St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom is a Church father that is often quoted.  He is one of those saints that is loved and venerated by pretty much all of Christendom. Even Protestants admire him and accept him as a great teacher and preacher of the Gospel.

He is one of the first Church fathers that I began to read and appreciate. His series of homilies compiled as a little book, - On Marriage and Family Life - are surprisingly applicable to today’s realities. People don’t really change all that much. The kinds of problems that marriages faced in the 4th Century are similar to our own. So even though these were preached way back in the early centuries of the Church, they still speak.

He did not use the term “complementary”, but he certainly lays out what we would call the complementary nature of the husband - wife relationship. He also shows the balance and even equality that married people should seek to live out in their lives.

I spent quite a few years studying both egalitarianism and complementarianism in their Protestant forms. While I still believe that complementarian is the more natural way that men and women interact, especially in marriage and the Church, there is also a strong element of mutuality.

It seems to me that Chrysostom understood both complementarity and mutuality in a way that few have. Why was that? Well, he was good friends with a woman named Olympias, who is also a saint. Read a short biographical sketch of this amazing woman at the website, Saints and Angels, St. Olympias. 

In a way, she was more than a close friend. She was his mentor in matters of marriage and family life.

The fine translation of On Marriage and Family Life  is done by  Catherine P. Roth and David Anderson. The introduction to the homilies with some historical and linguistic background is almost worth the price of the book.


The epithet Χρυσόστομος (Chrysostomos, anglicized as Chrysostom) means "golden-mouthed" in Greek and denotes his celebrated eloquence.^[2][7]

That is a quote from the Wikkepedia article about St. John Chrysostom.

You will be happy if you read some of his homilies. They will help you get in touch with the Church through the ages. Yes, she has to adapt and grow, but always in the same direction - towards the Beatific Vision.

The Christian Classics Etherial Library has many entries for his works. Browse and be happy!