The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
It may be said that Ambrose, commenting on this verse, says that the Apostle speaks of the wife only, because it is never lawful for her to marry another after she is divorced ; but that it is lawful for the husband, after putting away an adulterous wife, to marry another, because he is the head of the woman. I answer that from this and similar passages it is evident that this commentary on S. Paul’s Epistles is not the work of S. Ambrose, or at all events that these passages are interpolations. For in matrimony and divorce the same law governs the wife which governs the husband, as the true Ambrose lays down (in Lucam viii. and de Abraham , lib. i. c. 4). What then the Apostle says of the wife applies equally to the husband ; for he is speaking to all that are married, as he says himself ; and moreover, in ver. 4, he declared that the marriage rights of husband and wife are equal, and that each has equal power over the other’s body.
Let not the husband put away his wife . i.e., without grave and just cause ; for it is allowed to put her away because of fornication and other just causes.
Ver. 12 . — But to the rest speak I ... let him not put her away.
The rest are those that are married and belong to different religions ; and to them I say, that if a brother, i.e., one of the faithful, have a wife that is an unbeliever, &c. In other words, I have thus far spoken to married people when both are of the number of the faithful, as I implied in ver. 5, when I said “that ye may give yourselves to prayer.” Now, however, I am addressing those of whom one is a believer, the other an unbeliever. This is the explanation given together with S. Augustine, who will be quoted directly.
But if this is so it is certainly strange that the Apostle did not express himself more clearly, for by the addition of a single word he might have said more simply: “To the faithful who are married it is not I that speak but the Lord ; but to the rest, viz., to those married couples of whom one is an unbeliever, I speak, not the Lord.”
But since he says not to the faithful , but unto the married , he seems to speak in general terms of all that are married, whether believers or unbelievers. Nor is it to be objected to this that in ver. 5 he speaks casually to the faithful, for there he is excepting from the general law which governs the marriage debt those of the faithful who are married, when by mutual consent they give themselves to prayer.
But this exception is not to be made to cover all the marriage laws, which the Apostle in this chapter is laying down for all who are married. Moreover, the Apostle so far has not said a single word about the unbeliever, or about a difference of religion.
Hence we may say secondly and better, that the rest are those who are not joined in matrimony. For by the words but and the rest this verse is opposed to ver. 10, as will appear more clearly directly.
Speak I, not the Lord. “ I command,” says Theodoret. But S. Augustine (de Adulter. Conjug. lib. i. c. 13 et seq.), Anselm, and S. Thomas interpret it : I give the following advice, viz., that the believing husband is not to put away an unbelieving wife who lives at peace with him, and vice versa.
There is a third interpretation, and the best of all, given us from the Roman, Plantinian, and other Bibles, which put a full stop after the words, But to the rest speak I, not the Lord, thus separating them from what follows and joining them to what precedes. We have then the meaning as follows : To the rest, viz., the unmarried, the Lord gives no command (supply command from ver. 10), but I say, and I advise what I said and advised before in ver. 8, viz., that it is good for them to remain as they are, unmarried.
This interpretation too is supported by the antithesis between the rest and the married, by which it is clear that the rest must be the unmarried, not married people of different faiths. Moreover, he explains himself in this way in ver. 25, where he says, “ Now, concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord, yet I give my judgment,” which is identical with what he says here, “To the rest speak I, not the Lord.”
If any brother hath a wife that believeth not. This is the third question put to Paul by the Corinthians : Can one of the faithful that is married live with an unbelieving partner ? S. Augustine and others, as I have said, connect these words with the preceding, which then give as the meaning : Although Christ permitted a believer to put away his wife that believeth not, yet I give as my advice that he do not put her away ; for to put her away is neither expedient for her salvation nor for that of the children, if she is willing to live with a believer without casting reproach on her Creator and on the faith. Hence many doctors, cited by Henriquez ( de Matrim . lib. xi. c. 8), gather indirectly by analogy that, since Paul forbids what Christ permits, one of the faithful that is married may, by Christ’s permission, put away an unbelieving partner that refuses to be converted, and contract another marriage. On the contrary, when both are believers, neither is allowed this, as has been said. But if we separate these words, as the Roman Bible does, from the preceding, by a full stop, nothing of the kind can be proved. Nay, Thomas Sanchez (de Matrim . vol. ii. disp. 73, no. 7), who does not read any full stop, as S. Augustine does not, and so refers these words to what follows, thinks that all that is exactly to be gathered from this is that Christ permits to a married believer separation a toro , but not dissolution of a marriage entered into with one that believes not. In the third place, this passage might be explained to mean that Christ laid down no law on this matter, but left it to be settled by His Apostles and His Church, according to needs of different ages, as, e.g., the Church afterwards declared the marriage of a believer with an unbeliever null and void, if one was a believer at the time of the marriage. According to S. Augustine’s reading, this rendering is obtained with difficulty ; according to the Roman, not at all. For all that the Apostle means is that the believer is not to put away an unbeliever, if the latter is willing to live with the former. Cf. note to ver. 15.
Infidelity in S. Paul’s time was no impediment that destroyed a marriage contracted with a believer, nor did it prevent it from being contracted, if the believer ran no risk of apostatising, and if the unbeliever would consent to live in peace with the believer, retaining his faith, as S. Paul here lays down. But now by long custom it has become the law of the Church that not heresy but infidelity not only impedes, but also destroys a marriage which any one who was a believer at the time might wish to contract with an unbeliever.
Ver. 14. — For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife . Such union by marriage is holy. The believer, therefore, is not, as you so scrupulously fear, defiled by contact with an unbeliever, but rather the unbeliever, as Anselm says, is sanctified by a kind of moral naming and sprinkling of holiness, both because he is the husband of a holy, that is a believing, wife, and also because by not hindering his wife in her faith, and by living happily with her, he as it were paves the way for himself to be converted by the prayers, merits, words, and example of his believing wife, and so to become holy. So did S. Cecilia convert her husband Valerian ; Theodora, Sisinnius ; Clotilda, Clodaevus. So say Anselm, Theophylact, Chrysostom.
S. Natalia, the wife of S. Adrian, is illustrious for having not only incited her husband to adopt the faith, but also most gloriously to undergo martyrdom for it. For when she had heard that women were forbidden to serve the martyrs, and that the prison-doors would not be opened to them, she shaved off her hair, and having donned man’s dress, she entered the prison and strengthened the hearts of the martyrs by her good offices. Other matrons followed her example. At length the tyrant Maximianus discovered the fraud, and ordered an anvil to be brought into the prison, and the arms and legs of the martyrs to be placed on it and smashed with a crow-bar. The lictors did as they had been ordered ; and when the Blessed Natalia saw it, she went to meet them and asked them to begin with Adrian. The executioners did so, and when the leg of Adrian was placed on the anvil, Natalia caught hold of his foot and held it in position. Then the executioners aimed a blow with all their might, and cut off his feet and smashed his legs. Forthwith Natalia said to Adrian, “I pray thee, my lord, servant of Christ, while your spirit remains in you, stretch forth your hand that they may also cut that off, and that you may be made like the martyrs in all things: for greater sufferings have they endured than these.” Then Adrian stretched out his hand, and gave it to Natalia, who placed it on the anvil, and then the executioners cut it off. Then they took the anvil away, and soon after his spirit fled. Cf. his life, September 8th.