The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Notice that liberty is not here opposed to the obligation of law, Divine or human, as heretics think, but both to the veil of Moses, or the obscurity of the Old Law, and to the letter, or to the servile compulsion, fear, and deadness of the law. This liberty, therefore, is twofold. See notes to ver. 6.
1. Liberty is, says Chrysostom, an understanding and clear knowledge of the mystery of the Trinity, of the incarnation, and other things that are obscure to the Jews. It is also a knowledge of true religion and of Divine worship, which the Jews supposed to consist in the sacrifice of bulls and goats, though God wills to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Just as heaviness, dulness, perplexity , and ignorance of the understanding, which hold the mind as it were fast bound in chains, are rightly called slavery, so on the other hand illumination of the intellect and clear knowledge are rightly called liberty, because the mind, set free from ignorance, error, and crass conceptions, is able to freely devote itself to truth, to God, to things spiritual and Divine. Hence Aristotle, Plutarch, Seneca, and others used to say that the wise man alone was free.
2. Liberty, as S. Augustine says, is to be found in the affections and in the love of righteousness, in freedom from fear of punishment , in the spontaneous fulfilling of the law from love of virtue, and not from fear of punishment. This free spirit of Christian love is contrasted with the slavery of Jewish fear. This is evident from the context. The Begardi, three hundred years ago, and the Suencfeldiani and Libertines of the present day, are therefore as impious, as ignorant, and foolish (a) in rejecting, on the supposed authority of ver. 6, the written word of God, as though it were a sun that had set, and in holding that the light within is sufficient for our guidance; (b) in teaching that a holy and perfect man is set free from the law and does not sin, even if he commit fornication. (c) They are followed by many others, who deduce the invalidity of all human laws. Cf. Bellarmine (de Justific. lib. iv. c. 3 and 4), and Belliolanus, in the fifteen books he wrote on Christian Liberty. S. Augustine (de Continentia, c. iii.) says excellently: “We are not under a law which orders good and does not give it, but we are under grace, which makes us love what the law orders, and which can, therefore , give orders to free men.” Cf. the same Father (de Spirit. et Lit. c. x., and de Natura et Grat. c. 57).
Ver. 18. — But we all with open face. The open face is that of Christ incarnate or of the mysteries of the faith. We, looking on them, see the glorious Godhead of the Lord and His grace, and the work of our redemption foreshadowed in Moses and the Old Testament.
Beholding as in a glass . “ Seeing as in a mirror, not beholding as from a watch-tower,” says S. Augustine (de Trin. lib. xv. c. 8 ) ; but Erasmus renders the passage, “representing in a mirror,” because he says this is the image of the glory of God. But the Greek verb is clearly to see, not represent in a mirror, and besides the representation is spoken of in the next phrase, “are changed into the same image.” Since we see the glory of God in Christ and His Gospel, as though in a mirror, we are by this transformed into the same image of God, and we represent in ourselves this glory. This mirror, therefore, is the cause of the image, not the image itself!
The Apostle here means by mirror the Word clothed in flesh, and made visible, and whatever is put before our eyes in the Gospel and in the Church, and he contrasts all this with Moses veiled. Hence, in the next chapter, he speaks of the image of God ; for Christ as God is the Word and image of the Father, as Man He is the mirror of the Deity and His grace and glory ; consequently the Gospel of Christ is nothing but a most clearly polished mirror of the glory of God. Hence S. Augustine calls his “Sentences” a mirror.
“Mirror” may also be taken here to mean the faith through which, as through a mirror darkly, we behold God and the things of God. Cf. notes to 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
Are changed into the same image . Not essentially, as though our essence were changed into the Divine Essence, or into its archetypal being, which it had in God from eternity before it was created, of which S. John speaks when he says, “That which was made was in Him life.” This is the error of Almaric and other fanatics, which is refuted by Gerson in his two epistles written against Ruisbroch, and of Ruisbroch himself (de Vera Contempl.). But we are changed per accidens, by the rays of the light of Christ being reflected on us as from a mirror, we become bright with the light of the faith and grace of Christ, and so we become like mirrors flashing out the light of heaven, and like suns illuminating others, as Chrysostom and Theophylact say. Nay, we become as gods, sharing in the Divine Nature, as S. Peter says. “ God foreknew and predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son,” says S. Paul. He alludes to Moses, who, beholding God and conversing with Him, received the rays of light reflected from God, as was said in the note to ver. 7. Moses did not see God Himself, but in a glorious , assumed body which acted as a mirror. Tertullian ( contra Marcion , lib. v.) reads here, we are transfigured, as though Paul was alluding to the transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, when Christ, brilliant with the light of His glory, shed it over Moses and Elias and the Apostles, and as it were transfigured them. In the same way, by the Gospel and the grace and faith of Christ, we are transformed and transfigured, inasmuch as we are made partakers of the truth, brightness, and glory of God, so that we are able to communicate them to others, and at last we reflect them on God Himself, from whom they first came.
“The whole life of Christ,” says S. Augustine, “which was spent as man on earth, was a mirror giving us a pattern of good living.” How wise are they who gaze constantly into this mirror, and do all they can to conform their lives to it, and so are transformed into different men, into heavenly, angelic, and Divine beings !
From glory to glory. (1.) From the glory of Christ into our own glory, so that we become clear and bright with grace and wisdom, even as Christ. (2.) From the brightness of faith into the brightness of sight. (3.) From the brightness of creation into the brightness of justification, according to Anselm. (4.) Daily growing more and more glorious, till we come to the glory of the Beatific Vision. Cf. notes to Rom. i. 17. Maldonatus (Notes mss.) gives a further explanation: “Progressing from the glory of the Old Testament to the glory of the New.” So it is said in Rom. i. 17, “from faith to faith.”
Even as by the Spirit of the Lord. This change is through the Spirit of the Lord. Even as denotes the cause that is suitable to, and worthy of, so great a change, such as it becomes the Holy Spirit to work. S. Basil and S. Chrysostom argue from these words against Macedonius that the Holy Spirit is God, and that it is He that taketh away the veil and gives understanding of the Scriptures. Tertullian finally (contra Marcion , lib. v. c. 11) reads here: “Even as by the Lord of Spirits.”