Tertullian — Commentary on Scripture

1 Corinthians 5:10

No doubt he used to please them by celebrating the Saturnalia and New-year's day! [Was it so] or was it by moderation and patience? by gravity, by kindness, by integrity? In like manner, when he is saying, "I have become all things to all, that I may gain all," does he mean "to idolaters an idolater? ""to heathens a heathen? ""to the worldly worldly? "But albeit he does not prohibit us from having our conversation with idolaters and adulterers, and the other criminals, saying, "Otherwise ye would go out from the world," of course he does not so slacken those reins of conversation that, since it is necessary for us both to live and to mingle with sinners, we may be able to sin with them too.

On Idolatry

1 Corinthians 5:10

All waves thereof whatsoever suffocate; every eddy thereof sucks down unto Hades. Let no one say, "Who will so safely foreguard himself? We shall have to go out of the world!" As if it were not as well worth while to go out, as to stand in the world as an idolater! Nothing can be easier than caution against idolatry, if the fear of it be our leading fear; any "necessity" whatever is too trifling compared to such a peril.

On Idolatry

1 Corinthians 5:11

If these things are so, it is certain that believers contracting marriages with Gentiles are guilty of fornication, and are to be excluded from all communication with the brotherhood, in accordance with the letter of the apostle, who says that "with persons of that kind there is to be no taking of food even." Or shall we "in that day" produce (our) marriage certificates before the Lord's tribunal, and allege that a marriage such as He Himself has forbidden has been duly contracted? What is prohibited (in the passage just referred to) is not "adultery; "It is not "fornication.

To His Wife Book II

1 Corinthians 5:11

Since, however, he quotes with especial care, as a proof in his domain, a certain companion in misery (suntalai/pwron), and associate in hatred (summisou/menon), with himself, for the cure of leprosy, I shall not be sorry to meet him, and before anything else to point out to him the force of the law figuratively interpreted, which, in this example of a leper (who was not to be touched, but was rather to be removed from all intercourse with others), prohibited any communication with a person who was defiled with sins, with whom the apostle also forbids us even to eat food, forasmuch as the taint of sins would be communicated as if contagious: wherever a man should mix himself with the sinner.

Against Marcion Book IV

1 Corinthians 5:12

Dogs, sorcerers, fornicators, murderers, out!" -of course, such as do not act according to the precepts; for to be sent out is the portion of those who have been within. Moreover "What have I to do to judge them who are without? " had preceded (the sentences now in question).

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 5:12

Whence the apostle withal judges, and that in a case of fornication, that "such a man must be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh; " chiding them likewise because "brethren" were not "judged at the bar of the saints: " for he goes on and says, "To what (purpose is it) for me to judge those who are without? ""But you remit, in order that remission may be granted you by God.

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 5:13

But, as the argument now stands, since what is eternal can be deemed evil, the evil must prove to be invincible and insuperable, as being eternal; and in that case it will be in vain that we labour "to put away evil from the midst of us; " in that case, moreover, God vainly gives us such a command and precept; nay more, in vain has God appointed any judgment at all, when He means, indeed, to inflict punishment with injustice.

Against Hermogenes

1 Corinthians 5:13

It does not matter that he also said, "For the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord," since both in the destruction of the flesh and in the saving of the spirit there is, on His part, judicial process; and when he bade "the wicked person be put away from the midst of them," he only mentioned what is a very frequently recurring sentence of the Creator.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 5:13

"Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness; " for (in the Psalm it is written, ) "With the holy man thou shalt be holy, and with the perverse thou shalt be perverse; " and, "Thou shalt put away evil from among you." Again, "Go ye out from the midst of them; touch not the unclean thing; separate yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.

Against Marcion Book V

1 Corinthians 6:1

Whence the apostle withal judges, and that in a case of fornication, that "such a man must be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh; " chiding them likewise because "brethren" were not "judged at the bar of the saints: " for he goes on and says, "To what (purpose is it) for me to judge those who are without? ""But you remit, in order that remission may be granted you by God.

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 6:1

And she will have to go forth (from her house) by a gate wreathed with laurel, and hung with lanterns, as from some new consistory of public lusts; she will have to sit with her husband ofttimes in club meetings, oft-times in taverns; and, wont as she was formerly to minister to the "saints," will sometimes have to minister to the "unjust." And will she not hence recognise a prejudgment of her own damnation, in that she tends them whom (formerly) she was expecting to judge? whose hand will she yearn after? of whose cup will she partake? What will her husband sing to her, or she to her husband? From the tavern, I suppose, she who sups upon God will hear somewhat! From hell what mention of God (arises)? what invocation of Christ? Where are the fosterings of faith by the interspersion of the Scriptures (in conversation)? Where the Spirit? where refreshment? where the divine benediction? All things are strange, all inimical, all condemned; aimed by the Evil One for the attrition of salvation!

To His Wife Book II

1 Corinthians 6:2

The handmaid of God dwells amid alien labours; and among these (labours), on all the memorial days of demons, at all solemnities of kings, at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, she will be agitated by the odour of incense. And she will have to go forth (from her house) by a gate wreathed with laurel, and hung with lanterns, as from some new consistory of public lusts; she will have to sit with her husband ofttimes in club meetings, oft-times in taverns; and, wont as she was formerly to minister to the "saints," will sometimes have to minister to the "unjust." And will she not hence recognise a prejudgment of her own damnation, in that she tends them whom (formerly) she was expecting to judge? whose hand will she yearn after? of whose cup will she partake? What will her husband sing to her, or she to her husband? From the tavern, I suppose, she who sups upon God will hear somewhat! From hell what mention of God (arises)? what invocation of Christ?

To His Wife Book II

1 Corinthians 6:2

For avoiding it, remedies cannot be lacking; since, even if they be lacking, there remains that one by which you will be made a happier magistrate, not in the earth, but in the heavens.

On Idolatry

1 Corinthians 6:3

Sure they were that all ostentation, and ambition, and love of pleasing by carnal means, was displeasing to God. And these are the angels whom we are destined to judge: these are the angels whom in baptism we renounce: these, of course, are the reasons why they have deserved to be judged by man.

On the Apparel of Women Book I

1 Corinthians 6:3

But when the comparison is challenged with an angel, I am compelled to maintain that the head over all things is the stronger of the two, to whom the angels are ministers, who is destined to be the judge of angels, if he shall stand fast in the law of God-an obedience which he refused at first.

Against Marcion Book II

1 Corinthians 6:3

" "Know ye not that we are to judge angels? " Again, of how open censure (does) the free expression (find utterance), how manifest the edge of the spiritual sword, (in words like these): "Ye are already enriched! ye are already satiated! ye are already reigning!" and, "If any thinks himself to know, he knoweth not yet how it behaves him to know I" Is he not even then "smiting some one's face," in saying, "For who maketh thee to differ? What, moreover, hast thou which thou hast not received? Why gloriest thou as if thou have not received? " Is he not withal "smiting them upon the mouth," (in saying): "But some, in (their) conscience, even until now eat (it) as if (it were) an idol-sacrifice.

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 6:3

Grieve and groan he must of necessity over the fact that, by the grant of pardon, so many works of death in man have been overthrown, so many marks of the condemnation which formerly was his own erased. He grieves that that sinner, (now) Christ's servant, is destined to judge him and his angels. And so he observes, assaults, besieges him, in the hope that he may be able in some way either to strike his eyes with carnal concupiscence, or else to entangle his mind with worldly enticements, or else to subvert his faith by fear of earthly power, or else to wrest him from the sure way by perverse traditions: he is never deficient in stumbling-blocks nor in temptations.

On Repentance

1 Corinthians 6:9

Come, now; who in the world has (ever) redintegrated one who has been "marred" by God (that is, delivered to Satan with a view to destruction of the flesh), after subjoining for that reason, "Let none seduce himself; " that is, let none presume that one "marred" by God can possibly be redintegrated anew? Just as, again, among all other crimes-nay, even before all others-when affirming that "adulterers, and fornicators, and effeminates, and co-habitors with males, will not attain the kingdom of God," he premised, "Do not err" -to wit, if you think they will attain it.

On Modesty

1 Corinthians 6:11

" And if so, the apostle too was in error when he said in his epistle, "Ye were at one time darkness, (but now are ye light in the Lord: )" and, "We also were by nature children of wrath; " and, "Such were some of you, but ye are washed." The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant with truth.

A Treatise on the Soul

1 Corinthians 6:13

But why is Christ our passover, if the passover be not a type of Christ, in the similitude of the blood which saves, and of the Lamb, which is Christ? Why does (the apostle) clothe us and Christ with symbols of the Creator's solemn rites, unless they had relation to ourselves? When, again, he warns us against fornication, he reveals the resurrection of the flesh. "The body," says he, "is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body," just as the temple is for God, and God for the temple.

Against Marcion Book V