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Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. XIII: The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians.: Philippians 3:7-10

John ChrysostomNicene and Post-Nicene FathersPauline Epistles

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This is a patristic homily — almost certainly by John Chrysostom — from the tradition of early Christian expository preaching, commenting on Philippians 3:7–9, where Paul calls his Jewish credentials and the Law "loss" and "dung" compared to knowing Christ. The central argument is polemical: Chrysostom addresses heretics (likely Marcionites or related groups) who seized on Paul's language to argue the Law is evil and not of God, and he systematically dismantles that reading. His key move is distinguishing between the Law being "loss in itself" versus "loss in relation to something greater" — the Law was genuinely good and necessary as a ladder or bridge to raise humanity toward God, but once Christ has come, clinging to it means forfeiting something incomparably superior, as a poor man trading silver for gold loses nothing intrinsically but gains everything relatively. He further argues that faith, not reason, is the faculty by which the Resurrection and the Word's generation are known, and that suffering persecution conforms believers to Christ's death in a more literal sense than baptism does. The homily's most distinctive rhetorical claim is that the heretics were actually trapped by the very passage they thought favored them — Paul's careful phrasing ("I counted it loss," not "it is loss") refutes their position from within the text they accepted.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. XIII: The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians.: Philippians 3:7-10

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