So then, he delivered the incestuous fornicator to Satan not for amendment but for perdition—to Satan, to whom he had already passed over by sinning beyond the heathen—that they might learn there must be no fornicating. Finally 'for the destruction,' he says, 'of the flesh,' not for its torment, condemning that very substance through which he had fallen away, which from that point had already perished with baptism lost; 'that the spirit,' he says, 'may be saved in the day of the Lord.' And on this too let it be asked, whether the spirit of the man himself will be saved. Shall then the spirit polluted by so great a crime be saved—the flesh being destroyed on this account—that it may be saved in punishment? Then the contrary interpretation will reckon a punishment without the flesh. Thus we lose the resurrection of the flesh.
It remains, therefore, that he called 'spirit' that which is reckoned in the Church—the spirit that must be rendered saved, that is, whole, in the day of the Lord, when the incestuous fornicator has been cast out from the contagion of impurities. Since indeed he subjoins: 'Know you not that a little leaven maketh the whole lump insipid?' And yet incestuous fornication was no little, but a great, leaven. XIV. And these things, therefore, having been discussed, which had intervened, I return to the second to the Corinthians, that I may prove that saying of the Apostle also—'Let this rebuke which is inflicted by many suffice for such a man'—does not fit in the person of the fornicator. For if he had pronounced him to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, assuredly he had condemned him rather than rebuked him.
It was therefore another for whom he wished the rebuke to suffice; seeing that the fornicator had carried back from that sentence of his not a rebuke but a condemnation. For this very thing too I offer you to examine: whether there were in the first epistle others also who had grieved the Apostle by acting unruly, and were grieved by him as they took back a rebuke—according to the sense of the second epistle—out of whom someone could in it have obtained pardon. But let us mark the whole first epistle, written, so to speak, not with ink but with gall—swelling, indignant, disdainful, threatening, invidious, and, through each several cause, figured against certain men as the ringleaders of them.
For thus had schisms and rivalries and dissensions and presumptions and elations and contentions demanded it—that they be both burdened with invidiousness, and beaten back by correction, and filed down from pride, and deterred by austerity. And what a goad of humbling is invidiousness! 'I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any say that I baptized in my own name. For I judged not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.' And, 'I think God has chosen us apostles as the last, as men doomed to the beasts, since we are made a spectacle to this world, and to angels and to men, and are made the offscourings of this world, the refuse of all men.' And:
'Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord?' Against what haughtiness was he compelled to pronounce: 'But to me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by man's day; for I am conscious of nothing in myself'; and, 'My glory no one shall make void. Know you not that we shall judge angels?' For the rest, how open the liberty of his rebuke, how bared the edge of the spiritual sword: 'Already you are enriched, already you are filled, already you reign'; and, 'If any thinks he knows anything, he knows not yet as he ought to know!' Did he not then also, striking someone in the face, say, 'For who distinguishes you? And what have you that you did not receive? But if you received it, why do you glory as though you had not received it?'
Does he not smite those also on the mouth? 'But certain ones, in conscience even until now, eat as of a thing sacrificed to an idol. And so, sinning by wounding the weak consciences of the brethren, they sin against Christ.' Now indeed even by name: 'Have we not the power of eating and drinking, and of leading about women, even as the other apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? And if others partake of your power, do not we the more?' Equally he transfixes those too with a singular pen: 'Wherefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall'; and, 'If any seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the Church of the Lord.' With such a clause woven of a curse—'If any love not the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema, maranatha'—he assuredly smote someone.
But I will stand rather there where the Apostle grows more heated, where the fornicator himself made trouble for others also. 'As though I were not coming to you, some are puffed up. But I will come more quickly, if the Lord permit, and will know not the speech of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power. And what will you? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in the spirit of gentleness?' For what lay beneath? 'It is heard that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away out of your midst.' For whom would they mourn? Assuredly for a dead man. To whom would they mourn?
Assuredly to the Lord, that he might in some way be taken away out of their midst—not, to be sure, that he be put outside the Church (for this would not be sought from God, since it lay in the office of the president), but that, through this death also—common and proper to the flesh itself, which was now a corpse, insomuch as it was a captive, festering with irrecoverable impurity—he ought the more fully to be taken away from the Church. And therefore, in the manner in which he could meanwhile be taken away, the Apostle judged that such a one must be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. For a curse pursued that flesh which was cast forth to the devil, that it might be discharged, by the sacrament of blessing, never to return into the camp of the Church.
We see, therefore, in this passage the apostle's severity divided between a certain puffed-up man and a certain incestuous man, armed against the one with a rod and against the other with a sentence: the rod with which he threatened, the sentence which he carried out; the former still merely flashing like lightning, the latter striking home at once, the one by which he rebuked and the other by which he condemned. And it is certain from this that the one rebuked trembled under the brandishing of the rod, while the one condemned perished under the actual infliction of the penalty. For the former stands still, fearing the blow; the latter has departed, paying the penalty. When the same apostle's letters to the Corinthians are read a second time, pardon is indeed granted, but it is uncertain to whom, since neither the person nor the cause is set forth. Let me weigh the matter against its meaning. If the incestuous man is set in opposition, there too will be the puffed-up man.
Assuredly a sufficient account of the matter is given, when the puffed-up man is rebuked but the incestuous man is condemned. The puffed-up man is forgiven, but as one rebuked; the incestuous man does not appear to be pardoned, since he was condemned. If forgiveness was extended to him for whom there was fear of being swallowed up by excessive grief, then, being still only rebuked, he was in danger of being swallowed up, failing on account of the threat and grieving on account of the rebuke; but the condemned man, already swallowed up both by his guilt and by the sentence, was reckoned as one who had no cause for grief but only to suffer what before his suffering he might have grieved over. If forgiveness was extended for this reason, that we should not be defrauded by Satan, then surely the loss was being guarded against in the fact that he had not yet perished. Nothing is guarded against with respect to what is past, but only with respect to one still safe.
But the condemned man, and one indeed already fallen into Satan's possession, had already at that time perished as far as the Church was concerned, when he committed such an outrage, still more so when he was even repudiated by her. How should the apostle fear to suffer the loss of one whom he had both already given up as forfeited and could not hold as condemned? Finally, what will it be fitting for a judge to grant indulgence about—that he has decided by his pronouncement, or that he has suspended by an interlocutory ruling; and above all a judge who is not accustomed to rebuild what he has destroyed, lest he be reckoned a transgressor?
Come now, if the first epistle had not grieved so many persons, if it had rebuked no one, terrified no one, if it had struck down the incestuous man alone, if it had cast no one into terror on his account and had confounded the puffed-up man—would you not more rightly suspect and more faithfully argue that there was rather some other man entirely, then in the same predicament among the Corinthians, who, being rebuked and terrified and wounded by grief, afterwards obtained pardon precisely because the measure of his offense allowed it, than that you should interpret this pardon as granted to the incestuous fornicator?
For this you ought to have read—if not in the epistle, yet in the very character of the apostle—stamped more clearly by his sense of shame than by his pen: namely, that you should not brand Paul, Christ's apostle, the teacher of the nations in faith and truth, the chosen vessel, the founder of churches, the censor of disciplines, with such levity as either to have rashly condemned one whom he was soon about to absolve, or rashly to have absolved one whom he had not rashly condemned—and that for the sake of mere fornication of simple unchastity, let alone for incestuous nuptials and impious wantonness and parricidal lust, which he had not even compared to the heathen, lest it be reckoned an ordinary custom; which he had judged while absent, lest the accused should gain time; which he had condemned by invoking even the power of the Lord, lest it should seem a merely human sentence.
He would therefore have made a mockery both of his own spirit, and of the angel of the church, and of the power of the Lord, if he had rescinded what he had pronounced upon their joint counsel. XV. Even if you were to extend the following portions of that epistle to bear upon the apostle's threat, not even these will bear comparison, so as to blot out the incest, lest here too the apostle be put to the blush by the incongruity of his later sentiments. For what sort of thing is it, that at the very moment when he had granted to the incestuous fornicator the restoration of ecclesiastical peace, he should straightway have pressed home admonitions about turning away from uncleanness, about cutting off blemishes, about exhortation to holiness—as though he had decreed nothing to the contrary just a little before? Compare, in short, whether it be his to say:
'Therefore, having this ministry, according as we have obtained mercy, we faint not, but we renounce the hidden things of shame'—he who has condemned as manifest not only what is shameful but even what is criminal. Is it his to excuse any unchastity, who among the titles of his labors, after straits and pressures, after fastings and vigils, has also proclaimed chastity? Is it his to receive into communion any reprobates whatsoever, who writes: 'For what fellowship has righteousness with iniquity? And what communion has light with darkness? What concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has the believer with the unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?'
Will he not have to hear firmly in reply: And how do you distinguish these things from those which above you joined together concerning the restoration of the incestuous man? For when that man is re-incorporated once more into the Church, righteousness is again allied with iniquity, and darkness holds communion with light, and Belial is in concord with Christ, and the unbeliever shares the sacraments with the believer. And let the idols look to themselves—the very defiler of God's temple assembles in God's temple. For here too, 'You,' he says, 'are the temple of the living God. For God says: I will dwell in you and walk among you, and I will be their God, and they shall be to me a people. Wherefore come out from the midst of them, be separate, and touch not the unclean thing.'
Do you also unfold this, O apostle, that at the very moment when you yourself are handing your hand to so great a whirlpool of uncleannesses, nay, when you even go on to add: 'Having therefore this promise, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God'? I beseech you—he who fixes such things in our minds—had he recalled any fornicator into the Church? Or does he write this precisely so that he may not now seem to you to have recalled him? These sayings, just as they must prescribe against what has gone before, so also they will have to prejudge what follows.
For saying at the end of the epistle: 'lest, when I come again, my God humble me, and I mourn many of those who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanness which they have committed, of fornication and vileness'—he certainly did not appoint them as men to be received back, if they had entered upon repentance, whom he was going to find in the Church, but as men to be mourned and doubtless to be cast out, so that they might lose their repentance. And for the rest, it is not consistent that he here disclosed anything about communion, who above had denied it between light and darkness, righteousness and iniquity.
Sedignorantapostolumomnesisti, quialiquidcontranaturamatquepropositumhominisipsius, contraformametregulamdoctrinarumeiusintellegunt, utsanctitatisomnisetiamexsemetipsomagistrum, impuritatisomnisexsecratoremetexpiatoremetubiquetalemcitiusincestoquamalicuihumaniorireoecclesiamreddidissepraesumant. XVI. NecesseestigiturusqueillisapostolumostendiquemegoetinsecundaCorinthiorumtalemdefendamqualemetinomnibuslitterisnoui. QuietinprimaprimusomniumtemplumDeidedicauit: NonscitisuostemplumDeiesseetinuobisDominumhabitare? Quiettemplosanciendopurificandoqueaeditualemlegemscripsit:
But all those men are ignorant of the apostle, who understand anything contrary to the nature and purpose of the man himself, contrary to the form and rule of his teachings, so as to presume that the master of all holiness even from his own example, the execrator and expiator of all impurity, and everywhere such a man, restored to the Church the incestuous man sooner than any less serious offender. XVI. It is necessary, then, that the apostle be shown to those men throughout as the very man whom I would defend even in the second epistle to the Corinthians as being such as I have known him in all his letters. He who even in the first, first of all dedicated the temple of God: 'Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Lord dwells in you?' He who also wrote the sacristan's law for the sanctifying and purifying of the temple:
'If any man defile the temple of God, God shall defile him; for the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.' Come now, who at all has restored to wholeness what has been defiled by God—that is, one delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh—since he added underneath for this very reason: 'Let no man deceive himself'—that is, let no man presume that what has been defiled by God can be restored to wholeness anew? Just as, again, among other things—nay, even before other things—denying that adulterers and fornicators and the effeminate and men who lie with males shall obtain the kingdom of God, he prefaced: 'Be not deceived'—namely, if you should suppose that they will obtain it. But from those from whom the kingdom is taken away, surely neither is the life granted which is inherent in the kingdom. And further pressing home:
'But such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.' By how much he makes those offenses to be prior to the washing that was received, by so much he establishes them as irremissible after the washing, seeing that it is not permitted to be washed anew. Recognize in what follows also that Paul is the immovable pillar of the disciplines: 'Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; God shall bring to nothing both this and those; but the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord' (for 'Let us make man,' says God, 'after our image and likeness, and God made man, after the image and likeness of God he made him') 'and the Lord for the body' (for 'the Word was made flesh').
'And God has both raised up the Lord and will raise us up by his own power'—on account, that is, of the body's bond with him. And therefore: 'Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?' Since Christ also is the temple of God: 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days.' 'Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is made one body? For the two shall be one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication.' If she who is revocable by pardon—how shall I flee, being about to become an adulterer once more? I shall have gained nothing if I flee her; I shall be one body with her, to whom by communion I shall be joined. 'Every sin that a man commits is outside the body;'
'but he who commits fornication sins against his own body.' And lest you should rush into this saying as a license for fornication, as though you were about to sin in your own concern and not the Lord's, he takes you away from yourself and, as he had arranged, makes you over to Christ: 'And you are not your own,' immediately adding: 'For you were bought with a price'—namely, with the blood of the Lord: 'Glorify and bear God in your body.' Consider whether he who commands this pardoned the man who has dishonored God and cast him out of his own body—and that indeed through incest.
If you wish to drink in the whole knowledge of the apostle, understand with how great a security of censure he cuts down and uproots and stumps out the entire forest of lusts, so as to permit nothing to sprout again from a fresh shoot: behold him desiring souls to fast even from the lawful fruit of nature—I mean from the apple of marriage. 'Now concerning the things whereof you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman; but because of fornication, let every man have his own wife; let the husband render to the wife her due, and likewise the wife to the husband.' Who does not know that he loosened the clasp of this good thing against his will, in order to meet fornication? And if he has indulged or indulges this to anyone, surely he has broken the plan of his own remedy, and he will now be held bound to the marriages of continence to be curbed, if fornication, on account of which they are permitted, is not to be feared.
For that which shall be pardoned will not be feared. And yet he professes that he has pardoned the use of marriage, not commanded it. For he wishes all to be equal to himself. But whence do those who hope for the unlawful expect that even lawful things are pardoned? To the unmarried also and to widows he says it is good to persevere after his own example, but if they cannot contain, to marry; 'for it is better to marry than to burn.' By which fires, I ask, is it worse to burn—those of concupiscence or those of punishment? And yet if fornication has pardon, its concupiscence does not burn. But it is rather the apostle's concern to provide against the fires of punishment. But if it is punishment that burns, then fornication, which punishment awaits, does not have pardon.
Meanwhile, prohibiting divorce as well, in its stead he provides, by the Lord's precept against adultery, either the perseverance of widowhood or the reconciliation of peace, because 'whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of adultery, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries her that is put away by her husband commits adultery.' How great are the remedies the Holy Spirit sets up, precisely lest that be committed anew which he does not wish to be pardoned anew! Now if he says everywhere that it is best for a man to be thus: 'Are you bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed'—so that you may give no place to adultery; 'Are you loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife'—so that you may keep opportunity for yourself. 'But even if you marry a wife, and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned; such, however, shall have tribulation of the flesh'—and here too he permits by way of sparing.
For the rest, he places the time within a narrow compass, so that even those who have wives should be as though they had them not. 'For the fashion of this world passes away'—no longer, that is, desiring: 'Increase and multiply.' Thus he wishes us to pass our life apart from anxiety, because 'the unmarried are careful about the things of the Lord, how they may please God, but the married think again about the things of the world, how they may please their spouse.' Thus he declares that the man who keeps his virgin does better than he who gives her away. Thus too he distinguishes as more blessed her who, having lost her husband, entering upon the faith, has loved the occasion of her widowhood.
If he commends all these counsels of continence as divine—'I think,' he says, 'that I also have the Spirit of God'—who is this most audacious champion of all unchastity, this most faithful advocate, forsooth, of adulterers and fornicators and incestuous men, for the honoring of whom he has taken up this cause against the Holy Spirit, so as to recite false testimony concerning His apostle? Paul granted no such thing, who strives to blot out the whole necessity of the flesh even by honorable titles. He indulges indeed, not adulteries, but nuptials. He spares indeed marriages, not defilements. He attempts not to pardon even nature—and shall he flatter guilt? He is zealous to restrain the intercourse of blessing, that the intercourse of malediction may not be excused.
This alone remained for him: to purge the flesh even of its filth—for of its stains he cannot. But this is customary for perverse and ignorant heretics, and now for all the Psychics as well, to arm themselves, on the occasion of some doubtful little chapter, against the whole army of the sentences of the entire instrument. XVII. Challenge them to the apostolic battle-line, look at his epistles: all of them plead for modesty, for chastity, for holiness; all of them hurl their darts against the affairs of luxury and lasciviousness and lust. What, in short, does he write even to the Thessalonians? 'For our exhortation was not of seduction nor of uncleanness,' and:
'This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication, that each one of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of lust, even as the nations who know not God.' What do the Galatians read? 'The works of the flesh are manifest.' What, pray, are these? In the first place he set fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 'which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God by inheritance.' But what do the Romans learn more than not to forsake the Lord after the faith? 'What then shall we say? Shall we continue in delinquency, that grace may abound? God forbid. We who are dead to delinquency, how shall we still live in it?'
'Or are you ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him by baptism into death, that as Christ rose from the dead, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have been buried together in the likeness of his death, we shall be so also in that of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him. But if we are dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more; death has no more dominion over him. For in that he died to delinquency, he died once; but in that he lives, he lives to God. So also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to delinquency, but living to God through Christ Jesus.'
Therefore, since Christ has died once, no one who has died after Christ can come back to life again to delinquency—and above all to so great a delinquency. Or if fornication and adultery could be committed anew, Christ too could die anew. But the apostle presses on, forbidding delinquency to reign in our mortal body, whose infirmity of the flesh he knew. 'For as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present them as servants to righteousness unto sanctification.' For although he denied that good dwells in his flesh, yet this was according to the law of the letter, under which he was; but according to the law of the spirit, to which he joins us, he frees us from the infirmity of the flesh.
'For the law,' he says, 'of the spirit of life has set you free from the law of delinquency and of death.' For although he may seem to dispute in part from Judaism, yet he directs at us the integrity and fullness of the disciplines, on whose account—since they labor under the law—God sent his Son through the flesh in the likeness of the flesh of delinquency, and on account of delinquency condemned delinquency in the flesh, 'that the right of the law,' he says, 'might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. For they who walk according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh, and they who walk according to the spirit, the things of the spirit.'
But he affirmed the mind of the flesh to be death, and thereafter enmity even against God, and that those who are in the flesh—that is, in the mind of the flesh—cannot please God. 'And if you live according to the flesh,' he says, 'it will come to pass that you will die.' But what do we understand by the mind of the flesh and the life of the flesh, except whatever it shames one to name? For the other things of the flesh the apostle would also have named. Accordingly, to the Ephesians too, recalling former things, he admonishes concerning the future: 'Among whom we also had our conversation, doing the desires and pleasures of the flesh.' Noting, in short, those who had denied themselves—Christians, that is—in that they had given themselves over to the working of all uncleanness, 'but you,' he says, 'have not so learned Christ.' And again if he says:
'Let him who stole steal no more'—he keeps silence about him who up to now committed adultery, that he commit adultery no more, and about him who up to now committed fornication, that he commit fornication no more. For he would have added these things too, had he been accustomed to extend pardon to such persons, or been at all willing that it be extended—he who was unwilling to be defiled even by a word. 'Let no filthy speech,' he says, 'proceed out of your mouth.' Likewise: 'But fornication and all uncleanness, let it not even be named among you, as becomes saints'—so far is it from being excused, knowing this, that every fornicator or unclean person has not the kingdom of God. 'Let no man deceive you with vain words. For because of these things comes the wrath of God upon the sons of unbelief.' Who deceives with vain words, if not he who preaches that adultery is remissible?
Not perceiving, moreover, that its very foundations have been dug out by the apostle, when he curbs drunkenness and revelries, as also here: 'And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.' He shows to the Colossians too what members they should mortify upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and filthy speech. Concede now, to so many and such sentences, that one saying which you hold. Few things are foreshadowed by many, doubtful by certain, obscure by manifest. Even if for certain the apostle had granted pardon for fornication to that Corinthian, it would be another matter, since he had done it once against his own institution by reason of the times. He circumcised Timothy alone, and yet abolished circumcision. XVIII.
'But these things,' he says, 'will pertain to the interdiction of all unchastity and to the enjoining of all chastity, with a place nevertheless reserved for pardon, which is not straightway denied if offenses are condemned, seeing that the time for pardon does not coincide with the condemnation, which excludes it.' It followed that the Psychics should relish this too, and therefore we have reserved for this place those things which are, even from of old, expressly enacted against granting ecclesiastical communion in cases of this kind. For in the Proverbs too—which we call paroimiai—Solomon says specifically of the adulterer, who is nowhere to be expiated: 'But the adulterer, through want of sense, acquires the destruction of his own soul; he endures pains and dishonors, and his ignominy shall not be blotted out for ever.'
'For the indignation of the man, full of jealousy, will not spare in the day of judgment.' If you suppose this was said of the heathen, you have certainly already heard, concerning the faithful, through Isaiah: 'Come out from the midst of them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing.' There stands at once, in the Psalms: 'Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of pestilence.' Whose voice also is afterward: 'I have not sat with the assembly of vanity, and with those who act unjustly I will not enter; I have hated the church of evildoers, and with the ungodly I will not sit,' and: 'I will wash my hands among the innocent, and will compass your altar, O Lord'—so that he alone may compass rather than the many, since 'with the holy you shall be holy':
'And with the innocent man you shall be innocent, and with the chosen you shall be chosen, and with the perverse you shall be perverse.' And elsewhere: 'But to the sinner God says: Why do you declare my justifications and take up my covenant through your mouth? If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you set your portion.' Instructed from this source, therefore, the apostle also: 'I wrote to you in the epistle,' he says, 'not to associate with fornicators'—not indeed with the fornicators of this world, and the rest. 'Otherwise you would need to go out of the world.'