The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
S. Bernard (de Nat. et Dignit. Amoris , c. iii.) describes beautifully this frenzy of S. Paul’s. He says: “ Hear this holy frenzy : ‘ Whether we be beside ourselves , it is to God : whether we be sober , it is for your cause.’ Do you wish to hear further frenzy ? ‘ Yet now if thou wilt forgive their sin — and if not , blot me , I pray Thee , out of Thy Book of Life.’ Do you wish for more ? Listen to the Apostle himself: ‘ I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren.’ Does not this sound like the wholesome frenzy of a mind well affected , viz., that he is firmly affected to what cannot possibly be effected , viz., to be anathema from Christ for Christ’s sake ? This was the drunkenness of the Apostles at the coming of the Holy Ghost ; this was the madness of Paul when Festus said to him : ‘ Paul, thou art beside thyself.’ The reason follows: Was it wonderful that he should be pronounced mad, who, when in danger of death, was endeavouring to convert to Christ his judges, by whom he was being judged for Christ’s sake ? It was not much learning that gave this madness , as the king said, concealing the truth that he perceived; but , as was said , it was the Holy Spirit , with which he was drunken , who made him wish to make those who were judging him like himself in all things . And, to pass over all other instances , what greater madness could be conceived than that a man who had left the world from an ardent desire to cling closely to Christ should again lay hold of the world at the call of obedience and brotherly love , and descend from the sky to the sty ? I speak of our young friend Benjamin , who in his madness thinks nothing of himself but only of Him who has made him wholly beside himself. With this same madness were the martyrs afflicted who smiled amid their tortures . So do we delight to be beside ourselves.”
Again ( Serm . 85 in Cantic.) he says : “ Perchance one may ask me what it is to enjoy the Word ? Hear one who has had that experience , as he says , ‘ Whether we be beside ourselves , it is to God, or whether we be sober , it is for your cause.’ By the mere will of God my relations with Him are one thing, my relations with you another. It was allowed me to experience that ecstasy but not to speak of it; in my soberness I so condescend to you that you may be able to understand what I say . Whoever thou art that art anxious to know what enjoyment of the Word is, prepare for it thy mind and not thy ear . It is taught by grace and not by the tongue . It is hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes !”
Ver. 14. — For the love of Christ constraineth us . This love of Christ by which He loved us, and gave Himself for us, compels us to follow His example, and give ourselves for all men to save them from death. And hence, as occasion requires, we are at one time beside ourselves, at another, sober. It is better to understand the love of Christ objectively, rather than subjectively.
That if one died for all then were all dead. The bearing of this verse is explained by the next, which also gives its connection with the preceding. So great was the love of Christ that He died for all. Hence it follows that we were dead ; for He died to set us free (by taking it on Himself) from death, bodily and spiritual, which sin had brought on us. Hence plainly appears Christ’s compassion and love ; and they constrain us to love Christ in return, and to work in every way for the salvation of our neighbour ; to exclude no one, but to labour for all, whether rich or poor, even as Christ did. S. Thomas explains it otherwise : “ All ought to be dead to the old life, and account themselves dead, that they may live, not to themselves, but to Christ.” But this is somewhat obscure and far fetched, and is identical with what is said in the next verse, which yet is distinct from this.
Were all dead. Except, says S. Anselm, the Blessed Virgin, who never incurred original sin and spiritual death. Secondly and better, all died in Adam because in him all came under the necessity of sin and of death, even the Mother of God herself, so that she and all others without exception needed to be redeemed by the death of Christ. In Adam, therefore, the Blessed Virgin sinned and died, but in herself she incurred neither sin nor spiritual death, because she was kept from them by God’s prevenient grace, as was said in the notes to Rom. v. 12.
Ver. 15. — And that He died for all, &c. We judge also that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live for their own glory, or pleasure, or their desires, but for Christ, who by right of redemption has made us His servants ; and as a servant does not labour and live for himself but for his lord, so should each of us be able to say : “ I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; ” and, “ My soul shall live to Him.” Anselm says : “ The soul of man should fail in itself to avail in Christ, who died that we should die to our sins, and who rose that we should rise to works of righteousness. What else is ‘ living not for themselves but for Him ’ but living not according to the flesh in the hope of earthly vanities, but according to the Spirit, in hope of the resurrection which has already taken place in themselves in Christ ?”
Ver. 16. — Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh. Because the love of Christ for us is so great, and constrains us, therefore we regard carnal things, that is things external and temporal, such as fame, health, friendships, kindred, of no account out of Christ. So Chrysostom takes no one to stand for “ nothing,” as does Vatablus; and S. Augustine (contra Faust. lib. ix. c. 7) takes it in the same way. But by the flesh he understands the corruption and mortality of the flesh to be meant ; and the sense then would be: We no longer know this carnal and mortal life, because , filled with a sure hope, we meditate on and seek for a future life, that blissful spiritual life awaiting us after the resurrection, in which Christ is even now preparing us a place. This meaning is suitable but somewhat far-fetched, for the Apostle is here setting in opposition to the flesh, or the carnal man, the new creature which is in this life, and which lives through faith and grace in Christ; therefore he adds : “ If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.”
In the third place, then, we may more simply and properly explain the verse thus : We henceforth know none of those outward relationships of kindred, friendship, nationality, rank, breeding, or learning, for we are dead to these natural affections, and having been regenerated in Christ, we live to Him alone, and love Him alone, and all others in Him, according to the spirit of charity, and not according to the flesh. In other words, we seek not to please men, or the praise and glory of men, but of God only. S. Paul’s rivals, the Judaising false apostles, as we shall see in chap, xi., were wont to boast that they were Hebrews and of the seed of Abraham, and this boasting he calls, in xi. 18, “glorying after the flesh.” Hence this verse is a tacit rebuke to them, where he says that he knows no one in the way of earthly love or boasting, or because of relationship and friendship according to the flesh, not even in Abraham himself. Similarly, in Phil. iii. 3, he says, “We rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh;” we once rejoiced that we were Hebrews and nobly born according to the flesh, but now we are dead to those affections, for all our praise and rejoicing is Christ. So Gagneius.
Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh. If at any time we, whether I, Paul, myself, or the other Apostles, regarded and saw Christ present with us in a mortal body and subject, like us, to bodily sufferings, such as hunger and thirst and cold, now we know Him not save as immortal and impassible. So Chrysostom, Theodoret, and the Seventh General Synod. This interpretation too is supported by what follows.
Secondly, and better, Gagneius takes the meaning to be : If we formerly knew, thought of great account, and made our boast of Christ after the flesh, that Christ by birth was a Jew and of our nation, so that we Hebrews were relations of Christ after the flesh, as the false apostles boast ; and if we were proud of having lived with Christ on terms of intimacy, then are we now dead to all such feelings, and, being re-created by Christ, we think more highly of Him, and now know Him only according to the Spirit, i.e., as the God-man, the Redeemer of the world, our Teacher, the Author of grace and salvation ; and as we live and labour for such an one, so do we preach Him throughout the whole world.
Thirdly, others with great probability think that Paul is referring to that time in his own life when he was a persecutor of Christ. Although once, he would seem to say, I had an unworthy opinion of Christ, thinking that He was to be a mere temporal king, such as the Jews expect the Messiah to be, yet I no longer know Him or regard Him as such.
Hence, fourthly, we may see the error of Faustus the Manichean, in explaining S. Paul to mean that in the beginning he thought Christ to have had a real body, but afterwards saw his error, and that he means the same in Phil. ii. 7, when he says that Christ was made in the likeness of men, as if He had a fantastical and apparent body, but not one that was real and substantial. Eutyches again twisted this passage to suit his heresy. He said that “ we know not Christ according to the flesh” means that, by the Incarnation the flesh and human nature of Christ were swallowed up by His Divinity ; and he laid down that in Christ was one nature as well as one person, and that that one was Divine.