Almost every Christian has stood at least once beside a man who was blaspheming what is holy, and has not known what he ought to do. Those who spoke have found, more often than not, that their word availed nothing, but chilled the friendship and hardened the other man. Those who kept silent have noticed, after a while, that the blasphemy they kept hearing had ceased to grieve them.
From both sides the same question rises, and it is an old one: what does the Church ask of the man who hears blasphemy spoken beside him?
Today this question is answered, most of the time, with a single text — a passage in St John Chrysostom in which a blow is mentioned. The passage is genuine, and it is found in the first of the Homilies on the Statues. Only it is nearly always quoted halfway, and what follows the quoted half changes the sense of the whole.
Where it was spoken, and to whom
St John spoke this word at Antioch, in a homily that had set out from another text altogether. Only towards the end, after he had spoken at length of the thanksgiving a Christian offers to God in losses and in sickness, does he turn to blasphemy and ask of his hearers a single recompense for the labour of the sermon: that they should correct, on his behalf, the blasphemers of that city.
And should you hear any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God; go up to him and rebuke him; and should it be necessary to inflict blows, spare not to do so. Smite him on the face; strike his mouth; sanctify your hand with the blow.
Here those who quote the passage today come to a stop. But St John adds at once what the man who has struck must do next:
and if any should accuse you, and drag you to the place of justice, follow them there; and when the judge on the bench calls you to account, say boldly that the man blasphemed the King of angels! For if it be necessary to punish those who blaspheme an earthly king, much more so those who insult God. It is a common crime, a public injury; and it is lawful for every one who is willing, to bring forward an accusation.
The continuation does not erase the blow, but neither does it leave it in the darkness of a private quarrel. The man who has struck is summoned to own the deed openly and to answer for it before the judge of the city. And the ground the Saint invokes is that blasphemy is reckoned a common crime — an injury done to all, which anyone who wishes may bring before the court, exactly as with an insult offered to the emperor.
There is something further. A little below, St John recalls St John the Baptist, who stood against a ruler, and immediately sets that example aside lest he be misunderstood: he is not urging his hearers against a magistrate, nor on behalf of the marriage law outraged, but asking them to reprove one who is their equal, for insolence against the Lord.
The sermon has in view blasphemy uttered in the sight and hearing of all, in the streets and in the marketplace, and the man to whom answer is made is a citizen no different in standing from the one who answers.
The measure the Saint himself gives
A few lines further on, in the same sermon, St John returns to the blasphemer and looks at him differently:
The blasphemer is an ass; unable to bear the burden of his anger, he has fallen. Come forward and raise him up, both by words and by deeds; and both by meekness and by vehemence; let the medicine be various.
The aim he sets before his hearers is not the punishment of the man who has blasphemed, but his raising up. And the medicine, he says, changes with the man and with the hour: sometimes gentleness, sometimes severity, according to what the wound requires.
It must be said plainly what this passage does and does not do. It shows the end for which the Saint’s severity is to be read — not the crushing of a man, but the raising of one fallen. It does not, however, withdraw the exhortation above, nor turn it into a saying with a hidden meaning. Whoever takes from the sermon only the blow has taken a real part of it, but has left aside the purpose for which it was given.
The same Father’s word, spoken otherwise
In the same years in which he was preaching at Antioch, St John was writing a book on the priesthood; and there, where he no longer had a drowsy congregation before him to be shaken awake, but was examining at leisure what the man set over others can and cannot do, he laid down this:
For Christians above all men are not permitted forcibly to correct the failings of those who sin. Secular judges indeed, when they have captured malefactors under the law, show their authority to be great, and prevent them even against their will from following their own devices: but in our case the wrong-doer must be made better, not by force, but by persuasion. For neither has authority of this kind for the restraint of sinners been given us by law, nor, if it had been given, should we have any field for the exercise of our power.
He goes on to give the reason: God crowns those who turn from evil by their own choosing, and not those who are compelled.
The ground he gives is the deepest of all. He does not say that force is unfitting because it wounds, nor that it is forbidden because the law prohibits it, but that it cannot reach the thing for which it is used. The crown is given for a free will; what is torn from a man by force remains, by the very manner of its taking, outside the reward. He who has been forced into silence has not been set right, but only silenced, and silence is not repentance.
The two passages are not to be read apart from one another. The sermon shows how gravely the Saint regarded indifference towards blasphemy shouted in the city; the book on the priesthood sets down the abiding principle of Christian correction, that a man is not made better by constraint, but by persuasion and by the free answer of his own will.
Between them there remains the very harsh language of the sermon, which ought neither to be hidden nor turned into a rule for Christians. Whoever sets about smoothing it, so that a teaching without a crease may come out of it, does the Saint a greater wrong than the man who quotes him amiss.
What sets blasphemy apart from other falls of our neighbour
Thus far we have spoken of blasphemy as though it were any sin of the man beside us. It is not, and the difference must be made clear, because everything that follows hangs upon it.
Most sins are done in secret and are hidden after they are done. The man fallen into fornication or theft is ashamed, conceals it, avoids the eye. Towards such a one the Fathers taught covering, and taught it with reason: he who is still ashamed has not yet grown hard, and to publish his guilt to others takes from him the very shame that still holds him.
The blasphemy we are speaking of here does not hide. It is committed by being uttered, and by the very utterance it reaches another man’s ear. We are not dealing with the disclosure to others of a hidden deed, for the word has already been spoken in their presence; and for this reason the sayings of the Fathers about covering a brother’s sin do not fit here, however similar the question may appear.
St John Chrysostom names this openly, in the Antiochene sermon itself: blasphemy is a common crime and an injury done to all. It wounds not only the man who utters it, but also those in whose hearing it was uttered.
And a little below, in the same sermon, he shows where the blasphemy he has before his eyes comes from. The blasphemer, he says, is like the ass that has fallen beneath the burden of its own anger. In this image the man who blasphemes appears not first as a theorist of unbelief, but as a man overthrown by his own wrath. Many of the oaths we hear are born in this way, though not all: some blaspheme knowingly, out of mockery, or to provoke. Whoever means to answer has first to consider which of the two he is dealing with.
It remains to be explained why, the matter being so grave, almost no one says anything. St Basil the Great examined this and called it a corrupt convention: a twisted human habit leads us to denounce some sins and to look with indifference upon others, so that murder and adultery rouse a great but feigned indignation, while anger, reviling, drunkenness and greed seem to us unworthy even of a simple rebuke.
We keep silent, then, not because we have weighed the matter and chosen silence. We keep silent because we have grown accustomed to reckoning the sins of the tongue small things, and that habit was in us before ever we asked the question.
How the hearer becomes a partaker
Here belongs the clearest passage I know, although it speaks of a kinsman of blasphemy rather than of blasphemy itself. St Maximus the Confessor examines what happens to the man in whose hearing slander is spoken, and urges him to silence the one speaking evil, lest he commit a double sin together with him: both by accustoming himself to that deadly passion, and by not restraining the other from senseless talk against his neighbour.
The word is spoken of slander, and it does not transfer directly to blasphemy: slander seeks the defaming of one’s neighbour, whereas blasphemy touches God and the things of God. It does, however, help us to see two dangers that lie in wait for the hearer, whatever word may be spoken beside him.
The first is habituation. A word heard continually settles slowly and dulls the feeling, until what once caused pain no longer causes it.
The second is that he let the other go on when he might have stopped him. But it must be added at once what might means here: not merely that he had a mouth to open, but that he had a real and fitting way of standing in the man’s path. When your word stops nothing, but provokes and multiplies the blasphemy, you did not have that power, however much it seemed that you did.
What the Church appoints
It remains to show what the Church has appointed, for from this it is seen how far her canonical practice stands from the distorted reading of the Antiochene sermon.
In the Pravila bisericească of Archimandrite Nicodim Sachelarie, the section on blasphemy comprises numbers 921–923. At number 922 there is reproduced a rule given as Îndreptarea Legii 105: for a layman who curses and blasphemes there are appointed a year of exclusion from Holy Communion, together with fasting, prostrations and almsgiving.
This is a penance for the repentance of the man who has blasphemed, set under the guidance of a spiritual father; it is not an authorisation given to the man who hears the blasphemy. In this rule no right is granted to a layman to strike the blasphemer.
So far as the sources consulted allow one to see, the exhortation in the sermon was not taken up into the legislation of the Church as a rule for the hearer. The sermon has remained in the books and is read to this day, but what entered the canonical tradition was the repentance of the man who blasphemes, not the hand of the man who hears.
The measure of speech and of silence
There remains the question from which we set out, and it is not resolved by a command, since it has no single answer for every meeting.
Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria, a Romanian elder of the last century, guiding the faithful in how to examine their conscience before confession, placed among the sins to be confessed this one also: that a man did not rebuke the sin of others when it was the time to do so. The last words carry the whole weight. He does not say that the man who does not rebuke sins, but the man who does not rebuke when the time had come.
And further on, in the same guide, he sets both faults within a single confession: that a man did not have good strength together with right discernment, for which reason he kept silent where there was need to speak, and spoke where there was need to keep silent.
Here is the resolution, and it makes nothing easier for anyone. Silence is not a virtue in itself, nor is speech. Both are weighed according to the hour, according to the man before you, and according to what is happening in your own heart as you speak or keep silent. He who is always silent hides behind a humility that is not his; he who always speaks feeds a zeal that is often not for God.
Between these two, right discernment is not gained by reading, but by labouring for years under a spiritual father, by asking for it in prayer, and by erring often enough to learn where one’s own measure lies.
As for the word itself, it has its hour, and that hour comes when the man is close to you and you can see that he is listening to you. Then, the Fathers taught, let it be short, spoken once, without the heat of rebuke. He who confesses his own pain leaves the other man free; he who judges shuts him in.
The difference is seen in a few words. The man who says “what you are doing is a great sin” has spoken a truth, but has spoken it as a judge, and nothing is left to the other but to defend himself. The man who says “please do not blaspheme God in front of me, because it grieves me deeply” has spoken a truth as well, but one about himself, and has left the other free to do with it as he will. A word such as this, spoken without anger, is often worth more than a long quarrel.
And a rebuke repeated no longer sets anyone right, but hardens them both.
There is also a case in which silence remains the only fitting answer. When a man blasphemes in order to draw a word out of you, your word is precisely what he was waiting for, and whatever you say confirms him in what he is doing. There you did not keep silent out of fear; you stopped giving him what he was seeking. Not every silence is cowardice.
What remains after one has spoken or kept silent
One thing remains the same, whichever the decision of the moment was, and it is harder than both.
Abba Isaac the Syrian, asking what a merciful heart is, answered that it is the heart which burns for the whole of creation, and which offers up tearful prayer continually for the beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who do it harm, that they may be preserved and shown mercy.
The words in the middle deserve to be dwelt upon, for they place there the very man of whom we have been speaking: the enemies of the truth. Abba Isaac does not set them among those to be rebuked, but among those to be remembered in prayer, beside those who do us harm.
It must be said at once, however, that Abba Isaac is describing the end of a road and not a beginner’s step. The heart that burns for the whole creation belongs to a man who has come far, and he gives it as a mark of perfection. Most of us barely finish the introductory prayers in the prayer book; we pray seldom even for ourselves, more seldom for our own household, and the name of a stranger has never entered our rule. Whoever measures his state against Abba Isaac will either fall into despair or imagine himself to be what he is not.
What, then, is asked of the poor man?
Less than prayer with tears, and much harder to counterfeit: that he should not hate that man, and should not rejoice when he sees him falling into something else. St Maximus the Confessor sets this at the foundation of the whole Christian life, showing that whoever sees in his heart any trace of hatred against any man, for any fault whatsoever, has made himself wholly a stranger to the love of God. This examination can be made even by the man whose rule of prayer is the poorest.
Nor could he have taught otherwise, since the Lord Himself, hanging upon the Cross between those who blasphemed Him and wagged their heads at Him, prayed to the Father for them. He did not deny the weight of their blasphemy; He bore it, and prayed from beneath it. From there the Church received the measure that the believer is seeking when he agonises over what to do on hearing blasphemy.
For this reason the most fearful examination does not concern what we said or what we passed over in silence, but what rises in the heart when we call that man to mind. So long as pity rises, our silence is not yet indifference; it remains to be examined, however, whether at that hour pity was asking for silence or for speech. But when in place of pity there rises contempt, or a hidden satisfaction that he is worse than we are, his sin has begun to bear fruit in our heart also — not as blasphemy, but as coldness towards a man for whom Christ died.
And if someone should nevertheless wish to do something, the smallest thing possible is to say his name once, in the evening, at the end of whatever prayers he has, however few they may be. It is no achievement and is not to be counted among ascetic labours. It is only the sign that this man has not yet been struck off the list of those for whom we still hope.
The other face of the same commandment
Whoever has read this far has been thinking all the while of another man’s mouth. It remains for him to turn, at the end, towards his own.
The third commandment forbids taking the Name of God in vain, and blasphemy shouted in anger is only the most evident form of its transgression. There is another, far more frequent and entirely untroubling to the conscience: the Name uttered as a filler in speech, as a badge of belonging, as a formula of Christian politeness, without anyone being called upon by it. The man who is grieved by his friend’s cursing, and who has never examined his own utterances that address no one, has before him a work that no one can do in his place.
The same commandment therefore asks us to guard two mouths, beginning with our own: the neighbour’s mouth is not entrusted to our force, while our own is entrusted to our watchfulness. We cannot compel another man to honour the Name, but we can refuse to use it carelessly ourselves.
The measure is one. The Name of God was not entrusted to us to be defended by striking, but to be called upon with attention and confessed without fear. As for the man who blasphemes it, we guard him as far as it lies in our power: by the word spoken at the right time, and by the prayer that does not abandon him even when the word has availed nothing.
Sources
- St John Chrysostom, Homily I on the Statues, §§ 32–33 — trans. W. R. W. Stephens, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 9 (Buffalo, 1889).
- St John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, Book II, ch. 3 — the passage on correction by persuasion and the free answer of the will.
- Archimandrite Nicodim Sachelarie, Pravila bisericească, nos. 921–923 — the section on blasphemy; no. 922 gives Îndreptarea Legii 105 as its source. In Romanian.
The passages from St John Chrysostom are given in the Oxford translation as printed in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, which is in the public domain. The passages from St Basil, St Maximus, Abba Isaac and St Cleopa are given in substance rather than as verbatim quotation, and are not enclosed in quotation marks.