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| St. Paul's Phraseology Often Suggested by the Jewish Scriptures. Christ Our Passover--A Phrase Which Introduces Us to the Very Heart of the Ancient Dispensation. Christ's True Corporeity. Married and Unmarried States. Meaning of the Time is Short. In His Exhortations and Doctrine, the Apostle Wholly Teaches According to the Mind and Purposes of the God of the Old Testament. Prohibition of Meats and Drinks Withdrawn by the Creator.
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Chapter VII.—St. Paul’s Phraseology Often Suggested by
the Jewish Scriptures. Christ Our Passover—A Phrase Which
Introduces Us to the Very Heart of the Ancient Dispensation.
Christ’s True Corporeity. Married and Unmarried States. Meaning
of the Time is Short. In His Exhortations and Doctrine, the Apostle
Wholly Teaches According to the Mind and Purposes of the God of the Old
Testament. Prohibition of Meats and Drinks Withdrawn by the
Creator.
“And the hidden things of darkness He will
Himself bring to light,”5472
even by Christ; for
He has promised Christ to be a Light,5473
and Himself He has declared to be a lamp, “searching the hearts
and reins.”5474
From Him also shall
“praise be had by every man,”5475
from whom proceeds, as from a judge, the opposite also of praise. But
here, at least, you say he interprets the world to be the God thereof,
when he says: “We are made a spectacle unto the world, and
to angels, and to men.”5476
For if by world he
had meant the people thereof, he would not have afterwards specially
mentioned “men.” To prevent, however, your using
such an argument as this, the Holy Ghost has providentially explained
the meaning of the passage thus: “We are made a spectacle
to the world,” i.e. “both to angels,”
who minister therein, “and to men,” who are the
objects of their ministration.5477
| 5477 Our author’s
version is no doubt right. The Greek does not admit the co-ordinate,
triple conjunction of the A.V.: Θέατρον
ἐγενήθημεν
τῷ κόσμῳ—καὶ
ἀγγέλοις καὶ
ἀνθρώποις. | Of course,5478
| 5478 Nimirum: introducing a
strong ironical sentence against Marcion’s conceit. | a man of the noble courage of our apostle
(to say nothing of the Holy Ghost) was afraid, when writing to the
children whom he had begotten in the gospel, to speak freely of the God of
the world; for against Him he could not possibly seem to have a word to
say, except only in a straightforward manner!5479
I
quite admit, that, according to the Creator’s law,5480
the man was an offender “who had his
father’s wife.”5481
He followed, no
doubt,5482
the principles of
natural and public law. When, however, he condemns the man
“to be delivered unto Satan,”5483
he
becomes the herald of an avenging God. It does not
matter5484
that he also said,
“For the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved
in the day of the Lord,”5485
since both in the
destruction of the flesh and in the saving of the spirit there is, on
His part, judicial process; and when he bade “the wicked person
be put away from the midst of them,”5486
he
only mentioned what is a very frequently recurring sentence of the
Creator. “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as
ye are unleavened.”5487
The unleavened
bread was therefore, in the Creator’s ordinance, a figure of us
(Christians). “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for
us.”5488
But why is Christ
our passover, if the passover be not a type of Christ, in the
similitude of the blood which saves, and of the Lamb, which is
Christ?5489
Why does (the
apostle) clothe us and Christ with symbols of the Creator’s
solemn rites, unless they had relation to ourselves? When, again, he
warns us against fornication, he reveals the resurrection of the flesh.
“The body,” says he, “is not for fornication, but for
the Lord; and the Lord for the body,”5490
just as the temple is for God, and God for the temple. A temple will
therefore pass away5491
with its god, and
its god with the temple. You see, then, how that “He who
raised up the Lord will also raise us up.”5492
In the body will He raise us, because the
body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And suitably does he
add the question: “Know ye not that your bodies are the members
of Christ?”5493
What has the
heretic to say? That these members of Christ will not rise again, for
they are no longer our own? “For,” he says, “ye
are bought with a price.”5494
A price!
surely none at all was paid, since Christ was a phantom, nor had He any
corporeal substance which He could pay for our bodies! But, in truth,
Christ had wherewithal to redeem us; and since He has redeemed, at a
great price, these bodies of ours, against which fornication must not
be committed (because they are now members of Christ, and not our own),
surely He will secure, on His own account, the safety of those whom He
made His own at so much cost! Now, how shall we glorify, how shall we
exalt, God in our body,5495
which is doomed to
perish? We must now encounter the subject of marriage, which Marcion,
more continent5496
| 5496 Constantior:
ironically predicated. | than the apostle,
prohibits. For the apostle, although preferring the grace of
continence,5497
yet permits the
contraction of marriage and the enjoyment of it,5498
| 5498 1 Cor. vii. 9, 13, 14. | and advises the continuance therein rather
than the dissolution thereof.5499
Christ plainly
forbids divorce, Moses unquestionably permits it.5500
| 5500 One of
Marcion’s Antitheses. |
Now, when Marcion wholly prohibits all carnal
intercourse to the faithful (for we will say nothing5501
about his catechumens), and when he
prescribes repudiation of all engagements before marriage, whose
teaching does he follow, that of Moses or of Christ? Even
Christ,5502
| 5502 Et Christus: Pamelius
and Rigaltius here read “Christi
apostolus.” Oehler defends the text as the
author’s phrase suggested (as Fr. Junius says) by the preceding
words, “Moses or Christ.” To which we may add, that
in this particular place St. Paul mentions his injunction as
Christ’s especially, οὐκ ἐγὼ,
αλλ᾽ ὁ
Κύριος, 1 Cor. vii. 10. | however, when He
here commands “the wife not to depart from her husband, or if she
depart, to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her
husband,”5503
both permitted
divorce, which indeed He never absolutely prohibited, and confirmed
(the sanctity) of marriage, by first forbidding its dissolution; and,
if separation had taken place, by wishing the nuptial bond to be
resumed by reconciliation. But what reasons does (the apostle) allege
for continence? Because “the time is short.”5504
I had almost thought it was because in
Christ there was another god! And yet He from whom emanates this
shortness of the time, will also send what suits the said brevity. No
one makes provision for the time which is another’s. You degrade
your god, O Marcion, when you make him circumscribed at all by the
Creator’s time. Assuredly also, when (the apostle) rules that
marriage should be “only in the Lord,”5505
that no Christian should intermarry with
a heathen, he
maintains a law of the Creator, who everywhere prohibits marriage with
strangers. But when he says, “although there be that are called
gods, whether in heaven or in earth,”5506
the meaning of his words is clear—not as if there were gods in
reality, but as if there were some who are called gods, without being
truly so. He introduces his discussion about meats offered to idols
with a statement concerning idols (themselves): “We know that an
idol is nothing in the world.”5507
Marcion,
however, does not say that the Creator is not God; so that the apostle
can hardly be thought to have ranked the Creator amongst those who are
called gods, without being so; since, even if they had been gods,
“to us there is but one God, the Father.”5508
Now, from whom do all things come to us, but
from Him to whom all things belong? And pray, what things are these?
You have them in a preceding part of the epistle: “All
things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or
life, or death, or things present, or things to come.”5509
He makes the Creator, then the God of all
things, from whom proceed both the world and life and death, which
cannot possibly belong to the other god. From Him, therefore, amongst
the “all things” comes also Christ.5510
When he teaches that every man ought to live
of his own industry,5511
he begins with a
copious induction of examples—of soldiers, and shepherds, and
husbandmen.5512
But he5513
| 5513 He turns to
Marcion’s god. | wanted divine authority. What was the use,
however, of adducing the Creator’s, which he was destroying? It
was vain to do so; for his god had no such authority! (The apostle)
says: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the
corn,”5514
| 5514 1
Cor. ix. 9 and Deut. xxv. 4. | and adds:
“Doth God take care of oxen?” Yes, of oxen, for the sake of
men! For, says he, “it is written for our sakes.”5515
Thus he showed that the law had a symbolic
reference to ourselves, and that it gives its sanction in favour of
those who live of the gospel. (He showed) also, that those who preach
the gospel are on this account sent by no other god but Him to whom
belongs the law, which made provision for them, when he says:
“For our sakes was this written.”5516
Still he declined to use this power which the law gave him, because he
preferred working without any restraint.5517
Of
this he boasted, and suffered no man to rob him of such glory5518
—certainly with no view of destroying
the law, which he proved that another man might use. For behold
Marcion, in his blindness, stumbled at the rock whereof our fathers
drank in the wilderness. For since “that rock was
Christ,”5519
it was, of course,
the Creator’s, to whom also belonged the people. But why resort
to the figure of a sacred sign given by an extraneous god?5520
| 5520 Figuram extranei
sacramenti. | Was it to teach the very truth, that ancient
things prefigured the Christ who was to be educed5521
out of them? For, being about to take a
cursory view of what befell the people (of Israel) he begins with
saying: “Now these things happened as examples for
us.”5522
Now, tell me, were
these examples given by the Creator to men belonging to a rival
god? Or did one god borrow examples from another, and a hostile
one too? He withdraws me to himself in alarm5523
from Him from whom he transfers my allegiance. Will his
antagonist make me better disposed to him? Should I now commit the same
sins as the people, shall I have to suffer the same penalties, or
not?5524
But if not the same, how vainly does he
propose to me terrors which I shall not have to endure! From whom,
again, shall I have to endure them? If from the Creator, What evils
does it appertain to Him to inflict? And how will it happen
that, jealous God as He is, He shall punish the man who offends His
rival, instead of rather encouraging5525
him. If,
however, from the other god—but he knows not how to
punish. So that the whole declaration of the apostle lacks a reasonable
basis, if it is not meant to relate to the Creator’s discipline.
But the fact is, the apostle’s conclusion corresponds to the
beginning: “Now all these things happened unto them for
ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends
of the world are come.”5526
What a Creator! how
prescient already, and considerate in warning Christians who belong to
another god! Whenever cavils occur the like to those which have been
already dealt with, I pass them by; certain others I despatch briefly.
A great argument for another god is the permission to eat of all kinds
of meats, contrary to the law.5527
Just as if we did
not ourselves allow that the burdensome ordinances of the law were
abrogated—but by Him who imposed them, who also promised the new
condition of things.5528
The same,
therefore, who prohibited meats, also restored the use of them, just as
He had indeed allowed them from the beginning. If, however, some
strange god had come to destroy our God, his foremost prohibition would
certainly have been, that his own votaries should abstain from
supporting their lives on the resources of his
adversary.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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