Although Paul is not numbered among the twelve apostles who were called by Christ while he dwelt upon earth, he is nevertheless called an apostle, for “apostle” is interpreted “one sent.”
He was sent to preach throughout the world, called by Christ who sat at God’s right hand but at that time descended into the air near the earth. Paul was taught the Gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ, not by a human being, as he himself relates.
Although in humility he says, “I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God,” and in First Timothy, “Jesus came to save sinners, of whom I am the first,” that is, the greatest, nevertheless he truthfully says: “I labored more than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
Concerning his name, it is interpreted “mouth of the trumpet,” “their mouth,” “wonderfully chosen,” “Paul” from pausa, which means rest, or “Paul” as though modicus, little.
There are three opinions concerning this name. Origen says that he always had two names, being called both Saul and Paul. Rabanus asserts that he was first called Saul from the proud Saul, but was afterward called Paul because of his great humility, as though “little,” and this after his conversion.
Bede holds that he was called Paul from the proconsul Sergius Paulus, whom he converted to the faith. He was of the tribe of Benjamin; hence Augustine expounds of him Jacob’s prophecy: “Benjamin, a ravenous wolf,” and so forth, Genesis 49.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
Paul was converted in the first year after Christ’s Passion, that is, in the month of January immediately following Christ’s Passion.
Haimo relates that Paul applied himself to manual labor from cockcrow until the fifth hour, for he practiced the craft of tentmaking. He then devoted himself to preaching and often prolonged his discourse until night. The time that remained was needed for food, sleep, and prayer.
Jerome says in On Illustrious Men that in the twenty-fifth year after the Lord’s Passion—that is, the second year of Nero’s reign—Paul was sent to Rome in chains, as was said above from the Acts of the Apostles. Remaining for two years in free custody, he disputed against the Jews. Afterward Nero released him, and he preached the Gospel in the regions of the West.
When Nero heard that the dispute between Paul and the Jews concerned the law of the Jews and the Christian faith, he did not care much about such a question because he was not yet securely established in the empire. Paul was therefore released. But in the fourteenth year of Nero, on the same day on which Peter was crucified, Paul was beheaded, according to Jerome.
Paul’s wisdom and religion were proclaimed everywhere, and people regarded him as marvelous. He also joined many members of Caesar’s household to himself in friendship, especially Seneca, Nero’s teacher. Hence letters addressed by each to the other are found. Some of Paul’s writings were also read before Caesar and were wonderfully commended by everyone. The Senate likewise held no ordinary but a lofty opinion of him. Pope Linus described his passion.
While Paul was at Rome, he was preaching one day around evening in an upper room. A young man named Patroclus, the king’s cupbearer, climbed into the window of the house so that he could hear Paul more conveniently because of the crowd. He fell asleep, fell from the window to the ground, and died.
When Nero heard this, he grieved greatly over Patroclus and appointed another man to his office. Paul, however, learned what had happened through the Spirit and made it known to those present, commanding them to bring the dead Patroclus to him. When the body was brought, Paul raised him and sent him back to Caesar.
Nero heard that Patroclus was present and wished to enter. Because Nero knew that he had died and feared that he might be an apparition, he did not wish to admit him; but at the urging of his friends, he permitted Patroclus to enter.
Nero said to him, “Patroclus, are you alive?”
He answered, “Caesar, I am alive.”
Nero said, “Who made you live?”
He replied, “The Lord Jesus Christ, King of all ages.”
Nero angrily said, “Then will Jesus dissolve all the kingdoms of the world and reign himself?”
Patroclus answered, “Yes.”
Nero struck him with a blow and said, “Then you too serve that king?”
Patroclus replied, “Indeed I serve the one who made me live.”
Those who stood by reproved the emperor for striking a young man who spoke prudently, and they said that they too served the king who had raised him. Filled with rage, Nero imprisoned all those who had been converted to the faith. He ordered a search for Christians and had them tortured by various torments without any inquiry into their cases.
Among the others, Paul was brought before Nero as the chief teacher of this doctrine. Nero said to him: “O servant of the great King, yet my prisoner, why do you take my soldiers from me and gather them for your lord?”
Paul answered: “I have gathered soldiers for my King not only from your corner of the world but from the whole earth. He lavishly gives them gifts that will never fail and that exclude every need. If you are willing to be his servant, you will be saved. His power is so great that he will come to judge everyone, dissolve the form of this world by fire, and destroy all cities and kingdoms.”
Then Nero, filled with anger, ordered all Christians to be burned with fire and Paul to be beheaded as guilty of treason. While many Christians were being slaughtered, the people made a disturbance and ran to Nero’s palace, crying: “Set a limit, Caesar, to the force of your order. Those whom you destroy are our own people, and they protect the Roman Empire.”
Fearing a revolt of the people, Nero changed the edict: no Christian was to be killed until the matter had been more fully deliberated.
Paul was again presented before Nero. As soon as he saw him, Nero cried: “Take away the evildoer and behead him. Destroy this corrupter of minds for the future; remove from the face of the earth this man who changes human thought.”
Paul answered him: “I shall suffer for a little time today, but I shall live eternally with the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Nero said: “Take off his head, so that he may understand me to be stronger than his king, and let us see whether he can live forever.”
Paul answered: “So that you may know that I live eternally after death, when my head has been cut off I shall appear to you alive. Then you will be able to know that Jesus Christ is Lord of life and death.”
As Paul was being led to the place of execution, the three soldiers escorting him said: “Tell us, Paul, who is that king of yours whom you love so greatly that you choose to die rather than live for his sake, and what reward will you have from him?”
Paul then preached to them about the kingdom of God and the pains of hell so effectively that he converted them. When they asked him to go freely wherever he wished, he answered: “Far be it from me to flee. I am not a fugitive but a lawful soldier of Christ, for I know that I shall pass from this transitory life to eternal life.”
He also told them that, on the day after his death, they should come to the place where the faithful would bury him after his beheading. There they would find Titus and Luke, who would baptize them.
Meanwhile Nero sent two soldiers to determine whether Paul had yet been killed. When the apostle wished to preach to them, they said: “After you have died and risen, then we shall believe your words.”
They hurried to lead him to the place of beheading. As they passed through the Ostian Gate, Paul met a devout disciple of his named Plautilla—or Lemobia, according to Dionysius. She wept and commended herself to his prayers.
The apostle said: “Farewell, Plautilla, daughter of eternal salvation. Lend me the veil with which you cover your head, so that I may cover my eyes with it at the time of my beheading, and I shall return it to you.”
When she had done so, the attendants mocked her for giving him so beautiful a veil, which they said she would lose.
Paul came to the place of his passion, extended his hands toward heaven, and prayed for a long time with tears, facing east. He bade farewell to the assembled brethren, bound his eyes with Plautilla’s veil, extended his neck, made the sign of the cross, and received the stroke of the one striking while saying: “My Lord Jesus, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
When his head was cut from his body, it sounded forth in a clear voice, “Christ Jesus.” That name had been so sweet to him during his life that in his epistles he had named Jesus, Christ, or both together five hundred times.
A stream of milk first flowed from the wound as far as the executioner’s garments, and afterward blood flowed out, for he had been a virgin. An immense light appeared in the air above him.
At the very stroke he unfolded the veil, received the blood in it, wrapped it up, and carried it back to Plautilla.
[Running head: Chapter Five, Folio 188.]
When the ministers of the crime returned to the city, Plautilla said to them at the Ostian Gate: “Where have you left my teacher?”
They answered: “He was beheaded in the Valley of the Wrestlers, with his head covered by your veil.”
She replied: “Not at all. See, Peter and Paul have just entered the city clothed in splendid garments, with shining crowns upon their heads, and Paul has returned my veil to me.” She showed it to them, and many were thereby converted to the faith.
When Nero heard this, he was astonished. While he was speaking about it with the philosophers and his friends behind closed doors, Paul entered and said to him: “See, Caesar, I live as a soldier of the eternal King Jesus Christ. At least now believe, for I am not dead but alive. You, however, will die an eternal death because you unjustly kill God’s saints.”
Nero became like a madman. At his friends’ urging, however, he released Patroclus and the other Christians so that they might go wherever they wished.
On the following day, the soldiers who had been converted by Paul’s words went to the place, as he had told them. They found Titus and Luke and were baptized by them.
John Chrysostom wonderfully exalts Paul in his book On the Praises of Paul, saying: “One would not err at all who called Paul’s soul a distinguished meadow of virtues and a spiritual paradise. What tongue could be found equal to his praises, since one soul possessed every good thing found among human beings, all fully and abundantly—and not only human goodness, but, what is greater, that of the angels?”
He then shows that Paul surpassed the works of the saints of the Old Testament. In offering sacrifice he surpassed Abel, for he offered in sacrifice not lambs and sheep but himself, subjecting the whole world to God.
Noah saved his children and irrational animals in the ark; Paul saved the ark of the Church when it was endangered in the floods of errors, changing many irrational people, like beasts, into rational people.
Everyone admires Abraham because he left his homeland and kindred at God’s command; Paul left not only homeland and kindred but the entire world and the heaven of heavens for Christ.
Isaac is praised for patience when foreigners stopped up his wells; Paul strove to carry up to heaven not those who stopped up a well, but those who buried his own body beneath stones.
In the same way Chrysostom shows that Paul surpassed Jacob in forbearance, Joseph in chastity, Job in patience, Moses in charity, John the Baptist in abstinence, and so forth.
Chrysostom says in the same work: “As iron placed in fire becomes wholly fire, so Paul, set aflame by charity, became wholly charity. As though he were the common father of the whole world, he imitated the parents of everyone in his love for them, and indeed surpassed every carnal and spiritual father in care and affection. He desired to present every human being to God as though he himself had begotten the whole world.”
He also says there: “This obscure wandering craftsman who worked with hides advanced with such power that in scarcely thirty years he subjected to the yoke of truth the Romans, Persians, Parthians, Medes, Scythians, Indians, Ethiopians, Sarmatians, Saracens, and indeed every race of humanity. As fire cast into stubble or hay, he consumed every work of the demons.”
Again: “With the love of Christ he judged himself happier than all angels and archangels. Without it he did not wish to be the companion of dominions or principalities; with this love he preferred to be the lowest, indeed even among the number of the punished, rather than to be without it among the highest and most exalted honors. To depart from this charity was his greatest and singular torment; this was Gehenna to him, this alone was punishment, this was infinite torment.
“He so despised everything we fear that he regarded it as rotten grass. He considered tyrants and peoples breathing fury to be like gnats, and he regarded death, tortures, and a thousand torments as a children’s game.” Thus Chrysostom.
Gregory of Tours relates that a certain man in despair prepared a noose with which to hang himself. A filthy apparition appeared to him and said: “Come, good man, do what you have begun, and make no delay.” Yet while the man did this, he repeatedly said, “Saint Paul, help me,” for he was devoted to him.
Another apparition in human form appeared and said to the filthy spirit: “Flee, wretch; behold, Paul is coming.” When the apparitions thus vanished, the man returned to repentance and cast away the noose.
§ I: On the Teaching of Paul’s Epistles
Certain extracts from the teaching of Paul’s epistles, which are the summit of all sacred theology, are inserted here.
He wrote ten epistles to peoples or nations: one to the Romans; two to the Corinthians; one to the Galatians; one to the Philippians; one to the Ephesians; one to the Colossians; and two to the Thessalonians. He wrote four to disciples: two to Timothy, one to Titus, and one to Philemon.
The prologue to the Epistle to the Romans explains its occasion in this way. The Romans to whom he writes were those who had believed from among Jews and Gentiles. Through pride and contention, each party wished to subordinate the other.
The converted Jews said that they ought to be preferred because God had chosen that people out of all nations as his own, had delivered his law to it, had led it out of Egypt through many miracles, had nourished it with manna in the desert, and at last had brought it into the Promised Land after conquering the nations that inhabited it. In the end, he had assumed flesh from them. The Gentiles, by contrast, had always served idols in ignorance of the true God.
The converted Gentiles answered: “The greater the benefits you recount as having been conferred upon you, the greater the punishments you deserve, since you were utterly ungrateful for them. You despised the commandments of the law, persecuted the holy prophets, and finally crucified the Lord himself. You deserve to be rejected by God because of your hardness. We merited pardon because we did not know God and had no one to show us our error. But as soon as we understood the truth through the apostles and others, we were converted to the faith; therefore we are more loved and dear to God.”
The Apostle interposed himself between these contending parties and resolved their questions in such a way as to affirm that neither had merited salvation through its own righteousness. He showed that both peoples, Jews and Gentiles, had knowingly and gravely sinned: the Jews by transgressing the law, and the Gentiles by failing to worship the God known through natural reason and instead worshiping idols.
Yet both peoples, insofar as they were converted to the faith, obtained pardon and salvation not from their own merits but from God’s mercy. They were therefore equal and ought to live with one another in peace.
In the first chapter, then, he shows that the Gentiles, through their philosophers and poets, knew God by natural investigation, saying: “What is known of God”—that is, what can be known of God by reason—“is manifest to them” through investigation, such as the unity of God’s essence and his attributes: wisdom, power, goodness, and the like.
[Running head: Fifth Title, as printed.]
“For the invisible things of God”—that is, God’s perfections—“are seen and understood from the creation of the world through the things that have been made, as are his eternal power and divinity.”
But because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him but were lifted up in pride and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, adoring idols with the peoples, God therefore gave them over to a reprobate sense. That is, he permitted them to fall into blindness of mind and into errors, so that by following their own passions they committed without reason vices against nature and many other acts worthy of eternal death, yet formed no conscience about even the greatest crimes. These matters are treated there.
In chapters 2 and 3 Paul inveighs against the Jews. Although they surpassed the Gentiles by receiving the law from God, they nevertheless transgressed it, according to the saying, “All have turned aside,” and so forth. Thus all, Jews and Gentiles, sinned and needed the grace of God in order to obtain salvation.
This justification through grace cannot be had from the works of the law or from circumcision. Even concerning Abraham their father, before the law and before he received circumcision, it was said: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” that is, for justification. He believed that Christ, through whom all would be saved, was to be born from him. People are therefore saved not from the law but from faith in Jesus Christ together with grace.
Hence in chapter 5 Paul shows that just as through one man, namely Adam, sin—that is, original sin—entered the world, and through sin came the death of soul and body, which was Adam’s sin when he transgressed God’s command by eating from the forbidden tree.
All who descend from Adam through the union of man and woman were then within him in seminal power, just as an entire great tree is potentially within its seed. Therefore, when the root was corrupted, all branches or fruits derived from him, who was the active principle of human generation, were infected by original sin. Christ alone was excepted, for he was not conceived from male seed but by the Holy Spirit, as in On Consecration, Distinction 4, Most Firmly.
This is what is meant by the statement that all sinned in Adam. Thus the Apostle says that through the obedience of one man, namely Jesus Christ, who was made obedient even to the death of the cross, many will be constituted righteous—that is, justified by his grace. He does not say “all,” because not all believe and receive grace.
This comes about through Baptism properly received, in which Christ’s Passion works especially: the mortification of every vice and the resurrection of the spiritual life of the virtues. Baptism itself signifies this, as is noted at the beginning of chapter 6.
This mortification of vices and justification could not be accomplished through observance of the Old Law. Although that law showed what was sin by means of its commandments, it did not furnish help for observing them and avoiding sin. The result was that a person experienced a greater incitement to sin because a thing was forbidden, according to the saying, “We strive for what is forbidden.”
The law was therefore an occasion of sin, though it was not given for that purpose. In itself it was good, for it taught that evil should be avoided; but the occasion was taken by a person who used it badly.
The Apostle says: “The good that I will, I do not do; but the evil that I hate, that I do.” According to the Gloss, this is understood in two ways.
In one way it is spoken of a person, or in the person of someone established in mortal sin. Such a person sometimes wills to do something good, insofar as natural desire, stirred by reason, urges it; yet while the passion of sin dominates, he does not do the good. Instead, he does the evil of sin that he hates according to reason, knowing it to be evil. Knowledge of the law does not help him in this, but the grace of Christ does.
In another way, the statement can be understood in the person of someone liberated by grace. Such a person also does not do the good he wills—that is, he does not do it so perfectly and without any defect—but instead does the evil that he hates, namely such a defect.
The righteous person would wish to do good without any rebellion of sensuality, any burden, or any suggestion of evil, even in the first movements; but he cannot do this because of concupiscence, that is, the inclination toward evil or sensible things. This is called the law of the members or the law of the tinder of sin.
The Apostle says of it here: “I see another law in my members, concupiscence, fighting against the law of my mind and making me captive in the law of sin that is in my members.” This is also treated in Cause 15, Question 1, at the beginning and in the chapter If Concupiscence.
A person is liberated from this law of the flesh through grace—not so that there is no struggle and inclination toward evil, even as far as venial sins, but so that this law of the tinder does not dominate the person and make him consent to mortal sin. The law did not furnish such strength.
Thus, after the preceding words, the Apostle said: “Unhappy man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?”—that is, from the death of sin into which this concupiscence, existing in the body or sensitive part, leads. He then adds: “The grace of God through Jesus Christ.” This appears in chapter 7.
In the following chapter, chapter 8, he shows that Christ’s grace liberates from condemnation and conquers concupiscence itself, or the law of sin, provided that a person lives according to the spirit—that is, reason or the impulse of grace—and not according to the flesh, that is, sensuality. Sensuality must be mortified in many ways so that it may remain subject.
Lest anyone shrink from such labors, he says: “The sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that will be revealed in us.” Below he adds: “For those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who according to his purpose are called saints,” that is, for those predestined to eternal life.
Augustine says in On Penance, Distinction 2, To Such People, that this is true to such an extent that, even if any of them wander or depart from the path, this causes them to advance toward good, inasmuch as they rise again more humble, cautious, and fervent.
The Apostle adds: “For those whom he foreknew”—namely such people—“he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,” that is, afflicted and mortified as he was. “Those whom he predestined, he also called; those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.”
Here it should be known that God’s foreknowledge properly signifies his eternal prior knowledge of all future events, especially human acts, whether those of the reprobate or of the elect. He knows them all.
Predestination signifies more: not only God’s eternal prior knowledge of human acts, but also the bestowal of final grace at its proper time, when the creature actually exists. Because this occurs only in the elect, God’s predestination concerns only the elect.
Foreknowledge, when taken more strictly as distinguished by opposition from predestination, is commonly used for God’s eternal prior knowledge of the reprobate. Yet this foreknowledge places nothing in the reprobate by which they are compelled to evil.
Calling signifies the preparation for grace that God causes in a person through inspiration. Justification is the infusion of grace itself, by which an ungodly person is made righteous. Glorification is the conferral of glory.
Augustine therefore says: “God’s predestination must always be understood in a good sense. Through it he knows that sin, which is committed by the human will alone, is either to be forgiven with praise of mercy or punished with praise of justice. In our evil works only God’s foreknowledge is to be understood.”
[Running head: Chapter Five, Folio 189.]
“For just as he foreknew and predestined the things that he himself did and that he caused us to do, so he only foreknew, but did not predestine, the things that he neither did himself nor required us to do.” This appears in Cause 23, Question 4, Nebuchadnezzar.
Since God has granted us so many good things of grace and glory, and even gave his Son to death, nothing adverse or afflictive ought to separate us from the love of the one who loved us so greatly. Rather, we ought to labor to procure the salvation of others.
Hence Paul himself says in chapter 9: “I wished to be anathema from Christ for my brethren,” that is, for the conversion of the Jews, whom he calls brethren because he too was from the Jewish people. “Anathema” signifies separation.
A person can be separated from Christ in the present life in two ways. One is with respect to grace, so as to lose grace. Paul must not be understood to have wished this, because it would have been contrary to the order of charity.
The other is with respect to a certain enjoyment, namely the greatest sweetness that the perfect perceive in contemplation and meditation on divine things. In this way Paul desired to be separated from Christ in this world so that he might procure his neighbors’ salvation.
To humble each of the two parties contending against the other—the converts from the Jews and those from the Gentiles—Paul shows that God did not choose the Jewish nation as his own peculiar people from all nations because of the works of their fathers. He gave them the law and was incarnate from them while the other nations fell into idolatry.
Nor did he now call the Gentiles to the faith because of their virtues, since they were idolaters, while the greater part of the Jews fell into unbelief. By his mercy or grace alone, as he willed, he called the former then and the latter now.
Paul therefore introduces the authority of the Lord’s words in Exodus: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,” that is, as I will, by granting prevenient mercy or grace, “and I will show mercy”—that is, the mercy of subsequent grace—“to whom I will have mercy.”
The Apostle therefore adds: “It is not of the one who wills”—that is, merely or principally wills the good, and that meritoriously—“nor of the one who runs”—that is, merely or initially runs, advancing fervently along the way of the commandments—“but of God who shows mercy.”
That a person believes or acts well is principally from God; that he acts badly is from himself, not from God. Thus, when the Lord said to Moses concerning Pharaoh, “I will harden his heart,” it is not understood that God sent the evil of obduracy into Pharaoh’s heart. Rather, because God did not infuse grace and illumination while Pharaoh’s malice impeded it, God is said to have hardened him.
Paul therefore treats there at length the rejection of the Jews and the election of the Gentiles as foretold by the prophets, introducing the authority of the Law and Isaiah.
Moreover, he shows that no one can complain against God—neither the Jewish nor the Gentile people, nor any private person—that God did not give him grace and illumination. God is debtor to no one for any good, while the whole mass of the human race is subject to perdition.
That he takes some from that mass in order to save them must be ascribed solely to his will and mercy, and continuous thanks must be given to his goodness and grace. In giving nothing to others, he withholds nothing owed to them, since they are debtors to damnation.
The Apostle gives the example of a potter who from the same lump of clay makes one vessel beautiful and honorable, to contain precious things, and another base, to contain filth. No other reason can be assigned except the potter’s will.
Thus, as to why some peoples or persons are predestined and others are not, we ought not to seek a reason that cannot be found. There ought instead to be wonder born of reverence and solicitous fear in the person who acts well, lest he fall. Hence the Apostle says: “Do not be high-minded, but fear.”
Below he exclaims: “O depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways”—that is, the reasons for his works cannot be discovered. They are called ways because through them we are led to knowledge of God. He adds: “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” as though to say, no one. These things are found from chapter 9 through chapter 12.
Note what Augustine says in On Rebuke and Grace: “Whoever mocks us when in these matters we cry, ‘How unsearchable are his judgments,’ and so forth, is compelled, as we are, to confess that it is a gift of God when a person ends this life before changing from good to evil. For it is said, ‘The innocent person was taken away lest wickedness change his understanding.’
“Why this is given to some and not to others is unknown. Let them acknowledge with us, according to the Scriptures, that perseverance in good is a gift of God; and let them deign to remain ignorant with us, without murmuring against God, why it is given to some and not to others.” This appears in On Penance, Distinction 4, If from Good, where this matter is treated at length, and in the following section.
Since, therefore, God’s judgments are unknown to us according to the Apostle—namely, who is predestined and who is not, and why this person and not that one—we should observe what Augustine says in Cause 23, Question 4.
Just as prayer, correction, and admonition for people’s conversion and amendment should not cease, although these do not benefit those merely foreknown and although the predestined might be corrected without them, so even a person who is predestined ought not to cease from good works. For, as Gregory says, the predestination of the eternal kingdom was so ordained by the Almighty that the elect should attain it by labor. This appears in Cause 23, Question 4, To Obtain.
The Apostle therefore exhorts everyone to good works in chapter 12. First, he teaches that they should be rightly ordered in themselves, saying: “I beseech you to present your bodies”—that is, your actions, which are done through the body—“as a sacrifice,” through the mortification of vices and passions. An animal offered in sacrifice was slain and called a victim.
He calls the sacrifice “living” through indwelling charity or the spirit of grace, for “it is the Spirit who gives life”; “holy” through persevering continuance, for a thing is called holy from being made firm; “pleasing to God” through fearful humility, according to the Psalm, “The Lord is pleased with those who fear him”; and “your reasonable service” through prudent observance, for prudence is right reason concerning things to be done by us.
Second, Paul instructs them to be well regulated toward others in their offices. He compares the Church’s mystical body to the human body, in which there are many members possessing diverse functions. Each diligently serves the other in a manner suited to the body’s preservation.
So too in the Church, which is one in faith, love, and end, there are many faithful in number, diverse in graces and offices. Each ought diligently to serve the others in his own office.
Hence Paul says: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given by God, whether prophecy or ministry”—namely, the ministry of dispensing temporal and spiritual goods, as prelates do—“or one who teaches,” and so forth. Each should diligently, fervently, and humbly serve others in the grace granted to him. What is found in Distinction 89, Each One, supports this.
He admonishes them not to return evil for evil but good for evil. This is not to be overcome by another person’s evil, but to overcome the evil of a neighbor’s injury by the good of patience and beneficence.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
In chapter 13 Paul teaches that people ought to be subject to their superiors. He says: “Let every soul be subject to higher powers.” This is treated in Cause 11, Question 1, A Great Thing.
The Apostle adds: “There is no power except from God.” Augustine’s Gloss says: “Either by his command,” with respect to good power, “or by his permission,” with respect to evil power. This appears in Cause 23, Question 1, What Is Blamed.
The text continues: “Whoever resists the power”—when it commands just things—“resists the ordinance of God.” It is otherwise if a superior commands something contrary to God, for the rule is that among subordinate powers the higher power must always be obeyed more than the lower. God must therefore be preferred to everyone. This appears in Cause 11, Question 3, Whoever Resists, and Distinction 8, Things Contrary to Custom.
The Apostle adds that everyone must be rendered what is owed to him: honor; fear, that is, obedience; tribute; and temporal tax or revenue.
He thus shows generally that debts must be paid so that a person remains bound in nothing that can be discharged, except the debt of love. A person ought to pay the debt of love by loving and helping his neighbor in such a way that he always remains bound by it. By doing this, he fulfills the whole law and thereby puts on the Lord Jesus, following his way of life perfectly, as Paul exhorts.
In chapter 14, concerning things sacrificed to idols, Paul says two things. First, those who ate such food were not to be judged guilty of sin, because they could eat it without sin when they did so neither in veneration of an idol nor with scandal, but merely as other food.
Second, he shows that scandal to the little ones must be avoided. When some saw the faithful eating things offered to idols, they thought that the faithful did this in veneration of the idol. Although those eating had no such intention, they ought to abstain from such food to avoid scandalizing these people.
This is what Paul means when he says: “If food scandalizes my brother”—that is, the eating of things sacrificed to idols—“I shall never eat such meat.”
He also adds: “Everything that is not from faith is sin.” This is not to be understood as meaning that every act of unbelievers is sin. Rather, as Gratian says in Cause 28, Question 1, § From These Things, Therefore, everything that is not from faith—that is, everything contrary to conscience—builds toward Gehenna, which means that it is mortal sin. According to the Gloss, this is true if it is done against the conscience of a command or prohibition. Alternatively, what is outside faith is called sin because it is useless and fruitless for eternal life.
In chapter 15 Paul admonishes the stronger, that is, the more perfect, to bear with the weakness and imperfection of the weak. He exhorts all, with one mind and one voice, to honor God for the mercy and benefits granted to them, whether they were converted from among the Jews or from among the Gentiles. They should receive one another with honor and charity, just as Christ by his mercy and not their merits received both peoples, as the Scriptures also foretold.
In the final chapter he gives the names of many people whom he greets.
§ II: The Epistles to the Corinthians
Paul wrote two epistles to the Corinthians. They had heard the word of truth from the Apostle and had been converted by him to the faith, having previously been Gentiles. After the Apostle departed from them, however, they were seduced and overthrown by false apostles. Some were led to the wordy eloquence of philosophy and others to the Jewish sect.
By the epistle sent to them from Ephesus, Paul recalls them to the way of salvation and evangelical wisdom, reproving and instructing them about many things.
At the beginning of the epistle he first anoints them so that afterward they may bear his piercing words more patiently. He praises them greatly, saying: “In all things you have been made rich in Christ, so that you lack no grace.” According to Gregory, this was true with respect to the perfect, even though they were few among the Corinthians.
Paul then begins to reprove the divisions and contentions among them and their many other vices, as will appear. This concerns the imperfect or wicked faithful.
They contended with one another about those who had baptized them. They thought that a person baptized by a holier or more celebrated teacher was baptized better and thereby received greater grace. This is false.
Hence Paul says in chapter 3: “Neither the one who plants,” by preaching, “nor the one who waters,” by baptizing, “is anything,” with respect to effecting or giving the power of the sacrament, “but God, who gives the increase,” bestowing power upon the word and sacrament. This appears in Cause 1, Question 1, Just as Christ.
They also gloried in the teaching of the false apostles as though they preached more wisely and eloquently than the apostles. Paul shows that he had refrained from preaching sublime things because of the Corinthians’ incapacity. Since they were untaught, he had given them, like little children, the milk of simple and clear teaching rather than the food of difficult and lofty doctrine.
At that time he had also preached the cross of Christ simply, so that their conversion to the faith would not be attributed to human wisdom and eloquence but to God’s power.
“Yet we speak wisdom”—that is, sublime things concerning divine realities—“among the perfect” who are capable of them. This is not human wisdom but Wisdom incarnate, “which none of the princes of this world knew,” that is, neither the teachers of the Mosaic Law, the Gentile philosophers, nor the demons. “For if they had known,” he adds, “they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.”
The demons did not know with certainty that Christ was God until the cross, although at times they conjectured it. For this reason they cried, “You are the Son of God,” in Luke 4. They are said to have crucified Christ insofar as they incited the Jews to crucify him. The teachers of the Law did not know this because they were blinded by their own malice.
In chapter 3 Paul says: “No one can lay another foundation”—in the spiritual edifice of works leading to beatitude—“besides that which has been laid” by God, namely the Lord Jesus in a living faith in Christ Jesus.
A person builds upon this foundation by teaching or acting. If someone builds gold, silver, and precious stones upon it, this means that he teaches right things for the proper end: gold represents philosophical wisdom; silver, human eloquence; and precious stones, moral maxims and even the moral sayings of the pagans. His building will remain, and he will receive a reward from it.
If someone builds “upon,” that is, alongside this foundation, “wood, hay, and stubble,” he gives frivolous and useless doctrines, such as fables and the like. He himself will be saved because the foundation does not fail in him, “yet so as through fire,” namely purgatorial fire. Here “as” expresses the truth of the matter rather than a mere likeness.
With respect to works, a person builds directly upon the foundation Jesus—that is, upon living faith—gold if he persists in works of contemplation; silver if he serves in the active life through works of mercy; and precious stones if he observes the counsels of perfection. This building will be stable in merit and will receive the reward of recompense.
A person builds alongside, rather than directly upon, the foundation wood, hay, and stubble when living faith remains in him but he commits venial sins, whether more or less serious, for degrees exist even among them. His building—that is, his way of life—will remain upon living faith with respect to merit, but what exists alongside it or together with it, namely the guilt of venial sins, will be destroyed.
He will indeed be saved, but he will pass through purgatorial fire, where those sins will be purged if he carries them with him by failing to repent here. Augustine treats this in Distinction 25, § Elsewhere These Things.
Paul further shows that the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God, who knows that the judgment of the worldly is not what they themselves think according to their own reason.
[Running head: Chapter Five, Folio 90 [read: Folio 190].]
In chapter 4 he shows that prelates and teachers should not be regarded as authors, but as ministers and dispensers of Christ and of his sacred things. For this work it is difficult to find a faithful person; nevertheless, one should not easily be judged unfaithful or unfit for that ministry when this is not manifestly apparent.
For if Paul himself did not judge even himself by confidently considering himself justified, much less should others do so. In all other cases, too, no one should judge the hidden matters of another person’s heart when he cannot judge even himself. This appears in Cause 2, Question 1, Many.
In chapter 5 Paul reproves them severely because they tolerated, without correcting him, one of their number who had converted to the faith but was publicly committing incest with his stepmother.
Paul therefore excommunicates him, delivering him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that is, for the torment of the body. Excommunication had this effect in the primitive Church. This is treated in Cause 11, Question 3, Hear, and Cause 24, Question 1, § But If, where Gratian says that the form of excommunication is handed down here and that only a believer can be marked by a believer, namely with excommunication.
Paul further explains what he had written to them in another epistle, which we do not possess: that they should not associate or converse with fornicators, plunderers, the greedy, and the like. They understood this simply and indiscriminately of all believers and unbelievers, which was nearly impossible for them to observe.
The Apostle therefore says that he did not mean everyone indiscriminately. He did not mean unbelievers, who are outside and whom the Church does not judge; nor did he mean wicked believers who are tolerated. He meant those believers who are “named,” that is, excommunicated, because of such offenses. He commanded them not even to take food with such people but to avoid them as persons excommunicated by the Church. Thus, as Augustine says in Cause 2, Question 1, Many, he calls excommunication a naming.
In chapter 6 Paul reproves them because in lawsuits they dragged other believers before unbelieving judges, and because they fraudulently summoned others to judgment. This is treated in Cause 14, Question 1, § 1.
Because they did not regard certain crimes as sins, or considered them slight, he also shows that they are so grave as to exclude people from God’s kingdom, saying: “Neither fornicators, nor servants of idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate”—that is, those who voluntarily pollute themselves—“nor men who lie with men, nor drunkards, nor the rapacious, nor revilers” who act from hatred, “will possess the kingdom of God.”
Among all these things, they formed the least conscience concerning fornication, namely an unmarried man’s intercourse with an unmarried woman. Paul therefore labors especially to make them detest it.
Through fornication, a person takes his body—which was made a member of Christ because it belongs to the body of the Church—away from Christ and makes it a member of a prostitute. Through other sins a person sins against his soul by staining it; through this sin he also stains the body. He is thus said to sin against the body because he dissolves it improperly.
He is also said through fornication to sin against his own body because he draws not only himself, as in other sins, but also those with whom he sins into perdition. He thus sins against the body of the Church with respect to others as well. Through fornication he also makes himself a temple of the devil, whereas he had formerly been a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Paul therefore says, “Flee fornication,” by avoiding its occasions and rejecting such thoughts when they occur, not by dwelling upon them in order to overcome them by reason, as with other vices, for this arouses concupiscence.
In chapter 7 Paul treats marriage more fully than in any other place in sacred Scripture, for they had asked him certain questions about it.
He first says: “It is good in itself for a man not to touch a woman,” that is, not to know her carnally even by way of marriage. But because not everyone is fit for virginal or widowed continence, “because of fornication”—that is, so that such people may avoid it—“let every man have his own wife and every woman her own husband.” This appears in Cause 32, Question 2, These Things Being So, and the following chapter.
Once marriage has been contracted, “let the husband render the debt to his wife, and the wife to her husband,” when explicitly or implicitly asked, while observing the due circumstances of place, time, and preservation of the subject. This is treated in Cause 32, Question 5, If He Says, and the chapter According to the Words. “Do not defraud one another,” says the Apostle, by denying the marital debt, “except by consent.”
When the married state is compared with widowhood or virginity, widowhood is more perfect and virginity more perfect still. Yet each person has his proper gift from God: one has the gift of continence, which is indeed God’s gift, while another has not this gift but another.
For one who does not perceive himself to possess such continence, “it is better to marry than to burn,” that is, to fall into illicit corruptions by failing to contract marriage. A virgin does not sin by marrying, nor does her father sin by giving her in marriage; neither does a widow sin by contracting marriage with another after her husband’s death. Yet she would act better by not marrying and remaining in virginity, as Paul is believed to have done. Hence his statement, “I wish all to be as I am,” is explained to mean virgins.
A man joined to a wife or a woman joined to a husband thinks about the things of the world and how each may please the other. One who is without a spouse has a greater aptitude for thinking about God and how to please him.
If one of two unbelieving spouses is converted to the faith and the other is not, and if the unbeliever consents to live with the believing spouse without insult to the Creator and without drawing the believer away from the faith received, the Apostle tells the believer not to dismiss the unbeliever so as to take another wife or husband. In the course of time, the unbeliever may be converted to the faith, and the marriage will thus be ratified and that man or woman saved.
But if the unbeliever is unwilling to live with the believer, or is unwilling except with insult to Christ or by drawing the believer into unbelief, then the man or woman converted to the faith may contract marriage with another. This appears in Cause 28, Question 1, If the Unbeliever, with the following chapter.
In chapter 8 Paul says that one should abstain from things sacrificed to idols in the sight of those weak in faith. Otherwise, seeing knowledgeable believers eat such food, they may be scandalized by thinking that those believers do it improperly in veneration of the idol, although this is not their intention; and thus they may be provoked to do the same in veneration of the idol.
In chapter 9 he shows that he could have demanded temporal support for his life from them, since by preaching he had sown spiritual things among them. Divine and natural law declare that a person who labors for another should receive wages. This is treated in Cause 12, Question 1.
Nevertheless, Paul did not wish to use this power but obtained food for himself and his companions through the labor of his hands. He did this lest the Corinthians, being devoted to greed, think that he preached to them for temporal profit and thereby be drawn farther away from his teaching.
He also acted thus lest false preachers, following his example, dare all the more to demand temporal things, which they sought principally from their preaching, if Paul had done so.
He concludes that he did all these things and conformed himself to everyone in matters that were not evil, becoming all things to Jews and Gentiles alike so that he might save all. He then shows by a material example that one must labor to the end and abstain from vices and pleasures in order to obtain the prize of glory and victory over temptations. He presents himself as an example by chastising his body and subjecting it to reason. This appears in Cause 32, Question 5, If Paul.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
In chapter 10 Paul indicates that all the deeds of the people of Israel were figures of the Christian people. Hence their sacraments also signified the sacraments of the New Law.
For this reason he says that they were all baptized in figure when they passed through the waters of the Red Sea while Pharaoh was submerged. There was a figure of Baptism both in its matter and in its effect, the extinguishing of vices, while the cloud signified the grace of the Holy Spirit.
They also received Communion in a sign, namely in the manna and the water flowing from the rock. Thus he says: “They all ate the same spiritual food.”
He then admonishes the Corinthians not to imitate the Israelites in their vices, lest they be punished like them by failing to enter the land of promise, that is, the glory above. Some gave themselves to idolatry, worshiping the golden calf in the desert; others fell into fornication with the Moabites; others tempted God; still others murmured because of weariness from labor. All were punished even temporally.
Paul says that these things were written for our correction. Therefore, if a temptation concerning some vice comes upon us, he says: “Let no temptation seize you except what is human.” That is, even if a person is incited toward sin as far as sensual delight, at least consent should not follow, for then a diabolical temptation would seize and capture him. This is treated in On Penance, Distinction 2, Among These Things.
The Apostle adds: “God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also provide an outcome”—that is, help for overcoming it—“so that you may be able to endure.”
Moreover, he exhorts them: “Do everything for God’s glory, whether you eat,” and so forth. “Be without offense”—that is, scandal—“to Jews, Gentiles, and the Church, just as I please everyone in all things,” namely lawful things, “not seeking what is useful to me but what is useful to the many, so that they may be saved.”
He had previously taught them to abstain from eating things sacrificed to idols when someone was present who might be scandalized about this because of ignorance. “All things are lawful for me,” he says—that is, things prohibited by no law—as in Cause 13, Question 2, § The Preceding. “But not all things are expedient.” Explaining this, he adds: “All things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.” Some things sometimes scandalize others, and such things are not expedient. This appears in Extra, On Vows, A Great Thing.
In chapter 11, after explaining an observance—namely that a woman ought to let the hair of her head grow because it is a sign of subjection and ought to pray with her head veiled, while a man ought not to grow his hair and ought to pray with his head uncovered—Paul reproves the Corinthians for irreverence in receiving the Eucharist. These matters concerning sensuality and reason are also explained morally beyond the literal sense.
He sets forth the institution of this sacrament as revealed to him by Christ, with respect to its matter, form, and cause, namely in memory of Christ’s Passion.
Because Christ’s true body is present in it, Paul says: “Let each person prove himself,” that is, examine his conscience carefully to determine whether he is fit, because free from mortal sin, “and so let him eat of that bread.”
“For whoever eats unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself,” that is, toward his damnation, “not discerning the Lord’s body” from other foods but taking it heedlessly like common food. This is treated in On Consecration, Distinction 2, Whoever Wickedly, and the chapter Fear.
In chapter 12 Paul sets forth all the divisions of graces in the Church, of which one person has one and another person another. He speaks of gratuitously given graces. All the righteous, and no wicked people, possess sanctifying grace, which exists together with charity; but both good and wicked people can possess a gratuitously given grace. This appears in Cause 1, Question 1, Many Operations.
He enumerates nine kinds of gratuitously given grace, bestowed principally for the Church’s benefit: the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, the working of powers, the grace of healings, prophecy, discernment of spirits, the grace of tongues, and interpretation of speech. These are treated in the fourth part, in the title on grace.
All the faithful are one mystical body whose head is Christ. Just as the human body has many members with diverse actions, so in the Church there are many people with diverse graces and offices. Although one member in the body is nobler than another, all are necessary to the body, each serves the other, each rejoices with the other in good things and suffers with it in evil things, and one does not despise another. Rather, the less honorable members receive more abundant honor.
It ought to be so in the Church, in which, says the Apostle, “God has placed first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then powers; afterward graces of healing, assistance, governance, kinds of tongues, and interpretation of speech.” Not everyone possesses all these offices and graces alike, but different people possess different ones.
“Desire the better gifts,” he adds, “and I shall show you a still more excellent way,” namely charity. Why charity is called a way is treated in On Penance, Distinction 2, This Is.
In chapter 13 charity is commended more highly than in any other passage of sacred Scripture. First, Paul shows its necessity. Other gifts—wisdom; eloquence, called the tongues of angels and human beings; faith together with miracles; the distribution of alms; and martyrdom—profit nothing without charity for obtaining eternal life. This appears in On Penance, Distinction 2, But If Anyone.
Second, he expresses its fruitfulness or usefulness, because charity commands all the virtues and gives form to their acts so that they are meritorious: “Charity is patient, is kind,” and so forth.
Third, he describes its permanence, because “it never fails.” This appears in On Penance, Distinction 2, Charity. Yet in the future the gift of tongues, prophecy, knowledge, and faith will be destroyed with respect to the manner in which they now exist.
Finally, among the theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—which surpass all the others in perfection, charity is the greatest.
In chapter 14, some contended with one another about which was the greater gift, prophecy or the kinds of tongues. Many considered the gift of tongues greater. The Apostle declares the contrary to be true: prophecy is greater because greater usefulness can come from it to the Church. Unless someone interprets what a person speaking in a foreign language says, no benefit comes from it to the hearers.
He concludes that they ought not to contend about such matters: “Let all things be done among you honorably and according to order.” And “the ignorant person will be ignored,” that is, rejected by God. This is understood of ignorance of divine and natural law concerning things necessary for salvation. It is treated in Distinction 37, the final section, and more fully in Cause 1, Question 4, the final section in the Gloss.
In chapter 15 Paul makes manifest that Christ died and rose, appearing to the disciples many times, and that his resurrection is the cause of our resurrection. From Christ’s resurrection he argues that the future resurrection of our bodies will occur. Some denied it because they considered the reduction of bodies to ashes.
He guards them against that false opinion, saying: “Do not be deceived. Evil communications corrupt good morals.” He proves the future resurrection in many ways, especially through the example of a grain that is sown. Once it is dead in the earth, it rises in a certain manner when it springs forth.
[Running head: Chapter Five, Folio 191.]
There Paul also sets forth the four endowments of glorified bodies, saying: “It is sown in corruption,” that is, corruptible; “it will rise in incorruption,” that is, impassible. “It is sown in dishonor,” that is, obscure; “it will rise in glory,” namely in the greatest brightness. “It is sown in weakness,” that is, heavy; “it will rise in power,” that is, agility. “It is sown an animal body,” that is, gross; “it will rise a spiritual body,” that is, in subtlety.
Just as one star differs from another in brightness because one is more luminous than another, so it will be in the resurrection of the dead, because one person will be more glorious than another in soul and body.
He adds that although all, both good and evil, will rise, not all will be changed from present misery into the aforesaid glory, “for flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God,” that is, those who live carnally will not possess it.
This resurrection will occur at the end of the world, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. For the trumpet will sound”—that trumpet being divine power manifesting itself in this act—and all the dead will then rise together.
In the final chapter Paul urges them to make collections, that is, alms, for the faithful gathered at Jerusalem who lived in common. Thus, when he came to them, they would not then have to prepare the gifts, but he would send them already prepared to Jerusalem or carry them himself.
Finally, he strengthens them, saying: “Watch; stand in the faith; act courageously and be strengthened; and let all your things be done in charity.” He commends Timothy to them, if he should come, so that they may treat him kindly. He gives the greetings of many and says: “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
§ III: The Epistle to the Hebrews
Paul wrote one epistle to the Hebrews, which is placed last. In ancient times it was doubted whether it was his. Some attributed it to another author because its manner differs from his other epistles, since his name is not placed at the beginning as it is in the others. But the Church now affirms with certainty that it is Paul’s.
The reason assigned for his silence about his name at the beginning is that his name was hated by the Hebrews. Lest they recoil from such teaching upon hearing his name at the outset, he withheld it.
In the epistle Paul shows Christ’s dignity, because he is both God and man. He declares the divinity when he says: “In these last days God has spoken to us in his Son, through whom he also made the ages, who, being the brightness of his glory and the figure of his substance, bears all things”—that is, sustains them—“by the word of his power.”
He shows the excellence of Christ’s humanity united to the deity, saying: “He appointed him heir of all things,” that is, Lord. “Making purification of sins,” namely of the human race through his Passion, “he sits at the right hand of majesty on high,” having risen and ascended to the higher degree of glory. “He was made so much better than the angels as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs.”
Paul proves that Christ surpasses the angels insofar as he is man, because what is said to Christ in the Psalm was never said to any angel: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” Nor was it said to any angel: “Sit at my right hand.”
Neither was that said of any angel which is said of Christ: “You made him,” namely Christ insofar as he is man, “a little lower than the angels” through his assumed mortality; “you crowned him with the glory of the Resurrection and the honor of the Ascension and appointed him over the works of your hands. All things,” and so forth.
God did not subject the world to angels. Indeed, it is said to the angels: “Let all his angels worship him,” namely Christ. Concerning the firmness of his kingdom the Psalm says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”
Those who did not hear and obey the angel—that is, the law given through an angel—were punished. Much more will those be punished who do not hear the voice of evangelical teaching.
This evangelical law, “when it began to be declared by the Lord Jesus, was confirmed to us by those who heard him, God bearing witness by signs and wonders, various powers, and distributions of the Holy Spirit.”
Because Christ took hold not of angels but of Abraham’s seed—that is, human nature—in order to liberate it, the Apostle says in chapter 2: “It was fitting that he be made like his brethren in all things,” namely by assuming penal conditions, yet without sin, “so that he might be found merciful. For in that wherein he himself suffered and was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.”
In chapter 3 Paul shows that Christ was worthy of greater glory than Moses, in whom the Hebrews gloried so greatly. Moses, as a faithful servant of God, lived in God’s house, that is, the synagogue; but Christ, as Son, lived in God’s house, that is, the Church.
He therefore tells them to attend to what the Psalm says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts,” and so forth. Just as those in the desert who were hardened and did not obey the Lord’s voice did not enter the Promised Land, as he swore to them, so now those who do not hear the voice of Christ’s teaching will be excluded from the kingdom and from rest.
“Having, therefore, a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold the confession” of faith. “For we do not have a high priest unable to suffer together with our infirmities, but one tempted in all things according to our likeness, without sin.”
In chapter 5 Paul proves that Jesus is truly the great high priest because he possesses the conditions of that office. He says: “Every high priest taken from among human beings is appointed for human beings in the things that pertain to God, so that he may offer gifts,” namely oblations, “and sacrifices for sins. He must be able to suffer together with those who are ignorant and err, because he himself also is surrounded by infirmity. Nor may anyone take the honor” of the pontificate “to himself, but only one who is called by God, as Aaron was.” All these things are found in Christ.
Beginning with the final condition: “Christ did not glorify himself so as to become high priest,” but God the Father glorified him, saying to him: “You are my Son,” and so forth, and: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
He was taken from among human beings because he was born of the Virgin. He offered prayers and sacrifice when, “in the days of his flesh,” that is, mortality, he offered himself in sacrifice upon the cross, praying for the salvation of the human race with tears and saying, “I thirst,” namely for the salvation of human beings. “He was heard because of his reverence,” in the salvation that followed from it.
He also knows how to suffer together with others, for “he learned obedience from the things he suffered, and he was made the cause of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
In chapter 6 Paul says to those who do not remain in grace but relapse: “It is impossible,” that is, very difficult, “for those who were once enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have fallen away, to be renewed again to penance, since they crucify the Son of God again for themselves and hold him up to mockery.”
In chapter 7 he shows how Christ is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, that is, like him. According to Genesis 14, Melchizedek was “priest of the Most High God” and “king of Salem,” that is, king of righteousness and peace. He is read to be “without father and without mother” insofar as his genealogy is not found; neither his beginning nor his end is found. All these things befit Christ: he is King of righteousness and peace, without father on earth and without mother in heaven, and, according to his divinity, has neither beginning nor end.
[Running head: Sixth Title.]
Paul proves that Christ’s priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek—that is, a priesthood like his—is worthier and more perfect than the Levitical priesthood of the Old Law.
He proves this because Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings, met Melchizedek and gave him tithes of everything, while Melchizedek blessed Abraham.
At that time Levi, from whom the Levitical priesthood—which belonged only to that tribe—was to descend, was in Abraham’s loins according to seminal power and principle. Thus, when Abraham offered tithes to Melchizedek and received his blessing, Levi and the Levitical priesthood offered them potentially.
The one who receives tithes and gives a blessing is greater and worthier than the one from whom he receives them, namely the one who is blessed. The lesser yields to the greater and the imperfect to the perfect. Therefore, when Christ’s priesthood arrived, the Levitical priesthood ceased.
From this follows what the Apostle adds: “When the priesthood is transferred, the law also must be transferred.” The chief and worthiest element in that law, as in every law, is the priesthood, which pertains to divine worship and religion and is like the foundation of every law.
But the Levitical priesthood is transferred and fails because Christ’s priesthood succeeds it. Therefore, with the coming of the evangelical law, the former law must also cease with respect to its ceremonial precepts.
It fittingly ceases, for that law brought nothing to perfection. It was a figure of the evangelical law and therefore ought to cease when the figure is fulfilled.
The imperfection of that law and priesthood is also shown because no sacrifice of that law sufficed to purge sins; new sacrifices were therefore made every day. Those priests were sinners who also had to offer for their own sins, and they died.
But Christ, by the one sacrifice of his Passion, cleansed his people from their offenses. Because this high priest is holy, innocent, undefiled, and separated from sinners, he did not need to offer for himself, and he lives forever.
In chapter 8 Paul declares, by the authority of the prophet Jeremiah, that the evangelical law and a new testament were to come after the old: “Because they did not remain in my testament,” namely by observing the Old Law, “I neglected them, says the Lord. For this is the testament that I shall establish with the house of Israel after those days, placing my laws in their mind,” and supply, “I shall write them in their hearts,” namely the evangelical precepts, and so forth.
In chapter 9 Paul shows that what was chief and figurative in the Old Law—the tabernacle, and afterward Solomon’s Temple, divided into the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies with the things contained in them—was fulfilled through Christ and the Church.
The chief office or most solemn act performed by the high priest was his entry once a year into the Holy of Holies with the blood of goats and calves offered in sacrifice. All these things were fulfilled through Christ and through the Church signified by the tabernacle, which is divided into the Church militant and the Church triumphant.
“For Christ,” says the Apostle, “appearing as high priest of the good things to come, entered into the Holy of Holies,” opening the kingdom of heaven, “through blood”—not the blood of animals but his own—“having obtained eternal redemption.”
This sacrifice of his Passion was so perfect that it sufficed when offered once. It avails not merely for cleansing the flesh as did the sacrifice of the ancient law—that is, for removing certain impediments that prohibited entry into the Temple and certain other things—but cleanses human consciences from dead works, that is, sins. This occurs in the proper reception of the sacraments of the New Law, in which the power of the Passion remains.
In chapter 10 Paul shows that the ancient law was a shadow and figure of the New Law, and that sins could not be taken away through those sacrifices but were taken away through Christ and his Passion, according to the Psalm: “Sacrifice and oblation,” namely of the Old Law, “you did not desire; but you prepared a body for me,” namely for enduring the Passion, and so forth.
The old law must therefore cease with respect to its ceremonial precepts when the evangelical law of faith in Christ has been introduced.
“Therefore, brethren,” Paul says, “having confidence in entering the holy places through the blood of Christ, who inaugurated for us a new and living way, let us draw near with a true heart and in fullness of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience.”
“A person who makes void the law of Moses dies without mercy upon the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think is deserved by one who has trampled upon the Son of God and regarded the blood of the testament as defiled,” namely by living wickedly?
In chapter 11 Paul defines faith and commends it wonderfully, showing that from the beginning, from Abel and through all the fathers of the Old Testament, every magnificent work was done through faith.
He defines it by saying: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen.” That is, it is a certain virtue or light infused by God that possesses the substance or beginning of the things for which we hope, namely the future beatitude for which we ought to hope. It is a proof convincing the mind—that is, a certain means from which a conclusion is inferred—so that it assents to things that do not appear to us through sense or necessary natural reason.
In chapter 12 he says: “Having so great a cloud of witnesses set over us,” those of whom he had spoken above as approved by the testimony of faith, “laying aside every weight and the sin that surrounds us, through patience we take care [read: let us run] toward the contest set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and sits at God’s right hand.
“Therefore consider him who endured such contradiction from sinners against himself, so that you may not grow weary and fail in your souls. For you have not yet resisted sin to the point of bloodshed.” He leads them to this patience by many authorities and arguments.
In chapter 13, the final chapter, he exhorts them to brotherly charity, hospitality by the example of the fathers, honor in marriage, avoidance of greed, obedience to those who preside, and resistance to being drawn away from truth by various and foreign doctrines.
“For it is best to strengthen the heart by grace,” not by legal ceremonies. “For here we have no abiding city, but we seek the city to come. Through him,” namely Jesus, “let us always offer to God a sacrifice of praise.”