests and deacons, see Benjamin Harris Cowper, ‘Introduction’, Chrysostom, On the Priesthood In Six Books, trans. by Benjamin Harris Cowper (Memphis: General Books, 2012), p. 3.
16. Scholars have debated the historical veracity of this literary frame. Some argue that Basil probably did not exist because he is not attested anywhere else in the relevant ancient literature and that the ‘Platonic-style dialogue’ of the book implies its fictional frame. See Kelly, Golden Mouth, p. 27.     
17. See for example I Corinthians 2.1.
18. Chrysostom, Six Books, pp. 9, 9, 17, 28, 30, 31, 28, 28, 28, 28, 29 29. One explanation of this seeming inconsistency is the simple fact that Paul was being modest about his abilities and did not want to detract from God’s sovereignty and power in his epistles to the Corinthians, especially since they were known for over-valuing and over-emphasizing their spiritual and rhetorical abilities.    
19. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), pp. XXI, 219-220, 241, 245, 284, 290.
20. ‘The Portrait of Paul as the supremely effective orator serves to justify Chrysostom’s rhetorical practice, and his injunctions for others to imitate it themselves’, Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet, p. 291.
21. Carol Harrison, Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p, 47.
22. Watts, City and School, pp. 2, 4, 5, 7, 5, 15, 15, 15-16, 21.
23. See also Gregorius Nazianzenus, ‘Funebris oratio in laudem Basilii Magni Caesareae’, 11.1–4. trans. by Alexandros Andreou, January 2013, who supported classical Paideia.
24. Kateri Carmola, ‘Noble Lying: Justice and Intergenerational Tension in Plato’s “Republic”’, Political Theory, 31 1 (2003), p. 52. In the words of Socrates, ‘They are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth, where they themselves and their arms and appurtenances were manufactured; when they were completed, the earth, their mother, sent them up; and so, their country being their mother and also their nurse, they are bound to advise for her good, and to defend her against attacks, and her citizens they are to regard as children of the earth and their own brothers […] yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honour’, Plato,The Republic Book III, trans. by Benjamin Jowett, The Internet Classics Archive, <http://classics.mit.edu/index.html>. This is itself based on an older lie, that is, the founding of Thebes by Cadmus, Carmola, ‘Noble Lying’, p 53.
25. Chrysostom, Six Books, p. 8.
26. Malcolm Heath, ‘John Chrysostom, Rhetoric and Galatians’, Biblical Interpretation, 12 4 (2004), pp. 384, 385, 385, 386, 400; This reading is not given much weight by most contemporary scholars, but it was also advanced independently by Origen, Jerome, Theodoret and others. See Heath, ‘Rhetoric and Galatians’, pp. 386, 387; Heath also provides parallel examples from Greek literature, one of which is Plutarch’s Precepts on Politics (Mor. 813a-c), wherein ‘he recommends that if a city is faced with a decision of critical importance the political elite should suspend normal political rivalry and agree among themselves on the correct course of action; but since popular assemblies are potentially refractory, that collusion should be concealed by a stage-managed disagreement ending with one party backing down by prearrangement’, p. 388.
27. Mitchell, ‘The Archetypal Image’, p. 24.
28. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet, pp. XVII, XXI, 43, 225.
29. ‘That virtue which Themistius, Julian and Libanius would ascribe to an education in Hellenic literature is attributed by Chrysostom to the formation obtained from a Christian “culture”’, David G. Hunter, Preaching in the Patristic Age: Studies in Honour of Walter J. Burghardt (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), p. 126.
30. Hunter, Preaching in the Patristic Age, pp. 121, 121, 122, 120, 126, 129, 128-129.
31. Chrysostom ‘saw himself as in the same ambivalent position as he saw Paul: an ascetic forced by circumstances to live in the world and the church to carry out the worldly duties placed in his charge’, Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet, p. 68.
32. Anthony Meredith, Porphyry and Julian against the Christians, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.23.2, Institute for the Classical Tradition Boston University, pp. 1138, 1138. 
33. This cannot be determined with any certainty, but Sandnes argues that if Julian had this agenda, ‘to get rid of Christianity but also not to appear as a tyrant, this implies a situation where he might well have addressed the issue differently on different occasions, and left to local administrations to put things into practice’, Karl Olav Sandnes, The Gospel ‘According to Homer and Virgil’: Cento and Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 92.
34. Sandnes,The Gospel, p 87; Harrison concurs. She writes that at that time ‘the two most important chairs of rhetoric were occupied by Christians—Prohaeresius at Athens and Victorinus at Rome—and numerous Christians were employed in the secular schools’, therefore ‘sensitivity to Christianity’s position was obviously heightened’, Harrison, Christian Truth, p. 56.
35. Susanna Elm, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church (University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 141, 142.

Bibliography

• Cameron, Averil, ‘Education and literary culture’, in The Cambridge ancient history: Vol. XIII The late empire, A.D. 337–425, ed. by Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey    (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Carmola, Kateri, ‘Noble Lying: Justice and Intergenerational Tension in Plato’s “Republic”’, Political Theory, 31 1 (2003)
• Chrysostom, John, ‘Eutropius, and the Vanity of Riches. On The Myriad Names of the Church And on the Economy of Divine Speech’. Homily II.
• ——— , On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, trans. by Paul W. Harkins (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984)
• ——— , On the Priesthood In Six Books, trans. by Benjamin Harris Cowper (Memphis: General Books, 2012)
• Elm, Susanna, Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
• Harrison, Carol, Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Heath, Malcolm, ‘John Chrysostom, Rhetoric and Galatians’, Biblical Interpretation, 12 4               (2004), 369-400.
• Hunter, David G., Preaching in the Patristic Age: Studies in Honour of Walter J. Burghardt (New York: Paulist Press, 1989)
• Kelly, J. N. D., Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom – Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Cornell University Press, 1998)
• Mayer, Wendy, and Paul Allen, John Chrysostom (Psychology Press, 2000)
• Meredith, Anthony, Porphyry and Julian against the Christians, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.23.2, Institute for the Classical Tradition Boston University, pp. 1137-1149. < https://www.bu.edu/ict/anrw/pub/II/23/meredith.html>. [accessed 13 January 2015]
• Mitchell, Margaret, ‘The Archetypal Image: John Chrysostom’s Portraits of Paul’, The Journal of Religion, 75 1 (1995), 15-43
• ——— , The Heavenly Trumpet John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002)
• Nazianzenus, Gregorius, ‘Funebris oratio in laudem Basilii Magni Caesareae’, 11.1–4. trans. by Alexandros Andreou, January 2013
• Neville, Graham, ‘Introduction’, in John Chrysostom, Six Books On The Priesthood, trans. by      Graham Neville, (USA: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996)
• Plato, The Republic Book III, trans. by Benjamin Jowett, The Internet Classics Archive
• Sandnes, Karl Olav, The Gospel ‘According to Homer and Virgil’: Cento and Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2011)
• Watts, Edward Jay, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (University of California Press, 2006)