Someone named Ceecee left a rather nasty comment on my November 27th Fathers post, taken from the works of St. John Chrysostom. I won’t allow the comment because of its tone, and because of the fact that she disparages the saint by calling him anti-Semitic. Of course I can see where she is coming from. She believes that the Jewish people are (present tense) “chosen.” She goes on to note that “[Chrysostom] spread a curse to the church, because anyone who curses the Jews is cursed by God themselves.” She notes that “Jesus is not pleased with John Chrysostom.” and that she gets her “Christian teaching from some truly Christian sources.”

The problem with these statements is that they mimic the typical Fundamentalist/Evangelical line; that somehow Jerusalem, the Jewish people, the state of Israel, etc. are necessary in the present dayNothing against the city, country, or people, but their relationship, in the present day, to our salvation, is non-existent. We look forward to the new and heavenly Jerusalem which will come down from heaven (ref. Revelation 21:1-6). I wish them well, but depend on Christ and His Holy Church for my salvation.. They spend their time and money focused on Israel, somehow hoping that they can move God along, demanding that He bring about the end. This is typical Dispensationalist/Millennialist thinking, biblical literalism, and includes a suspect “voodoo” understanding of blessings and curses. Typical of Protestant thinking Ceecee seems to know, by herself and apart from the infallible Church, what our Lord and Savior likes and dislikes. She can decide this for herself, based on whatever she happens to think at the moment, one of the inherent problems in ProtestantismThus the many Protestant Churches that have departed from the faith, inventing new, modern, and convenient doctrines based on what they feel now, ignoring or misinterpreting scripture and the patristic witness.. I would recommend that Ceecee take the time to study Church history and all of the truly Christian sources, i.e., scripture and the fathers.

For more on the subject of the Fathers and alleged anti-Semitism take a look at the following from the Orthodox Christian Information Center: Was St. John Chrysostom Anti-Semitic?

Calling any Church Father anti-Semitic on the basis of ostensibly denigrating references to Jews, therefore, is to fall to intellectual and historiographical simple-mindedness. Applying modern sensitivities and terms regarding race to ancient times, as though there were a direct parallel between modern and ancient circumstances, is inane. This abuse of history is usually advocated by unthinking observers who simply cannot function outside the cognitive dimensions of modernity…

There is an excellent study by Robert L. Welken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century. It is an essential work. It very convincingly demonstrates not only that St. John Chrysostomos was not an anti-Semite, but that his supposed writings against the Jews are actually against the “Judaizers,” a terrible mistranslation which convicts him unfairly of racism, when in fact his words are addressed to a theological element in the Christian Church. This work was published in 1983 and is a “must” for anyone wishing to understand the issue at hand.

I would also direct you to a study, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (I could be wrong about the title, but it is close to this), by Stanford Professor Gavin Langmuir, a prominent historian of anti-Semitism, which was published in Berkeley, in 1990, by the University of California Press. This work approaches the history of anti-Semitism with a sophistication, based on good historical research, that puts an end to that unenlightened and artless theory, first put forth in the last century by eccentric (though admittedly trained) scholars and passed about today by coffee shop “scholars” …; namely, that there is a chain of thought connecting St. John Chrysostomos, Luther, and Hitler, and that its links are cemented together by anti-Semitism. In so doing, he offers peripheral support (amidst some ideas about Christian thought that I would question) for many of the points that I have made about our contemporary ignorance of the historical image of Jews in the ancient world, their anti-Christian sentiments and their violence against Christians, and the many ways that the Fathers of the Church used the word “Jew” in their writings and the diverse images that this usage entailed…

If you are confronting someone who has accused St. John Chrysostomos of anti-Semitism, enlightening such a person may be a difficult thing. You will face endless citations from his writings that most simply refuse to put in context. Moreover, there are people who simply refuse to relinquish the idea that anti-Semitism links Christianity, the Reformation, and The Third Reich. This comfortable view of history helps them to avoid that complexity that characterizes the true course of human experience. It also allows them to attribute to the Fathers of the Church a meanness of spirit by which they can separate themselves from the Patristic witness and thus the compelling force of Orthodox Christianity. …[B]lasphemy which is supported by ignorance, and which gains social acceptance, is one of the most destructive forces in society…

Also see: Was Saint John Chrysostom Anti-Semitic? from the St. John Chrysostom website.