The Witness of John Chrysostom

Then there is John, the glory of the bishopric of Constantinople, whose holy life won the reward of martyrdom, though no pagan persecution was to be seen. Hear what he thought and taught about the Incarnation of the Son of God. “And him,” he says, “whom neither the heaven nor the earth nor the sea nor any other creature could have contained, if he had come in his Deity unveiled, the pure womb of a Virgin bore.” Even if you ignore everyone else, this is the man whose faith and teaching you ought to follow and hold. For it was out of love and affection for him that the devout people chose you as their bishop. When they took you as their priest from the Church of Antioch, from which they had once chosen him, they believed they would receive in you all that they had lost in him. I ask you, did not all these men say all these things, almost with the spirit of prophecy, in order to put your blasphemies to shame? You declare that our Lord and Savior Christ is not God; they declare that Christ the Lord is true God. You blasphemously assert that Mary is Christotokos and not Theotokos; they do not deny that she is Christotokos, while they acknowledge her as Theotokos. Not only the substance but even the very words stand against your blasphemies. So we can see plainly that God long ago prepared an unbreakable rampart against them, so that the force of the heretical attack, which was bound to come at some time or other, would break against the wall of truth already standing ready. And you, you utterly wicked and shameless defiler of a famous city, you ruinous and deadly plague upon a catholic and holy people, do you dare to stand and teach in the Church of God? Do you dare, with your wild and blasphemous words, to slander the priests of a faith that has never been broken and of the catholic confession, and to say that the people of the city of Constantinople have gone astray through the fault of their earlier teachers? Are you, then, the corrector of the former bishops, the accuser of the priests of old? Are you better than Gregory, more approved than Nectarius, greater than John, and all the other bishops of the cities of the East who, though not as famous as those I have named, held the same faith? And that, as far as the matter in hand goes, is enough. For when it is a question of the faith, all are as good as the best, so far as they agree with the best. [a]