Providence, Virtue, and History in John Chrysostom and the Stoics

Visiting scholar from Notre Dame University (Indiana), Robert Edwards, will deliver a public lecture on John Chrysostom at Macquarie University (Sydney) in late April 2020. In anticipation of the lecture, Edwards offers a foretaste below. 

Scholars have often claimed that John Chrysostom’s moral teaching is, if not Stoic, at least stoicizing. This claim especially applies to Chrysostom’s teaching on what is in our power (to eph’ēmin) vs. what is not—that is, the relationship that human choice and action have to externals. For Chrysostom as for the Stoics (so the argument goes) externals are indifferent (ta adiaphora), and only virtue can be spoken of, properly, as good (to kalon, to agathon). The evidence which is typically brought forward to support such a claim is Chrysostom’s use of something approximating a dictum of Chrysippus, the “second founder” of the Stoic school: “no one can be harmed unless he harms himself.” Chrysostom even has a whole treatise named after it (his penultimate work): Quod nemo laeditur nisi a seipso. Virtue is the only good. 

To put aside for a moment that this is not actually an accurate picture of Chrysostom’s ethics, such a comparison raises questions about the comparative enterprise itself. For a philosophy like Stoicism, which prides itself on the coherence of its physics, logic, and ethics, is it fair to compare just one part of the system—ethics—a single part of a different school’s system? Can we really say that Chrysostom adopts Stoic “ethics” without it having any impact on his “physics” (i.e. theology)? Or, if his theology remains Christian, and not Stoic, then can his ethics actually be called Stoic?

If we really want to appreciate the relationship between Stoic and Christian teachings on “externals” (what is not up to us), then we must turn to the doctrine which is, for both the Stoics and for Chrysostom, the domain of externals: providence (pronoia, providentia). While providence is involved in a number of important ancient philosophical discussions, such as the problem of fate and human freedom, I am instead concerned with investigating how God acts in relation to human beings—that is, what bearing divine activity has on human life and action. In other words, are externals, governed as they are by God’s providence, good or indifferent? For Stoics, although it is called good, providence is not concerned with individual externals (i.e. individual events or circumstances), but only the order of the cosmos as a whole. Providence is good, in a Stoic scheme, because it provides human beings with reason and freedom to choose the good (virtue). For Chrysostom, on the other hand, individual externals are good, not indifferent. Therefore the good refers not only, nor even primarily, to virtue, but to salvation and eschatological reward—both of which come from without, and which are given by providence in particular historical circumstances. These major differences in conceptions of providence have real implications for ethics. So, even if Chrysostom’s moral teaching can appear similar to that of the Stoics—and can even share the above dictum of Chrysippus—their approach to the value of externals and their judgment about virtue are actually at odds with one another.

Most often Chrysostom speaks about the distinction between God’s providence and what is up to us by interpreting biblical narratives. Through scripture’s divinely inspired narrations of past events he discovers the truth about how these philosophical questions have actually worked themselves out: have externals proved to be good or indifferent to past righteous persons? Is God’s providence responsible for individual events or not? In the light of external events, how should human beings act? In sacred histories, the otherwise abstract doctrine of providence comes up against concrete human action and experience. Among Stoic writers, Seneca also finds answers to these philosophical questions in history. However, he finds the truth of things in the exemplary histories of Roman maiores, and other sages. He also finds a different version of providence in these narratives than Chrysostom does in his scriptural stories.

For both of these figures, the narratives they employ prove can tell us much about their doctrines of providence and therefore also their moral teaching. However, these narratives do more work for Chrysostom than they do for Seneca. While for Seneca these serve as convenient historical examples, they are not rooted in a divinely inspired text. On the other hand, Chrysostom’s understanding of providence—the goodness of externals, the ordering of providence towards eschatological and miraculous salvation—is actually formed by his attention to biblical histories. In the end, this is why Chrysostom’s understanding of providence differs so radically from that of the Stoics.