Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Same Subject Continued.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XIV.—The Same Subject Continued.
And—these intervening points having
accordingly been got rid of—I return to the second of
Corinthians; in order to prove that this saying also of the apostle,
“Sufficient to such a man be this rebuke which (is
administered) by many,” is not suitable to the person of the
fornicator. For if he had sentenced him “to be surrendered
to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” of course he had
condemned rather than rebuked him. Some other,
then, it was to whom he willed the “rebuke” to be
sufficient; if, that is, the fornicator had incurred not
“rebuke” from his sentence, but
“condemnation.” For I offer you withal, for your
investigation, this very question: Whether there were in the
first Epistle others, too, who “wholly saddened” the
apostle by “acting disorderly,”837
and
“were wholly saddened” by him, through incurring (his)
“rebuke,” according to the sense of the second Epistle; of
whom some particular one may in that (second Epistle) have received
pardon. Direct we, moreover, our attention to the entire first
Epistle, written (that I may so say) as a whole, not with ink, but with
gall; swelling, indignant, disdainful, comminatory, invidious, and
shaped through (a series of) individual charges, with an eye to certain
individuals who were, as it were, the proprietors of those
charges? For so had schisms, and emulations, and discussions, and
presumptions, and elations, and contentions required, that they should
be laden with invidiousness, and rebuffed with curt reproof, and filed
down by haughtiness, and deterred by austerity. And what kind of
invidiousness is the pungency of humility? “To God I give
thanks that I have baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, lest
any say that I have baptized in mine own name.”838
“For neither did I judge to know
anything among you but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”839
And, “(I think) God hath selected
us the apostles (as) hindmost, like men appointed to fight with wild
beasts; since we have been made a spectacle to this world, both to
angels and to men:” And, “We have been made the
offscourings of this world, the refuse of all:” And,
“Am I not free? am I not an apostle? have I not seen Christ Jesus
our Lord?”840
With what kind
of superciliousness, on the contrary, was he compelled to declare,
“But to me it is of small moment that I be interrogated by you,
or by a human court-day; for neither am I conscious to myself (of any
guilt);” and, “My glory none shall make
empty.”841
“Know ye
not that we are to judge angels?”842
Again, of how open censure (does) the free expression (find utterance),
how manifest the edge of the spiritual sword, (in words like
these): “Ye are already enriched! ye are already satiated!
ye are already reigning!”843
and, “If any
thinks himself to know, he knoweth not yet how it behoves him to
know!”844
Is he not even
then “smiting some one’s face,”845
in saying, “For who maketh thee to differ? What,
moreover, hast thou which thou hast not received? Why gloriest
thou as if thou have not received?”846
Is he not withal “smiting them upon the mouth,”847
(in saying): “But some, in
(their) conscience, even until now eat (it) as if (it were) an
idol-sacrifice. But, so sinning, by shocking the weak consciences
of the brethren thoroughly, they will sin against
Christ.”848
By this time,
indeed, (he mentions individuals) by name: “Or have we not
a power of eating, and of drinking, and of leading about women, just as
the other apostles withal, and the brethren of the Lord, and
Cephas?” and, “If others attain to (a share) in power over
you, (may) not we rather?” In like manner he pricks
them, too, with an individualizing pen: “Wherefore,
let him who thinketh himself to be standing, see lest he
fall;” and, “If any seemeth to be contentious, we
have not such a custom, nor (has) the Church of the Lord.”
With such a final clause (as the following), wound up with a
malediction, “If any loveth not the Lord Jesus, be he
anathema maranatha,” he is, of course, striking some
particular individual through.
But I will rather take my stand at that point where the
apostle is more fervent, where the fornicator himself has troubled
others also. “As if I be not about to come unto you, some
are inflated. But I will come with more speed, if the Lord shall
have permitted, and will learn not the speech of those who are
inflated, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in speech,
but in power. And what will ye? shall I come unto you in a rod,
or in a spirit of lenity?” For what was to succeed?
“There is heard among you generally fornication, and such
fornication as (is) not (heard) even among the Gentiles, that one
should have his own father’s wife. And are ye inflated, and
have ye not rather mourned, that he who hath committed such a deed may be taken away from the
midst of you?” For whom were they to
“mourn?” Of course, for one dead. To
whom were they to mourn? Of course, to the Lord, in order that in
some way or other he may be “taken away from the midst of
them;” not, of course in order that he may be put outside the
Church. For a thing would not have been requested of God which
came within the official province of the president (of the Church); but
(what would be requested of Him was), that through death—not only
this death common to all, but one specially appropriate to that very
flesh which was already a corpse, a tomb leprous with irremediable
uncleanness—he might more fully (than by simple excommunication)
incur the penalty of being “taken away” from the
Church. And accordingly, in so far as it was meantime possible
for him to be “taken away,” he “adjudged such an one
to be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh.” For it followed that flesh which was being cast
forth to the devil should be accursed, in order that it might be
discarded from the sacrament of blessing, never to return into the camp
of the Church.
And thus we see in this place the apostle’s
severity divided, against one who was “inflated,” and one
who was “incestuous:” (we see the apostle) armed
against the one with “a rod,” against the other with a
sentence,—a “rod,” which he was threatening; a
sentence, which he was executing: the former (we see) still
brandishing, the latter instantaneously hurtling; (the one) wherewith
he was rebuking, and (the other) wherewith he was condemning. And
certain it is, that forthwith thereafter the rebuked one indeed
trembled beneath the menace of the uplifted rod, but the condemned
perished under the instant infliction of the penalty. Immediately
the former retreated fearing the blow, the latter paying the
penalty. When a letter of the self-same apostle is sent a second
time to the Corinthians, pardon is granted plainly; but it is uncertain
to whom, because neither person nor cause is advertised. I
will compare the cases with the senses. If the
“incestuous” man is set before us, on the same platform
will be the “inflated” man too. Surely the analogy of
the case is sufficiently maintained, when the “inflated” is
rebuked, but the “incestuous” is condemned. To the
“inflated” pardon is granted, but after rebuke; to the
“incestuous” no pardon seems to have been granted, as under
condemnation. If it was to him for whom it was feared that he
might be “devoured by mourning” that pardon was being
granted, the “rebuked” one was still in danger of being
devoured, losing heart on account of the commination, and mourning on
account of the rebuke. The “condemned” one, however,
was permanently accounted as already devoured, alike by his fault and
by his sentence; (accounted, that is, as one) who had not to
“mourn,” but to suffer that which, before suffering
it, he might have mourned. If the reason why pardon was being
granted was “lest we should be defrauded by Satan,” the
loss against which precaution was being taken had to do with that which
had not yet perished. No precaution is taken in the use of a
thing finally despatched, but in the case of a thing still safe.
But the condemned one—condemned, too, to the possession of
Satan—had already perished from the Church at the moment
when he had committed such a deed, not to say withal at the moment of
being forsworn by the Church itself. How should (the Church) fear
to suffer a fraudulent loss of him whom she had already lost on his
ereption, and whom, after condemnation, she could not have held?
Lastly, to what will it be becoming for a judge to grant indulgence? to
that which by a formal pronouncement he has decisively settled, or to
that which by an interlocutory sentence he has left in suspense?
And, of course, (I am speaking of) that judge who is not wont
“to rebuild those things which he has destroyed, lest he be held
a transgressor.”849
Come, now, if he had not “wholly
saddened” so many persons in the first Epistle; if he had
“rebuked” none, had “terrified”850
none; if he had “smitten” the
incestuous man alone; if, for his cause, he had sent none into panic,
had struck (no) “inflated” one with
consternation,—would it not be better for you to suspect, and
more believing for you to argue, that rather some one far different had
been in the same predicament at that time among the Corinthians; so
that, rebuked, and terrified, and already wounded with mourning, he
therefore—the moderate nature of his fault permitting
it—subsequently received pardon, than that you should interpret
that (pardon as granted) to an incestuous fornicator? For this
you had been bound to read, even if not in an Epistle, yet impressed
upon the very character of the apostle, by (his) modesty more clearly
than by the instrumentality of a pen: not to steep, to wit, Paul,
the “apostle of Christ,”851
| 851 Comp. Rom. i. 1, and the beginnings of his Epp.
πασσιμ. | the
“teacher of the nations in faith and verity,”852
the “vessel of
election,”853
the founder of
Churches, the censor of discipline, (in the guilt of) levity so great
as that he should either have condemned rashly one whom he was
presently to absolve, or else rashly absolved one whom he had not
rashly condemned, albeit on the ground of that fornication which is the
result of simple immodesty, not to say on the ground
of incestuous nuptials and
impious voluptuousness and parricidal lust,—(lust) which he had
refused to compare even with (the lusts of) the nations, for fear it
should be set down to the account of custom; (lust) on which he would
sit in judgment though absent, for fear the culprit should “gain
the time;”854
(lust) which he had
condemned after calling to his aid even “the Lord’s
power,” for fear the sentence should seem human. Therefore
he has trifled both with his own “spirit,”855
and with “the angel of the
Church,”856
| 856 Comp. Bible:Rev.2.18 Bible:Rev.3.1 Bible:Rev.3.7 Bible:Rev.3.14">Rev. i. 20; ii. 1, 8, 12, 18; iii. 1, 7,
14. | and with “the
power of the Lord,” if he rescinded what by their counsel he had
formally pronounced.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
