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Chapter 3 - Power, Faith, and Reciprocity in a Slave Society

Domestic Relationships in the Preaching of John Chrysostom

from Part I - Women and Children First

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

Kate Cooper
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Jamie Wood
Affiliation:
University of Lincoln
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Summary

This chapter evaluates the links between the power balance in household relationships and Chrysostom’s preaching on pistis (normally translated as ‘faith’). It argues that, for Chrysostom, pistis is closer to faithful obedience than cognitive belief and analyses how Chrysostom used the expected norms of faithful obedience in household relationships to reinforce congregational faithful obedience to God. The chapter uses this preaching to expose the unequal, reciprocal, and sometimes violent nature of the relationships in the late antique household. It also demonstrates how Chrysostom attempted to regulate the household through reinforcing existing power imbalances in relationships, benefiting the paterfamilias as husband, father, or master. Faithfulness to God and the paterfamilias are intertwined. Wives are exhorted to be faithful to and obey their husbands. Sons are expected to obey their fathers. Slaves are encouraged to be loyal and obedient. Masters are encouraged to treat slaves as if they were their own children – fictive kinship – but in practice this amounted to little change. Chrysostom preached a potentially revolutionary message about faithful obedience to God, but recast it into safe exhortations and a defence of existing societal structures.

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Chapter
Information
Social Control in Late Antiquity
The Violence of Small Worlds
, pp. 59 - 75
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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