Apologist

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DISCOURSE ON BLESSED BABYLAS AND AGAINST THE GREEKS INTRODUCTION UR LORD, JESUS CHRIST, as he was about to go to his passion and die a life-giving death,I on the very last night called his disciples aside and, conversing with them at length, gave them counsel. In addition to other words he said, he spoke thus: "Amen, amen, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he also shall do, and greater than these he shall do."· Yet there have been many other teachers, who had disciples and paraded wonders, even as the Greeks3 boast.4 Nonetheless none of them ever conI The adjective "life-giving" is applied by Greek Fathers to the passion, cross, death, and burial of Christ. See the examples listed in PGL, s.v. zoopoios 4g· 'In 14.12. See Introduction 37-38. Cf. Chrysostom, Hom. 4 in Ac. prine. (PG 51. 107-08. A. Neander, The Life of St. Chrysostom, trans. lC. Stapleton [London 1845]310-11.): "Christ performed miracles; he raised the dead; he cleansed lepers; he cast out devils: he was afterwards crucified; and, as the wicked Jews say, he arose not from the dead. What then shall we say to them? If he arose not, whence came it, that greater miracles were afterwards wrought in his name? For no one, who ever lived, wrought after his decease miracles greater than before. But here they became more wonderful both in the manner of their performance and their own nature. In their own nature, because the shadow of Christ never awakened the dead; but the shadow of an Apostle performed many such miracles. In the manner of their performance, because, before the crucifixion, Christ wrought the miracles by his own personal presence; but, after the crucifixion, they were his servants, who, by virtue of his holy and adorable name, performed greater and sublimer miracles ; and thus his power shone forth more gloriously; for it was the same power, which wrought both before and after the crucifixion-first directly from himself; afterwards by means of his disciples." 3 "The Greeks" here stands for "children of the Greeks," a circumlocution found in classical Greek and analogous to the biblical phrase "children of Israel." On the translation of"Hellenes" as "Greeks" rather than "pagans" see Introduction note 136. 4Thus the anti-Christian writer Hierocles mentioned wonder-workers of 75 ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM ceived of or dared to express such a notion. Nor can certain among the Greeks, for all their impudence, point to the existence of such a prediction or saying among themselves. Rather, many say that many of their wonder-workers evoke apparitions of the departed and phantoms of certain dead men. They also say that certain individuals elicit voices from tombs.5 But never can any of them assert concerning any human being, whom they admired during his lifetime, or concerning those whom after death they considered gods, that he said such a thing to his disciples. (2) Permit me to explain the reason why they never dared to invent a fiction of this kind, though lying impudently and brazenly6 in regard to all else.7 They did not desist from this stratagem casually without some purpose. These malefactors shrewdly perceived that one who intends to deceive must contrive something plausible, ingenious, and hard to detect. And in fact skillful hunters of fish and of birds do not expose bare traps, but carefully cover them all round with bait, and thus both prevail in their hunting. But if they uncovered their traps and allowed them to be seen by those about to be captured , neither fish nor bird would ever enter those nets-or rather they would not approach them in the first place, and the hunter on the sea and on the land would each go home the past including Aristeas and Pythagoras, as well as Apollonius (Hierocl. 2). Earlier, Celsus enumerated a whole list of such men, whom the pagans did not consider gods in spite of their extraordinary works (note 39 to Introduction ). Cf. Eugene V. Gallagher, Divine Man or Magician? Celsus and Origen on Jesus, SBL Dissertation Series 64 (Chico, California 1982). 5Necromancy, defined as "the pretended art of revealing future events, etc., by means of communication with the dead" (OED), was associated with Persian magi and the followers of Zoroaster. Eusebius accuses Apollonius of necromancy (Hierocl. 24). Chrysostom makes the accusation against emperor Julian (Bab. 79). 6 Literally, "with bare head." Chrysostom reports...