(1 Corinthians 5:5) 2ND CATEGORY NT QUESTION 49. WHAT IS THIS SPIRIT OF WHICH THE APOSTLE AFFIRMS AND DESIRES SALVATION WHEN HE SAYS: "I GAVE HIM UP TO SATAN FOR THE DEATH OF THE FLESH, THAT HIS SPIRIT MAY BE SAVED, ETC."? — The death of the flesh takes place when one gives oneself to the pleasures and desires of the flesh, and thus makes oneself worthy of hell, for one thus buys death at the price of the works of the flesh. Through these works man becomes carnal; for just as by living in the law he becomes all spiritual until then, when he participates in spirituality and takes the name of the soul; thus living according to the desires of the world and guilty pleasures, he becomes wholly carnal in all his being and tends entirely towards the death of the flesh. And to explain this truth even more clearly, just as the flesh that is fragile, corruptible and mortal, losing the soul loses all its beauty and all its form and dies, because to die for it is to lose what gave the life to all its members; thus the soul loses all its beauty and all its form in contact with that body whose vigor has despised the soul united to the flesh and plunged it into all the defilements of vice. Far, therefore, that the soul can be of no use to the flesh, the flesh becomes for the soul a cause of death, because the soul which God had given as queen to the flesh did not govern the body spiritually, but taught him to do the works of the flesh. So when the Church rejects such a man from within, she keeps the spirit, that is, the Holy Spirit who is the protector of the Church, for if they had suffered in the midst of this man who dared to defile the wife of his father, because they had the design to arm himself against the law to preserve others from his contact, and that this crime forces the Holy Spirit to withdraw from the Church, we can no longer say that the Church has preserved the Spirit. In fact, one does not keep what one loses, and when in the day of the Lord they appear to be stripped of the Spirit, they cannot be admitted to the number of the children of God, for it is the Spirit who makes us bear witness that we are the children of God. The Apostle addresses himself here to the people, because not all the churches had bishops yet. He therefore commands the faithful to do what the bishop would do if he were at their head, that is to say, to unite all to reject him from the bosom of the Church and not appear to be accomplices of his crime. He who does not take back a culprit, when he can, but who welcomes him as if he were innocent, increases for him the ease of sinning, and by the same defiles his soul and puts to flight the Holy Spirit. St. Paul writing to the Thessalonians said to them in the same sense: "May your spirit, your soul, and your body be kept intact and undefiled for the coming of Our Lord.” (1 Thess. 5:23) This is the same meaning, since to be kept safe and to be intact means one and the same thing. So the king said to Daniel, "Are the seals safe?" (Dan. 14:16), Daniel answers him, "Yes, king, they are safe,” that is to say, “intact." So the Spirit is intact for us, when it does not abandon us. Those whom the Holy Spirit abandons, are no longer intact for the work of regeneration, because they no longer have in them the one that gave them to be called God's children. There is no contradiction in saying that the Holy Spirit abandons us when we sin, and that he is no longer intact or whole. We are abandoned by the one who was our guide and our master, for if he is our leader we are his members, and when we do an action which displeases him, he is not the one who abandons us, it is we who abandons him, and then he seems to be no longer intact and whole in losing us. It is an obvious truth that he is not the one who walks away from us, but we who walks away from him when we sin. The Apostle in his Epistle to the Colossians said to them, "Whose whole body is supported by his bonds and by his joints, converses and increases for the increase of the Lord God." (Col. 2:19) These words if we hear them in their literal sense, they do not seem to be admissible, for there is no void in God which we are called to fill, but when we return to the author of our life, and confess that he is our God he seems to acquire us for salvation, and his divinity take in us from increase in our soul, while it undergoes a real decrease in those who are departing from him and undergo a decrease are therefore two synonymous expressions.
1ST CATEGORY NT QUESTION 96. SHOULD WE INTERPRET THE WORD PASSOVER IN THE SENSE OF THE PASSING OVER, AS THE GREEKS EXPLAIN? — The apostle could not be mistaken when he said: "Jesus Christ, our paschal lamb, was slain for us." (1 Cor. 5:7) And this is not his doctrine here, but that of the law, in which Moses said to the Israelites, "When your children ask you, What is this ceremony? You will answer: It is the sacrifice of the Passover of the Lord.” What more is needed to establish the truth that occupies us? The law speaks, the Apostle gives proof, it remains only to repel the contradictors if they persevere in their stubbornness. It is obvious, indeed, that the passing over took place after the Passover. And they took of the blood of the lamb that was slain, and put it on the one and on the other, and on the tops of their houses so that the angel who was to pass during the night should spare the houses which would be marked with the blood of the lamb. It is therefore the blood that saved them, not the passing, for it is the blood that has opposed the passing to become deadly and fatal.
(1 Corinthians 6:8) 2ND CATEGORY NT QUESTION 50. THERE IS A GREAT NUMBER OF SINS WHOSE BODY IS THE OBJECT, FOR EVERY MAN WHO COMMITS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE ON ANY PART OF HIS BODY, SIN AGAINST HIS BODY. THUS THIS ONE MUTILATES HIMSELF, THAT ONE HANGS HIMSELF, THIS OTHER PLUNGES A DAGGER INTO THE BREAST. WHY THEN DOES THE APOSTLE SAY, "EVERY SIN THAT MAN COMMITS IS OUTSIDE HIS BODY, BUT HE WHO GIVES HIMSELF UP TO FORNICATION SINS AGAINST HIS BODY?" — Do you want to accuse the Apostle of ignorance, or do you simply want the explanation of these words? Saint Paul under the name of body, includes not only the man but the woman, because the woman is a part of the man. Now, all these crimes of which we speak above, that is to say those acts of violence to which we are against ourselves, do not defile the whole body, because the man sins alone, and by the same becomes guilty only. In fornication, on the contrary, the defilement extends to the whole body, because the consent to the crime is at the same time the fact of the man and the woman, that is why the fornication is a crime so serious, because it is pushing the sin until the excess, than to seek an accomplice to his crime. If the virtuous man receives the reward due to the one he has won for good, and if the vicious man is not only punished for himself, but for the one he associates with his condemnation, how much more who commits fornication, and who by one sin imprints upon himself, so to speak, a double defilement? Indeed, as soon as he sinned against the flesh that comes from him, he dishonors himself by a double adultery. If we wish to give another explanation of this question, by applying these words either to the Church or to the body of Jesus Christ, this interpretation cannot be admitted. It is to violently divert the meaning of these words and to resemble Novatian who, to defend his extravagances, claims that the one who commits fornication, does not sin against his body, but against the body of Jesus Christ, because Christians are the body of Jesus Christ, that is, fornication is the same as sacrilege, and he who is guilty of it sin against Jesus Christ as he who denies Jesus Christ. Now, nothing weaker and more fragile than this interpretation, on whatever side it turns, it falls into difficulties that it is impossible for it to avoid. Indeed, if the Lord sins against the body of Jesus Christ, the other sins will no longer be offenses against Jesus Christ. For example, the crime of a Christian who kills his brother, sacrificed to idols, or is guilty of some other sin, because all sin is outside the body, except fornication. If, on the contrary, all sin is not outside the body, but all without exception, are so many direct offenses against Jesus Christ, it must be said that the thief, the perjurer, the liar, the one who strikes his brother, or commits some other similar crime, sins against Jesus Christ or against the Holy Spirit, which is supremely absurd, and yet the Apostle calls the members of the Church the body of Jesus Christ, and we are members of each other. How, then, does the fornicator sin against his body, and not against the body of Jesus Christ? Because it is from the mystery of the formation of the Church that we are called not our body, but the body of Jesus Christ. This explanation is further removed from the question we are dealing with, because the fornicator sins against his body, because Adam is defiled by this sin.
(1 Corinthians 9:22) 2ND CATEGORY NT QUESTION 51. WHY DOES THE APOSTLE SAY THAT HE HAS BECOME ALL THINGS TO EVERYONE, WHICH SEEMS TO BE THE FAULT OF A FANATIC AND A HYPOCRITE? — The adversary gives his approval not to oppose the one whom he wishes to render favorable. He who, to avoid scandal, does something which has no danger, it is true, but which is also useless, desires the salvation of him to whom he will spare scandal. When the Apostle St. Paul circumcised his disciple Timothy, who had caused the Jews, and purified himself before entering the temple, he did so not to scandalize those who defended with exceeding zeal the traditions of their fathers, and who could have put him to death or looked at our religion as being directly opposed to them. He therefore consented to submit to a less important observance to earn more. He might have exposed himself to a grave fault by not going as a Jew in the temple to pray; he therefore submitted in their interest to this prescription. He also lent himself to the way of seeing of those who were under the law, that is, Samaritans, in that they admitted that the books of Moses came from God, and that circumcision and the Sabbath were also divine institutions. It was by means of these books that he proved to them that the Christ whom they hoped for was the one whom he preached to them. This is what the Samaritan woman utters when she says to the Lord: "I know that the Messiah must come, when he comes, he will tell us all things. (Jn. 4:25) It is according to this principle and in this sense that the Apostle went through all the books of Moses who said, "The Lord your God will raise up a prophet from among your brethren." (Deut. 18:15) Saint Paul is still made to those who were under the law, in this respect that they recognize that the world and the human race have God as author. This is why he says to them: As some of your poets have said: We are the children of God himself. (Acts 17:28) This is how he made himself all for the sake of their salvation.
(1 Corinthians 12:3) 2ND CATEGORY NT QUESTION 53. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THESE WORDS OF THE APOSTLE: "NO ONE CAN SAY JESUS IS THE LORD, EXCEPT BY THE HOLY SPIRIT?" SO PHOTIN, WHO DENIES THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST, CAN CONFESS IN THE HOLY SPIRIT THAT JESUS IS THE LORD; MARCION AND MANICHEA, WHO DENY THE INCARNATION OF CHRIST, WILL ALSO BE ABLE TO SAY THAT JESUS CHRIST IS THE LORD, AND SO ARE WOMEN OF BAD LIFE AND FILTHINESS, WHEREAS THE HOLY SPIRIT DOES NOT DWELL IN A SUBMISSIVE BODY TO SIN, AND THAT WISDOM DOES NOT ENTER A SOUL THAT WANTS EVIL. (WIS. 1:4) — It is not according to persons that we must judge the truth or the falsity of an assertion. All that is in conformity with the good and the truth is said without doubt by the Holy Spirit. That a man is reprehensible on other points is not a reason to refuse to believe him when he speaks the truth. It is not him when we refuse to believe, but our Lord Jesus Christ is contradicted. By arguing that he does not speak the truth, it is Jesus Christ who is insulted. If, indeed, this man speaks the truth, and it is denied that he has said by the Holy Spirit that truth which Jesus Christ approves (for no good man can condemn him who says of him what is true, and it is not by revelation that we learn what tradition teaches us), no one can be condemned by telling the truth. |
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