Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of St. Paul, and the Person Whom He Urges the Corinthians to Forgive.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIII.—Of St.
Paul, and the Person Whom He Urges the Corinthians to
Forgive.
We know plainly at this point, too, the suspicions
which they raise. For, in fact, they suspect the Apostle Paul of
having, in the second (Epistle) to the Corinthians, granted pardon to
the self-same fornicator whom in the first he has publicly sentenced to
be “surrendered to Satan, for the destruction of the
flesh,”825
—impious heir as
he was to his father’s wedlock; as if he subsequently erased his
own words, writing: “But if any hath wholly saddened, he
hath not wholly saddened me, but in part, lest I burden you
all. Sufficient is such a chiding which is given by many; so
that, on the contrary, ye should prefer to forgive and console, lest,
perhaps, by more abundant sadness, such an one be devoured. For
which reason, I pray you, confirm toward him affection. For to
this end withal have I written, that I may learn a proof of you, that
in all (things) ye are obedient to me. But if ye shall have
forgiven any, so (do) I; for I, too, if I have forgiven ought, have
forgiven in the person of Christ, lest we be overreached by Satan,
since we are not ignorant of his injections.”826
What (reference) is understood here to
the fornicator? what to the contaminator of his father’s
bed?827
what to the Christian who had overstepped the
shamelessness of heathens?—since, of course, he would have
absolved by a special pardon one whom he had condemned by a special
anger. He is more obscure in his pity than in his
indignation. He is more open in his austerity than in his
lenity. And yet, (generally), anger is more readily indirect than
indulgence. Things of a sadder are more wont to hesitate than
things of a more joyous cast. Of course the question in hand
concerned some moderate indulgence; which (moderation in the
indulgence) was now, if ever, to be divined, when it is usual for all
the greatest indulgences not to be granted without public
proclamation, so far (are they from being granted) without
particularization. Why, do you yourself, when introducing into
the church, for the purpose of melting the brotherhood by his prayers,
the repentant adulterer, lead into the midst and prostrate him, all in
haircloth and ashes, a compound of disgrace and horror, before the
widows, before the elders, suing for the tears of all, licking the
footprints of all, clasping the knees of all? And do you, good
shepherd and blessed father that you are, to bring about the (desired)
end of the man, grace your harangue with all the allurements of mercy
in your power, and under the parable of the “ewe” go in
quest of your goats?828
do you, for fear lest
your “ewe” again take a leap out from the flock—as if
that were no more lawful for the future which was not even once
lawful—fill all the rest likewise full of apprehension at the
very moment of granting indulgence? And would the apostle so
carelessly have granted indulgence to the atrocious licentiousness of
fornication burdened with incest, as not at least to have exacted
from the criminal even
this legally established garb of repentance which you ought to have
learned from him? as to have uttered no commination on the past? no
allocution touching the future? Nay, more; he goes further, and
beseeches that they “would confirm toward him affection,”
as if he were making satisfaction to him, not as if he were granting an
indulgence! And yet I hear (him speak of)
“affection,” not “communion;” as (he writes)
withal to the Thessalonians: “But if any obey not our word
through the epistle, him mark; and associate not with him, that he may
feel awed; not regarding (him) as an enemy, but rebuking as a
brother.”829
Accordingly, he
could have said that to a fornicator, too, “affection” only
was conceded, not “communion” as well; to an incestuous
man, however, not even “affection;” whom he would, to be
sure, have bidden to be banished from their midst830
—much more, of course, from their
mind. “But he was apprehensive lest they should be
‘overreached by Satan’ with regard to the loss of that
person whom himself had cast forth to Satan; or else lest, ‘by
abundance of mourning, he should be devoured’ whom he had
sentenced to ‘destruction of the flesh.’” Here
they go so far as to interpret “destruction of the flesh”
of the office of repentance; in that by fasts, and squalor, and every
species of neglect and studious ill-treatment devoted to the
extermination of the flesh, it seems to make satisfaction to God; so
that they argue that that fornicator—that incestuous person
rather—having been delivered by the apostle to Satan, not with a
view to “perdition,” but with a view to
“emendation,” on the hypothesis that subsequently he would,
on account of the “destruction” (that is, the general
affliction) “of the flesh,” attain pardon, therefore did
actually attain it. Plainly, the selfsame apostle delivered to
Satan Hymenæus and Alexander, “that they might be emended
into not blaspheming,”831
as he writes to his
Timotheus. “But withal himself says that ‘a
stake832
was given him, an angel of Satan,’ by
which he was to be buffeted, lest he should exalt himself.”
If they touch upon this (instance) withal, in order to lead us to
understand that such as were “delivered to Satan” by him
(were so delivered) with a view to emendation, not to perdition; what
similarity is there between blasphemy and incest, and a soul entirely
free from these,—nay, rather elated from no other source than the
highest sanctity and all innocence; which (elation of soul) was being
restrained in the apostle by “buffets,” if you will, by
means (as they say) of pain in the ear or head? Incest, however,
and blasphemy, deserved to have delivered the entire persons of men to
Satan himself for a possession, not to “an angel” of
his. And (there is yet another point): for about this it
makes a difference, nay, rather withal in regard to this it is of the
utmost consequence, that we find those men delivered by the apostle to
Satan, but to the apostle himself an angel of Satan given.
Lastly, when Paul is praying the Lord for its removal, what does he
hear? “Hold my grace sufficient; for virtue is perfected in
infirmity.”833
This they who
are surrendered to Satan cannot hear. Moreover, if the crime of
Hymenæus and Alexander—blasphemy, to wit—is
irremissible in this and in the future age,834
of
course the apostle would not, in opposition to the determinate decision
of the Lord, have given to Satan, under a hope of pardon, men
already sunken from the faith into blasphemy; whence, too, he
pronounced them “shipwrecked with regard to
faith,”835
having no longer the
solace of the ship, the Church. For to those who, after
believing, have struck upon (the rock of) blasphemy, pardon is denied;
on the other hand, heathens and heretics are daily
emerging out of blasphemy. But even if he did say,
“I delivered them to Satan, that they might receive the
discipline of not blaspheming,” he said it of the rest, who, by
their deliverance to Satan—that is, their projection
outside the Church—had to be trained in the knowledge that there
must be no blaspheming. So, therefore, the incestuous fornicator,
too, he delivered, not with a view to emendation, but with a view to
perdition, to Satan, to whom he had already, by sinning above an
heathen, gone over; that they might learn there must be no
fornicating. Finally, he says, “for the destruction
of the flesh,” not its
“torture”—condemning the actual substance
through which he had fallen out (of the faith), which substance had
already perished immediately on the loss of baptism—“in
order that the spirit,” he says, “may be saved in the day
of the Lord.” And (here, again, is a difficulty): for
let this point be inquired into, whether the man’s own
spirit will be saved. In that case, a spirit polluted with so
great a wickedness will be saved; the object of the perdition of the
flesh being, that the spirit may be saved in penalty. In
that case, the interpretation which is contrary to ours will recognise
a penalty without the flesh, if we lose the resurrection of the
flesh. It remains, therefore, that his meaning was, that
that spirit which is accounted to exist in the Church
must be presented “saved,” that is, untainted by the
contagion of impurities in the day of the Lord, by the ejection of the
incestuous fornicator; if, that is, he subjoins: “Know
ye not, that a little leaven spoileth the savour of the whole
lump?”836
| 836 1 Cor. v. 6, where Tertullian appears to have used
δολοῖ, not
ζυμοῖ. | And yet
incestuous fornication was not a little, but a large,
leaven.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
