John Chrysostom

The Argument

John Chrysostom — the name means golden-mouthed, given posthumously — is the greatest preacher of the early church and one of the great prose stylists of late antiquity. His homilies on Matthew, John, Romans, and the Pauline letters are still read as models of biblical exposition, and they are models not only theologically but rhetorically. Chrysostom understood that the preacher's task is not merely to convey information but to form the imagination of the congregation.

His significance for literary apologetics is his understanding of language as a moral act. He was unsparing in his criticism of the wealthy, the corrupt, and the comfortable — including, famously, the empress Eudoxia, who had him exiled twice. He understood that speech has power and that the misuse of that power is a form of violence against the truth. His homilies on wealth and poverty remain among the most challenging texts in the Christian tradition on the question of what the Gospel requires economically.

Chrysostom died in exile, driven there partly by his refusal to moderate his preaching to accommodate the powerful. For a literary apologist, he is the model of the writer who understands that style is not separate from substance — that how you say something is part of what you are saying.