The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
3. The best rendering is to refer these words, with Anselm and S. Thomas, to what had been said above about judgments : I have said these things against going to law, not because it is unlawful in itself for a man to seek to regain his own at law, but because I am unwilling for you to be brought under the power of any one, whether he be judge, advocate, or procurator, especially when they are of the unbelievers.
S. Bernard (de Consid. lib. iii.) says, moralising: “ The spiritual man will, before undertaking any work, ask himself three questions, Is it lawful ? Is it becoming? Is it expedient? For although, as is well known in the Christian philosophy, nothing is becoming save what is lawful, and nothing is expedient save what is both lawful and becoming, nevertheless it does not follow that all that is lawful is necessarily also becoming or expedient .”
Why, says S. Paul, do you enter on lawsuits for the sake of worldly good, which for the most part serves only for the belly and its meats ? For food is but a perishing and mean thing, made but to be cast into the belly. The belly too is the lowest part of man, made only to cook, digest, cast forth, and corrupt the food, and is a vessel containing all that is disgusting. Both food and belly shall be destroyed, for both shall be food for worms; and though the belly shall rise again, yet it will no longer take in food. Secondly, it should be observed that the Apostle here purposely introduces gluttony, because it is the mother of lust, which he then proceeds to condemn. So Theophylact. Hence in the passage bearing the name of S. Athanasius (qu. 133 ad Antioch .), the belly here is understood to mean gluttony and drunkenness. The belly has its desire to drunkenness, and drunkenness to it ; but he who is thus given up to serve his belly cannot serve God, but is the slave of his belly, and therefore shall be destroyed of God. This passage is plainly not the writing of S. Athanasius, for earlier (qu. 23) Athanasius himself is quoted, and differed from ; moreover, Epiphanius and Gregory of Nyssa are quoted, who lived after Athanasius.
But God shall destroy both it and them. In death and the resurrection , in such a way that the belly will no longer be for meats, nor will there be meats to fill the belly.
Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body . It was not meant, or given us, for such an end, but that with chaste body we should serve the Lord, and follow Him, our Head, with pure and holy lives. So Anselm. So also is Christ given to our body to be its head and crown. Or the Lord is for the body in another sense, according to Ambrose and Anselm, viz., that He is the reward for the body that is chaste and pure, and He will give it incorruption and immortality. The first meaning is the simpler, for S. Paul proceeds to speak of the resurrection.
Ver. 14. — And God . . . will also raise up us by His own power. As He raised up Christ when crucified and dead, so too if with Christ we die to lust and gluttony, and crucify them, will He raise up us.
Ver. 15. — Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ ? For ye yourselves, and consequently your body and soul, are members of the Church of Christ. S. Augustine (Serm. 18 in hæc Verb.)
says beautifully : “ The life of the body is the soul, the life of the soul is God. The Spirit of God dwells in the soul, and through the soul in the body, so that our bodies also are a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God.”
Shall I then . . . make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. Take here is not to pluck off and separate from Christ, for a fornicator remains a member of Christ and His Church so long as he retains the true faith. But it means, as S. Thomas says, unjustly to withdraw these members, that were given for generation, from the obedient service of Christ, whose they are. For whoever of the faithful commits fornication filches as it were his body and his organs of generation, which body is a member of Christ, from their lawful owner, and gives them to a harlot. He takes, therefore from Christ, not jurisdiction over his body, but the use of it.
Ver. 16. — Know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? One body by a union and blending of the two bodies. Just as merchants in partnership have but one capital, because it is common to both, so those who join in committing fornication have one body, because their bodies are common to both, as Cajetan says. So two are one flesh : that is, out of two there is made but one human being, and that not spiritual, but carnal —wholly fleshly.
For two , saith He , shall be one flesh. S. Paul is here quoting from Gen. ii. 24, where the words are applied to those married. But he refers them truly enough to fornicators, because the external acts, whether of them or of those married, do not differ in kind, though they differ morally by the whole sky, for the acts of the former are lustful and vicious, but those of the latter are acts of temperance, righteousness, and virtue, as S. Thomas says.
1. Observe that it is said of the married that they too shall be one flesh (1.) by carnal copulation, as the Apostle here takes it; (2.) they shall be one individual, one person: for the man and the woman civilly are, and are reckoned as one ; (3.) because in wedlock each is the master of the other’s body, and so the flesh of one is the flesh of the other (cf. 1 Cor. vii. 3) ; (4.) in the effect produced, for they produce one flesh, that is one offspring.
2. Observe again that Scripture employs this phrase in order to show that of all human relationships the bond of matrimony is the closest and the most inviolable. Hence it was that God made Eve out of the rib of Adam, to show that the man and the woman are not so much two as one, and ought to be one in heart and will, and therefore, if need be, each for the sake of the other ought to leave father and mother, as is said in Gen. ii. 24. The Apostle quotes this passage to show the fornicator how grievously he lowers and disgraces himself, inasmuch as he so closely joins himself to some abandoned harlot as to become one with her, and as it were he transforms himself into her and himself becomes a harlot.
Ver. 17. — But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit . Not one essentially, as Ruisbrochius (de Aita Contempt .) says that
Almaric and certain fanatic “illuminati” thought, but one in the way of accidents : one in charity, in the consent of the will, in grace and glory, all which make man like God, so that he is as it were one and the same spirit with God. So Ambrose, Anselm, Œcumenius.
From this passage S. Basil (de Vera Virgin.) shows that the chaste and holy soul is the spouse of God, and is changed into the excellence of the Divine image, so as to become one spirit with God, and from this union with God drinks in all possible purity, virtue, incorruption, peace, and inward calm. “Wherefore,” he says, “the soul which is joined to Christ is, as it were, the bride of the Wisdom or the Word of God ; is necessarily wise and prudent, so that every mark of the yoke of brutish folly having been removed by meditation on Divine things, she wears the beauteous ornament of the Wisdom to which she has been joined, until she so thoroughly joins to herself the Eternal Wisdom , so becomes one with It, that of corruptible she is made incorruptible , of ignorant most prudent and wise , like the Word, to whose side she has closely kept, and in short, of mortal man is made immortal God ; and so He to whom she has been united is made manifest to all.”