The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
Virgil says of Junius Brutus, who ordered his sons to be put to death for conspiring against the Romans with the Tarquins —
“The love of Rome him mastered with boundless thirst for praise;” so we may say of the Christian —
“The love of Christ will conquer, and heaven’s unquenchable thirst.”
Listen to what S. Chrysostom says (de Martyr. vol. iii.): “You are but a feather-bed soldier if you think that you can conquer without a fight, triumph without a battle. Exert your strength, fight strenuously, strive to the death in this battle. Look at the covenant, attend to the conditions, know the warfare — the covenant that you have entered into, the conditions on which you have enrolled yourself, the warfare into which you have thrown yourself!”
It is clear from this, says S. Chrysostom, that faith alone is not sufficient for salvation, but that works also are requisite, and heroic efforts, and especially no small abstinence from all the allurements of the world. For, as S. Jerome says (Ep. 34 ad Julian): “It is difficult, nay, it is impossible for any one to enjoy both the present and the future, to fill here his belly and there his soul, to pass from one delight to the other, to show himself glorious both in heaven and in earth.”
S. Augustine piously consoles and animates Christ’s athletes by reminding them of the help that God gives (Serm. 105). He says: “He who ordered the strife helps them that strive. God does not look upon you in your contest as the spectators do on the athlete: for the populace warms him by shouts, but cannot lend him any help. He who arranged the contest can provide the crown, but cannot lend strength; but God, when He sees His servants striving, helps them when they call upon Him, for it is the voice of the combatant himself in Psalm xciv. 18, who says, ‘When I said, my foot slippeth. Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.’” S. Dionysius too (de EccL Hier. cii.) says: “To them that strive the Lord promises crowns as God. He has laid down the rules of the contest by His wisdom. He has appointed rewards most fair and beautiful for the conquerors; and, what is surely more Divine, He Himself, as supreme loving-kindness and goodness, conquers in His warriors; and while He indwells within them, He fights for their safety and victory against the forces of death and corruption.”
Ver. 26. — So fight I, not as one that beateth the air. The comparison is still maintained. I fight as an athlete, but I do not spend my toil for nought, but I wound my enemy, i.e., I subdue my body and my flesh; and when I have subdued this foe, the remaining two, the world and the devil, are easily overcome. For the world and the devil cannot kill us, wound us, strike us, tempt us, approach us, except through the body and its organs, the eyes and ears and tongue and other members.
Ver. 27. — But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection. I keep under means, says S. Ambrose, “I repress it by fastings;” “I wound it with stripes,” says S. Basil (de Virginitate); “I starve it,” says Origen. S. Augustine (de Utilit. Jejun.) says: “The devil often takes it upon him to protect the flesh against the soul, and to say, ‘Why do you thus fast?—you are laying up punishment in store for yourself, you are your own torturer and murderer?’ Answer him, ‘I keep it under, lest this beast of burden throw me headlong.’” For our flesh is the devil’s instrument; it is, says S. Bernard, “the snare of the devil” (Serm. 8 in Ps. xci.). Erasmus, following Theophylact and Paulinus (Ep. 58 ad. Aug.), renders the Greek verb, “I make it black and blue,” or “I make the eyes of a black and bloody colour.” This last is, as Hesychius and Suidas say, the literal rendering of the word. But all others in general take the word to mean subdue, coerce, . Castigate in the Latin, or “keep under,” as the text, suits both renderings, but the second is better, as being at once plainer and more near to the Greek — taking to be synonymous with ὑπωπιάζω.
This keeping under or castigation of the body is effected by fastings, hair-shirts, humiliations, scourgings, and other mortifications of the flesh. Hence some think that Paul was in the habit of scourging his body. This is certainly the literal meaning of the Greek, which is rendered by Beza, Melancthon, Castalion, and Henry Stephen “bruise.” But a bruise is not caused except by a blow, whether from a stick, or a scourge, or some other instrument. Moreover, fasting (which some, as, e.g., Ambrose, Gregory, and Chrysostom, think was Paul’s discipline) is not so much a strife and contest as a preparation for them; for of it he has already said, “Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.” Cf. also Jacob Gretser (de Discipl lib. i. c. 4).
Moreover, as Anselm remarks, as well as Gregory, in a passage to be quoted directly, the Apostle, while he keeps under and scourges his body, at the same time scourges and wounds the devil, his antagonist, who is in alliance with our carnal concupiscence, and lies in hiding within the foul jungle of the flesh, and through it tempts and attacks us.
Lest I myself should be a castaway. Lest I be a reprobate from God and excluded from heaven. Maldonatus (Note Alanusc.) learnedly says that, as the comparison is still with the arena, a castaway here is one who is conquered in the fight; and that S. Paul’s meaning is, “Lest while I teach others to conquer I myself be conquered.” The Apostle is speaking not of eternal reprobation, which is in the mind of God, but of that temporal reprobation which is the execution of the eternal. He is referring to Jer. vi. 30: “Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them.”
1. Hence it is clear that the Apostle is not speaking (as in 2 Cor. xiii. 7), as some think, of the reprobation of men, as if his meaning were, “What I preach that I practise: I do not fare sumptuously, but I keep under my body, lest I be a castaway and reprobate of men, and regarded as one not doing what he teaches.” For Jeremiah clearly speaks of God’s rejection, not men’s; and reprobation and reprobate always refer to this when they are spoken of absolutely, and not restricted to men, as they are restricted in 2 Cor. xiii. 7. Hence appears the uncertainty to us of grace and predestination. Paul feared being condemned, and will you believe that your faith cannot but save you?
2. It also follows that Paul had no revelation of his salvation. Cf. S. Gregory (lib. vi. Ep. 22, ad Gregoriam).
3. And that he was not so strong in grace but that he might fall from it.
From this passage, it is evident that the Christian’s fight consists especially in bringing the body into subjection. For this foe is an inward foe, and one most hard to withstand, and therefore the snares of the flesh are to be dreaded more than all others. We ought also to get ourselves ready for this fight by the athlete’s training, that is, by temperance, and in this temperance we should begin the fight, and in it daily increase, grow strong, and come to perfection. The Christian, therefore, must begin with conquering gluttony. When that is done, it will be easier for him to conquer other vices, as Cassianus and others say. Hence it appears that the Christian fighter must keep under his body, lest its lusts make him a castaway; and that, therefore, bodily mortification, by watchings, fastings, and other afflictions, is the right way to salvation, and is the most suitable instrument for perfecting virtue, and for the complete subdual of vices, if it be done with discretion, and in proportion to one’s strength and health. Cf. S. Thomas (ii. ii. qu.
But let us hear what the ancient doctors of the Church have to say on this head. Ambrose (Ep. ad Eccl Vercell.) says: “I hear that there are men who say that there is no merit in fasting; and who scoff at those who mortify their flesh, that they may subdue it to the mind. This S. Paul would never have done or said if he had thought it folly” (let our Protestant friends observe this); “for he says, as though boasting, ‘I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’ Therefore, who do not mortify their body, to preach to others, themselves regarded as reprobates.