The Spirituality of Chrysostom's Commentary on the Psalms

Abstract

Chrysostom does not figure in traditional lists of spiritual guides from antiquity, nor his Commentary on the Psalms among spiritual classics. This may be due to ignorance of it by modern commentators, though aspects of its spiritual teaching could contribute to this omission: the preacher's accent—if preached the commentaries were—on a balance of human effort and divine grace in the process of salvation was thought pelagian by some in the West in the patristic age. No mystic, Chrysostom can be pedestrian in his approach to prayer, and the claim some have made for him as initiator of a lay spirituality is open to question. But there is no doubting the Scriptural fare he provided to his (male) congregations in his classroom.

Of the great texts called into service by Christian commentators from the beginning for spiritual direction or simply moral guidance, a principal one—yielding pride of place only to the Gospels—has been the Psalter. Over thirty of the Fathers are known to have composed commentaries on this book of the Bible,¹ though we are not fortunate enough to have all these still at our disposal or in direct manuscript tradition. One of the better represented is that by John Chrysostom, preacher in Antioch in the late fourth century, from which period of his ministry of the Word the Commentary seems to come, and then bishop of Constantinople. Not the whole of the Psalter is included in the text we have;² even in the ninth century Photius, bishop of that same see, admitted its incompleteness, leaving the question open as to whether Chrysostom ever commented on every psalm.³ Beyond the fifty eight in the extant collection of ¥rmhneÝai beginning at Ps 4, we have also commentaries on Ps 3 and verses of other psalms that are authentic but not of this collection (if the term "series" begs the question).

Not only does the condition of the Commentary leave us with a relatively hefty corpus of patristic material on this important text for spiritual formation. It also has the advantage of coming to us in direct and (compared with Chrysostom's New Testament works) uncomplicated manuscript tradition,⁴ and of not being clearly and directly dependent on the work of earlier commentators—a dependence that marks some of the better known Psalms commentaries from antiquity, as Rondeau capably demonstrates. Chrysostom occasionally betrays awareness of other views on a verse; but it is less a tribute to his integrity than an acknowledgment of his ignorance of or disdain for the work of "the scholars" (as he rather pejoratively terms them on occasion) that we do not have to debate the provenance of his teaching on the psalms.

Neglect of Chrysostom's Commentary

Yet this lengthy work and its composer have not found widespread recognition in histories of Christian spirituality. This is probably not due to a quibble about the circumstances of its composition/delivery, of which Photius even a millennium ago in Constantinople acknowledged ignorance and which modern scholars have not been able to clarify with certainty;5 nor would the lack of a critical edition of the text be to blame. Perhaps it has more to do with the extent of the work and its lack of availability in modern languages that accounts for its failure to provide documentation for commentators on Chrysostom's significance in that history of notable guides of the Christian faithful since the New Testament. The treatment of "Patristic spirituality" in The New Dictionary of Christian Spirituality does not accord a place to the golden-mouthed preacher in a section on "the Golden Age,"⁶ nor does he rate a mention in Andrew Louth's classic text, where Origen and Augustine are thought worthy of chapter-length treatment.⁷ Charles Kannengiesser is more concessive in acknowledging his contribution to "the spiritual message of the great Fathers," though the Psalms commentary is not cited,⁸ as is true of the lengthy article on "Jean Chrysostome" by Antoine Wenger in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité.⁹ At least Wenger, and more so Louis...