The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle to the Corinthians
The first man Adam was made a living soul. Adam was made a soul, an animal, living a vegetative and sensitive life, and therefore nourished by food and drink, and needing to be preserved in this his animal life. S. Paul uses a synecdoche.
The last Adam was made a quickening spirit. In order that after His resurrection He might have a glorious soul to give life to His body and to make it spiritual, i.e., glorious like a spirit, independent of food, impassible, and deathless. His body here, indeed, is ours as well as His own. S. Paul here again uses a synecdoche, and his meaning is that Christ received a spirit or soul, able to quicken Himself and His members.
Theophylact, Chrysostom, and Theodoret remark that S. Paul does not say a “living spirit,” but a “life-giving spirit;” for the soul or spirit of Christ does not merely enjoy life itself, but also gives life to others, and the life which He gives glorifies both our souls and bodies.
Ver. 47. — The first man is of the earthy earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. The Vulgate reading here is “the second man is of heaven, heavenly.” This was corrupted into “the second man is the Lord from heaven” by Marcion, as Tertullian proves (contra Marcionem, lib. i. c. 5). The Latin rendering, therefore, is the more genuine.
Valentinus and the Gnostics gathered from this passage that Christ had not a material and human body, but that He brought from heaven a heavenly one, and passed through the Blessed Virgin, not as her child, but as rain-water passes through a pipe. This is a heresy long ago condemned, as S. Augustine testifies (Hares. 11), and Irenaeus (lib. i. c. 5), and Tertullian (de Carne Christi, c. viii.).
1. Bede rightly says: “Christ is called heavenly, because He led a heavenly life and was always without sin; Adam is called earthy because he was subject to sin.” Hence there follows: “As is the earthy,” &c.
2. Christ is called heavenly because He was conceived and bom of the Virgin by the heavenly power of the Holy Spirit, above the ordinary course of nature. S. Ambrose, S. Hilary (de Trin. lib. i.), S. Augustine (Dial, ad Orosium, qu. 4).
3. Christ is called heavenly by reason of His Divine and heavenly substance. In the same way He is called the Son of man, i.e., the Man who came down from heaven (S. John iii. 13). See Gregory of Nazianzen (Oral. 51) and Augustine (Ep. 57 ad Dardanum).
4. The most natural sense in which Christ is called “heavenly” is that He is glorious and incorruptible, like the inhabitants of heaven. This celestial glory Christ had substantially in His soul from the moment of His conception. He had it, too, in His body, because it was His due, and was natural to His body; but its manifestation was suspended and postponed, on account of His Passion, in order that He might assume it in His resurrection. Yet even before His death, Christ now and then assumed this glory, or the four gifts of the glorified body, viz., brightness in His transfiguration, agility when He walked on the sea, subtilty when He penetrated the womb of His mother, impassibility in the Eucharist. On the other hand, Adam is called “earthy” because he was formed from the earth, and hence and from sin contracted mortality, and the other qualities of an earthly, animal, mortal, and corruptible body. So S. Chrysostom, Augustine (de Civ. Dei, lib. xiii. c. 23), Tertullian (de Resurr. c. 49); for the Apostle is speaking here of the resurrection, and the glory of the bodies of the blessed, the pattern of which is the glorified body of Christ, and hence he calls Christ heavenly, and His body heavenly also.
Ver. 48. — As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy. As Adam was formed from the earth, was earthy, and died, and returned to the earth, so also all the earthy born from him shall return to the earth.
As is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As Christ by His resurrection obtained a body that was heavenly, i.e., immortal and glorious, so too do the saints who are born again of Him become heavenly, i.e., immortal and glorious.
Ver. 49. — As we have borne the image of the earthy we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. The Latin reading is, “let us bear.” If we adopt the future, “we shall bear,” the reference will be to the resurrection, when we shall be fashioned like to Christ in His glorious body, as in this world we were made like Adam in having a life that needed food, sleep, &c., and that was subject to death. The Latin reading, “let us bear,” is in consonance with the practice of the Apostle, who frequently passes on to enforce a precept in this way. The meaning then is: As we sometime lived in unbelief and in sin, as earthly men, intent on the earth and living an animal life, like the beasts that perish, even as Adam did, who was of the earth and sinful, so, now that we have been born again into Christ, and called by Him to a fellowship of immortal life and glory, let us endeavour with all our might to attain it, and consequently let us bear the image of the heavenly Christ, that we may enter on this heavenly life here, viz., (i.) let us be, as He, impassible, i.e., undisturbed by prosperity or adversity, so that we can say with Socrates, “I have climbed up into heaven in mind: this lower sun and soil I now despise.” (2.) let us be bright like Christ, that our good works may shine before all men; (3.) let us be agile like Christ, apt to works of charity, of obedience, and of other virtues; (4.) let us be subtle, as was Christ, i.e., let us cleave the skies by prayer and meditation, that having ascended from the earth to heaven and to God in heart and mind, we may be joined to the saints and united to God. S. Cyril ( de Fide ad Theodos.) interprets it a little differently. He says: “As we bear the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly. The image of the earthy is our propensity to sin and the death which follows it. The image of the heavenly, i.e., of Christ is His constancy in holiness, and a return and renovation from death and corruption to life and immortality.”
S. Bernard beautifully explains these words of the Apostle (Serm. 30 inter Parvos). He says: “There are two men, the old and the new. Adam is the old man, Christ is the new. The one is earthy, the other heavenly. The image of the one is our former state, of the other our newness of life. Each of these is threefold. Our former corruption was in heart, in mouth, and in body, in which we sinned in three ways, in thought, word and deed. In the heart there are carnal and worldly desires, the love of the flesh and the love of the world; in the mouth is a double evil, boasting and detraction; in the body degrading vices and disgraceful crimes. All these are the image of the old man, and all these are to be renewed in us. … Dwelling in the heart is wisdom, in the mouth is truth, in the body righteousness.”
Ver. 50. — Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.
(1.) Origen and Euthymius explain this as follows, that in heaven the blessed will not have a body of flesh but an etherial body. But this is a manifest error, and opposed to ver. 53, as we shall see. (2.) Theophylact and Ambrose say that the flesh, or the works of the flesh, will not inherit the kingdom of God. But (1.) The natural meaning is that natural and corruptible flesh and blood, such as the earthly Adam had and such as we have in this life, will not inherit the kingdom of God. What the Apostle, in vers. 46, 47, called natural and earthly, he here calls flesh and blood. He merely wishes to point out that in heaven the body will not be as here, natural and earthly, but spiritual and heavenly, in the sense that I have explained (ver. 47). This is why he adds, “neither doth corruption,” i.e., corruptible flesh, “inherit incorruption.” Cf. Theodoret, Theophylact, Ambrose. (2.) The Apostle leaves it to be collected from these words that in heaven there will be no carnal and animal life, consisting in the use of food and generation of children, such as the Jews and Mahometans look for at the resurrection. (3.) He implies that those who are striving for the kingdom of God ought not to live after the flesh, but after the Spirit of Christ, that so they may bear the image, not of the earthly and carnal Adam, but of the heavenly and spiritual Christ; then they will merit to reign with Christ, and to live a life of bliss in heaven. “Flesh” often stands for the corruption of the flesh. Cf. Augustine (Ep. 146 ad Consentium).
Ver. 51. — Behold, I show you a mystery. Theophylact says that by these words the Apostle wishes to arouse the attention of his readers, and to point to some great, dreadful, and hidden fact about the resurrection.