Despite the fact that John Chrysostom wrote more on the Eucharist than any other Greek Church Father, there has never been a full treatment of his doctrine in English. In this book, Kenneth Howell brings together a wide array of sources from which he develops a many-sided portrait of Chrysostom's eucharistic thought. While the Antiochene preacher assumed the real presence and the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, he focused more on the moral and spiritual implications of communion. At the root of his theology lies the conviction that the Eucharist with its home in the liturgy is the extension of Christ's incarnate life through space and time. All that Christ accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection is present and available to the communing Christian who stands in union with the angelic hosts in the liturgy of the church. John's preaching at times reaches encomiastic proportions as he never tires of praising the benefits and power of the Eucharist and he deftly applies the sacrament to the struggle of virtue and vice as he explores both the invitation and the obstacles to communion. Among the moral implications of the Eucharist, John seems to distinguish well between sins arising from human weakness versus malicious dispositions freely chosen. He is especially keen to exhort his hearers to lay aside the remembrance of evil (mnesikakia) done to them in their past lives. Humility and forbearance are two essential virtues in arriving at forgiveness of past injuries. And lack of forgiveness is like greed in that both constitute a turn in on oneself. The Eucharist demands love of neighbor and active ministry to the less fortunate of the world. For John, God is interested in golden souls more than golden chalices.

In Revisioning John Chrysostom, Chris de Wet and Wendy Mayer harness and promote a new wave of scholarship on the life and works of this famous late-antique (c. 350-407 CE) preacher. New theories from the cognitive and neurosciences, cultural and sleep studies, and history of the emotions, among others, meld with reconsideration of lapsed approaches – his debt to Graeco-Roman paideia, philosophy, and now medicine – resulting in sometimes surprising and challenging conclusions. Together the chapters produce a fresh vision of John Chrysostom that moves beyond the often negative views of the 20th century and open up substantially new vistas for exploration.

John Chrysostom, or "Golden Mouth", was a famous ascetic and preacher of the fourth/fifth century, a controversial bishop of Constantinople, and a brilliant orator - hence the epithet. This is the first comprehensive study of him in the English language in over a century. In the early chapters John Kelly highlights Chrysostom's youthful experiments with asceticism at Antioch in Syria, his six years as a monk and then a recluse in the nearby mountains, and his influential role as Antioch's leading preacher. The central section of the book shows him as a fearlessly outspoken populist bishop of the capital. Kelly focuses on his authoritarian style, his interventions in political crises, and his clashes with the Empress Eudoxia, as well as his efforts to promote the primacy of the see of Constantinople in the east. The final chapters reconstruct the plots that led to Chrysostom's downfall, the drama of his trial, and his exile and death. Golden Mouth also provides fresh analyses of Chrysostom's principal treatises and public addresses, and discussions of his views on monasticism, sexuality and marriage, education, and suffering.

While it has often been recognised that the development of Christian orthodoxy was stimulated by the speculations of those who are now called heretics, it is still widely assumed that their contribution was merely catalytic, that they called forth the exposition of what the main church already believed but had not yet been required to formulate. This book maintains that scholars have underrated the constructive role of these "heretical" speculations in the evolution of dogma, showing that salient elements in the doctrines of the fall, the Trinity and the union of God and man in Christ derive from teachings that were initially rejected by the main church. Mark Edwards also reveals how authors who epitomised orthodoxy in their own day sometimes favoured teachings which were later considered heterodox, and that their doctrines underwent radical revision before they became a fixed element of orthodoxy. The first half of the volume discusses the role of Gnostic theologians in the formation of catholic thought; the second half will offer an unfashionable view of the controversies which gave rise to the councils of Nicaea, Ephesus and Chalcedon . Many of the theories advanced here have not been broached elsewhere, and no synthesis on this scale had been attempted by other scholars. While this book proposes a revision in the scholarly perception of early Christendom, it also demonstrates the essential unity of the tradition.

This great orator addresses the question of wealth and poverty in the lives of people of his day. Yet Chrysostom's words proclaim the truth of the Gospel to all people of all times.

The Eucharist goes back to the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. It is based on the prayer of thanksgiving that Jesus pronounced over the bread and wine at that meal. "Eucharist" means thanksgiving, praise and blessing. The Church celebrates the Eucharist as a memorial of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The memorial of the Eucharist is more than a remembrance of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. In the Eucharist the sacrifice of our redemption becomes present sacramentally. In the past, dogmatic theology has treated the meaning of the Eucharist while disregarding the form of its liturgical celebration, whereas liturgical studies have been content with the latter. Yet the two cannot be separated, however, any more than liturgy and dogma or pastoral practice and doctrine can. For the Church’s liturgy is not about something external to Christian revelation, but rather about "revelation accepted in faith and prayer" (Joseph Ratzinger). In this work Helmut Hoping combines the approaches of dogmatic theology and liturgy while examining the Eucharist from an historical and systematic perspective. The second German edition of this major work, which this new English translation is taken from, was revised and expanded, adding a comparative analysis of the Second Eucharistic Prayer and a chapter on the theology of the words of institution.