The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
Secondly and more fitly we may say that this house is the body glorified by the resurrection, and this body we have , i.e., shall surely have at the resurrection. And this meaning is more in harmony with ver. 4 and the last chapter ; for the Apostle is urging them to endure, in hope of the resurrection when we shall receive our glorified body, bodily mortification and suffering. So, in 1 Cor. xv. 43, he says that the body is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory, i.e., glorified. Such a body is properly the home of a beatified soul, as a mortal body is the home of a soul living and suffering here. So S. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Ambrose.
It may be said that the glory itself into which the beatified soul enters is the house of the soul, even as Christ says : “ Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” I answer that “enter into joy” does not mean that that joy is a house into which the soul enters, as some seem to think, but by metonymy the place of joy is called joy, and the meaning is: “Enter into the heavenly nuptials, enter into heaven, where is the place of the most perfect joy for ever.” It is less accurate to speak of that glory or joy as a house into which the Blessed shall enter.
Chrysostom (Horn. 5 in Ep . ad Heb.) says that “we ought to put off our body with as much ease as we should a coat, or as Joseph left his cloak with the Egyptian woman;” and Aloysius Gonzaga, on his death-bed, spoke of his death as a mere change from one house to another.
Ver. 2. — For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven. That is, (1.) we long to be free, as the Syriac takes it, from the earthly house of our natural body, and receive the heavenly home of our glorified body. (2.) But a better meaning is : We groan because of the death which must intervene between this life and the life of eternity ; for death is a violence done to nature. We should wish to be clothed upon with glory, not to be deprived of life, as appears from ver. 4. S. Gregory (Morals, lib. xxxi. c. 26) says: “ Lo ! Paul longs to die and yet shrinks from death. Why is this? Because, though victory is for ever joyous , yet pain for the present is grievous . For, as a brave man who is girt ready for battle with one that is close at hand is both nervous and ardent, trembling and resolute ; as his pallor bewrays his fears , while his wrath urges him forward ; so is a holy man, when he sees his suffering near , both distressed by the weakness of his nature and strengthened by the certainty of his hope: he trembles at the prospect of a speedy death, and yet rejoices that by dying he will more truly live . No one, however, can enter the Kingdom but through death ; and therefore, in all, confidence is mingled with wavering, and wavering with confidence ; joy with fear, and fear with joy.”
It may be asked how the metaphor of a house and tabernacle agrees with that of a garment which is put over all. I answer that the Apostle uses here two metaphors, one taken from a house, one from a garment. The Hebrews are wont, and in this they are here copied by S. Paul, to mingle many metaphors at once. We may see this repeatedly in the Prophecies and the Psalms, and also in the parables of Christ.
Ver. 3. — If so that being clothed we shall not be found naked . Instead of clothed, some read unclothed, through a difference of a letter in the Greek compound verb. This reading is followed by Augustine and Bede, Ambrose, Tertullian, and Paulinus; and Augustine thus gives the sense: “We shall be clothed upon with heavenly glory, when once we are stripped of this body and clothed with Christ.”
We should observe that the Apostle here distinguishes three things, (1.) the being unclothed and naked, (2.) the being clothed, (3.) the being clothed upon. As in the last verse he called our heavenly glory a house, so here by another metaphor he calls it a robe. Now some explain this passage thus : We long to be clothed upon with our heavenly home, the heavenly and incorruptible body, in such a way, however, that we may be gifted with immortality and glory, and be found not bare, but clothed with glory. For, as the Apostle says in 1 Cor. xv. 51 : “ We shall all rise indeed to immortality , but we shall not all be changed into glory.” But this is true of the reprobate alone. Although they will have an immortal body, yet it cannot be said that they will have a celestial body ; this will be the endowment of the Blessed only. A celestial body, then, is one that is both immortal and glorious, and consequently they that have this are necessarily clothed and not found naked. This is the distinction pointed out here by the Apostle in the conditional statement, “If so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked.”
Secondly, S. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret, Ambrose explain the passage differently. They say: This house, i.e., this celestial glory will be our portion if we be found worthy of it, and are placed among the elect and not the reprobate : in other words, if we are found clothed with grace, charity, and good works, and not naked without them. This is the sentence of S. Paulinus ( Ep . 8 ad Sever, Sulpit.). He says : “ If, when you are stripped of your body, you be not found naked of good works.” If we be clothed with them, then God will super-clothe us with the new robe of eternal glory. But since in the next verse he explains this nakedness to be the separation of the soul from the body, in the words not for that we would be unclothed , i.e., of the body, so that the soul alone be beatified in nakedness, but clothed upon , it seems better, with Tertullian (de Resurr. Carnis, c. 42), to say that we are called naked and unclothed when we are dead, and when the soul has lost the body ; and consequently that we are clothed when the soul regains the body, and puts it on as her robe, and are clothed upon when the body is clad and adorned with heavenly glory as its robe. As the soul’s dress will be the body, so the body’s will be glory ; and thus the soul will be clothed with the body, and clothed upon with glory. Therefore, we long to be clothed upon with it, “ if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked.”
We should notice again that the word if points to something that is peculiar and not common to all the elect, but proper to those only who shall be found at the end of the world alive and clothed with the body, and who so live, or so die, as quickly to rise again, and seem to be not dead but alive, clothed upon with immortality. As Cajetan rightly points out, the sense therefore is : It will not be our lot to be dissolved in death, from which we naturally shrink, and on account of which we groan, but to be clothed upon with glory, which we so ardently long for ; that is to say, if at the end of the world we be found remaining and not yet dead, but clad with the body, and so not be made naked ; or if so, at all events for so short a time that we may be said to pass from this life to eternity.
Ver. 4. — For we that are in this tabernacle do groan , being burdened. Being burdened, as the Syriac takes it, through the weight and load of the body. Yet we may say with S. Gregory Nazianzen : “ Take from me, O Lord, this heavy robe ” (this earthly, burdensome, and troublesome body), “but give me another, one that is lighter.”
Not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon . We would not be deprived of the body, but we would be clothed upon with glory, if nevertheless being clothed with a body of flesh we be not found stripped of it by death. The Apostle is in the habit of speaking of the resurrection and the day of judgment as if they were close at hand, and as if he with the others then alive would behold them. Cf. 1 Thess. iv. 17. Since the Apostle says that we would not be stripped of our body, Plato was wrong in identifying σῶμα and σῆμα, as though the body were a tomb. In this he was followed by Origen, who supposed souls to be enclosed in bodies as in prisons in punishment of their sins. But the soul does not long to be set free from the body, as it would if this theory were true. The body is therefore the friend, companion, and colleague of the soul, and the soul demands its body as form requires matter, and vice versa. The Apostle would seem to be here condemning this error of Plato and his followers, which was commonly taught in the schools of Corinth.
That mortality might be swallowed up of life. Mortality by immortality.
Ver. 5. — Now He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God. He that wrought, perfected, and formed us, i.e., (1.) He that created us for this eternal life of bliss, is God. (2.) He who by His eternal decree prepared and predestinated us for this same bliss, is God. (3.) Best of all, He who by His grace so forms and prepares the will and understanding of man and his whole nature, and who makes him so live as to be worthy of being beatified with this immortality, is God.