Testing God and the End of the Age

Let him take part; for people do not join together with those in whom there is no agreement, but with those who join together in part. Since it also seems that the gospel does not use law, I have imitated its administration, so that I may participate in that which it intends to administer. Since it also seems that the gospel uses law, I have imitated its administration; for what that one said, this I administer.

He does not say that one of us is preferred—for if people had not recognized themselves by looking toward the difficult thing—but rather that the image has been taken up by the nations in response to what was said to him. All, he says, as if they are contending in this stadium of life: Jews according to law, Greeks according to error, but one is the word of the truth, the one winning and receiving the prize. Therefore run so that you are not left behind with the others.

What great thing, he says, if you exercise self-control over the flesh for the sake of the brother? Everything must be exercised by the one contending, from passion, from glory, and from all the rest; those indeed so that they might receive a perishable crown, but we an incorruptible one. He did not say this simply, but correcting those making it their business to philosophize for the sake of gluttony, supposing that the sacrificial food is not sacrificial food. He did not say this simply, but correcting those making it their business to eat the sacred things without distinction in faith.

The divinely inspired Paul brings the future truth into the midst by pre-figuring the types and the shadows from the old, so that he might bring the Corinthians to sobriety from the old tradition. For he says: those baptized into Moses, who was a type of Christ, in the cloud and in the sea, and having eaten the manna, the spiritual food, and having drunk from the rock the spiritual drink, were destroyed in the wilderness, turning toward outbursts, and fornication, and idolatry, because they insulted the type and the shadow; why then should not those sinning into the truth itself suffer? Since they were saying: 'To me, an idol is nothing; for I thank and I eat,' this, he says, is to test. For what he did not command...

By what you do, you are testing rather than believing. He says this to those saying, 'To me, there is no idol; for I thank God and eat.' This is to test. For whatever the Lord has not commanded, when you do it as one believing in Him, you are testing rather than believing.

He says that the arrival of Christ has reached you, with which there shall no longer be commandment, nor law, nor prophets; for he says they are ends, not the end of the last generation at which the fulfillment of the world shall be, but the final political order in Christ, upon which the fullness of the ages shall meet. Because of all these things, this one was being prepared. He came for the purpose for which he was being prepared; for all things which he spoke regarding turning them away from idolatry were being said and prepared.

From this it is evident that those who believed in Him endured a certain displeasure from the citizens. He says that they were to be tested in such a way as to endure. Do not look at the idols as if they existed, but look at the mind, through which they sacrifice to demons and not to God; for what is happening becomes as a denial of God. Since it was written that God said through Moses to them, 'You have made me jealous over not-gods, you have provoked me in their idols,' and the Corinthians were eating sacrificially to idols, he says: Do we provoke the Lord? Or are we stronger than He? He showed through this that the Lord does not want us to eat sacrificially to idols. Therefore, he says, do not want what the Lord does not want, as if you were stronger or more wise than He. Or do we move Him to zeal and provoke Him? For it is said by Moses: 'You have made me jealous over not-gods, you have provoked me in their idols.' He says these things because the Corinthians were eating sacrificially to idols.

Since it was likely that they were being precise and no longer dared even to buy food for fear of hearing, 'You bought idol-meat,' he consoles that fear. He speaks of a conscience, not the conscience of the one knowing that there is no idol, but the conscience of the one seeing the one buying...