The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
This verse differs from Rom. vii. 22. There the outward man is concupiscence, or the man governed by concupiscence ; the inward man is charity, or the man renewed by the spirit. But here the outward man is the body, the inward is the soul; or, more appositely , the outward man is the man regarded as corporeal, or in so far as through his body he is visible, tangible, passible, and susceptible of injuries from without ; the inward man is the same man regarded as possessed of a soul, or in so far as through his soul he is invisible, and bravely and cheerfully bears bodily afflictions. Since man consists of two so dissimilar parts, the body without and the soul within, and since the soul itself seems to have two sides, one which animates the body, and shows itself outwardly in the body by its working and passions, and so seems in a sense outward, animal, and embodied ; one self-contained, concerned only with the operations of the mind, and so seems inward and invisible , hence man, consisting of these two parts, is called outward in the first respect, and inward in the second.
Hence it is evident, against Illyricus, that original sin and concupiscence are not an evil substance formed from man by the devil, and united to man’s substance as its form ; for this form would be the inward man, and that so corrupt as to be incapable of renewal, opposed to what the Apostle says here.
Tertullian was wrong, says S. Thomas, in gathering from this passage that the soul is corporeal, and has its figure and members like the body, so that the inward man is but a copy of the outward. In the same way John Huart, a physician, in his Examen Ingeniorum, lately published, has maintained that the souls of the lost are tortured , because, he says, they have their members or images of members, they have their senses and sensations, in the same way that Dives said that his tongue was tormented, in S. Luke xvi.
But this opinion is baseless. As the soul is not corporeal, it has no members strictly speaking; but what is said of its senses and sensations may be true. For the rational soul, being also sensitive, has within itself a root of sense and sensation, e.g., touch, by which it feels heat and fire, and the pain they cause. Although this sensation cannot be exercised naturally apart from the body, yet God can supernaturally produce it in a soul separated from the body; for such a soul has and retains the root of sensation within itself. This is the opinion of many subtle philosophers, and they find it easy in this way to explain how fire affects the soul. Reason, too, is in their favour; for sensation wholly consists in the soul. When, e.g., we see with the eye, or hear with the ear, or touch with the hand, the sight, or hearing, or perception of touch is not in the eye, or ear, or hand, but in the soul. It is not the body but the soul which sees by the eye, hears by the ear, and touches by the hand ; why, then, cannot God, by His omnipotence, produce the same sensation in a soul separated from the body? The natural use of the organs of the body, which has been lost at death, may be supernaturally replaced, as He can and does sometimes supply the object of sensation ; as, e.g., he may enable a man to see through a wall what is being done in a closed bedroom, or see what is taking place in distant countries. We read of such things in the life of Anselm and other Saints.
Day by day . As the outward, the body daily is weakened and aged by affliction, so the inward man, i.e., the mind, is daily renewed and gifted with youth through the hope of resurrection. We read of Abbot Barnabas in Sophronius (Prat. Spir. c. x.), that he drove a thorn into his foot and refused to have it taken out, and so caused his foot to fester ; and when some expressed their wonder, he said : “ The more the outward man suffers, the more does the inward flourish.” In the same work, in chap, viii., we read of Myrogenes , a man afflicted with dropsy, saying : “ Pray for me, fathers, that the inward man may not grow dropsical, for my prayer to God is that I may live a long time in this weakness.” No doubt these Saints applied this general declaration of the Apostle to their own particular diseases.
So that admirable martyr, Clement of Ancyra, when tortured by Agathangelus, under the Emperor Diocletian, with every possible kind of torture, though broken in body, yet became daily stronger, so much so as to long for fresh tortures, and to pray God that his life might be prolonged for them, and obtained his request. He lived for twenty-eight years, during which he was constantly tortured. At length Diocletian and the judges, amazed at his constancy, asked him how he could bear such tortures, and he answered in these words of Paul : “ Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.”
Ver. 17. — For our light affliction , which is but for a moment. All our tribulation is light and short-lived when compared with the exceeding weight of eternal glory, and is to it as a single feather is to all the lead in the universe.
S. Augustine ( Enarr . in Ps . lxx.), when explaining the words of Christ, “ For My yoke is easy, and My burden light,” says beautifully : “ The one burden is oppressive and wearisome , but that of Christ sustains thee. One pulls thee down , the other lends thee wings. If you take away its wings from a bird, you take away, indeed, a weight, yet you force it to remain on the ground. Restore the weight, and it will soar aloft. Of this kind is the burden of Christ.”
S. John Chrysostom had this in his mind when he was being led to Cucusus into exile. And then when, in extreme bodily weakness and fever-stricken, he was forced by his guards to travel from there for seventy days continuously, with the hope that he would succumb to the hardships of the journey, and so rid the Empress Eudoxia of one she hated bitterly (as indeed happened), when oppressed with hunger, thirst, poverty, heat, and attacks by the Isaurians, he cheerfully and bravely overcame them all, and, forgetful of himself, consoled and animated the noble matrons, Olympias and Pentadia, and his other friends, bidding them be ready to bear bravely imprisonment and other sufferings for Christ. It was then that he wrote that Divine treatise on the theme, “No one is injured but by himself,” in which he surpasses himself. By solid arguments he showed that the whole cause and matter of real pain arise from ourselves, and not from any one else. “Sin alone,” he says, “is the only evil, and the only one to be grieved for, and it cannot find lodgment in the breast by one’s own free-will. But all other evils and pains, when compared with sin, are not real, but only painted shadows, being light, short-lived, and of little account; but sin brings in its train an innumerable number of grievous and eternal pains.”
A far more exceeding . The Greek is, “from excellence to excellence,” i.e., says Theophylact, a weight of glory that is above measure wonderfully sublime and great. The Latin version gives, “above measure excellent.” The sense, of course, is — the weight of future glory is incomparably greater and more sublime than the tribulation we suffer here.
Chrysostom and Theodoret remark on the beautiful contrast drawn between the eternal and the momentary, the weight and the lightness, the rest, nay, the glory and the tribulation. So in the next verse we have a contrast drawn between the things which are seen and the things which are not seen, between things temporal and things eternal. So to the Maccabees, to Vincent, Laurence, Stephen, stones, gridirons, and racks, and all tortures, when compared with the glory of heaven, were but as a moment in respect of eternity, as a feather or a bubble in respect of heaven, as a point in respect of the whole world.
S. Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xciv.) says beautifully that “ God says, ‘ I have somewhat for sale.’ ‘ What is it, Lord ?’ ‘ The Kingdom of heaven.’ ‘ With what price is it bought ?’ ‘ Thy kingdom is bought with poverty, joy with grief, rest with toil, glory with shame, life with death.’” For it is written, “ Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven ; blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” &c. S. Paul therefore aptly assigns to glory, weight ; to tribulation, lightness; a moment’s duration to this, eternity to that ; to this, present time and place ; to that, an exalted permanence ; to this, tribulation, that it is ours as a thing we can contain within the hand ; to that that it ever works within us, beyond all conception and all measure.
Eternal weight of glory . The Syriac is “ an infinite glory for ever and ever.” This is “worked for us,” not physically or efficiently, but morally and meritoriously. Hence appears the merit of good works. Calvin, however, denies that this follows, and in this he is followed by Beza; he says that all that is here signified is the order and road by which we attain to glory, viz., through tribulations. But this is too cold an exposition. A road or way is not said to work the end of the journey, unless you understand the road to mean, not the way itself by which you go, but the act of travelling or journeying ; this, indeed, is the cause of the end of the journey, and not merely the moral cause, but the physical and efficient cause. But if Calvin assign this to good works and merits in respect of the eternal reward, he assigns more to them than Catholics do. Again, the Greek word κατεργάζεται shows that more than the order of going is meant, for it signifies, “works out,” “finishes,” “perfects;” i.e., it denotes a cause, not of any kind, but one that is powerful and efficacious. So say Ambrose and also Chrysostom in these words : “ God, the Just Judge, renders bliss to the just, in the same way that He renders hell to the wicked.” But to the wicked He assigns hell as the merited punishment of their wickedness, therefore to the just also He assigns bliss as the reward they merit for their good works.