Virtue is Easy
Image: Mosaic in the northern tympanum of the Hagia Sophia, depicting Saint John Chrysostom
“If we are willing, [virtue] is very easy.” This is what John Chrysostom thinks, anyway (1 Cor. hom. 14.4 ). He writes elsewhere, “It is easy for a man to change his ways. . . . Virtue is . . . easy and well-known by everyone” (Matt. hom. 23.5). Most of us, however, probably put virtue in the “challenging” or “downright hard” category. Being excellent, doing good, following God in all things—virtue—takes concentration, fortitude, and often foregoing what we want for what is right or good. It is sin or giving into temptation that seems easy. Resistance is hard.
Chrysostom would have us rethink this. He was, admittedly, an intense person not much given to either politics or sugar-coating things. A fourth-century theologian, would-be ascetic, and bishop in Antioch and Constantinople, he twice called out the empress for her sin when she was in the congregation. Both times she exiled him for it. He was considered among the best preachers of his day, earning the nickname Chrysostom, the “golden-mouthed,” and continues to be among the greatest preachers in church history. The thing he preached most about was virtue. Chrysostom constantly urged his congregants to live virtuous lives of almsgiving, worship, asceticism, and avoiding pagan spectacles like the horse races (especially when congregants were choosing those over attending worship). Over and over Chrysostom tells his congregants to live the “heavenly life” on earth. Living the heavenly life is easy, he says. It is just a matter of choice. We have to choose virtue over vice, following Christ over following Satan. It is that simple.
It is worth thinking about how Chrysostom preaches about virtue in order to consider how we preach about and discuss virtue. Listening to Chrysostom will remind us what is at stake in our behavior and in our congregants’ behavior. We will hear a fresh voice, and in Chrysostom’s stark, black-and-white preaching on the topic, we must confront our assumptions. Chrysostom also suggests to us in this particular time that fear of one another is misplaced. He will challenge us to attend to ourselves instead. In the end, Chrysostom will empower us—and teach us to empower our parishioners—to stand tall and make choices for virtue each day.
Chrysostom on Virtue
Chrysostom says that virtue is easy because he understands that virtue is a choice. When God created human beings, he created them fully free and self-determining. Chrysostom is adamant that human beings were created neither evil nor good by nature. They are good as part of God’s creation (because God said, “It was very good” [Gen. 1:31]), but morally they are neither good nor evil as a matter of nature. Chrysostom goes so far as to preach, “There is nothing that is evil by nature”(Act. apost. hom. 2.4). The things of nature do not change: human bodies always require food and water; dogs by nature bark and will not one day start meowing. If humans were evil by nature, they would never be able to do good. And if human beings were good by nature, they would never be able to do evil. Our experience bear witness that we do both good and evil. Therefore, neither good nor evil is a matter of human nature.
That good and evil human behavior are not matters of human nature is significant for Chrysostom because it implies that human beings are responsible for their behavior. If human beings are evil by nature, they cannot be held responsible for any evil they commit because it is in their DNA and they are powerless to resist it. Chrysostom preaches, “They [fictitious adversaries] make other objections again, asking, ‘And why did God make him [an evil man] this way?’ God did not make him this way. Far from it! Since if he had, he would not have punished him” (Matt. hom. 59.2). For Chrysostom, Scripture is clear that people are punished for their sins, and punishment implies responsibility. If God punished a person for a sin that was not her fault, God would be unjust, something Chrysostom rejects. God is just, so punishments must be for things for which a person is herself responsible.
The same is true of rewards. Chrysostom holds that people cannot be rewarded for things that are “natural.” We do not—or at least as a society have agreed it is wrong to—reward people for having blue eyes or being over six feet tall. We reward for things for which people are responsible. Chrysostom’s favorite passage on this is Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and the goats. He preaches that choice, rather than nature, is what makes the difference between reward or punishment: “The animals have from nature their unfruitfulness and fruitfulness, but [people] have it from choice, on which account some are punished, and others crowned” (Matt. hom. 80.1). Punishment and reward imply responsibility, and responsibility implies choice.
In addition to the question of nature as cause for behavior, Chrysostom preaches that no other agent can compel a human being to any action. That is, God has created human beings with a faculty of choice that demons and other human beings cannot compel and which God does not compel. Moreover, Chrysostom says that Christ “made over” the faculty of choice so that we are again able to choose virtue after the fall corrupted that ability (Cat., 4.14). Should another compel sin, then the person could not justly be punished for that action, since the compulsion precludes responsibility. When discussing the parable of the sheep and goats, Chrysostom tells his audience: “For this reason one group entered hell and the other entered the kingdom. But if the devil were the cause of their sins, they would not be destined to be punished because someone else sinned and forced them. Do you see here both those who sin and those who live righteously? . . . Do you see again that the choice is the cause of the end, not the devil?” (De diab. tent. 2.3).
Chrysostom is about removing excuses from his congregants for their sins. Their sin was not because of their nature, nor was it compelled by demons. Humans are free and self-determining, or God’s reward and punishment would be unjust.
The first thing Chrysostom wants his congregation to hear is that every person is responsible for her virtue, and this virtue is a choice. The reason Chrysostom thinks this choice is easy is that the choice is between Christ and the devil. Every choice to pursue virtue is a choice to follow Christ. Every choice to sin is a choice to follow the devil. Chrysostom preaches, “To Christ, who promises countless good things, no one pays any attention. But to the Devil, who promises nothing of the kind but sends them on to hell, all give way” (Eph. hom. 4.1). By putting the issue so starkly, Chrysostom intends to make the choice obvious. Congregants hear that they are choosing “countless good things” or being sent to hell. Having the fifth piece of chocolate cake is not just eating too much; it is following the devil. Hearing it this way, who would choose the latter?
In his catechetical homilies, Chrysostom frames the whole of the Christian life as a wrestling match against the devil. When baptized, the Christian enters the arena and begins the match. Even here, Chrysostom says that the struggle is “easy”: “The wrestling matches are easy so that you may win the contest, not so that you may lay down to sleep or abuse the greatness of this grace by your laziness, to wallow again in the mire you were in before” (Rom. hom. 13.7). The reason God designed the match to be easy is so that we have no excuse for failure. The reason the contest is easy is that “Christ does not stand impartial but is wholly on our side. . . . He anointed us with the oil of joy; he bound the devil with unbreakable chains in order to bind him hand and foot for the struggle” (Cat. 3.8-9). Indeed, when we fall, Christ picks us up and sets us on our feet again. The contest is rigged.
Human beings thus have no excuses for sin. We are called to be virtuous and that virtue is entirely within our power. No one can stop us from being virtuous because no one can compel our choice. That is ours alone. We are truly free. And, Chrysostom urges, because it is our choice, we must be vigilant so that we are always making the virtuous choice rather than giving into temptation for sin.
Virtue and Responsibility Today
Chrysostom’s emphasis on paying attention to oneself and one’s own responsibility is a helpful reminder. When I was growing up and my brother and I were in trouble for fighting, I often tried to blame my behavior—perhaps hitting my brother—on him rather than taking responsibility for it myself. I might claim, “He made me hit him because he was calling me names!” My parents rightly explained that Aaron did not compel me to hit him; that choice was mine (though for some reason his choice to call me names was never considered a vice and worthy of punishment). The stakes are higher now, but we could use more discussion of responsibility in our conversations about virtue culturally. Men who sexually harass are responsible for their actions. Women did not provoke them to it and thus remove their responsibility, nor can we say that sexual harassment is merely part of men’s nature. No one compels us to strike back—with words or drones—when someone attacks us; we are responsible for our strike. Culture does not compel us to ignore the homeless man begging at the intersection; we make a choice to do that.
Chrysostom shuts down any attempts to say that someone else made me do x or y or that I could not control myself. If that is true, then we are not free, and if we are not free, then we are not responsible. We are also then not agents who love or do good. What excuses for behavior do we hear? What excuses do we allow? What excuses do we use? Chrysostom urges us to take responsibility.
Another aspect of Chrysostom’s account of virtue that is especially pertinent now: because we alone are responsible for our sin, and because sin is the only thing that can hinder our salvation, then no one else can cause our damnation. We alone can do that.
Why is this significant? At the moment we are learning to fear each other. We have been learning this for some time, and the inclination people and groups have to fear one another, to fear those different from them, is growing exponentially. When we fear one another, we often act dangerously toward those we fear. We think we need to hurt them before they can hurt us. We need to protect our own, so we make groups, and those become in-groups and out-groups. Once we are a group, it is even easier to strike against the out-group first because we are emboldened by numbers or urged on by a sense of needing to protect our group.
We are living in a world of polarization: liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, pro-LGBTQ+ and anti-LGBTQ+, pro-life and pro-choice, the list goes on. United Methodists are living in a world of traditionalists, centrists, and progressives. In all cases we are arguing about what behaviors constitute virtue. In the church, all of these arguments about virtue are, as for Chrysostom, linked to arguments about salvation. This behavior or that action is sin and will therefore cause damnation without repentance and change. That behavior or this action is not sin and therefore will not cause damnation, but this other one, close-mindedness, will. In the most charitable read, we argue with one another because we fear for one another’s salvation. Too often, however, I think we argue because we fear for our own salvation. We fear that the other group’s ideas and ethics will be forced upon us and we will therefore be forced into damnation, if only by association. The stakes are high and so our interactions are heated. When we are afraid of losing our salvation, we lash out and try to bring everything within our control.
Yet Chrysostom tells us that everything significant, everything regarding our salvation, is already within our control. Chrysostom holds that God in Christ has done all the prior and primary work of salvation in his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. Without that work, nothing we do would matter. However, Chrysostom holds that we need to participate in our salvation by bringing our virtue to the work God has already done. It is this work of ours that is within our control. We are free and self-determining. No one can compel us to sin, which is the only thing that can imperil our salvation. People can persuade us to sin, but the choice to think, speak, act, or omit lies with us alone. People can create a situation in which we feel threatened, but the choice to sin in response to that threat is ours. We are responsible.
There is also a fear of others who are different, whom we just do not know about. We fear the unknown and assume they might hurt us. Here Chrysostom reminds his audience that being hurt by another person, however painful, does not endanger salvation. Our response to the hurt—or the perceived or even possible hurt—is what we are responsible for. One of Chrysostom’s examples is Cain and Abel. Chrysostom says that Abel was not truly harmed because his salvation was not damaged when he was murdered. His soul was untouched. Cain, however, damaged his own soul with his sin of murder (Quod nem. laed. 4). On a less extreme level, it does not truly damage a person to be demonized in an argument. The one demonizing is the one doing damage to his own soul. However, should the person who was attacked choose to respond in kind and demonize or threaten or in any other way retaliate, her soul will be damaged as well.
Chrysostom would counsel us that we need to spend less time fearing others and more time fearing ourselves--or not fearing, so much, but attending to what we are doing to ourselves. Stop demonizing the other group. Stop kicking people out of our group because they do not quite fit and we fear their ideas will bring about our own damnation. Stop seeking revenge. Stop trying to hurt those who hurt us. Start paying attention to our own sin and work with Christ to resist it. Start making choices for virtue. Nothing others do can take our salvation from us, however much they hurt us. We are the only ones who can damn ourselves.
In the end, virtue is a choice. In this moment, will I choose to follow Christ or choose to follow the devil? No one compels me. I alone am responsible for this choice. And so, at base, virtue is easy. I choose it. In this moment, all I have to do is make a choice. In fact, that knowledge is empowering. I can make a choice. I can choose not to have the third piece of cake. I can choose not to swear at the man who cut me off in traffic. I can choose not to respond in kind to the colleagues who treated me unjustly. I can choose to see the homeless man at the intersection. I can choose to consume less. In this moment, I make a choice to do good or a choice not to sin. Then in the next moment I make the same choice. In doing so, Chrysostom tells us that we polish our virtue and present ourselves shining to Christ, worthy of the salvation he wrought for us.
Dr. Samantha L. Miller is the Assistant Professor of the Theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington.