Fragments on 1 Corinthians

Paul’s Greeting and the One Church§1

1By the same holy Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria: a few fragments on the First Epistle to the Corinthians.

“Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:1). The inspired Paul says that he has been sent by Christ, by the good pleasure of God the Father. For this, I think, is what “through the will of God” means (1 Corinthians 1:1). Since the Father’s willing and working are through the Son, we say that it is again through the Son that the saints have been appointed to their apostleship.

“And Sosthenes the brother,” and so on (1 Corinthians 1:1). Paul makes it plain that the power of the preaching will benefit not only the Corinthians but also all who have been called in Christ to the sanctification that comes through faith, when he says, “to those sanctified in Christ in every place, theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2). For the Law did not command this to be done in every place; it commanded them to come to the divine temple itself in Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 12:13–14). It feared, as one would expect, how easily their minds could be carried away: if they were commanded to worship or sacrifice in every place, they might perhaps take the Law as a pretext for turning to more shameful things, and worship carved images, setting up temples and altars for themselves.

But now that we who come from the Gentiles have been called, through faith in Christ, into a close bond with God, and have been enriched with the security that comes through the Holy Spirit, we are commanded to worship, not all of us in Jerusalem, but in every place. This, then, was what was spoken through the prophets: “And they shall worship the Lord, each one from his own place” (Zephaniah 2:11).

So he writes, together with Sosthenes, to the church of God, which Christ presented to himself (Ephesians 5:27). And who were seen to be that church? All who have been sanctified and called through Christ to justification, and who call upon his name “in every place, theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2), that is, whether in the land of the Jews or in the cities and countries of the Gentiles. He proclaims Christ to be God by nature, and with him and through him he renders glory to God the Father. For he names the sanctified “the church of God,” and yet he assigns them to Christ, saying, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him” (Romans 8:9).

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:3). He crowns those who have believed with the grace that comes from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. For through him and in him all things come from God the Father. He is co-giver and co-provider, with the one who begot him, of the good things from above, and he distributes the gifts from heaven. He himself is the peace of all (Ephesians 2:14), and by the grace that comes from himself he makes radiant principalities, thrones and authorities (Colossians 1:16), and, to put it simply, every rational creature.

“But be joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10). It was both necessary and wise to persuade them that they ought to take their honor from the Master’s name, as the Master himself says through one of the holy prophets: “But those who serve me shall be called by a new name, which shall be blessed upon the earth” (Isaiah 65:15–16). For we have been named Christians, and we are rich in the new name. Some are rightly deprived of it: those who desert the right teaching of the Church and give themselves to deceiving spirits (1 Timothy 4:1) and to the wonder-mongering of certain unholy false teachers. They have taken those teachers’ name, and very fittingly, for they are not Christ’s. They have each taken a share in the blasphemy against him and have been split into differing opinions and judgments, although Christ called his own in peace.

It was needful also to persuade them that Christ himself is one and is not divided (1 Corinthians 1:13). So we are all one in Christ (Galatians 3:28), and for this we have been joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment, since he has bound us into one soul by a spiritual union, he who says of us to God the Father, “I desire that, as I and you are one, so they too in […]” (John 17:21–22).

Preaching, Baptism and Worldly Wisdom§2

2[…] “us may be one” (John 17:21–22).

“Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?” (1 Corinthians 1:13). If someone else endured the cross for us, let us be called his. If perhaps we were baptized into someone else’s name, let him have us, and let us enroll him as Savior and Redeemer. But if “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3), and with him alone we have been “buried through baptism into death” (Romans 6:4), then let him, he says, possess those who have been bought. For we have been saved through him and by him, who laid down his own life for us (1 John 3:16).

“For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel” (1 Corinthians 1:17). He was admittedly sent to proclaim Jesus to the Gentiles. But we say that it also belongs to the work of an apostle to baptize some, as the occasion and need require, if he so chooses. So that he would not seem to spend the time owed to preaching on other pursuits, he very rightly left this to be done at leisure by those in each region and by all who were appointed to oversight. He himself preached the gospel instead, since he had been entrusted with the ministry of the word and had searched out the mystery of Christ with great precision. Yet just as the inspired Stephen, though appointed a servant of tables, did not set aside the duty of teaching the mysteries (Acts 6:2–5), so too the inspired Paul, though appointed to preach the mystery of Christ, also met the need for baptism when the time came. Authority for both lay before him, and nothing prevented him from doing it if he chose.

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?” (1 Corinthians 1:20). To those who pride themselves on worldly wisdom and do not accept the faith, clearly meaning faith in Christ, the gospel is foolishness. But it is not so with us; far from it. For we are convinced that it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18), a way of salvation that leads to sanctification, and that by its abundant preaching it wisely guides us to the knowledge of the truth.

I for my part think that here he calls the orators “wise,” who by the cleverness of their speeches always wove persuasion into falsehood and strove to win for it the appearance of truth. By “scribes” I think he means the schoolmasters or grammarians, whose custom it was to labor over the writings of the poets and to explain them to the young. By “debaters” he means those who are used to fighting over words and who, supposedly with precision, put things to the test. Through the concepts they devise they pretend to seek the truth, that is, whatever seems, as far as possible, to stand beyond reproach on each question set before them. But they do not do it rightly at all; rather, they do it with utter carelessness. For they have not known the God of all, who without toil framed this whole universe by ineffable workings, and by a mere nod brought into being all things that were not. So the wisdom of the world has truly been made foolish (1 Corinthians 1:20).

“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). He calls even human understanding and eloquence, that is, the very bloom of style, “the wisdom of God,” to teach that God is the maker of the mind and the giver of good sense and eloquence, even if some have used them for ends they should not. By “the foolishness of the preaching” he means the plainness of the words. For the inspired disciples were unskilled in speech but rich in knowledge (2 Corinthians 11:6).

“For Jews ask for a sign, and Greeks seek wisdom” (1 Corinthians 1:22). Paul’s statement is true on both counts. Once, when Christ was driving out of the temple courts those who sold sheep and oxen, turtledoves and pigeons, and saying, “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:14–16), they retorted, “What sign do you show us, since you do these things?” (John 2:18), and, “Who gave you this authority?” (Matthew 21:23). Some of the scribes also came to him, after a very great display of signs, and said with malice, “Teacher, we wish […]” (Matthew 12:38).

God’s Weakness Is Stronger than Men§3

3[…] “to see a sign from you” (Matthew 12:38). So, counting the words of the saints as worth almost nothing, words through which they could well have learned that he was the Christ, they kept demanding signs from God. That is why the Savior said to those sent by John, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,” and so on (Matthew 11:4–5).

The Greeks, for their part, seek brilliance of diction and argument, and they think even the way of the dispensation in the flesh to be foolishness. They say, “Why was it necessary at all for the Word who is from God, being God by nature and able to accomplish whatever he purposes by will and nod, to become man and to endure death? How could a virgin give birth?” they say. “And how will what death has destroyed rise again?” But it is not at all surprising that they say such things: “For the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

But to us it is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). For through him God the Father has saved the whole world under heaven, as through the power that is naturally his and through his own ineffable wisdom. For the Son is the wisdom and power of God the Father, through whom all things were brought into being and, once made, are preserved.

And if anyone, he says, should choose to measure the power that is in God against the powers of men, he will certainly see that whatever among the divine works may seem to have been done as in weakness, and as it were not with the full power of its Maker, is beyond and better than all human strength. You will understand wisdom in exactly the same way: what seems to be foolish is wiser than men. Suppose someone wished to compare the small and least of created things with the size and beauty of the elements, I mean heaven and the sun and the other stars, and fire and water and the rest. The power and wisdom found in the small things would be very slight, and, judged by their inferiority at least, it might seem a [The text is damaged here.] sort of thing. Yet no one among us could become the maker even of things so [The text is damaged here.]. Truly, then, “the weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). So the dispensation holds all wisdom, for Christ has reigned with understanding, in wisdom, over the whole world under heaven.

“Proclaiming to you the testimony of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1). He calls Christ the testimony of God, for God the Father bore witness to him, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear,” and so on (1 Corinthians 2:3). Although I used such modest instruction, he says, I was very much afraid that my words, if they proved too lofty for the understanding you had, would do you no good but rather harm. For those who are infants in mind, a tender and gentle word would suit their learning, “but solid food is for the mature, for those who by practice have their senses trained to distinguish good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14). So my word to you, he says, came as in great weakness, and not with the full power of one who teaches the mysteries. Nor was it “in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4–5).

For to their preaching the apostles added signs from God as well. They made the deed itself a clear demonstration that one must believe that God was attested in them, through the Spirit and through the deeds themselves, since they used a certain ineffable and inexpressible power and working and performed their wonders with ease. The little myths of the Greeks would naturally need an eloquence to fight in their defense and, as it were, to cover up their ugliness. But for the divine preaching a plain and gentle word suffices, attested as it is by the power of God.

Wisdom Hidden from the Rulers§4

4“Yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing” (1 Corinthians 2:6). The word of the holy teachers of the mysteries goes forth in lowly speech, yet it plants in us an unadulterated knowledge of the divine mysteries. It shows that Christ is wisdom, not through the fine speech of the world’s wise men, but as he is attested by his own nature. None of the rulers of this age knew him (1 Corinthians 2:8). These rulers are the evil and hostile powers, who have spoken through the wise men of the world.

“For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). The saying is very reasonable. For by his own cross Christ triumphed over the evil and hostile powers, nailing to the wood “the bond written against us” (Colossians 2:14–15). He drove Satan away from his tyranny over us, abolished the sin of the world, opened the gates of Hades to the spirits below, and pulled down the power of death. How, then, could the suffering on the cross be anything but hateful to the unclean demons? So they would not have crucified him, had they known for certain that he was the Redeemer and the Lord of glory.

That the crucifixion of Christ, carried out through the madness of the Jews, was the work of the devil’s savagery, the inspired John showed plainly when he said of Judas, “After the morsel, Satan entered into him” (John 13:27). Satan did not know that Jesus was God. For if he had known and been convinced of it, how could he have tempted him in the desert, saying, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3)? And the Savior himself, as all agree, took care to escape the notice of the rulers of this age, so that, unnoticed, he might suffer, and by his own blood win for himself and for his own Father all that lies under heaven.

“Even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10). The depths of God are the hidden knowledge laid up in the sacred writings. The Spirit knows it and reveals it to the souls of the saints, and makes the mind within them a divine mind.

“The natural man” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The natural man is the one who lives according to the flesh and has not yet had his mind enlightened through the Spirit. He has only the inborn, human understanding which the Creator puts into the souls of all.

“But the spiritual man judges all things” (1 Corinthians 2:15). The spiritual man judges all things and, so to speak, sifts them finely with exact care, but he himself is judged by no one. That those called natural need spiritual teachers, by all means, for their benefit and training, Paul makes plain by adding, “For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct him?” (1 Corinthians 2:16; Isaiah 40:13). It is as if he said: No one could instruct the natural man unless he had the mind of Christ. By “instruct” he means “prepare him to understand.” And who are those that have the mind of the Lord? He showed this himself when he went on, “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), that is, the Spirit who speaks in the saints, unveils mysteries to them, and makes the mind within them a divine mind.

So, although the saints could have understood and spoken things better and loftier than what they wrote, they wisely measured their teaching to the state of those they were leading into the mysteries.

“And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of the flesh, as to infants in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1). It was not for want of a word strong enough to raise you to perfect knowledge that I was kept from speaking to you of the more perfect things. It was because you are infants in your condition and have an unsteady mind, one that has not yet advanced to the knowledge of the more perfect things and cannot yet take in mysteries.

“I planted” (1 Corinthians 3:6). Paul planted, Apollos watered, and God called them to growth. What, then, is the planting, if not what belongs to the beginning of faith: to acknowledge and to say that God is the Lord of all? And what is the watering, if not the sowing and pouring in, as it were, of the words that come from teaching, which nourish the believer’s mind to strength so that it may also prove fruitful?

Christ the Foundation§5

5And what is the growth that comes from Christ, if not the strengthening given through the Spirit and the rising up “to a mature man” (Ephesians 4:13), granted in proportion to each one’s diligence and eagerness?

“You are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Corinthians 3:9). Since Christ redeemed us with his precious blood (1 Peter 1:19), having endured the death of the flesh, we surely belong to him who bought us, and to no others, even if some have become for us ministers, reconcilers, mediators, and teachers of the mysteries of the grace that comes from him. That is why we are named after no others, but after Christ alone, who is also our Lord.

“Like a wise master builder I laid a foundation” (1 Corinthians 3:10). Since he called believers the house of God, he fittingly names Christ the foundation. There had been many teachers among the Corinthians, but Paul boasts that he was the first of them all, a kind of firstfruits among those who preached to them the mystery of Christ. Christ is the unshakable foundation. He holds up those who are built upon him and shows them to be temples, fitted together with one another through faith (Ephesians 2:21) and brought together into one mind by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Of this foundation God the Father spoke through the prophet: “Behold, I lay in the foundations of Zion a costly stone, a precious cornerstone, in her foundations; and whoever believes in him shall not be put to shame” (Isaiah 28:16).

So Paul says, and very rightly, that he himself laid the foundation, and that others can work on it and build upon it, but can no longer lay another beside the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11). “For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “For there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6), “and he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). If anyone, then, denies the foundation and refuses the rock, he does not build on it but on the sand (Matthew 7:24–27), and so he will very easily be shaken down. For what Christ does not hold up will surely be moved, since it has no firm footing.

“Some have become puffed up, as though I were not coming to you” (1 Corinthians 4:18). There were some in Corinth who thought themselves sufficient and in no need of teachers, and who thought they surpassed Paul in the wisdom of worldly eloquence. For this reason they were puffed up to the point of contempt and rose up against the others, though they themselves were not blameless in their lives. Paul means: Since some have become puffed up while I am away, and think that I stay away because I am afraid to come and face them in argument, which is not so, I will come, if God wills and permits.

“But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills” (1 Corinthians 4:19). He promised to come, yet not without condition. As was fitting, he modestly added the needful words, “if the Lord wills.” For we must think and speak in this way, and in no other.

“And I will find out not the talk of those who are puffed up, but their power” (1 Corinthians 4:19). What is the use of brilliant speech that holds nothing good, such as the speech of the pagan Greeks? But the speech of the inspired Scripture is simple and ordinary, yet it gives rich profit and carries one splendidly to the true knowledge of him who is God by nature. It also makes people diligent in every admirable work. And when this has come about, a person may be enriched with the grace of the gifts given through the Spirit, a grace worth receiving. “For the kingdom of heaven is not in word but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20). As for “in power,” if it is said of the holy apostles themselves, you will understand it as the strength and working that comes through the Spirit, by which they also work wonders. But if it is said of us, you will take it to mean the power of a holy and sincere life.

“What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love?” (1 Corinthians 4:21).

The Saints Will Judge the World§6

6Paul says: Do you wish me to bring a wise rebuke upon those who have sinned, as with a rod? Or shall I deal with you in a spirit of gentleness, as in love, and pass the matter by in silence (1 Corinthians 4:21)? But rebuke was better for them, for it would cut off at once the dreadful sin, the slackness, and the very attempt at such lawlessness. Of this the inspired Scripture also spoke concerning the people of Israel, through the voice of Joel: “A son and his father went in to the same girl, so as to profane the name of their God” (Amos 2:7).

He says that such fornication is not heard of even among the Gentiles (1 Corinthians 5:1). For he had heard somewhere, we may suppose, of Theseus, who was roused to fury against his own son, cursed him, and even killed him, after the stepmother had set him against the boy; and of certain others whom the poets in their fine verse mocked on similar charges.

“To deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 5:5). By handing over the fornicator to the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved, Paul showed what is meant by “The kingdom of heaven is not in word but in power” (1 Corinthians 4:20). For this is a clear sign of the marvelous authority given to him from above. For our Lord Jesus Christ has honored the saints.

“To go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints?” (1 Corinthians 6:1). He calls saints those who have been sanctified in the Spirit, and unrighteous those who have not yet believed, since they are all too ready to go after any evil whatever. For those who do not yet know him who is God by nature and in truth leave no outrage untried.

“Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6:2). They will judge it, not by sitting in every case as judges on the bench, for “there is one Lawgiver and Judge” (James 4:12), but by the dignity of their life and their readiness to obey in everything. By this they all but pass sentence on the sin of the world, because the people of the world did not become their imitators. For we are all of one nature: we have all been given the earth for a mother and live in these perishable bodies. But if some of us have become lovers of God and good, what plea will be left to help, before the divine judgment seat, those who chose an inglorious and accursed life? For though they could have been honored equally with the others, they went of their own will after every kind of outrage.

“Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more the things of this life!” (1 Corinthians 6:3). We shall read the verse as a question, with a pause; this is to be read as a question, with a pause: For who would dare to say that you are unworthy of such petty courts (1 Corinthians 6:2), you who judge the world by the brightness of your life? Then he adds a reason for what he has said, and confirms the force of his argument by setting the greater case beside it. By angels here he does not mean the holy angels, but rather the apostates, who did not keep their own first rank (Jude 6). Though they were from above and not weighed down with bodies made from earth, they will be condemned by the saints in the same way as the world, through the goodness of the saints, and stand accused of every kind of shameful deed. If, then, the saints are better than angels, how could they be unworthy of the smallest courts, those that deal with worldly affairs?

“If, then, you have courts for matters of this life” (1 Corinthians 6:4). To judge the matters of this life is a very small thing, worth nothing to those in the church who are truly upright. We have been taught this, too, by the Lord. For someone came to him and said, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” (Luke 12:13–14). It would better suit the wiser members of the church to judge spiritual things, and to test with skill the teaching about the faith. This is counted among the good gifts given from above and through the Spirit; for to some is given a word of wisdom and a word of knowledge, and to others the discerning of spirits (1 Corinthians 12:8–10).

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 6:15). How could our bodies be members of Christ? We have him within ourselves both in a way the senses perceive…

Members of Christ and Sin Against the Body§7

7…and in a spiritual way. For he dwells in our hearts through the Spirit (compare Ephesians 3:17), and we have also shared in his holy flesh; so we have been made holy in two ways. He has come to dwell in us as life and as the giver of life, so that through himself he might abolish the death that had fallen upon our members. This frees us from corruption and from the snares of death, and raises us above the passions of the flesh. We also receive within ourselves the unleavened teaching of the divine oracles (compare 1 Corinthians 5:8), which nourishes the ruling part of the soul, and we live together with Christ, spiritually of course, having overcome the passions of the flesh.

If, then, he is “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18), we are its members, each one in particular. So whenever we fall into unseemly pleasures, then, precisely then, we will sin against him whose members we have become. For we will be, as it were, handing over what is his to fornicators: his members are defiled by sin and are made members of a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:15). For just as the man who is joined to a woman will be one body with her, so also the one who is bound to God spiritually will be one spirit with him (1 Corinthians 6:16–17). For we have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), and we have been joined to him and made holy through the Spirit in Christ.

From the third book on the Letter to the Corinthians, by the same Cyril.

“Every sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the one who commits fornication sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Someone might say: “Tell me, how will the murderer carry out his murder? Is it not by bloodshed? And if someone chooses to find fault with others, is it not with his tongue that he is such a man? What offense, then, could be committed other than through the body? Will the bearer of the Spirit, then, turn out after all to have spoken falsely?” By no means! For he speaks in Christ (compare 2 Corinthians 2:17), and Christ is the truth (John 14:6); so he will be truthful.

Suppose we look into the matter this way: if someone happens to choose to be perverse in his ways, he will surely be so toward others and not toward himself. The murderer will kill not himself but others; the reviler will insult not himself but others; the greedy man will wrong not himself but others; and in each outrageous deed that is done you will find the same course. In this sense, then, “every sin is outside the body, but the one who commits fornication sins against his own body.” For he will be caught wronging his very own body, and I will say in what way.

The members of our body, if through purity they have remained members of Christ, will surely share in the life and glory that come from him; for “he will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory” (Philippians 3:21). But if they should become members of a prostitute, how could they receive that transformation and the spiritual splendor of being conformed to him? For when earthly bodies have been raised at the time of the resurrection, “the righteous will shine like the sun” (Matthew 13:43). The ungodly, the profane, and those who have lived outrageously will indeed be raised, yet they will not go on to live the glorious life; they remain without any share in glory. For they will rise not “in judgment, nor in the council of the righteous” (Psalm 1:5), but for penalty and punishment, for they will go down into the outer darkness (compare Matthew 25:30). For how can what is being punished be in glory? And he adds something more, which has no small power to persuade us to hate the accursed pleasure of the body.

The one who murders, the one who dishonors, and the one who reviles commit the sin with the body, yet they do it against others. In this sense it is said, “Every sin is outside the body,” but the one who commits fornication wrongs his very own body. Through purity our bodies remain members of Christ and share in the life and glory that come from him; but if the body is defiled, it is deprived of that glory.

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). For “the Spirit of adoption” (Romans 8:15) has come to dwell in us…

Temples of God, and Paul’s Counsel to the Unmarried§8

8…that is, the Holy Spirit, “by whom we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). And we have been bought at a price (1 Corinthians 6:20), since Christ, the Savior of us all, laid down his own life for us (compare 1 John 3:16). We are, then, temples of the living God (2 Corinthians 6:16); for Christ makes his dwelling in us through the Holy Spirit, and in his own nature he has also the Father and God, from whom he came forth in essence. For he himself said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).

So let foul-smelling pleasure be far from our minds, as from a temple of God, and let the sweet fragrance of self-control rise up instead, like incense. Let us present “our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, our reasonable worship” (Romans 12:1). For we were bought “not with perishable things, with silver or gold, but with precious blood” (1 Peter 1:18–19), as it is written. Let us therefore serve him who bought us; let us present ourselves to him for obedience (Romans 6:16), “and our members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Romans 6:13). For it is written, “The body is not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13). So when we keep the members of the body free of the defilement that comes from love of the flesh, then the Lord too will be for the body; for he dwells among the holy, being holy by nature, as God.

“To the unmarried and the widows I say: it is good for them if they remain as I am” (1 Corinthians 7:8).

The people of Israel were found to be very fickle and easily carried away toward anything at all that pleased them. For this very reason they were rightly barred by the law from giving rulings of their own. For of the commandments it says, “To them nothing may be added, and from them nothing may be taken away” (Deuteronomy 4:2; compare Deuteronomy 4:2). But those who brought in the decrees of the Gospel had minds set firmly on the good and had Christ himself speaking within them (compare 2 Corinthians 13:3). So they rightly took courage to give their words of guidance with great authority, even where some matter of conduct was not laid down in the sacred writings.

The inspired Paul was such a man. “I say,” he writes, “to the unmarried and the widows, it is good for them if they remain as I am,” and so on (1 Corinthians 7:8). Where we have no divine law, he has of necessity put “I say”; but where Christ was the one giving the command, he says “I command,” adding at once, “not I, but the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:10). Yet what necessary thing did Christ overlook when he gave the law? Do those who lead us into the mysteries devise something better? And how could it be anything but ignorant and utterly senseless to think that what comes from Christ is not complete? What, then, shall we say?

The divine preaching of the Gospel did not forbid marriage, since God, I think, measures the commandment to human nature. For when the Pharisees, testing him, asked the Lord “whether it is lawful to put away his wife” (Matthew 19:3) for a cause other than fornication, he told them that whoever puts away “his wife, except on the ground of fornication, causes her to commit adultery” (Matthew 5:32; compare Matthew 19:9). At this the disciples said to him, “If this is how the case stands between a man and his wife, it is better not to marry.” And he said to them, “There are eunuchs who were born so from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to accept this accept it” (Matthew 19:10, 12). For he set it before those who wish to achieve it, but he did not bring it under law, since he knew that not all are able to master the impulses of the flesh.

In this the shadow of the law (compare Hebrews 10:1) also has something entirely like it. It commanded that the various kinds of sacrifice be offered to the glory of God: some for sin and for sins of ignorance, others for cleansing and the casting away of filth, and also those on the Sabbath, those at the new moon, and those at the feasts. But besides these it also allowed…

Freewill Gifts, Mixed Marriages, and Circumcision§9

9…some to make freewill offerings, that is, to bring gifts to God. These freewill offerings were the things beyond what the law required, given as the fruits of a good and God-loving generosity. It was not permitted to neglect the sacrifices ordained in the law, but God counted worthy of praise those who added to them gifts of their own, from their own free choice. We say that something of this kind has been arranged now as well. For Christ did not forbid anyone who so chooses to take part in the union the law allows; but nothing would keep us from achieving the greater thing, if we are eager to lay claim to glory as our final portion.

Paul therefore does very well to say to the unmarried and the widows, “It is good for them if they remain as I am” (1 Corinthians 7:8), but, “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord,” and so on (1 Corinthians 7:10). He brings forward his own case as a pattern of the chosen and undistracted life (compare 1 Corinthians 7:35), plainly ranking the unmarried state above the other. So if anyone has put off the yoke of the law, let him remain, he says, in self-control; for in this way he will inherit the kingdom of heaven. And the One who awards the crowns will confirm it, saying, “Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: As many as keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that I will, and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give in my house and within my wall a renowned place, better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, and it shall not fail” (Isaiah 56:4–5).

So the reward of self-control is worth the winning. But those already bound by marriage he does not permit to leave the wife once joined to them, so that the message of salvation may not fill the world under heaven with turmoil. For Christ, the Savior of us all, does not approve of this practice, even though the law, by way of concession, allowed the people of old to do it “because of their hardness of heart” (Matthew 19:8), as the Savior himself says.

That those in Christ are steadier and stronger than the people of old, anyone who wishes can easily see from this as well. The law forbade the children of Israel to associate with foreigners and to be bound to them in marriage (compare Deuteronomy 7:3); but to us Paul says, “If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever,” and so on (1 Corinthians 7:12). For their mind was unsound and unsteady, but we are not so; for we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit for adoption as sons, and Christ has come to dwell in us. Standing so firmly, then, toward every good thing, we are in no way afraid any longer to live with one of the unbelievers. Rather, we are confident that we will draw them as in a net into godliness, and that we will not become the prey of the ignorance that is in them. We bless those who have not yet believed rather than being defiled by them.

For “the unbelieving husband,” he says, “has been made holy in his wife,” and so “your children too are holy” (1 Corinthians 7:14), since the holiness in those who believe surely overcomes the filth of those who have not yet believed. “But if the unbeliever separates,” he says, “let him separate; in such cases the brother or the sister is not enslaved” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Let the defiled one go away, if he so decides, from the one who makes him holy, and take the loss that comes with it as the wages of his own choice. But the one who follows the divine commandments is wholly blameless; for he will be blessed as obedient by Christ, the Savior of us all.

“Was anyone called when already circumcised? Let him not remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised” (1 Corinthians 7:18).

Some of those from the circumcision, it seems, were reasoning among themselves: “How shall we be acceptable and honor the life in Christ, when we already have circumcision? Perhaps we shall have to draw the foreskin forward, that is, to go back to uncircumcision and do violence to the nature of the flesh.” But those who came from pagan error, learning perhaps from those who still honored the shadow in the law that circumcision is a precious thing and one kept by all the saints, although the faith…

Called as a Slave, Free in Christ§10

10…at times, though they had received the faith, they were seeking to be made complete in the flesh, just as some in Galatia did, whom the inspired Paul rebukes, saying, “Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made complete in the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).

So the way had to be opened wide for them by a clear and most vivid proclamation of the truth: that circumcision is nothing when it lacks the other commandments of God, and in the same way uncircumcision is nothing unless it is adorned with a life worthy of the Gospel (compare 1 Corinthians 7:19). It is fitting, then, that the one who has been called should remain in his calling, in whatever state he may be (compare 1 Corinthians 7:20).

He then passes, of necessity, to the need to drive off once more, as it were, another slander against the divine proclamation. For there was a spirit of slavery in those under the law; but the decree of the Gospel says that the Spirit of adoption is given to those who are willing to believe, and that it no longer calls them to slavery but to the dignity of the free (compare Romans 8:15).

By the same Cyril, from the fourth tome of his work on the Epistle to the Corinthians.

“Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you” (1 Corinthians 7:21). Since some who had been counted worthy of the grace of the Holy Spirit were shaking off the yoke of slavery according to the flesh, he writes in another place too, “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh” (Galatians 5:13). Here also he wins them over, as it were, speaking with great grace: “Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather make use of it” (1 Corinthians 7:21).

That is: even if you were called through faith into free sonship while you still bore the yoke of slavery according to the flesh, even if you have become a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), rise above faint-heartedness; you will find that the toil you bear in slavery is not without its reward. For the Creator knows our nature as free, since it was made so by him; but a kind of greed, slipping in somehow over the course of time, has ruined the beauty of freedom.

Those who have suffered this must by all means throw off the burden of this evil, since Christ is refashioning all things to what they were in the beginning. For what is in him is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and there is neither slave nor free, but he himself is all and in all (Colossians 3:11). Indeed Isaiah cried out beforehand about the state of the life we await, the life that is to be, and about the equality that is found with God, saying, “And the people shall be as the priest, and the servant as his master, and the maidservant as her mistress” (Isaiah 24:2).

So, he says, even if you could become free, rather make use of it; for, as I said, the yoke is not without gain for those who have shown good will and have lived rightly under it. That slavery according to the flesh has now been laid on some out of greed will do no wrong at all, so long as freedom is kept for all alike, in equal manner and measure, before God, who judges what is just and weighs our affairs in holiness.

Besides, he says, since we are human beings, it is not possible for us to escape the name of slavery. For everything that has been made is a slave, and all that has been called into being is subject to the divine scepter. So the slave is Christ’s freedman, and the one called to freedom is surely a slave as well (compare 1 Corinthians 7:22), as the psalm says, “for all things are your slaves” (Psalm 119:91).

Yet the guide into the mysteries shows in another way too that those saved through Christ are helped by him. That is why he says, “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Corinthians 7:23). For we were, beyond dispute, bought with a price, since Christ, the Savior of us all, paid his own blood for us; we have been rescued from the greed of the devil and from the cruelty of the demons, and we have been called to freedom through Christ (compare Galatians 5:13). So, as those who have been bought and who owe their own life to the One who purchased them, “do not become,” he says, “slaves of men.”

We do not say that he is urging them to leap out of slavery according to the flesh; rather he teaches this, and very rightly: not to be slaves to those who try to carry off…

Food Offered to Idols and the Weak Conscience§11

11…the believers into the observance of the law. These people pour the venom of the ancient deceit into the souls of the simpler; they persuade them to keep days and months (compare Galatians 4:10), they practice what is called self-made religion (compare Colossians 2:23), and they advise others to choose to fulfill it.

Since, then, he says, you were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 7:23), and were ransomed “not with perishable things, with silver or gold,” but rather “with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, Christ” (1 Peter 1:18–19), let us rather be subject to his laws.

“Now concerning food offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge” (1 Corinthians 8:1). The believers at Corinth were convinced that God is by nature one and only, and that idols are not gods. They laughed at those who sacrificed to them, saying that meat offered in sacrifice is nothing at all, and they ate it without distinction, reckoning that no defilement came from it. But they caused the weak to stumble, those who thought they gave no offense to God if they honored the feasts of the idols. For this reason Paul puts a stop to these feasts, wishing the believers to be single-minded, worshiping the all-holy God alone.

“We know that there is no idol in the world” (1 Corinthians 8:4). For those who do not know the idols at all, or who know precisely that they are mere wood and stone, there is no idol in the world, for they do not count them worth any account at all. Thinking in this way, they believe in one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things (1 Corinthians 8:6).

He has the glory of the lordship of God the Father; and, as the One begotten of him, he has the pre-eminence of the One who begot him, since he exists, and is understood to be, God in his own nature, and not by that participation in the Spirit by which many have been called gods and lords. This knowledge few possess.

“As there are many gods and many lords” (1 Corinthians 8:5). It is by being counted worthy of a share in the Holy Spirit that many have been called gods and lords; and this mystical knowledge few possess. For unbelievers still think there are many gods, and some even of those who have believed in Christ do not wholly depart from the customs of idolatry.

“But some, being conscious of the idol until now, eat it as food offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled” (1 Corinthians 8:7). Some of those who have believed in Christ have not wholly turned away from idolatry, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. For out of a weak soul they perhaps even think it benefits them to be purified by sharing in sacred sacrifices, and to make a meal of the sacrificial meat. But the weak must be led on by spiritual teaching, not by eating without distinction and reclining at table with unbelievers.

“But take care that this right of yours does not become a stumbling block to the weak” (1 Corinthians 8:9). By being indifferent about eating sacrificial meat and reclining with unbelievers in the temples, they made the display of their own firmness an occasion of stumbling for some. For we must not use the right that faith gives in every case, nor out of season and without discernment; rather, it would be fitting for everything to be done by us in a seemly way (compare 1 Corinthians 14:40).

“Thus, sinning against the brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). By causing the brothers to stumble we shall offend against Christ himself, who died for the salvation of us all; and what wrong could weigh as much as that? For “the weak man is destroyed by your knowledge” (1 Corinthians 8:11); our good has become sin, the firmness of faith a stumbling block to the brothers, and knowledge a pit.

It is a very grievous thing, for it all but amounts to leaping on the weaknesses of the brothers, instead of taking pains to strengthen their weak conscience. For we must “not put a stumbling block or an occasion of falling before a brother” (Romans 14:13), keeping in mind what is…

Israel’s Fall in the Wilderness§12

12…written: “Do not despise one of these little ones, for their angels always behold the face of the Father” (Matthew 18:10). How then is it not very grievous that we should be accused even by the holy angels themselves, as those who all but leap on the weaknesses of the brothers, and do not rather take pains to strengthen their weak conscience?

Tome 4, Discourse 3.

“I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud” (1 Corinthians 10:1). Having charged those who supposedly have perfect knowledge not to eat sacrificial meat, Paul now tries to persuade them, from what befell the people of old, that the practice is not profitable but rather dangerous, and that it is not without harm to rush in among those accustomed to doing wrong. For it carries one off to do what is not lawful, since the human mind is easily shaken, little by little, toward what is not fitting.

So he takes no unlovely image of the matter, indeed a very close likeness: what happened in the wilderness to those of the blood of Israel. And he shows very forcefully that wanting to live with unbelievers would not be without harm even for those who stand firm.

What he says is this: those who had been freed from slavery were made perfect through the cloud in the sea, with the cloud hanging over them in their midst and Moses acting as mediator (compare 1 Corinthians 10:2). They ate the bread from heaven; they drank the life-giving drink; for Christ gave them drink, being himself the rock (compare 1 Corinthians 10:3–4). For he is unbreakable as God, even though he willingly suffered the assault of death. We say that such things are prefigurings of a spiritual reality.

And what happened to the people of old after this? In what way did they stumble? They were defiled at Shittim, they served idols, they were initiated into the rites of Baal of Peor (Numbers 25:1–3; Psalm 106:28). See, then, how those baptized in the cloud and in the sea, though they had eaten the bread from heaven and drunk the spiritual drink, became entangled with the idolaters. Because they shared meals with them and touched the table of the idols, they were at once easily carried away and slid into apostasy, and they danced with women: “And the people who understood were entangled with a prostitute,” in the words of the prophet (Hosea 4:14). For this is what is meant by “they rose up to play” (1 Corinthians 10:7).

So it is dangerous to live in the company of the wicked and the unbelieving. Indeed Solomon said somewhere, “He who walks with the wise will be wise, but he who walks with fools will be known” (Proverbs 13:20).

For we too, before our faith in Christ, were yoked under the greed of the demons and were slaves to the spiritual Pharaoh, that is, to Satan, the author of evil. We toiled for him in vain, standing in the works of the flesh as in clay and brickmaking (compare Exodus 1:14). But “the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6), rescued us too. He brought us too across the surge of this present life, as across a kind of sea, and made us perfect through holy baptism.

For he is the cloud from above, the spiritual cloud, which supplies living water to those who love it; and the living water is the Spirit. Indeed Christ said, “He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). And the inspired evangelist, making the saying plain, at once added to the words about it, “Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” (John 7:39).

We too have eaten the truly life-giving bread, we have drunk the spiritual drink, just as they drank the water from the rock; and the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4), who for us too…

The Other’s Conscience and Christ the Head§13

13…for our very selves, made his own blood gush out from his own side, mingled with water, when the soldiers of Pilate pierced him with the spear (John 19:34).

He brings forward the whole story in Numbers, teaching that those who had been baptized in the cloud and in the sea, and had been counted worthy of the spiritual food, slipped because they ate with the idolaters (1 Corinthians 10:2–5; Numbers 25:1–2). And “they rose up to play” stands for committing fornication with the Midianite women (1 Corinthians 10:7–8; compare Numbers 25:6).

“Conscience, I mean, not one’s own, but the other’s” (1 Corinthians 10:29).

So for conscience’ sake one must abstain from what one ought to abstain from. And by conscience I mean not one’s own, for one’s own is the conscience of the one with knowledge, but the other’s, so that he may not be built up in the wrong way (compare 1 Corinthians 8:10), copying in his ignorance what he does not understand, and so become a man who despises instead of a man of great soul.

Tome Four. Discourse Four.

“But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:3).

Some of those in Corinth were newly established in the faith and did not know the right manner of prayer. They had given the faith a home in themselves, but they had not yet learned exactly how one ought to enter the house of God. They came to pray to God and to offer their petitions for themselves, and then Paul found this being done in a most unseemly form. For the men made their approach without uncovering their heads of their customary coverings, and the women likewise came before God with their hair unshaded and uncovered, while nature all but cried out against them both. For nature has given openness to the man, while by modesty it draws the woman in toward seemliness.

Since it was right that he should put them to shame with compelling arguments, so that they would choose to think as they ought, and that he should make the law of nature a kind of umpire of what befits each, Paul tries to persuade them from the natural law to think as they ought, and he goes back to the making of man in the beginning.

By “head” he here means the archetypal beauty. Each of those named here, being enriched with its image, may rightly be understood to have received as a portion a kind of noble descent that in some way belongs to their very being, or, to put it another way, a sameness of nature.

For the first man, that is, Adam, came into being according to the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), for so the Creator of all says somewhere: “For in the image of God I made man” (Genesis 9:6). So the head of man is Christ: the archetype as God, and also of the same form with us by the law of our nature when he appeared as man, although the Word is God. Indeed, everywhere he calls himself Son of Man, although his birth from God the Father is beyond words.

Then the woman came into being according to the image and likeness of man, that is, of Adam. She is in no way of a different stock, but rather of one nature and one form with him. And the forefather Adam himself plainly confessed this when he said, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” and what follows (Genesis 2:23).

Some say that the Son has come into being, like the rest of the creatures, of which, they say, Christ is the head, “for the head of every man is Christ.” Before anything else they must consider that the force of their blasphemy will not touch only their teaching about the Son, but, rushing on as in an unchecked course, will drive right through to the Father himself. And how, I will tell.

For if they say that the Word who is from God the Father has come into being, and that it is right to count him among the creatures because he is the head of every man, how would the Father himself not be thought, in the same way, to be created and made, if indeed he is the head of a Son who is related by his very being to us, that is, to creatures (1 Corinthians 11:3)? For, as they themselves say, the head is in every way and altogether bound to the rest of the body by natural laws, so as to be one and the same with it. Then, by way of the Son, the kinship with every man will reach God the Father himself as well. How, then, does he still rise above the nature of things that have come into being? Or whom are we to seek as the Creator of all?

Christ the Head and the Veiling of Women§14

14But we shall not follow their foolishness. How could we? We believe that the Word who sprang from the Father is uncreated, as being from an uncreated Father. And we say that He has been called the head of every man (1 Corinthians 11:3), as the archetype, as I said; but since He appeared as man in the last times of the age, and as one of the same kind as men in His humanity, He was given as head to the Church, which is His body (Ephesians 1:22–23). For He holds the first place in all things, as Paul says (Colossians 1:18).

“Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head,” and so on (1 Corinthians 11:4).

Do you see how he makes the law of nature the judge and arbiter of what befits each? For openness is most fitting for men, while for a woman being veiled is an adornment. So the unseemliness of the image would quite reasonably be an insult to the archetype. For if man is the image and glory of God (1 Corinthians 11:7), as according to the Scriptures he was made (Genesis 1:27), let him keep before God the openness that befits him, with his head uncovered, since nature does not reproach him for having to go uncovered. For the Divine is free and beyond all blame, rich in its own glory and held in wonder.

And if woman is in the likeness of man, an image of an image and a glory of a glory, and nature also lays it down for her to wear long hair (1 Corinthians 11:15), why should what comes second in grace contend with what is first? For she too is according to the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26), but as it were through the mediation of man, so that in some small respect she differs in nature. I will not bring a charge against her when she wraps her person in modesty as far as she can and crowns it with her hair; for to go openly uncovered is not without harm for women.

So, he says, let her be veiled because of the angels (1 Corinthians 11:10), clearly meaning those whom God has stationed in the churches. Not that they suffer anything in seeing women. Human beings, who have this coarse body taken from the earth and are pushed down toward baser things by inborn pleasures, might suffer harm, being stirred by the beauty of women toward what is not fitting. But as for the holy angels, what could anyone think or say of that kind? For they are holy and above all defilement, since they are outside the flesh and have bodies that are fine and spiritual, beyond the grasp of the human mind. Rather, it is because they are deeply grieved if anyone neglects the law of what is fitting.

And being veiled befits women, and nature is witness to this: “for her hair,” he says, “has been given to her as a covering” (1 Corinthians 11:15). So let what is fitting be kept in this matter too, because of those who know the will of the Creator better than we do.

The inspired Paul uses yet another skilful device. He said that man was made according to the image and likeness of God, and he plainly insisted that the female has been cast, as it were, behind his honor and glory, adding what follows: “For woman,” he says, “is the glory of man; for man was not created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man” (1 Corinthians 11:7, 9). Then, gently covering over what would likely grieve women, he goes on to say, “Nevertheless, neither is woman without man, nor man without woman” (1 Corinthians 11:11).

For woman admittedly came from man, and this is true (1 Corinthians 11:12); yet she has been found to have her share in bringing man into being. Nature, bringing both together into one, has made them need each other, wisely binding them together in love. And he further confirms that God is the Creator of all things, saying, “But all things are from God” (1 Corinthians 11:12); for all things were brought into being through Christ (John 1:3).

Tome Five. Discourse One.

“No one speaking in the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is accursed,’” and so on (1 Corinthians 12:3). Our Lord Jesus Christ promised that when He had gone away He would send us the Comforter (John 16:7), and to this He added, “He will glorify Me” (John 16:14). And we understand, quite rightly, that His Spirit glorifies Christ both by making wise those in whom He comes to dwell and by making Christ dwell in the saints through Himself; for Christ is in us through the Holy Spirit. And He glorifies Him also in another way…

Jesus Is Lord: The Varieties of Gifts§15

15…in another way, for the Spirit works through the hands of the saints the deeds that serve his glory. And if his Spirit glorifies the Son, how could anyone speaking in the Spirit speak evil of him? He will rather say, “Jesus is Lord” (1 Corinthians 12:3). So those who rank with creation the one through whom all things were brought into being (John 1:3) would have no share at all in the Holy Spirit, for they plainly say, “Jesus is accursed” (1 Corinthians 12:3).

But those who devoutly confess that Jesus is God and Lord will have the fact itself as witness that they have been initiated through the Spirit into the knowledge of beholding God in him. “For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10). Knowing what is hidden in God, the Spirit carries it across to the souls of the saints and plants in them a knowledge free from error and beyond reproach.

And the inspired Paul himself is witness to this when he goes on to say, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, and the same Lord; and there are varieties of workings, but it is the same God who works all things in all” (1 Corinthians 12:4–6). For just as those who hold power over affairs on earth, and adorn the thrones of kingship, crown the more loyal of their own guards with different honors, so the holy and consubstantial Trinity distributes a rich possession of the good things from above to those who love it with a sound heart and a whole mind, through the one Spirit, as through Christ, from the Father. For all things are from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable. For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom,” and so on (1 Corinthians 12:7–8).

For he knows, he knows the times that befit each of the things he does, he “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” as it is written (Colossians 2:3). What the gifts are, and what the distributions, and indeed the workings of miracles, Paul makes clear when he says, “For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom” (1 Corinthians 12:8). The word of wisdom, as it seems to me at least, is the word given “in the opening of the mouth” (Ephesians 6:19): ready and flowing, as if it came from a very nimble tongue.

“To another, the word of knowledge” (1 Corinthians 12:8). For there are some among us who lack readiness in speech and have not gained the freedom to express themselves with ease, yet they are very deep in understanding. They come to the sacred words most thoughtfully and with great subtlety, and they are able to lead others into the mysteries and readily lay open what they have contemplated. But both the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge are supplied through the one Spirit, from the Father through the Son, to those worthy to receive them. It is a word of knowledge when someone knows the sense of the divine oracles and is able to unfold their meaning, but cannot teach it eloquently.

Both the one and the other are supplied to the worthy through the one Spirit, from the Father through the Son, who is said to apportion the ministries (1 Corinthians 12:5). For some of the holy apostles he commanded to proclaim the word of faith to those of the blood of Israel, and others again he assigned to the lands of the Gentiles. And this too he brought about through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, in the Acts of the holy apostles we shall find it written: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’ ” (Acts 13:2).

The inspired Paul was appointed to the apostleship of the Gentiles, and this ministry fell to him as his lot. He will confirm it himself when he writes, “Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry” (Romans 11:13). So the Son apportions the ministries, and the Holy Spirit carries the matter out with authority, for he is the Spirit of the Son. But the workings of miracles as well, that is…

Faith, Healings, Miracles and Tongues§16

16…the divine signs done through the saints, the same God accomplishes for us (1 Corinthians 12:6). For all things, as I said, are from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, and in everything that is well done the holy and consubstantial Trinity is glorified. For see how he begins from the Spirit, as the one who is in us and works the distribution of the divine gifts; then, raising his account to the Son, who is Son by nature, he goes up at last to the Father, ascribing to him, by way of the Son, the working done through the Spirit.

“To another, faith by the same Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:9). Faith here would be, as I think, steadfastness toward every good thing whatever, and toward whatever God may will. For in this sense we say that Moses, the revealer of holy things, was faithful “in all his house” (Hebrews 3:2; Numbers 12:7). For faith would not be understood or spoken of as only the duty to believe that by nature and in truth there is one God of all, but as standing firm in soul, “and being ready to walk with the Lord God,” in the words of the prophet (Micah 6:8). And so the inspired disciples once came to Christ, saying plainly, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5).

Besides this, gifts of healing are also given by the one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:9). And again, mark this closely, I ask you: though the Spirit is said to distribute the gifts of healing, it is Christ who gives them. For he gave the holy apostles “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out” (Matthew 10:1); and indeed he said, “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without cost; give without cost” (Matthew 10:8).

The workings of miracles are certainly his as well, but in the one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:10). For instance, Moses threw his staff on the ground and it became a serpent (Exodus 4:3); he turned the rivers into blood (Exodus 7:20); he brought water out of the rock (Exodus 17:6). And the blessed prophets performed a great many deeds beyond words and beyond wonder. These, we say, are the workings of miracles through the one Spirit. Another, again, prophesies, but not apart from the Spirit; and someone has the discernment of spirits, but in the Spirit himself (1 Corinthians 12:10). What kind of spirits are meant has been said earlier.

Paul also insists that to others it is given to know kinds of tongues, and indeed their interpretation (1 Corinthians 12:10). This we call a gift of its own kind, supplied to some in God’s plan, at a set time and for a need. But some spoke in the tongues though they had not known them before, while others understood and interpreted them, though some of them had never before had an ear trained in such languages or used to them. Yet the inspired Paul firmly states that speaking in tongues was given to the believers of that time not as counted among the gifts but as ranking as a sign. And he set beside it a prophetic oracle that runs thus: “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of others I will speak to this people, and not even so will they believe” (1 Corinthians 14:21; Isaiah 28:11–12).

The Spirit works the distribution of the gifts differently in each (1 Corinthians 12:11), so that, as he says, just as this coarse body from the earth is made up of parts, so too Christ, or rather his body, that is, the Church, has its most perfect structure through a great multitude of saints joined into a spiritual unity (1 Corinthians 12:12, 27). For this reason the inspired David too says that she is clothed “in a garment woven with gold,” embroidered in many colors (Psalm 45:9), signifying by this, I think, how many and how precious the gifts are.

Because, then, those who were to lead the world under the sun into the mysteries were to speak the saving proclamation of the Gospel to every tongue and every nation, he gave them the tongues as a sign. Men of Galilee they were, brought up in Judea, Hebrews born of Hebrews (Acts 2:7; Philippians 3:5), and yet to Medes and Parthians, and indeed to Elamites (Acts 2:9)…

Tongues and the One Body§17

17…and to those who live in Mesopotamia, to Cappadocians and Egyptians, they spoke in their own languages (Acts 2:9–10). The thing was carried out for them by the working and grace of the Spirit, for it is written, “Divided tongues as of fire appeared to them,” and what follows (Acts 2:3). What happened was part of God’s plan, but not all understood it.

But once they were speaking in the languages of others, they made the grace given through the Spirit into a kind of display and took the sign as an occasion for boasting. They grew careless about their duty to discuss with the crowds what comes from the holy prophets and to argue for the teachings of the Gospel as foretold from of old, long beforehand. Priding themselves on the mere ability to speak in tongues, they thought they should lay claim to this and this alone, and it ranked among their most pressing concerns.

“For just as the body is one and has many members,” and so on (1 Corinthians 12:12). For we are united to one another and have become one body in Christ, since he has raised us up together and all but bound us into one through the one Holy Spirit, who is in all, and whom we have been given to drink as a life-giving drink (1 Corinthians 12:13). So it was that Christ, when he was speaking with the woman at Jacob’s well, said, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him, it will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14). And somewhere he also said to the Jews, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” “Now this he said,” it says, “about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive” (John 7:38–39).

Do not be surprised. For if he himself is “the river of God,” in the words of the Psalmist, the one “full of waters” (Psalm 65:9), the torrent of delight whom God the Father is said to give as drink to those who love him (Psalm 36:8), how could his Spirit not have to be understood as the life-giving drink and water? Since, then, we have been called into unity through the Spirit and have become one body with Christ, let us keep the bond of love unbroken (Ephesians 4:3).

Tome Five. Discourse Two.

“For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God,” and so on (1 Corinthians 14:2). He weans them from thinking that speaking in tongues does more for one’s good name than interpreting the writings of the prophets. For once faith and hope have first been laid down in us and given first place, and indeed love toward God and the brothers, which holds the fulfillment of the whole Law (Romans 13:10), let the rest be added. For then, then indeed and at the right time, we shall be filled with the very gifts that come from God and grow rich in the gifts given through the Spirit. I mean the ability to prophesy, that is, to interpret the writings of the prophets.

For once the Only-begotten had become man, had suffered and been raised, and his saving plan for us had been carried to completion, what time was there still for prophecy, or what events were still left to foretell? So here “to prophesy” would be nothing other than simply being able to interpret prophecies. And when we make them as clear as we can to our hearers, and then from them firmly establish our own teaching in the truth, we shall be right and unerring interpreters of the noblest things.

So, he says, one who speaks in a tongue speaks to God rather than to men. But how, or in what way? “For no one hears,” he says (1 Corinthians 14:2). For if, say, it has been given to one of the disciples to be able to speak the language of the Medes, and to another that of the Elamites, and the men we are speaking of were then to address the synagogues of the Jews or the throngs of the Greeks, who would be there…

Prophecy Builds Up the Church§18

18…to hear, or what profit will the words bring? For no one will understand except God alone, who knows all things. “For he speaks mysteries in the Spirit,” he says (1 Corinthians 14:2). Notice how the one who speaks to God speaks in the Spirit: so the Spirit is God. Therefore the one who speaks in a tongue, he says, speaks to God rather than to men; “but the one who prophesies speaks to men for building up, encouragement and consolation” (1 Corinthians 14:3).

Knowing, then, that “to prophesy” here means interpreting the writings of the prophets, through which the word of encouragement is made sure and the mind of those being instructed in the mysteries is led by the hand to the truth concerning Christ, he shows in another way as well that interpreting the prophets ranks incomparably higher than speaking in a tongue. “The one who speaks in a tongue,” he says, “builds up himself” (1 Corinthians 14:4), for he understands, but no one else at all does. But the one who uses the words and predictions of the holy prophets as testimony builds up the church (1 Corinthians 14:4). So prophesying is the greater thing and belongs among the highest grounds for boasting and among bright hopes, if indeed it is admittedly better to build up the church than to speak in a tongue to oneself alone.

“Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy,” and so on (1 Corinthians 14:5). It was something wonderful and truly God-given that men who were Hebrews could speak the languages of others. So that no one would think the apostle was rashly passing judgment on what had happened, by calling worthless what had been bestowed through the working of the Spirit (for it was given as a sign to believers), he welcomes the thing and says, “I want you all to speak in tongues.” But at once he plainly cuts short their eagerness for it and turns them to what is better, adding immediately, “but even more to prophesy,” and stating most clearly that the one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in a tongue (1 Corinthians 14:5). Yet he shows that the gift is not altogether useless either to those who have it or to those who hear, when he adds, “unless he interprets” (1 Corinthians 14:5), that is, unless he has someone always at his side to interpret for those being instructed in the mysteries.

Tome Five. Discourse Three.

“And none of them is voiceless” (1 Corinthians 14:10). Some people used to come into the churches who had been enriched, by the working of the Spirit, with the ability to speak in tongues. Then, when they ought to have offered the prayers in the churches, and before these the litanies or the psalmody, using the language of those present, which they were able to do, they did not do it. Priding themselves only on the gift of tongues, they offered neither prayers nor psalmody. Paul teaches this: if the hearers do not know the language in which the one who has the gift is speaking, nothing is gained from it. For there are countless nations and many human languages, and none of those once counted among rational beings, or among men, is voiceless.

He says that none of those counted among rational beings, that is, among men, is altogether voiceless. But if someone does not know the meaning of another’s speech, and the others in turn do not know his language, they will be foreigners to one another (1 Corinthians 14:11), even though each speaks correctly in his own tongue. So those who wish to teach others must utter speech familiar to their hearers. But if the sound has no clear meaning and the speech is unfamiliar, he has labored in vain, merely striking the learner’s ear with an empty noise (1 Corinthians 14:9).

Those who wish to teach, he says, must speak in words familiar to their hearers, since otherwise one labors in vain; for speaking in tongues alone does not build up the church. “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays” (1 Corinthians 14:14). By “spirit” here he means the grace given through the…

Praying with the Mind§19

19…Spirit, that is, the ability to speak in tongues. So if, he says, I offer the prayers in the churches “in the spirit,” that is, using the tongue given through the Spirit, my mind will be unfruitful (1 Corinthians 14:14). For in prayer one must be intent and seek from God what leads to salvation, not pride oneself on a tongue and give oneself over merely to speaking in a tongue, since then the mind becomes unfruitful and gains no benefit from such display.

“I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). So, he says, if I choose to pray in a tongue, that is, to win esteem by speaking in a tongue, I must take earnest care not to have an unfruitful mind, and not to give myself over only to speaking in the tongue, but to rouse my mind within me. And if I happen to sing in a tongue, I must sing no less with the mind as well, by understanding the meaning of the psalmody and of the prophecy, and not leave such words unexamined (1 Corinthians 14:15). For if I utter empty sounds, “I have become a noisy gong” (1 Corinthians 13:1). So it is better to prophesy, that is, to interpret the divine Scriptures in church, than to be fond of merely using tongues.

What, then, will be the better way? “I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the mind also” (1 Corinthians 14:15). Here again by “spirit” he means the gift given through the Spirit. Since his aim, through a great many compelling arguments, is to show that speaking in a tongue is useless unless the ability to make the prophets plain to others goes with it, he adds still further points, in which one can see him saying it clearly.

“Otherwise, if you bless with the spirit, how will the one who fills the place of the uninstructed say the ‘Amen’?” (1 Corinthians 14:16). When you speak in a tongue, he says, how will the one who stands in the rank of the layman, if he does not know your language, answer “Amen” at your thanksgivings, that is, your prayers? For it is plain to everyone that in the churches the custom is for the prayers of those in the leaders’ charge to end together with the prayers of the leaders. They answer “Amen,” closing their own supplications to God at the priest’s words, so that whatever seems lacking in the people’s measure may be made up by the perfection of the priests, and so that God may receive, as it were, “the small together with the great” (Psalm 115:13) as in unity of spirit. For the people in their charge, joining their own prayers to the prayers of the priests, have believed that these will be accepted.

With this aim, too, God commanded that even poor sacrifices be brought to the altar of burnt offerings, so that the small, mixed with the perfect, might become acceptable to God. For we are all one in the Lord. So when you speak in a tongue, he says (for this is what “blessing with the spirit” means), how will the one who does not know what you are saying say the “Amen” at your thanksgiving? You yourself will do well, at least by the understanding that is in you, but the other is not built up (1 Corinthians 14:16–17). Yet everything we do must be done for building up and for the benefit of the brothers (1 Corinthians 14:26).

Tome Five. Discourse Four.

“Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel that I preached to you” (1 Corinthians 15:1). Very aptly and wisely he calls the preaching about the resurrection of the dead, and surely also about the resurrection of Christ himself, a gospel, for it truly is the announcement of every good thing to those who have received the faith. And he says that they stand in it and are being saved (1 Corinthians 15:1–2). “To stand” signifies that believers are firm in hope and well established in glory, while “to be saved” signifies that they have even been shown…

Christ Died, Was Buried, and Rose§20

20…superior to sin itself, and to have run beyond the snares of death. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

He says that he delivered to them, not something that had simply come into his mind and been accepted without testing, but the gospel that he received, since the one who became man for our sake put the knowledge of it into him. For the same apostle says again of the gospel, “For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). If, then, the one who hands it on is taught by God, how can what he preaches not be true: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3), that is, both the Old and the New?

For the witnesses of Christ’s death and resurrection are very many, so that it can no longer be doubted in any way that Christ Jesus died for us according to the flesh, to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and that he rose again, trampling on death, so that we too might gain this. Here he necessarily says not only that he died but also that he was buried (1 Corinthians 15:4). For Emmanuel was laid in a tomb to confirm that he had truly died; yet he came back to life, as I said just now. By dying in the flesh he gave full assurance that the Word, though he is God, had become flesh (John 1:14); and by trampling on death he showed plainly that he is God by nature.

Yet the Word who is from God the Father does not give life to a temple foreign to him, nor simply to that of someone else, but rather to his own body, through which he is also said to have died for us, so that the good of the resurrection too might be found to have truly come about for us. For the whole of human nature was in him, trampling on death; this is how we are said to have been buried with him and raised with him (Colossians 2:12), and seated with him “in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6).

So he says that he was raised in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4), and that he appeared to the holy apostles, to some of them separately, as chosen ones, and also to a great number at once (1 Corinthians 15:5–7). “And he appeared also to me,” as to the one untimely born among the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:8). He speaks very humbly: he insists that he persecuted the church, but that he received mercy from Christ and was called to be an apostle (1 Corinthians 15:9–10). And he shows that the great mystery of the resurrection was not unknown either to the saints of old, for it had been foretold, or to those chosen for apostleship, who also “became eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2).

“Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15:12). He is astonished at those who, I do not know how, have been persuaded to set themselves against the holy and divine Scriptures and dare to think something other than this. For if Christ died, not to remain dead, but so that, proving stronger than death and corruption, he might become a kind of way and door for human nature (John 14:6; John 10:9), so that it could prevail over corruption and run back to life, then how, now that he who for our sake was among the dead has been raised, so that we too might rise with him to life, can they still bind in the snares of death those for whose sake Emmanuel, who is God by nature, is said to have died and come back to life?

Why do they rob the human race of the good things that come from the resurrection, and slander the goal of his saving work in the flesh? For if Christ has become “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20) and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), then surely what remains will follow its own firstfruits and will go along with the firstborn, and with good reason, in keeping with what a firstborn is understood to be. And the inspired Paul himself will bear witness, saying, “For if…” (Romans 6:5).

If Christ Has Not Been Raised§21

21“…we have been united in the likeness of his death, we shall certainly be so in the likeness of his resurrection also” (Romans 6:5). So if some agree that Christ has been raised, yet do not accept the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, they are wholly ignorant of the purpose for which the Only-begotten became man. For God the Word did not become man for his own sake; and “for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). For what reason? The most wise Paul himself will teach us, saying, “Since the children share in blood and flesh, he himself likewise partook of the same, so that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and set free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14–15).

So if death is not destroyed, his design was in vain, and the mystery of the dispensation in the flesh is of no profit to us either; and we have missed the hope of life as well. And how have we been called to adoption, and how are we children of God, as the wise John says (1 John 3:1)? If it is true that “we wait for adoption, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23), what redemption is there at all, unless Christ has made us stronger than death? Or how “will he change the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory” (Philippians 3:21)? For what time will there be for this at all, unless death is made idle? Or what change will there be for those who will stay as they were, or rather end in a worse state?

See how skillfully he brings them round to the necessary admission that we must say our earthly bodies will come to life again in due time. For if, he says, Christ has been proclaimed through the whole of inspired Scripture as raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:12)? For he died, as we have said already, not for himself but rather for us, so that, since he is Life by nature as God, he might destroy death by the death of his own flesh, since human nature would follow him. For he came to life again and became, as it were, the firstfruits of humanity as it passes over into life, is created anew for incorruption, and conquers death. For what is in Christ is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Since the thing has made its beginning, how shall we remain in the earth? Or how do some among you dare to say that the dead will not come to life again?

These, it seems likely, were Sadducees; for they used to say “that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit” (Acts 23:8). Hymenaeus and Alexander also slandered the mystery of the resurrection, “saying that the resurrection has already taken place” (2 Timothy 2:18). But those men made shipwreck of their faith (1 Timothy 1:19–20), as have all who wish to follow their empty notions.

“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is empty” (1 Corinthians 15:14). For the second follows on the first, and with the second the first is taken away too. If that happened, that is, if we accepted it as our belief, the preaching of the holy apostles would be empty and powerless, and faith too would be empty (1 Corinthians 15:14). For this is what the word of faith holds, the word that through the saints has taught the mysteries to the initiated throughout the whole earth. How then shall we still believe, if, as some say, he did not come to life again? For, he says, we are even found to be false witnesses against God, claiming that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if the dead are not raised (1 Corinthians 15:15). Then how could so great a multitude of saints escape an indictment for slander? They would not even be saints. How could they be, when their offense would be slander against God? But that is not how things stand; for the teachers of the mysteries do not lie when they say that Christ has been raised.

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Most truly and very rightly he adds this as well to the rest. For faith justifies; but if one declares it futile, on the ground that Christ has not been raised, what difference does it make any more? Then we are still held fast…

Death through Adam, Life through Christ§22

22…by the old charges, and our sin is not washed away. In vain, too, did the inspired singer say, “Lord, you were pleased with your land; you forgave your people their iniquities; you covered all their sins” (Psalm 85:1–2); and again, “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin” (Psalm 32:1–2). And yet the blessed Paul says, in his Letter to the Romans, that the blessing spoken in these words reaches both the circumcision and those from the Gentiles (Romans 4:9). For we have been justified in Christ, “who was handed over for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25).

“Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (1 Corinthians 15:18). For it seems they have been deceived and have laid down their lives for him without reward, if Christ has not been raised. If the hope of the saints is not full of immortality, if they do not look to reign with him, then perhaps they have perished; and since they endured even death itself for nothing of use, their labors have brought them only loss. Away with such dreadful ignorance! For “the dead shall rise, and those in the tombs shall be raised,” as the prophet says (Isaiah 26:19); and he who hands out the crowns weighs out to each the one most fitting for him, and he will surely bring punishment on the ungodly; for as God he is the judge of all.

“But now Christ has been raised from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep,” and so on (1 Corinthians 15:20). From here he takes it as agreed that we must believe that Christ came to life again and became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first of those on earth to trample down death, just as our forefather Adam was the first to step into it and became the firstfruits of those who slipped into corruption. And that the resurrection of the dead will follow the resurrection of our Savior he adds when he says, “For as death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man” (1 Corinthians 15:21).

See how he shows once more that the mystery of the dispensation in the flesh is full of a skill worthy of God. For it was needful, truly needful, he says, that a man should conquer death for us. For this reason God the Word, who shone forth from God, did not take hold of angels, as Paul himself says, but of the seed of Abraham, so that he might be made like his brothers in every way (Hebrews 2:16–17). For, as I said, what had fallen sick had to be healed, and what had fallen had to rise. What had come under death through transgression and sin had to overcome death through obedience and righteousness. That is why the Only-begotten Word of God, who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), became man: so that, as in Adam we have all been condemned, when human nature suffered death, so also, justified in Christ, we might strip off, together with sin, the death that sprang from it. The inspired Paul himself will bear witness, saying, “For as by the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19).

So, as in Adam all die (1 Corinthians 15:22), since, as I said, human nature was condemned in him because of the transgression, so in Christ they will be made alive, since in him human nature is blessed again in the same way because of the justification. The second, then, is the undoing of the first. For “he was handed over for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). So when he was raised, we too were raised with him. For the Word who is from God is Life by nature; and he surely does not give the good that belongs to his nature, I mean life, to his own flesh alone, but passes it on to the whole of human nature.

Christ, as all agree, has been raised as the firstfruits, “so that he himself might have first place in all things” (Colossians 1:18), as it is written. Yet in due time the others will follow in coming to life again, though, as is fitting, not in a confused mass, but in order, rank by rank, and as at a word of command (compare 1 Thessalonians 4:16). For after the firstfruits, that is, Christ, he says, those who are his will be raised (1 Corinthians 15:23). Clearly he means those who belong to the time…

The Son Hands Over the Kingdom§23

23…of his coming among us, that is, those who lived after he became man, and who have fallen asleep in faith. For there were, admittedly, saints from time to time in Israel, while the life under the law was praised and still held sway. But those in Christ are better: they have been justified through faith, have become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), and have been made rich with the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15). They have also been called by grace into brotherhood with him who is Son by nature and in truth. Among those under the law there was a spirit of slavery, but we cry, “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). So, as I said, those in Christ are better than those of older times.

That is why he says that they will be the first to come to life again, following, as it were, in the footsteps of him who is the beginning of all, because they are closer to him and for this reason have been honored above the others. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself also hints at something of this kind in the parables of the Gospel. For he said that the one who hired the workers for the vineyard (he was the master of the house), “when evening came, said to his steward, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning from the last up to the first’” (Matthew 20:8).

“Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has destroyed every rule and every authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24). He says that the kingdom will be handed over by the Son to God the Father when every rule of the unclean spirits has been destroyed and death itself is at last wholly idle.

“When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Since some try, as far as lies with them, to belittle the Son, saying that he hands over the kingdom to the Father and is subject to him as to one greater, we must say that the Son underwent the voluntary self-emptying when he became like us, and humbled himself, as it were, from the heights, though he was of the same form as the Father and equal to him (compare Philippians 2:6–8). Now seated at the right hand of the Father, he is hidden in God (compare Colossians 3:3), but he will be revealed in glory at the time of the end of the present age.

If he is brought down from the honor he now has, does he then undergo a second self-emptying? And if he also hands over the kingdom, how does he come “with the holy angels in the glory of his Father” (Mark 8:38)? So it would be unwelcome to the Son that “his enemies should be put under his feet” (1 Corinthians 15:25), if now he reigns with the Father but then falls from the kingdom. Yet even if the Son is subject to the Father, he is not for that reason less than the Father. For subjection is not a defining mark of nature and essence; it points rather to a way of acting. Even among us, when it happens, it does not show that we are of different essence from one another. How so? A son is subject to a father, a slave to a master, a pupil to a teacher, and one of those under a ruler’s hand and yoke to the ruler. Yet in none of these cases is the principle of sameness of essence harmed; for they are of one kind with one another, even if they stand in this relation, yielding to one another and being subject, and not counting it a dishonor, for the sake of what is beneficial.

How then can they make an argument that is weak even in our case hold good in the case of God? For if, as they say, being subject is a property or measure of nature in the Son, then his not being subject is the property of another nature in him, a nature perhaps better than that one, if subjection belongs to lesser beings. For he is subject by way of the dispensation, for our sake.

The sense of the words is this. Since man sinned and came under corruption, and through the devil and the demons fell away from him who is God by nature, the Only-begotten became man for our sake and destroyed the power of death; he also removed sin, the root of death, and cast out the ruler of this age (compare John 12:31). Having done all this, when the whole dispensation has been brought to completion, he hands over, that is, he will present, to the Father the kingdom that had long ago been plundered and had passed under the power of others…

How Are the Dead Raised?§24

24…restoring to him authority over all things on earth. When death and Satan, who had tyrannized over them, have been destroyed, the Son will again have, in the age to come as well, supremacy of authority over all things.

Tome Seven.

“But someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’” and so on (1 Corinthians 15:35). The prophet Isaiah cried out long beforehand the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, that it will take place in due time, as God grants it and by his unspeakable power refashions into life what death held fast. He said, “The dead shall rise, and those in the tombs shall be raised, and those in the earth shall rejoice; for the dew that comes from you is healing to them” (Isaiah 26:19). By dew, I think, he means figuratively the life-giving working of God, by which he gives being to things that are not, and grants well-being to things already brought into existence. For all things hold together in him (Colossians 1:17), just as they were also brought into being through him (compare John 1:3).

And somewhere the inspired David sings of the creatures on earth to God, the Savior of all: “When you open your hand, all things will be filled with goodness; when you turn away your face, they will be troubled; you will take away their spirit, and they will fail and return to their dust; you will send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth” (Psalm 104:28–30). For in Adam, because of the transgression, human nature suffered the turning away of the divine face; and so it was all but thrown into confusion and troubled, went back to its own dust, and was brought down into death and corruption. But since the Only-begotten Word of God has become like us, and we have been enriched with a share in the Holy Spirit, we are being reshaped to what we were in the beginning and, as it were, created anew. For we have been called to newness of life (Romans 6:4), escaping the power of death.

The most wise Paul will bear witness, saying, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). Since, then, Christ came to life again, trampling down the power of death, and became the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, who will surely follow in his footsteps, how is it not utter madness still to doubt the mystery of the resurrection in any way at all?

If anyone chose to turn the eye of his mind too curiously on the works of the Godhead, and tried to look closely into the manner in which each thing was brought forth and the beginning of its coming to be, he would never stop uttering that senseless “How?” For how did the heaven come to be, from what matter, or from where? What foundation does it have? And the earth, how or from where did it come, and on what does it rest firm? How were the orb of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the other created things brought forth? How did the Maker of all take dust from the earth and form man (Genesis 2:7)? How was earth refashioned into bones and sinews and flesh? If, because we shall not be able to give an account of each thing that has been made, we shall for that reason deny that they came to be at all, where would these notions, or rather these perverse arguments, finally end?

After Christ’s resurrection, to doubt the resurrection, to say “How?” of the works of God, is a mark of bad judgment, ignorance, and arrogance. And indeed to ask, “With what body are the dead raised?” is also foolish; for it is quite plain that it is with the same body. For the Lord too raised his own flesh just as it was. But as for those who say that the soul existed beforehand and is bound to the body as a punishment, they set aside not only the account of creation, according to which…

With What Body the Dead Rise§25

25…man came into being for incorruption, but also the account of the resurrection. For God does not bring about the resurrection as a punishment, but because of His own compassion.

But perhaps you will say this: “Yes, you are right; and from now on I give up the need to ask, ‘How are the dead raised?’ Yet it is necessary to know clearly ‘with what kind of body they come’ (1 Corinthians 15:35). For will this very body that comes from the earth and is held fast by corruption come back to life, or some other body beside it, though made from it?”

To this I would say at once that the right teaching of the faith brings us to the resurrection of this very flesh. For so Christ came back to life, “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). But since this teaching does not much please some, come, let us set out the argument they think sound, and then say what is fitting.

(Then, after setting out the fables of those who say that souls exist beforehand, he says:)

Then how is it that God takes pride in the making of man? For He says somewhere to the blessed Job, “Did you take clay of the earth and form a living creature, and set it on the earth endowed with speech?” (Job 38:14). For to make a rational living creature out of earth would, I think, go beyond all wonder. And how did the Creator bless man as soon as he had come into being and been formed from the earth, saying, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28)?

(And after saying much else against them, he goes on:)

The inspired Paul uses an excellent example. He says that the body falls into the earth like a grain, and that it will not rise just as it was sown, bare, but as if in a garment and covering of the things that usually grow on it, I mean stalk and leaves (1 Corinthians 15:36–37). For “God gives,” he says, “to each of the seeds its own body” (1 Corinthians 15:38).

Since he says that not all who have fallen asleep will come back to life in glory, even if all will in incorruption (for surely it is not fitting that the unrighteous and those who work wicked deeds should be crowned with the renown that comes from God), he usefully mentions different seeds for this reason, to which God also assigns, in whatever way He Himself may choose, a difference in this form, it may be, or in another. For he says, “And what you sow is not the body that is to be” (1 Corinthians 15:37), and, “There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies” (1 Corinthians 15:40).

The account is one, in that each is and is called a body; but in another respect it is divided into different kinds. The bodies of all will come back to life in incorruption, yet there will be some difference in the glory and in the covering that God may provide, as He assigns to each what each deserves. “But the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another” (1 Corinthians 15:40).

It should be known that two examples have just been set before us, I mean that of the grain and that which shows the difference in glory among the heavenly bodies; for the present he relates the likeness of the resurrection of the dead to the force of the first, and says next, “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:42). For just as a grain of wheat, cast bare and dead into the soil, springs up in a covering of body and with an added…

Raised Clothed in Glory§26

26…beauty, and is admired, so in this same way the human body too is sown in corruption, in weakness and in dishonor, but will come back to life clothed in honor and incorruption, and in power as well (1 Corinthians 15:42–43).

The sober watchfulness of the one who speaks for God deserves our admiration. For his faith is firmly grounded, and he is confident that the body will come back to life in every way and without fail; so he likens the body's corruption to sowing, and with great skill and wisdom makes the nature of the thing match the example at every point. So, he says, like the grain, the body will not come back to life bare, but richly clothed with incorruption and glory, and with strength besides, and enriched also with this: that it comes to be of a spiritual mind, since the grace from above and the incomparable power of the Creator of all in a way refashion what is in it into the very opposite.

For corruption and weakness and lack of beauty dwell in the body that has fallen and been sown, as it were, in the earth, and a natural mind as well, which we say is the same as the fleshly and more earthly mind. But it was not so by nature when it was brought into being in the beginning; these things crept in through the transgression and the sentence of death. Since our nature is being called back to what it was in the beginning, the putting off of what came in between is necessarily brought about by the power and working of God, and in exchange there is brought in a share in the good things that were ours first, in the beginning.

For we have been renewed in Christ, as the Scriptures say. A holy prophet said, “Take courage, Zion; do not let your hands grow slack. The Lord your God is in you, mighty to save you, and He will renew you in His love” (Zephaniah 3:16–17). For when God the Father loved us, then, at that very time, He renewed us in Christ. And indeed it is true that all things in Him are “a new creation; the old things have passed away, and new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What old things does he mean? Those that have gone by. And what new things? Those that have been brought in. The old are corruption, and weakness, and dishonor besides, and the faults of the natural mind; the new, through Christ, are glory and incorruption and power and the spiritual mind. For our body will be spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:44).

What would “spiritual” mean, O teacher of the mysteries? Does he mean that it will no longer be flesh, and will in no way be composed, as it is now, of bones and sinews, through which the nature of our body is made complete, but will rather be thin and airy, hardly more solid than a shadow? Not at all. For if some think this is how things stand, then surely it will not be the very thing that falls into the earth that comes back to life, but something else beside it, in no way like the first.

I would say that “spiritual” means not what has the form of a shadow, that is, of a bodiless spirit, but rather what has stood apart from, and indeed been wholly set free from, the fleshly and more earthly mind. “For if there is,” he says, “a natural body, there is also…

The Natural Adam and the Life-Giving Christ§27

27…a spiritual one” (1 Corinthians 15:44). For suppose someone chooses to call our body from the earth “natural.” One would reasonably not attach to it the form of a soul, but would rather turn the force of the word to the natural, that is, the fleshly, mind, just as we understand our own human wisdom to be “natural” and “earthly” (James 3:15). So too, even if it is called a natural body, one who attaches to it the form of a soul would not, I think, escape the charge of going astray. Otherwise, in what sense are some people, while still alive and still in these very bodies from the earth, called natural and others spiritual? For it is written, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; but the spiritual man judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one” (1 Corinthians 2:14–15).

Since it followed that he should confirm his argument on this point by facts as well, he adds, “The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). So he called Adam natural; for this, I think, is what being made “a living soul” means: that he was not wholly free from fleshly desires. For the appetites that look and turn toward the passions of the flesh, even if they have the law to speak in their defense, would still in truth be charges against fleshly weakness, if one looks at the nature of what is done.

I mean something like this: “Marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). For the Maker of all has planted in the nature of the body a movement of appetite that stirs the living creature to the desire for children. For it was said to man, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28); and, he says, “He who formed them in the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4; Genesis 1:27). So the desire that looks only to having children is blameless; yet as far as the nature of the act goes, the passion would be fleshly, that is, natural. And so it is with the other blameless passions as well.

So the first man Adam became a living soul; but the second, the one from heaven, that is, Christ, became not a soul but rather a life-giving spirit. For God the Word, who came forth from God the Father and is God by nature, united the human to Himself and lived not a human life like ours, but a life divine, fitting for God, and wholly blameless. For “He committed no sin” (1 Peter 2:22): He kept His mind untouched by unseemly pleasures, and it could not be caught by desires for food. For even though He is seen to have taken food and drink, so that He might be believed to be truly a man like us, still He partook of them freely. For He was in the flesh for our sake, in keeping with the plan of salvation, and yet again above the flesh; for He was a life-giving spirit as God.

But our forefather Adam admitted a desire for food that was not wholly free from blame. For he had been made a living soul, and, overcome by the pleasure of food, he ate from the tree of life, although the divine law forbade him to do so (Genesis 2:17; 3:6).

The First and the Second Adam§28

28That the word “natural,” then, would suggest to us not a difference of nature, but rather a quality of life, of character and of ways, by which one person is held fast by the more earthly and fleshly mind, and another shines out in the freedom of the Spirit, he shows clearly from Adam, the first and the second. For both came to be in earthly bodies; but the quality, so to speak, of the mind, and indeed the choice to live in a different way, showed the one to be natural, and the other to be incomparably better, that is, spiritual.

“But the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and then the spiritual” (1 Corinthians 15:46). In a way he takes hold of the times in which they came to be, and says, “But the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and then the spiritual.” Since he said that the body is sown in the earth natural, he shows plainly that it is not foreign to human nature to pass from a natural mind to a spiritual one, and that the natural would be older than the spiritual. And what proof could there be of such things? “The first man was from the earth, made of dust,” and so on (1 Corinthians 15:47).

The first man, he says, that is, Adam, had been made a living soul, that is, earthly and fleshly; but the second is from heaven. For even though the Word of God became flesh, as the Scriptures say (John 1:14), yet He was [The text is damaged here.] also the One from heaven and “above all,” in the words of John (John 3:31). So both, as I said, were in earthly bodies, but they were not also equal in disposition, that is, in their way of life. For the first was of a fleshly mind, while the second, the One from heaven, was a life-giving spirit.

“And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,” that is, the likeness to Adam, being overcome by passions and weak toward sins, and brought besides under the yokes of corruption, “so let us also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49), that is, of Christ: becoming superior to love of the flesh and to any wish to go on sinning, and having already conquered death itself, which of old was terrible and hard to face and ruled savagely over us as a tyrant.

“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50). By this too he establishes the mystery of the resurrection. For as long as the human body is flesh and blood, that is, mortal and corruptible, it could not inherit the kingdom of God, that is, unending existence. So it is wholly necessary that corruption be swallowed up and what readily withers be done away, and that the body itself be refashioned into incorruption and made radiant with a divine and unspeakable glory; for then it will inherit the kingdom of God.

“Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51). Great and truly heavenly is the mystery, and it was surely revealed to him through Christ who spoke in him (2 Corinthians 13:3), “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

The Renewal of Creation and of Man§29

29For He is also the giver of the good things we expect to come. He will refashion creation and renew the whole universe, and He will set it free from slavery into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21). And if this is true, how could it not be wholly necessary that the one for whose sake creation exists, I mean man, should be renewed together with creation?

Man too had to be seen as new: not tyrannized by the first corruption, not overpowered by fleshly pleasures into sins, but raised instead in incorruption, in strength and in honor, and clothed with a divine glory (1 Corinthians 15:42–43). For the inspired Isaiah also says somewhere, “Your righteousness shall go before you, and the glory of God shall clothe you” (Isaiah 58:8).

And indeed our Lord Jesus Himself plainly affirmed that at the time of the end of this age the dead will come back to life (Matthew 13:40–43; Daniel 12:2), but “those who understand will shine like the brightness of the firmament” (Daniel 12:3). Yet the grace of such honor and glory will not be set before all without distinction. It would rather befit those who have been chosen out from the rest, who have also been conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29).

The Transformation of the Body§30

30For admittedly the bodies of all will come back to life clothed with the grace of incorruption, but not all will be changed (1 Corinthians 15:51). The wicked will remain in the form of dishonor, only so that they may be punished; but the righteous alone will be changed, and, besides the good of incorruption, they will be enriched with the covering of divine glory.

So He Himself, by His own power and a working fitting for God, “will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of His glory” (Philippians 3:21). And what is the body of our lowliness? This body from the earth, held fast by death because of that ancient curse (Genesis 3:17–19), which Christ undid by “becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).

The transformation will not carry us off into some other nature. For we shall be what we are, that is, human beings, but incomparably better: incorruptible and imperishable, and glorified besides.

What the last trumpet that raises the dead is meant to show (1 Corinthians 15:52), the inspired Paul himself will make clear to us when he says (1 Thessalonians 4:16), “For the Lord Himself, with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel…

The Voice That Raises the Dead§31

31…and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). “And the dead will be raised incorruptible” (1 Corinthians 15:52).

So he likens to a trumpet the voice of the archangel and that divine and most awe-inspiring command. And even if it is the archangel who cries out and gives the signal of resurrection to those who lie in the earth, still the voice will be Christ’s. For it is He who raises the dead by His own power, and certainly not the archangel’s voice; for every rational creature is yoked under the Master’s commands.

What true resurrection will there be at all, then, unless we say that the very thing held fast by death will come back to life? Or how shall we say, all but dancing in triumph over corruption, “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54; Isaiah 25:8), and what follows? “O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

It should be known that the blessed Paul cited the passage before us according to the Hebrew text. The Septuagint does not read this way, for it is written in the Prophets, “Where is your penalty, O death? Where is your sting, O Hades?” (Hosea 13:14).

Sin, the Law, and the Victory§32

32“But the sting of death,” he says, “is sin, and the power of sin is the Law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). For the one who holds the sting of death, that is, Satan (Hebrews 2:14), strikes like a scorpion. And he strikes in no other way than through sin. But the Savior has granted us “to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19).

For the sting of death has been destroyed, since sin has been taken away and no longer has the Law as its power. For the Law condemns those who sin; that is why the inspired Paul says that the Law is the power of sin. But this too has been undone in Christ: for sin will not be master over us, because we are not under the Law but under grace (Romans 6:14); and apart from the Law sin is dead (Romans 7:8).

Who, then, supplies us with all these things? Who is the dispenser of righteousness, the giver of freedom, the spring and cause of every good? We shall learn it from the blessed Paul, who says, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57).