The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
Ver. 10 . — I am what I am — an Apostle, and Teacher of the Gentiles.
His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain . Not empty, barren, without results. S. Ambrose reads : “ His grace was not poor in me,” and then the meaning would be : “ Though I persecuted the Church of Christ, yet I did not on that account receive a grace of apostleship that was poor and slight, and less than that of the other Apostles, but if anything greater.”
But I laboured more abundantly than they all. S. Jerome (Ep. ad Paulinum) says beautifully : “ A sudden increase of heat banishes a long-existing lukewarmness . Paul was changed into an Apostle instead of a persecutor ; was last in order, first in merits ; for though last he laboured more than all.” For, as Gregory says ( Pastor . p. 3, c. 29) : “A guilty life that has learnt to glow with love for God is often more pleasing to Him than a blameless life that has grown sluggish from long security.”
Yet not /, but the grace of God which was with me. It plainly appears from this passage against Luther and Calvin that man has free-will, and that God alone does not work everything in us, but that our free-will co-operates with Him, even in supernatural works, for the Apostle says with me , not in me , and I laboured more abundantly than they all.
Again, the verb to be supplied in this passage is properly laboured. Then it will run : “Yet it was not I that laboured, but the grace of God, which laboured with me.” S. Paul does not here exclude the co-operation of the will, but only attributes the praise due to the work to grace as its more worthy cause. But the sense will be the same if you read with the Greek Fathers and S. Jerome, “ was with me.” The meaning then is, “ which was with me to help me.” I laboured much of my own free endeavour, yet I did not so labour as to give myself all the praise and glory of my labour ; but it was the grace of God which aroused me, aided me, strengthened me for this labour; to it, therefore, I give the first and best praise of my labour.”
S. Bernard (“On Grace and Free-will,” sub finem) says: “It was not I, but the grace of God with me,” implies that he was not only a minister of the work by producing it , but in some way a companion of the worker by consenting to it. Elsewhere S. Paul says of himself, ‘We are workers together with God’ (1 Cor. iii. 9); hence we make bold to say that we merit to receive the kingdom because we are joined to the Divine Will by the voluntary surrender of our own will.”
See also Anselm, Chrysostom, Theodoret (in loco); also Jerome (contra Pelag. lib. ii.), Gregory (Morals, xvi. c. 10), S. Augustine (de Liber. Arbit. c. 17, and Scrm. 13 de Verbis Apost.). He says there: “If you were not a worker, God could not be a co-worker.”
Ver. 11. — Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed. So not only I, but all the Apostles, as was said in ver. 3, preach and affirm as eye-witnesses, viz., that Christ died, and rose from the dead, and appeared to us. The Apostle returns here, as if after a long digression, to the point of the whole chapter, which is to prove, from the unanimous testimony of the Apostles, the resurrection of Christ, and of the rest who have died.
Ver. 12. — How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Cerinthus with his followers are meant here. He was the first heresiarch after Simon Magus to deny, in S. Paul’s time, the resurrection. See Eusebius (Hist. lib. vii. c. 23, and lib. iii. c. 28) and Epiphanius (Hares. 28). Cerinthus was a champion of Judaism, and, founding his opinions on Jewish traditions, he referred all the prophecies about the Church and the Gospel law to an earthly kingdom, and to riches, and to bodily pleasures. In the same way he afterwards perverted the meaning of Rev. xx. 4, and became the parent of the Chiliasts, or the Millennarian heretics. Some think from this that he was the author of the Apocalypse, and that it should therefore be rejected.
S. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Churches of Smyrna and Tralles, censures this error and its author. Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim. ii. 17) also denied the resurrection.
Ver. 13. — But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. Not only because Christ was one of the dead, but also because the primary cause of Christ’s death and resurrection was the complete destruction of death, and the restoration of life. Moreover, the resurrection of Christ was a pattern of ours, i.e., of our resurrection to righteousness in this life, and to glory in the next. See S. Thomas (p. 3, qu. 53, art 1) for five other reasons why it was necessary for Christ to rise again.
Ver. 17. — If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. It rightly follows that, if Christ has not risen, we are still in our sins; for 1. if Christ has not risen, therefore faith in a risen Christ, which is the basis of justification, is false; but a false faith cannot be the beginning and foundation of remission of sins and of true sanctification. 2. If Christ remained in death, He was overcome by it, and His death was ineffectual for the remission of sins; for if by His resurrection He could not overcome death, then He could not overcome sin, for it is more difficult and a heavier task to overcome this than to overcome death. If this be so, sin is not fully abolished, if its penalty death is not.
3. The resurrection of Christ is the cause of our justification. (Rom. iv. 25). Now the cause being removed, the effect is removed. If, then, the resurrection of Christ is not a fact, neither is our justification from sins, and consequently we are still in our former sins.
Ver. 18. — Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished, i.e., who have died in faith, hope, and charity. If the body is not to rise again, but perishes outright at death, the soul too will perish: it cannot exist for ever without the body, for its nature is the “form” of the body. Unless, then, God take away by violence from the soul its nature and natural condition, He must restore to it its body.
Ver. 19. — If in this life only we have hope in Christ. 1. The word “hope” here signifies, not the act of hope, for this exists in this life only, but the object of hope or the thing hoped for. If our only hope in Christ is for the goods of this life, then are we the most miserable of men; we are the most foolish also, because we rely on an empty hope of the resurrection, which is never to happen, and suffer fastings, mortifications, persecutions, and other hardships, and we resign the pleasure of the world and the flesh which others indulge in. Although, then, we are more happy than they, because of the good that is the fruit of the virtue of abstinence, of charity, and of an unclouded conscience, yet we are more miserable than they, so far as our hope in Christ is concerned, nay, we are fools for relying on a baseless hope. So Anselm and Chrysostom. The Apostle does not say “we are worse,” but “miserable;” for it is a miserable thing to afflict ourselves for virtue’s sake, and yet not obtain the prize; but the prize of Christian virtue is the resurrection.
It may be said that the soul can have its reward and be blessed without its body rising again. My answer to this is: God might have so arranged things that the soul alone should be rewarded with the Beatific Vision, but He did not so will it. As a matter of fact He willed that if the soul be beatified, so shall the body; if the body is not, neither will the soul; otherwise Christ would not have completely overcome sin, which reigns by death over soul and body alike.
2. It was the opinion of men at that time that if the immortality of the soul be proved, the resurrection of the body must be at once admitted, because of the close connection between them. The soul has a natural longing after the body, and cannot exist without it unless by violence. Therefore the resurrection, so far as concerns the essence and the needs of human nature, is a natural process, though its mode of execution be supernatural. Nor can the soul when once separated be again united to the body by any created force, but only by the supernatural power of God. Paul, then, from the denial of the resurrection and happiness of the body, rightly infers, according to the common opinion of men, as well as the nature and truth of things, the denial of the immortality and bliss of the soul; and so it is no wonder if Christians are not to rise again, that they should be of all men most miserable.