Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
First, he proceeds to inculcate the future glory, and from this exile and tabernacle he sighs after it, desiring to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
Secondly, in verse 9, he shows that he strives to please not men, but Christ alone, inasmuch as He is to judge us, in all things.
Thirdly, in verse 14, he teaches that he is urged to this by the charity of Christ, who reconciled us by His death; and so he now knows no one according to the flesh, but only if any one is a new creature in Christ.
Fourthly, in verse 18, he professes that he is the minister and legate of Christ, and for Christ he beseeches that they be reconciled to God.
Vulgate Text: 2 Corinthians 5:1-21
1. For we know, that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven. 2. For in this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven: 3. yet so that we be found clothed, not naked. 4. For we also, who are in this tabernacle, do groan being burdened: because we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5. Now He that maketh us for this very thing is God, who hath given us the pledge of the Spirit. 6. Therefore having always confidence, knowing that, while we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7. (For we walk by faith, and not by sight). 8. But we are confident, and have a good will to be absent rather from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9. And therefore we labor, whether absent or present, to please Him. 10. For we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil. 11. Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but to God we are manifest. And I trust also that in your consciences we are made manifest. 12. We do not commend ourselves again to you, but give you occasion to glory in our behalf: that you may have somewhat against them who glory in face, and not in heart. 13. For whether we be transported in mind, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for you. 14. For the charity of Christ presseth us: judging this, that if One died for all, then all were dead. 15. And Christ died for all: that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again. 16. Wherefore henceforth we know no man according to the flesh. And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, but now we know Him so no longer. 17. If then any be in Christ a new creature, the old things are passed away: behold, all things are made new. 18. But all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to Himself by Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. 19. For God indeed was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing to them their sins; and He hath placed in us the word of reconciliation. 20. For Christ therefore we are ambassadors, God as it were exhorting by us. We beseech you for Christ, be reconciled to God. 21. Him, who knew no sin, He hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in Him.
Verse 1: If Our Earthly House of This Habitation Be Dissolved
1. For we know, that if our earthly house (that is, we know that if our mortal body, in which we tarry for a short time as in a tabernacle — for so the Greek σκηνή signifies — like pilgrims and travelers) be dissolved, that we have a house (and, as the Syriac, a building, namely firm and stable) not made with hands, — namely, the glory of the soul and life eternal. So Photius, Anselm, St. Thomas, Lyranus, and thus it corresponds to verses 6 and 8, where he says: "We are confident, and willing to be absent from the body and present to the Lord." Whence from this sense and the Fathers' explanation, and more certainly from verse 8, against Tertullian, the Greeks, Armenians, Luther, and Calvin, it is proved that the souls of the blessed see God immediately after death, nor do they sleep under the altar until the resurrection.
Secondly and more aptly: "A house," that is the body glorified by the resurrection, "we have," that is, we shall certainly have at the resurrection; and this corresponds better to verse 4 and the preceding chapter; for the Apostle stirs up to the endurance of bodily mortification and suffering through the hope of the resurrection, in which we shall receive the body as a glorious body. Thus in 1 Cor. 15, he says: "It is sown," namely the body, "in dishonor, it shall rise in glory," that is, glorious; and such a body is properly the house of the blessed soul, just as the mortal body is the house of the soul here living and suffering. So St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, St. Ambrose.
You will say: The very glory into which the blessed soul enters can be called the soul's house; for thus Christ says: "Enter into the joy of thy Lord." I answer: It is said, "Enter into joy," not as if joy were the house into which one enters, as some would have it; but joy is called by metonymy the very place of joy, as if to say: Enter into the heavenly nuptials, enter into heaven, where is the place of fullest and eternal joys: for less correctly is glory itself, or joy, called the house into which the Blessed shall enter.
Morally, Chrysostom, hom. 5 on the Epistle to the Hebrews: "With the same ease," he says, "we ought to put off the body as we put off a garment, just as Joseph left his cloak with the Egyptian woman"; and Blessed Aloysius Gonzaga, when about to die, spoke of his death as if he were merely passing from one house into another.
Verse 2: For in This Also We Groan
2. For in this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our habitation that is from heaven. — That is, as the Syriac has it, for this we groan and sigh, namely that this earthly and miserable house, that is this mortal body, may be dissolved, and that we may put on our habitation, that is our house which is from heaven, namely the blessed and glorious body, as follows. Secondly and better: on account of this, namely the death and dissolution which must intervene that we may pass from this life to the eternal, we groan: for this death is contrary to nature; for we should wish to be clothed upon with glory, not despoiled of life, as follows in verse 4. This sense will become clearer from the following verse. Whence St. Gregory, Moralia book XXXI, chap. xxvi: "Behold," he says, "Paul both desires to die, and yet dreads to be stripped of the flesh. Why this? Because, although victory gives perpetual joy, the present pain nonetheless disturbs. For as a brave man, when he is now about to engage in nearby battle, girds himself with arms, both palpitates and hastens; he trembles and rages; he is seen, as it were, to fear by his pallor, but is vehemently urged on by anger: so the holy man, when he sees himself drawing near to suffering, is shaken by the infirmity of his nature, and strengthened by the firmness of his hope; and he trembles at the nearby death, yet exults that by dying he shall more truly live. For one cannot pass to the kingdom save through interposed death: and therefore by trusting he, as it were, hesitates, and by hesitating he trusts; and rejoicing he fears, and fearing he rejoices."
You will say: How does the metaphor of a house and habitation agree with a garment which is put on over? I answer: The Apostle here joins two metaphors: one taken from a house, the second from a garment. For the Hebrews, whom St. Paul here imitates, are accustomed to interweave and entangle many metaphors at once. This is seen both in the Prophets, in the Psalms, and in the parables of Christ.
Verse 3: Yet So That We Be Found Clothed, Not Naked
3. Yet so that we be found clothed, not naked. — Instead of "clothed," some read "despoiled": for there is an easy slip in the Greek of ν to ζ, so that for ἐνδυσάμενοι is written ἐκδυσάμενοι: thus reads Augustine and after him Bede here, Ambrose, Tertullian and Paulinus soon to be cited; and so Augustine explains it, as if to say: We shall be clothed upon with heavenly glory, provided that, having been despoiled of this body, we have put on Christ and have been clothed with Him.
Note: The Apostle distinguishes three things here: first, being naked and despoiled; second, being clothed; third, being clothed upon, as is clearer from the Greek: for as in the preceding verse he called the heavenly glory a house and habitation, so also here he calls the same by another metaphor a garment. Now some explain this passage thus, as if to say: We desire to be clothed upon with the heavenly habitation, namely the heavenly and incorruptible body, yet so that we be also given glory together with immortality, and be found clothed with glory, not naked. For, as the Apostle says, 1 Cor. 15:51: "We shall all indeed rise to immortality, but we shall not all be changed to glory." But this is true only of the reprobate and damned. Although they shall have an immortal body, they cannot be said to have a heavenly body: for only the blessed shall have this. The heavenly body therefore is that which is so immortal that it is likewise glorious; and consequently those who have it are necessarily found clothed and not naked. But the Apostle here makes an exception from those who desire to have a heavenly body, and says conditionally: "Yet so that we be found clothed, not naked."
Secondly, therefore, St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret, and Ambrose explain this passage otherwise, as if to say: That house, namely the heavenly glory, shall be ours if we be found worthy of it among the elect, not among the reprobate; namely, if we be found clothed with grace, charity, and good works, and not naked of these, and, as St. Paulinus says, epistle 8 to Severus Sulpicius: "If, despoiled of the body, you be not found naked of works"; for if we be clothed with these, then God shall clothe us upon, as it were with a new garment, namely the stole of immortal glory. But since in the next verse he explains this nakedness as the separation of soul from body; for he says, "we would not be unclothed," namely of the body, that the naked soul alone be made blessed, "but clothed upon"; it seems rather, as Tertullian rightly noted in De Resurrectione Carnis, chap. xlii, that he calls us naked and despoiled when we are dead, and the soul is despoiled of the body; and consequently clothed when the soul is joined to the body and as it were puts it on as a garment; and clothed over, or clothed upon, when the body is clothed and adorned as it were with a garment of heavenly glory; so that as the soul is clothed with the body, so the body should be clothed with glory; for thus the soul is clothed with the body, but is clothed over and clothed upon with glory. We therefore desire to be clothed upon with these things, yet so that we be found clothed, not naked.
Where note secondly: The word "if" requires something peculiar, not common to all the elect, but proper to some, namely to those who at the end of the world shall be found alive and clothed with a body; and so the living, or those dying in such a way that they immediately rise, and seem not to be dead but alive, shall be clothed upon with immortality. The sense, then, as Cajetan rightly says, is: It shall happen to us not to be dissolved, not to die, which we naturally abhor, and on account of which we groan, but to be clothed upon with glory, which we so greatly desire, if we be found at the end of the world remaining and not yet dead, but clothed with the body, not despoiled of it, so that we shall not die, or only for a very brief time, but pass from this life to the eternal. This is plain from what follows.
Verse 4: We Who Are in This Tabernacle Do Groan Being Burdened
4. For we also, who are in this tabernacle (namely of the body), do groan being burdened (namely, as the Syriac, on account of its weight and burden; yet so that with St. Gregory Nazianzen we may say: "Lord, take from me this so heavy tunic, namely the earthly, weighty, troubled body, but give me a lighter one"), because we would not be unclothed. — In Greek ἐκδύσασθαι, to be unclothed, namely of the body, but ἐπενδύσασθαι, to be clothed upon, namely with glory; yet that we may be found ἐνδεδυμένους, that is clothed with flesh and body, not despoiled of these by death. For the Apostle is wont to speak of the resurrection and the day of judgment as though it were imminent, and as if he himself, with others then living, were about to see it. Whence in 1 Thess. 4, last verse: "Then," he says, "we who live, who are left, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord." On which see there.
Because we would not be unclothed, — namely of the body. Plato therefore erred, who thought σῶμα, that is body, was so called as if σῆμα, that is sepulcher; and from this came Origen of the Platonists, who held that souls were thrust into this body as into a prison on account of sins: for who would not desire to be despoiled of his prison? But the soul does not desire to be despoiled of the body; therefore the body is the soul's friend, companion, and consort, and the soul seeks the body, as form seeks matter: and conversely. The Apostle therefore here seems to censure this error of Plato and the Platonists, whose schools flourished at Corinth.
That that which is mortal may be swallowed up by life, — mortality by immortality.
Verse 5: He That Maketh Us for This Very Thing Is God
5. Now He that maketh us for this very thing is God. — In Greek ὁ δὲ κατεργασάμενος, who has wrought, perfected, formed us, namely "who" first, created "us for this very thing," namely for this blessedness and immortal life, is God. Secondly, He who by His eternal decree prepared and destined us for that same blessedness, is the same God. Thirdly and best, He who by His grace so forms, prepares, composes our will, intellect, and our whole man, and who makes us so to live that we may be worthy to be blessed with this immortality, He is the same God. So Ambrose.
Who hath given us the pledge of the Spirit, — that is, as Ambrose reads, the Spirit, as if to say: God has not given us a pledge of gold or silver, that is gold or silver as a pledge, but has given us the Holy Spirit, when He poured into us His charity, virtues and spirit of holiness, by which we confidently invoke God the Father, crying as it were sons, Abba Father. For this Spirit is the pledge of our future glory and of our heavenly inheritance: for to this end God has given us this Spirit, that through Him, as it were a pledge and earnest, He might make us certain of the future inheritance, if we proceed as obedient sons to invoke God the Father, and to obey Him, and to retain and preserve His Spirit as a pledge.
Verse 6: While We Are in the Body, We Are Absent From the Lord
6. Having confidence, — θαρροῦντες, being confident, that is, we dare, we are confident, we boldly and faithfully undertake dangers and death for Christ and the Gospel, indeed we desire them. So Theophylact. For the Hebrews use the present participle for the indicative, according to Canon 29.
Therefore. — Namely because we hope for this glory and eternal life as our inheritance; and we have received the Holy Spirit as its pledge: therefore we dare both to do and to suffer any arduous things whatsoever.
Knowing that, while we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord. — That is, as long as we are in this body, so long are we removed and absent from the sight and inheritance of the Lord God our Father, dwelling as it were as pilgrims in a foreign land, namely in this life and in the mortal body, as if to say: Here we are pilgrims, because we are enrolled as citizens of heaven and heirs of God; we therefore hasten to depart from this pilgrimage, and to attain our heavenly fatherland, and to enter upon the inheritance of God our Father: whence we boldly rush into dangers and death, and as it were invade them as the way into heaven. Secondly, by metalepsis, we are pilgrims, that is, we are absent, from the Lord (on which see verse 9); we therefore hasten, and most desire to be present with Him.
Whence St. Bernard, treatise De Praecepto et Dispensatione, chap. xxvii: "That," he says, "occupation about the body, what is it but a certain absenting from God? and what is absenting, but pilgrimage? And so we are pilgrims from the Lord, and we are pilgrims in the body, whose intention is impeded by hardships, and whose charity is wearied by cares."
Verse 7: For We Walk by Faith, and Not by Sight
7. For we walk by faith, and not by sight. — Namely, because we do not yet contemplate the very vision itself, that is the nature and beauty of God, in Himself face to face. So Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Oecumenius.
Wrongly, therefore, would anyone teach from this that God is seen by the Blessed not by Himself alone through His essence, but through a mediating species which represents the essence, as the species of color impressed on the eye represents to the eye the color which is on the wall: for the Apostle does not understand such a species here, but a vision by which the thing itself is clearly seen face to face; for he opposes it to the vision of faith, by which we do not see, but obscurely believe future and absent things.
8. But we are confident, — we dare, I say; for he repeats and inculcates what he said in verse 6: "Therefore having confidence."
And have a good will (Greek εὐδοκοῦμεν, we will well; Syriac, we most desire; Chrysostom translates, ἐπεδοκοῦμεν, with all our wishes we desire) rather (that is, preferring) to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord, — that is, choosing rather to be absent from the body, that we may be present to God, and enjoy His presence, vision, and face.
Hence is proved that souls immediately after death see God: for he therefore says that we prefer to be absent from the body, that we may be present to the Lord, or, as Erasmus and Vatablus literally translate the Greek ἐνδημῆσαι πρὸς τὸν Κύριον, that we may be at home with the Lord, as it were present in the fatherland to our heavenly Father: for if, on departing and being separated from the body, we did not come immediately home to God our Father, but had to delay and journey elsewhere on the way, we should not desire to be absent from the body, indeed we should rather prefer to dwell in it, as in the soul's natural place, than elsewhere in an unknown place: but on the Greek ἐνδημέω more in verse 9.
9. And therefore we labor, — φιλοτιμούμεθα, with eagerness, with all our zeal, ministry, effort, and striving, we contend, struggle, and seek to please God, so that in this zeal we do not allow ourselves to be surpassed by anyone.
Whether absent or present, — namely to God, and consequently to the body, but by antithesis: for by this very fact that we are absent from God, we are present to the body; and by this very fact that we are present to God, we are absent from the body, as preceded in verses 6 and 8.
Where note: The Greek ἐνδημεῖν properly signifies to be at home, to act among one's own people: for δῆμος signifies people; the opposite of this, ἐκδημεῖν, signifies to act outside, beyond the bounds of one's own people, or to be a pilgrim. Whence Vatablus and Erasmus translate, whether at home present, or abroad acting as pilgrims. But the Apostle seems to take these somewhat more generally; for he says we ἐνδημεῖν and ἐκδημεῖν both in the body and with God, but we cannot properly be at home and existing in the body, and at the same time separated from the body and present to God: just as conversely we cannot be said to be abroad, both in the body and with God. So he takes ἐνδημεῖν for to inhabit, to dwell in, to be present; but ἐκδημεῖν for to migrate, to depart, to be absent: for while we dwell present in this body, we depart and are absent from the Lord; and conversely, while we dwell in heaven present with the Lord, then we depart and are absent from the body. Whence our Latin translator clearly renders it, whether absent or present, namely whether from God or from the body, as preceded.
But nothing prevents the Apostle from taking ἐνδημεῖν and ἐκδημεῖν properly for being at home, and being abroad.
On which note: The Apostle in verse 1 said that we have two houses, one earthly, the other heavenly, and that in both places we are at home, namely both in the body, as in our natural home, and in heaven with God, as in the gratuitous home of God, given to us freely. Consequently our pilgrimage is twofold, and we are pilgrims in two places. One, when in this body and exile, removed from the heavenly fatherland and from God, we live and act as it were as pilgrims. Secondly, when, separated from the body as from a home by death, we depart as pilgrims into another region and world, into heaven to God. Hence then the Apostle says that we ἐνδημεῖν, are at home, both in the body and with God; and again, ἐκδημεῖν, are pilgrims, act as pilgrims, both in the body and with God. This is plain from the very express words of the Apostle, verses 6 and 8. This, however, in verse 9, where he simply says, εἴτε ἐνδημοῦντες, εἴτε ἐκδημοῦντες, whether acting at home or acting as pilgrims; although he does not add or express the τὸ "in the body" or "with God," yet he refers himself to those same things as already premised in verses 6 and 8, and so leaves the same here to be added and supplied, as if to say: Therefore, whether absent from God and present to the body, or present to God and absent from the body, that is, wherever and in whatever state we may be, we strive to please God, namely that we may be able to be present with the Lord, and perpetually enjoy His presence and face: for unless we please God, neither can we, while here present to the body and absent from God, advance to His presence; nor can we, absent from the body and present to God, remain in His presence, enjoy it, and be blessed by it: but we strive to accomplish and perfect both, while we are in this life: namely because, in this life, by striving in all things to please God, we tend to His presence and vision, and secondly we merit that, His presence being once given, we remain in the same perpetually: for he who here pleases God will not there displease, says Ambrose and Anselm.
Others translate more plainly, εἴτε ἐνδημοῦντες, εἴτε ἐκδημοῦντες, whether dwelling, or migrating from the body to the Lord, as if to say: Throughout our whole life until death and the final breath, by which the soul shall migrate from the body, we strive to please God. Whence Tertullian also, in the book De Resurrectione Carnis, chap. xliii, reads: "And therefore we strive whether as pilgrims or as remaining, to be pleasing to Him." But these general words of the Apostle, common to both God and the body, as I said, are by these restricted to the body alone; the former sense therefore, which I gave, seems the genuine one.
Verse 10: We Must All Be Manifested Before the Tribunal of Christ
10. For we all. — The word "for" gives the cause of what precedes, as if to say: We strive to please God in every work of ours, that at the tribunal of Christ, before whom we are to be set, we may be granted the glory of the body, and the blessed presence of God (as he said in verse 8) and His vision; and not be deprived of these with those who displeased God by evil works.
We must all be manifested (both to Christ the judge, and to all men) before the tribunal of Christ. — So that each may see the goods and evils of every individual. Hence it is plain that Paul and the Apostles also are to be judged, but in such a way that they themselves at the same time shall be judges of others, and shall condemn those who refused to believe them, Matt. 19:28.
That every one may receive the proper things of the body (namely the deeds and acts) according as he hath done — πρὸς ἃ ἔπραξεν. According to those things which he did and wrought through his own body; Vatablus, in proportion to those things which he did, that is, according to the disparity of merits and demerits, each shall receive a different glory, or punishment.
Note: Those things which are proper to the body are also proper to the soul; for the soul in this state and life does nothing, nor can it do anything without the body: so much so that for thought and understanding itself it needs a bodily phantasm; therefore the proper things of the body are those which the soul properly performs and works through the body.
Chrysostom notes secondly that "proper" is said because at the tribunal of Christ, the merits of others and of parents shall not aid the children, and so, as Ezekiel chap. 14, verses 14 and 20 says, Noah, Daniel, and Job shall not deliver son or daughter, but only their own souls. If we considered this tribunal when we are tempted by companions, by lust, by pride, by gluttony, we would easily overcome all things, and would allow ourselves to be drawn away from God's law and obedience by no fear or desire. See Chrysostom in the moral homily 10.
From this the Pelagians inferred that infants have no sin, and that there is no original sin; because Christ in judgment shall examine only the proper sins which each has committed in the body; but infants have done nothing, nor could they do anything as their own: therefore they do not have a sin which Christ should examine and judge.
St. Augustine replies, epistle 107, that this saying of the Apostle pertains also to infants: for original sin is habitually their own and inherent in them; but the actual sin of Adam, from which is propagated into each one born from Adam habitual original sin, although it was proper to Adam, that is, physically inherent (for it was the eating of the forbidden fruit, which Adam ate), yet is also said morally to be proper to little children, because this act of Adam pertained to them, and is reckoned to have been their own act, and so they have wrought and committed this sin, not through themselves, but through Adam: for the will of Adam was reckoned to be the will of all his posterity, even of the little ones.
But it can be answered more plainly and more according to the Apostle's mind, that the Apostle is not speaking of infants, but of adults: for he exhorts them to strive to please God in all things, that they may receive a reward from God, each one according to his deeds: for infants, although they shall appear at the judgment of Christ, nevertheless shall not need an examination of works, nor of demerits, but shall receive only the punishment due to original sin, as St. Augustine teaches, sermon On All Saints, vol. 1, and Nazianzen, oration 60, which is on the Holy Laver.
Verse 11: Knowing Therefore the Fear of the Lord
11. Knowing therefore (these things which I have said of the tribunal of Christ, before which each shall give account as he hath done; secondly and more simply "knowing") the fear of the Lord (that is, because we know that the Lord, the judge and avenger, is to be feared, hence this same fear) we persuade men, — that they may by it fear the Lord.
The fear of the Lord. — Fear can be taken in two ways: first, actively, by which we fear the Lord; secondly, passively, by which the Lord is to those who fear as a terrible judge. Whence the Syriac and Vatablus translate, knowing therefore that terror of the Lord, we persuade men. So Jacob calls God the fear of his father Isaac, that is, the object of fear, or whom Isaac his father feared, Gen. 31:42. So here fear is called the object of fear, the thing to be feared, terror, as if to say: Knowing God to be feared, that is, terrible; or, knowing the Lord to be feared and dreaded. See Canon 30. So Isaiah 8:13 says: "Sanctify the Lord of hosts: let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread."
But to God we are manifest. — As if to say: God knows that I sincerely fear God, and persuade this fear to others: for because Paul, on account of this fear and desire of pleasing God and of enjoying Him, which he here makes manifest, might have seemed to some, especially to his rivals and to the false apostles, who were seeking occasion to slander him, to be praising himself as if a saint; hence he wards off this vanity and desire of praise from himself here and in what follows.
Verse 12: Against Them Who Glory in Face, and Not in Heart
12. That you may have — namely an occasion of glorying (for he leaves this to be repeated) concerning me. Against them (against those) who glory in face, — who boast of themselves in external appearance, although they are not well-aware of themselves in conscience, and are hypocrites and false apostles.
Verse 13: Whether We Be Transported in Mind, It Is to God
13. For whether we be transported in mind, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for you. — Some manuscript codices read, if we are out of our mind. For the Greek ἐξέστημεν signifies a rapture, by which the mind, moved out of itself, is carried away, whether by the vehemence of nature, disease, choler, melancholy, or apprehension in new and unusual objects, or by God into contemplation and ecstasy, or by frenzy and madness into delirium. In all these ways it can be taken here. Indeed the Syriac, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Vatablus, and Erasmus translate, whether we are mad: for to this he opposes εἴτε σωφρονοῦμεν, or we are sane in mind, as if to say: Whether we are foolish, or wise.
For, as Plato says in book 1 of De Republica, τὸ σωφρονεῖν ἐναντίον ἐστὶ τῷ μαίνεσθαι, that is, to be wise, or to be in one's right mind, is the contrary of that which is to be foolish or mad; so he opposes μανίαν, or madness, to τῷ σωφρονεῖν. Paul, Acts 26:25: "I am not mad," he says, "most excellent Festus, but I speak words of truth and soberness." So Christ's relations say of Him, Mark 3:21: "For He is become mad," where in Greek there is the same verb ἐξέστη, which here.
Again this rapture and madness can be taken either of self-praise, or of divine love and contemplation. The Apostle seems to speak properly and genuinely of self-praise, as Ambrose and Chrysostom hold: for of this it preceded. But because this praise concerns the excellence of the ministry of the New Testament, and the excess of love and clear speculation of God, hence consequently and secondly, he is also to be understood of that, and seems to allude to the rapture of Moses, by which on Sinai, when about to receive the law, he saw the glory of God, as he said in chap. 3, verse 7. For the Apostle praised himself above Moses and Moses' rapture, chap. 3, verse 18: "But we all," he says, "with open face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory." Hence in chapters 4 and 5 he commends himself for the tribulations and labors undertaken for the Gospel, by which he aspires to this glory and to God's presence.
The sense therefore is, first, as if to say: If forgetful of ourselves we are carried away by some vehemence or zeal, which worldly men think madness, namely so that we are carried away as it were like madmen into the praises of our ministry, and speak more gloriously and more divinely of ourselves (for to praise oneself seems pride and boasting, and is madness, says Ambrose), "to God," that is, we do this for the honor of God. "Or if we be sober," namely in our speech and our praises, "for you" this is done, namely that we may teach you modesty. So Chrysostom. Hence consequently, as I said, secondly, St. Augustine, Anselm, Theophylact, and others explain it thus, as if to say: If we are caught up into an excess or ecstasy of divine love, contemplation, and speech, saying: "But we, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face; and: We strive, whether absent or present, to please Him; and: We have the good will rather to be absent from the body and present to the Lord"; in this matter we have gloried, and we seem to have praised ourselves. Or, as Chrysostom translates it, if we are mad — that is, if we sometimes appear drunk and mad with love and contemplation, like the Apostles in Acts II:13 and Acts XXVI:24 — we do this "for God," that is, for God's glory, etc.
For Plato, in the Phaedrus, teaches that there is a fourfold madness or insanity: first, that of seers; second, that of mystics; third, that of poets; fourth, that of lovers — and this fourth kind he holds to be the best and most blessed. "Of divine madness or mania, four species are reckoned," he says, "over which preside as many gods. The inspiration of prophecy they attribute to Apollo; the force and efficacy of the mysteries to Bacchus; poetry to the Muses; the frenzy of lovers to Venus and Cupid. That best and most excellent kind of madness we have assigned to the fourth place." Theophylact teaches here that this fourth frenzy was in Paul, since he lived not in himself, but as if rapt and carried out of his mind in his beloved Christ (for the soul of the lover is not so much where it animates as where it loves), and who wished to become anathema for his brethren. Thus Theophylact says: "If we are mad for God's sake, we are mad in order to lead you to Him. Paul therefore was mad with a certain amorous madness, loving God and living for Him after the manner of a lover — namely, snatched out of himself by his Beloved, and wholly translated into God; not living his own life but the life of Him whom he loves — an amorous life, plainly beloved and very dear."
St. Bernard, in his book On the Nature and Dignity of Love, chapter III, beautifully describes this holy madness of Paul: "Hear," he says, "a holy madness: Whether we are beside ourselves, it is for God; whether we are sober, it is for you. Will you hear of yet another madness? If you forgive them their sin, forgive it; but if not, blot me out of the book of life (Exodus XXXII). Will you hear another? Hear the Apostle himself: I wished, he says, to be anathema from Christ for my brethren. Does it not seem a sound madness of a well-affected mind, since it is impossible in effect, to hold fixed in affection the desire to be anathema from Christ for Christ's sake? This was the drunkenness of the Apostles at the coming of the Holy Spirit; this was Paul's madness, when Festus said to him: You are mad, Paul." He adds the reason: "Was it any wonder that he was pronounced mad, who in the very peril of death strove to convert to Christ the very judges by whom he was being judged for Christ's sake? It was not great learning that produced this madness in him, as the king who understood the truth said while dissembling, but (as has been said) the drunkenness of the Holy Spirit, by which he longed to make those who judged him similar to himself in both small and great. And to omit the rest, what greater, what more unexpected madness than for a man, having left the world and desiring and burning to cling to Christ, again by the necessity of obedience and fraternal charity to cling to the world for Christ's sake — striving toward heaven, to plunge himself into the mire? This is Benjamin the youth, who in his rapture of mind perceives neither himself nor anything of his own, but only Him into whom he is wholly transported. With this madness the Martyrs were mad, laughing amid their torments. So let me be glad to be mad."
And the same author, in Sermon 83 on the Canticle, near the end: "Let someone perhaps go on to ask me what it is to enjoy the Word? Hear one who has experienced it: Whether, he says, we are beside ourselves, it is for God; whether we are sober, it is for you — that is: One thing I have with God, with God as the sole arbiter; another thing I have with you. The former it was permitted to experience, but by no means to speak of: in this latter I so condescend to you that both I am able to speak and you to grasp. O whoever you are who are curious to know what it is to enjoy the Word, prepare for it not your ear but your mind. The tongue does not teach this, but grace. It is hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed to little ones."
"The excess of the mind," says Anselm, "is a stretching upward to heavenly things," so that the lowest things slip as it were from memory; in this excess of mind were all the Saints to whom the secrets of God, transcending this world, were revealed. So the Apostle here, exceeding in mind all human frailty and the temporality of the age, all things which by being born and dying vanish away as transient, dwelt in his heart in a certain ineffable contemplation of those things of which he says he heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter; but for the sake of others he came down. Hence he says: "We are sober for your sake," as if to say: Although we contemplate lofty things, we nevertheless speak of them soberly, that you may be able to grasp them. So Anselm.
But St. Augustine, Bede, and Anselm, who take this passage not of madness but of Paul's rapture and ecstasy, explain it thus: "What is meant," says Augustine according to Bede, "by 'We are beside ourselves for God'?" That we may see those things which it is not lawful for a man to utter. "What is meant by, 'We are temperate'" (so Augustine reads, for our "We are sober"), "'for you'? I judged not, he says, that I knew anything among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." The same St. Augustine, on Psalm CXIII: "What is meant by, We are beside ourselves for God? We have transcended all these carnal things, and what we have seen we cannot utter. What is meant by, We are temperate for you? We so speak that you may be able to grasp: because Christ also made Himself lowly by being born and by suffering, that men might be able to speak of Him."
Verse 14: For the Charity of Christ Presseth Us
14. For the charity of Christ (not so much passive as active — that is, by which Christ loved men and spent Himself entirely for them) presseth us, so that we too, by Christ's example and love, may do the same and spend ourselves entirely for men, to save them from death; and therefore, as is expedient for them, let us at one time go out of our minds, at another be sober. Whence follows:
Judging this, that if One (namely Christ) died for all, then all were dead. — This whole verse hangs on the next, which conveys and completes its sense and connection with verse 13. The sense is: Such was Christ's charity that He died for all. Whence it follows that we were dead: for He died in order that, by taking it upon Himself, He might free us from that death — both of body and of soul — which we had incurred through sin. From this Christ's mercy and charity is the more apparent: that out of so great a misery of death, by taking it upon Himself, He has rescued us — which surely urges us to love Christ in return, and out of love for Him to labor in every way for the salvation of our neighbor, and to exclude no one, but to labor for all, even the wretched and the poor, as Christ did. St. Thomas takes it differently: "they are dead," he says, that is, all ought to be dead to the old life, and reckon themselves dead, that they may live not for themselves but for Christ. But this is more obscure and remote, and the same as what the next verse plainly says — which the words show to be distinct from this one.
All were dead. — Except the Blessed Virgin, says Anselm, who never incurred original sin and death of soul. Secondly, and more probably, "all were dead," namely in Adam, because in him all contracted the necessity of sin and death — even the Mother of God — so that she too and absolutely all men needed Christ as Redeemer and His death. Therefore the Blessed Virgin sinned and died in Adam, but in herself she contracted neither sin nor death of soul, because she was prevented by God and by God's grace, as I said on Romans V, 12.
Verse 15: That They Also Who Live May Not Now Live to Themselves
15. And (supply from the previous verse, Judging that) Christ died for all, that they also who live may now not live to themselves (not to their own glory, will, or pleasure), but (to Christ) to Him who died for them and rose again, — and who by right of redemption made us all His servants, so that as a servant labors and lives not for himself but for his Lord, so each of us may say to Christ: "I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me; and: My soul shall live for Him." For, says Anselm, the human soul ought to fail in itself and to advance in Christ, who died that we might die to sins and rose again that we might rise to works of righteousness. And what else is, "Let them not live for themselves but for Him," than that they should not live according to the flesh in hope of earthly and corruptible goods, but according to the spirit in hope of the resurrection, which has now been made out of them in Christ? — thus Anselm.
Verse 16: We Know No Man According to the Flesh
16. Therefore from henceforth we know no man according to the flesh. — As if to say: Because Christ's love for us is so great and presses us so, therefore we count as nothing carnal things — that is, outward and present things outside Christ, such as fame, health, friendships, kinships. So Chrysostom, taking person for thing; "no one," that is, nothing, says Vatablus; St. Augustine likewise so takes "no one," Against Faustus, II, ch. VII. But by flesh he understands the corruption and mortality of the flesh — as if to say: "We know no man according to the flesh," that is, we no longer know this carnal and mortal life: for with sure hope we meditate upon and seek the life to come, spiritual and blessed after the resurrection, in which Christ already is and is preparing a place for us. This sense is fitting but a little remote; for the Apostle contrasts the new creature, which is in this life and lives by faith and grace in Christ, with the flesh — that is, with the carnal man; for he says: "If then any be in Christ a new creature."
Therefore, thirdly, you may explain it more closely and properly thus: "Henceforth," that is, no longer, "we know no man according to the flesh," that is, according to outward appearance, namely as being kin, friend, Jew, noble, elegant, learned to us; to these natural affections I am dead, because being regenerated in Christ I live for Him alone; Him alone, and all in Him according to the spirit of charity — not according to the flesh — do I love. As if to say: I do not seek to please men, nor the praise and glory of men, but of God. For because the false apostles, the Jews, rivals of Paul (as will appear in chapter XI), boasted that they were Hebrews and seed of Abraham — which in chapter XI, 18 he calls "glorying according to the flesh" — therefore tacitly rebuking them, he says that he knows no man with the knowledge of love and boasting, that is, that he glories in no man according to the flesh, or for the sake of carnal kinship and friendship, not even in Abraham himself. So Philippians III, 3: "We glory," he says, "in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh," as if to say: We once gloried in being Hebrews and noble according to the flesh, but now we are dead to those affections, because all our praise and glorying is Christ. So Gagneius.
And if we have known Christ according to the flesh. — That is, if we once esteemed and saw Christ (if not I, Paul, certainly other of our Apostles) as present, mortal, subject to the passions of the flesh, to hunger and cold — a man like ourselves; now we know Him only as immortal and impassible. So Chrysostom, Theodoret, and the Seventh General Synod, act. 6, and the following words support this. Secondly, and rather as Gagneius reads (as I said): If we once knew — that is, greatly esteemed and gloried in — Christ according to the flesh, namely that Christ by carnal generation was a Jew, our fellow countryman, and that we were Hebrews, kin to Christ according to the flesh (as the false apostles boast), and that we lived with Christ when present, or even conversed familiarly with Him — now we are dead to those earthly affections, and being recreated through Christ we have a more august judgment of Him, and we know Christ only according to the spirit, that is, as the divine man, the redeemer of the world, the teacher, the author of grace and salvation; and as such we live and serve, and as such we preach Him throughout the whole world.
Thirdly, others not improbably think that Paul speaks of himself with reference to the time when he was persecuting Christ, as if to say: Although once, judging carnally — that is, according to the flesh — we held an unworthy estimation of Christ, for instance that Christ was to be a temporal king, such a Messiah as the Jews expect: now however we do not so know or judge.
Hence fourthly, Faustus the Manichaean wrongly explained it thus, as if to say: I, Paul, in the beginning thought that Christ had true flesh; but I afterwards corrected the error. Hence also in Philippians II he says, "Made in the likeness of men," as if to say: He had flesh similar and phantastic, or merely apparent to us, not true, not human. Again Eutyches twisted this passage to his own heresy: "We do not know," he said, "Christ according to the flesh," because by the incarnation Christ's flesh and human nature were absorbed by the divinity: for he himself posited in Christ one nature equally as one person, and that a divine one.
You see here how heretics bend and twist Scripture like a wax nose to fit their fantasies. So once the Iconoclasts, and recently Calvin in his Admonition Concerning Relics, have wrenched these words of the Apostle against the veneration of the relics and images of Christ and of the Saints, as if the Apostle were saying: Now after the resurrection we do not know Christ according to the flesh, that is, whatever was carnal in Christ must be consigned to oblivion and dismissed, that we may put all our effort into seeking and possessing Him according to the spirit. But that the Apostle does not mean this is most clear: because so he would wish us to forget the flesh, death, and passion of Christ, and to be unmindful and ungrateful of Him — the contrary of which Christ willed and sanctioned, when He instituted the Eucharist as a perpetual memorial of His death. Hence Paul himself, I Corinthians XI: "As often," he says, "as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come." So not what Calvin wishes, but what I have said, is the Apostle's intention here. So the Second Council of Nicaea, act. 6, from Epiphanius and Cyril.
Verse 17: If Then Any Be in Christ a New Creature
17. If then any be a new creature in Christ (as if to say: If anyone, then, is regenerated with me in Christ, and is recreated and transformed as it were into another man and a new creature — as I now am not he who I was, namely Saul, but Paul — in such a one) the old things have passed away, — namely the old, both the rites of Judaism and rather the affections and judgments, such as the knowing someone according to the flesh, which went before. For behold, in such a one all things are made new, so that he has new affections, new judgments — in Christian fact and hope — a new life, a new hope of resurrection, new grace, sanctity, righteousness. See on this newness Anselm and St. Augustine, treatise On the New Canticle, vol. IX.
St. Bernard gives the reason, in his sermon On the Assumption of the Blessed Mary: "All things," he says, "are made new — that is, the new castle stands where the old has been overthrown. For with cupidity removed, the vast bosom of desire is expanded, so that at His coming the mind much more pants for heavenly things than before it had brooded over earthly. Now the wall of continence is set up, with the outwork of patience. And this work rises from the foundation of faith, and grows by love of neighbor up to the charity of God."
Verse 18: Who Hath Reconciled Us to Himself by Christ
18. And all things (the new things just spoken of) are from God (have been made and given by God's gift and grace), who hath reconciled us to Himself through Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, — that by our preaching we may persuade men of the faith of Christ and of repentance, of a new and Christian life, and so reconcile them themselves to God.
Verse 19: God Was in Christ, Reconciling the World to Himself
19. For God was in Christ, — as in the Son, by unity of essence. So Ambrose and Primasius: hence St. Ambrose, On the Faith to Gratian, III, ch. V: God, he says, that is, the eternal divinity, was in Christ — as if to say: Christ reconciled the world, because He was God. Secondly, and better: "God was in Christ," that is, through Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. So the Greeks. Thirdly, Cajetan: God reconciled to Himself the world in Christ — that is, the world believing in Christ. But this seems forced and distorted.
Not imputing to them their sins. — As if to say: Not imputing, but freely remitting their offences through the righteousness of Christ — not by imputation, as the heretics will have it, but by real infusion. So Chrysostom and Anselm.
Note the Hebraism: Scripture says that God determines, imputes to sin, or does not impute — not as though the matter were not really so, for then God would be deceived; but rather because God's judgment is most sincere, and reckons things and sins truly as they are. Secondly, because from God's judgment — namely from the eternal law which is in God's mind — every law depends, and consequently sin against the law. Thirdly and chiefly, because every remission of sin depends on God's pardon; and to pardon is, as it were, not to impute: for sin is a moral entity, namely an offense against God, which likewise is taken away by a moral cause, namely by pardon. But God's liberal clemency together with this pardon at the same time infuses grace, charity, and all the virtues, that we may be adorned by these as by real gifts of God, justified, and made worthy of God's friendship.
And hath placed in us the word of reconciliation, — namely the preaching of the word of God, by which we reconcile men to God, as I said in the preceding verse. Secondly, "word" could be taken metonymically for the thing, as it were sign for thing signified: thus "the word of reconciliation" would be the reconciliation itself, or the power and ministry, as I said in the preceding verse, of reconciling men to God.
Verse 20: For Christ We Are Ambassadors
20. We beseech you for Christ's sake, be reconciled to God, — as if to say: We beseech you in Christ's stead, as Christ's ambassadors, and as if Christ Himself through us were beseeching you, that you may be willing to be reconciled to God. Behold with what industry, efficacy, and zeal the Apostle uses, that he may convert the Corinthians.
Verse 21: Him Who Knew No Sin, He Hath Made Sin for Us
21. Him who knew no sin, — namely by experience, though He knew it by simple knowledge, says St. Thomas — that is, Christ, who had never committed sin.
He made Him to be sin for us, — who were sin, says Illyricus; because, he says, sin is the substance and form of our soul. But to say this of us is delirium; of Christ, blasphemy. "Sin," therefore, that is, a sacrifice for our sin, did God make Christ for us, lest we, as expiatory victims, should pay for it by eternal death and fire. The Apostle therefore plays on the word "sin": for when he says, "Him who knew no sin," he takes sin properly; but when he adds, "He made Him to be sin for us," he takes sin metonymically, according to Canon 3. So Ambrose, Theophylact, Anselm. Hence Christ, in Psalm XXI, 2, calls our offenses His own. So Theodoret and Chrysostom. He says "righteousness," not "righteous," says Theophylact, to signify the excellence of grace, by which it comes about that there is no blemish in the just man, no stain of sin, but all and the whole is grace and righteousness. Secondly, "sin," says St. Thomas, that is, in the likeness of sinful flesh, that Christ might be passible, as sinners are subject to passions from Adam's sin. Thirdly, "sin," that is, that Christ might be esteemed by men as sin, that is, as a notorious sinner, when He was hanged and crucified as if He were an infamous robber. So the Greeks.
Of these three senses the first is fuller, more significant and forceful than the rest, and more in accord with the use and idiom of Scripture, which often calls "sin" the very expiatory or atoning victim of sin; as in Hosea IV, 8: "They shall eat the sins (that is, the offerings made for sin) of My people (the priests)." Leviticus IV, 24: "Because חטאת chattat hu, it is sin, that is, a victim for sin," as our translator renders it. Likewise verse 21, חטאת chattat, sin, that is, the victim for the sin of the multitude. Ezekiel ch. XLIV, v. 29, חטאתם chattatam, their sin, that is, they themselves shall eat the victim for their sin (for sin in itself cannot be eaten: it is too hard a food, indigestible to any stomach). The reason of this idiom and metonymy is that the whole penalty, guilt, and vengeance of sin is transcribed onto the expiatory victim, so that sin itself appears to be transferred and transposed onto it. For guilt follows the guilty head. As a symbol of this the priest used to lay his hands upon the victim and imprecate the sins of the people upon it. For by the hands are signified actions and sins, as being for the most part performed by the hands, says Theodoret on Leviticus I. The laying of hands on the victim was therefore both a symbol of the offering and a testimony that the guilt was transferred to the victim, so that the victim might become a propitiation, and so might take upon itself sin itself — that is, all the weight, penalty, and vengeance of sin. In this manner on the solemn day of expiation the high priest used to imprecate the sins of the whole people upon the scapegoat, and then by a chosen man would lead it, as it were laden with sins, outside the camp, and dismiss it into the desert to be devoured by wild beasts. Concerning which it is thus written in Leviticus XVI, 20: "He shall offer the live goat, and laying both his hands upon its head, he shall confess all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their offenses and sins, which imprecating upon its head, he shall send it away by a man prepared into the desert. And when the goat has carried all their iniquities into a solitary land, and has been let go in the desert, Aaron shall return," etc.
That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him, — as if to say: That we might be made righteous before God, by the righteousness infused by God through the merits of Christ. See Canons 21 and 30. So Theophylact, Anselm. Secondly, "the righteousness of God," that is, that the effect or likeness of the uncreated righteousness of God might be communicated to us through created and infused righteousness. So Cyril, Treasury XII, ch. III. Thirdly, "the righteousness of God," because God owes it not to us, but to Christ and to Christ's merits, that He should infuse righteousness in us, and remit our sins. So Augustine, Enchiridion ch. XLI. Similar to I Cor. I, last verse.
The heretics object: Christ was made sin for us, because our sin was imputed to Him and punished in Him; therefore we are made the righteousness of God, because that righteousness is imputed to us.
I reply, the case is not parallel, for Christ could not truly be a sinner, as we can truly be just; nor does the Apostle press this analogy; but only that Christ took upon Himself the expiatory victim sins for this reason, that we through Him might be justified. Add: Christ was truly made sin, that is, a sacrifice for sin (for this is what "sin" here signifies), therefore we also are truly made the righteousness of God: for thus aptly and solidly we hurl this argument back upon the Innovators themselves.