Fragmenta ex commentariis in epistulam i ad Corinthios

I myself often used to inquire within myself why on earth, when there were prophets of God and false prophets, the false prophets were held in high esteem by their kings rather than the prophets; and the books of the false prophets were neither written down nor preserved among the people, while those of the prophets, though they were condemned, hated, and suffered what we know, came into public view and are honored. What was the origin of these things? I speak, taking my starting point from the apostle: that there was a gift among the people—just as prophesying, so also discerning prophets. For you can all prophesy one by one; there was then an abundance of those speaking and of those permitted to speak. For this reason the apostle permitted all to speak in the church; almost, he even permitted women to speak, had he not said what follows. [Let your women keep silent in the churches, for it is not permitted for them to speak, but to be in subjection, as the law also says. And if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is shameful for women to speak in church.] [Of Origen] For as all were speaking and able to speak, if a revelation should come to them, he says, Let the women keep silent in the churches. But those who were not of this command—

disciples of women, disciples of Priscilla and Maximilla, not of Christ, the bridegroom's husband. But let us be fair-minded and also respond to their plausible arguments. They say there were four daughters of Philip the evangelist, and they prophesied. But if they prophesied, what is absurd about our women also prophesying, as they say? But we will refute this. First, by saying: "Our women prophesied"—show the signs of prophecy in them. Second, even if the daughters of Philip prophesied, they did not speak in the churches; for we do not have this in the Acts of the Apostles. Nor even in the Old Testament: Deborah is testified to be a prophetess, and Miriam the sister of Aaron took the timbrel and led the women. But you would not find that Deborah addressed the people publicly like Jeremiah and Isaiah; you would not find that Huldah, being a prophetess, spoke to the people, but to one person who came to her. But also in the Gospel it is written that Anna was a prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher; but she did not speak in the church. So that even if a woman is shown by a prophetic sign to be a prophetess, still she is not permitted to speak in the church. When Miriam the prophetess spoke, she was leading certain women; for it is shameful for a woman to speak in the church, and I do not permit a woman to teach—not simply that, but nor to exercise authority over a man. And I will establish this from another place as well, even if that statement is more safely taken concerning a woman not becoming a leader over a man in speech: an older woman in holy demeanor, teachers of good, so that they may instruct the young women—not simply so that they may teach.

Let women be good teachers too, but not so that men sit and listen to women, as though there were a lack of men able to proclaim the word of God. But if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church. It seems to me that "their own husbands" is not to be referred only to those who are married; for virgins either will speak in church or will have no one to teach them, and widows likewise. But perhaps "their own husbands" means, as it were, also the brother and the relative and the son? Once and for all, simply, let a woman inquire of her own man, "man" being used in the generic sense, in contrast to "woman"; for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church, whatever she may speak, even if she speaks wonderful things, even if holy things, provided only that it comes out of a woman's mouth. "A woman in church" is spoken of, clearly, in the sense of the shameful, as a reproach against the whole church. [Or did the word of God go out from you, or did it come to you only?] Since this disorder existed in Corinth along with the other sins. This, then, is what he says: that God sent his word into the world. Did the truth, then, and the ecclesiastical canon come to you Corinthians only? [If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things I write to you are the Lord's commandments; but if anyone is ignorant, let him be ignorant.] [Of Origen] In order, then, that we may recognize the things of God, let us entreat the one who gives gifts, that he may give us a prophetic gift and make us spiritual by the ruling Spirit.

And so also in judging what things are of God and what things are not his. For the one who has been deprived of this grace is not able to understand; therefore he added, If anyone is ignorant, let him be ignorant. [Now I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, through which you are also saved, with what word I preached to you, if you hold fast, unless you believed in vain.] [Of Origen] He calls "gospel" that which he preaches, for this is what he also handed down; and this one stands in the gospel who has his own soul set upon it, as upon a vessel, through which he is also saved. He says that the one who does not hold fast the word of the gospel has believed in vain, but who heard without reason and by chance and not in an examined way. [Of Origen] The Jews have not stood in the gospel, since they did not receive Jesus; those from the heresies stand badly, not understanding the gospel but interpreting it in their own way; those who sin have not stood, not living according to the gospel. Who then have stood in the gospel but those who received it and accepted it and live according to it? But if the phrase With what word I preached to you, if you hold fast is understood, and what follows is understood reasonably for these, Unless you believed in vain, we shall know that it is impossible for the one who has believed in vain to have so believed in a false thing; but to have believed, yet in the true, is not a work; but to believe in judgment; those who believe before the time and in the time of trial give up, believe in vain.

And yet they have not believed falsely, but in the truth—since, however, they have not believed firmly, for this reason they are abandoned in the time of trial. For one who believes rightly will not fall. [And that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.] [Of Origen] He says that the Lord appeared to the twelve after the resurrection; for it was likely that Matthias was also present, who was appointed an apostle in place of Judas. [For I am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.] [Of Origen] Conscious within himself of the sins from which he had been set free, he says, I am not fit to be called an apostle. [But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me did not prove empty, but I labored more abundantly than them all—yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me.] Having said that his grace did not prove empty toward me, he taught that those who live unworthily of the grace received it as empty. But the grace does not labor; rather it must be understood thus: Not I have done these things, but the grace that is with me. [Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.] [Of Origen] Since all the apostles were fully assured concerning the resurrection of Christ from the dead, the proof is firm; therefore we say the same things—for you also believed in this way. [But if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. Origen. The resurrection of Christ is clear, having taken place with the flesh he had, from the passage set before us. But those who hold different opinions wish to allegorize the resurrection of men. Let them allegorize also the resurrection of the Savior, in their impiety wrongly treating the passage as allegory. He calls Manichaeans those who say that one who is set free from sins has thus risen from the dead. But if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is empty, and your faith is also empty. Origen. Since neither is the preaching empty nor the faith empty, it is clear that Christ has been raised. We have noted these things to show that even if Paul knew dialectical arguments, he used them naturally; for the dialectical art was embodied from nature and custom by those who philosophize. And we are found also to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if indeed the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised. Origen. If one who says that Christ has risen bears false witness against God, then so does everyone who says that there is a resurrection of the dead. But if Christ, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, has risen, it is clear that the dead are also raised. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, through a man also comes the resurrection of the dead. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.

But each in his own order. [Origen.] Since those from the heresies who claim the faith of the church and mock it as the faith of fools nullify it in deed, even if not in word, saying that the resurrection does not take place as the church believes—see how they must be answered from this apostolic phrase and from countless others. Christ has risen from the dead, or not? But on this point every heresy has agreed. If Christ has risen from the dead, and he is the firstborn from the dead, and no one is firstborn in a different kind, it is necessary that his resurrection be of the same kind as the resurrection of those who rise. For example: Reuben is firstborn, being a son of Jacob, his brothers being of the same kind; for Reuben is not of one nature and Simeon or Levi and the rest of another nature. And with the other firstborn it is the same. If, then, Jesus also is the firstborn from the dead, it is necessary that the resurrection of those who rise be of the same kind. But if he bore a body, and his resurrection was with a body, so that he even ate, as it is written in the Gospel according to John—but they rise otherwise, as those from the heresies think, those of the believers in Christ who rise—they cannot show how Jesus is the firstborn from the dead. For if we have become conformed to the death of Christ, we shall also be conformed to his resurrection; and how does Paul teach, saying, Who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of the glory of Christ? Shamelessly, then, some accept that Christ has been raised from the dead, but say that there is no resurrection of the dead.

Therefore the apostle says, "But if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" And even if someone does not say it with his mouth, but says in his heart, "There is no resurrection of the dead," he nullifies in power also the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For if the universal falsehood is [true], it is clear that the one who rose from the dead is also included in the universal. For if the dead are not raised, and Jesus also has come among the dead, then neither has Jesus been raised; but if that one has been raised, through him the resurrection of the dead is made clear—unless we disbelieve because of the impossibility of the thing in itself, forgetting who it was who promised. For what, among things impossible, so to speak, is more impossible than that the body be made alive, or that heaven come into being from non-being, or the sun, or the rest of the created things? But come also to the very beginning of man; consider his beginning. A seed of man is shown to you. If someone were to say, "This seed will be a man, will be formed, will have bones, from this flesh, sinews, veins; he will walk; from this small, cheap seed a man raised up on earth will use organs"—would we not say that the one proclaiming these things to us is foolish, unless we had received experience of this? In order, then, that I may dare and set before you the resurrection, you will receive it the more, having believed in the perfection of God. What that seed was in relation to this body that now exists—the present body, the generic, the sowing, having become an instrument of words and deeds according to righteousness—this body becomes in relation to that one.

The grain of wheat, if it does not fall into the earth and die, remains alone; but if it falls into the earth and dies and rots away, from the rotting of the grain of wheat an ear of grain is produced a hundredfold. For that your body is a seed of the one who will be raised, hear Paul saying: It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Do you see how there, in the case of the seed, something cheap and worthy of no account was sown, and a beautiful and fair man has been raised up? In the same way this dead thing is a grain of wheat to God, as that which will be raised first. Just as, then, God had the means from the grain of wheat to make an ear—not from outside the resources that are in the tiny seed; for from that he raised up the ear, and from each seed he raises up what exists potentially in the seed—so from the seed of a man in the beginning this man came to be. But if his body dies, it becomes a seed of the one who will be raised from the dead in glory in Christ Jesus. The apostle considered unbelief in the resurrection from the dead to be equal to not believing that we shall exist at all after our departure. Therefore to those who do not believe that there will be a resurrection of the dead he says, as though there were no other life according to them besides the

...present, [namely the words] "If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable." And in what follows, as if addressing those who say there is no resurrection of the dead, nor any life existing in this present world, he says, "Why do we also endanger ourselves every hour? I die daily, by your boasting, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord," and the rest. The heresy of the Sadducees also, who deny the resurrection of the dead, makes it clear that it follows for them that you do not live even after the present life. Therefore the Savior, taking an example from the law alone against them concerning the existence of the resurrection from the dead, says expressly: "But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said at the bush, saying, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead but of the living." But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. The firstfruits is the firstfruits of many. And as we have seen in the case of the examples in the law: the firstfruits of grain is offered by those who have harvested the grain; and, so to speak, of wine by those who have gathered the wine; and of oil by those who have crushed the olives; so, if our Lord Jesus Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, it is necessary that there be many of whom he is the firstfruits. And we ask whether he is the firstfruits of all or of many; for he says, "Christ, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." If, then, we did not have the expression from the beginning, we would at least have said, thinking it impious in this passage to say that he is the firstfruits of all, that he is the firstfruits of the righteous only who have fallen asleep, and not of the rest.

But now the apostle himself also says, "Since indeed through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead." How is it that he says this of certain ones, whereas [he says] that it is of all? For just as in Adam all die, so in Christ—he did not say "the righteous will be made alive," but "all will be made alive." Then, so that you may not be disturbed and say, "So then, was my labor, so great as it is, undertaken in vain, if indeed Christ, having risen from the dead, is the firstfruits of all who have fallen asleep, and in Christ all will be made alive?"—he says, "But each in his own order." All, then, died in Adam, and all will be made alive in Christ. But even if all died in Adam, nonetheless Abraham was righteous, Isaac was a patriarch, Jacob, having begotten the twelve patriarchs, was Israel; and so it will come also upon the rest of the righteous. I dare to say that the apostle said that Christ Jesus is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, but I, alongside him, would make this statement: This one is the firstfruits unto life of those who are to live, but Adam has become the firstfruits of the death of men; for in Adam all die, since he received the firstfruits of death. But the Savior, wishing to take up the firstfruits of life, first took up the death of those who had died, so that, having abolished death, he might become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep and of the living. [I die, by your boasting which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, daily.] [Of Origen:] It must be inquired whether he transgressed the gospel command that says, "Do not swear at all.

[If I fought with beasts at Ephesus according to man, what profit is it to me?] [Of Origen.] There are also intelligible beasts. [But someone will say, How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come? Fool, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies; and what you sow, you do not sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, if it happens to be of wheat or of some of the rest; but God gives it a body as he willed, and to each of the seeds its own body.] [Of Origen.] Is the seed of man, then, useless to the Creator beyond all those bodies, so that one hopes indeed that there is a resurrection of the dead—if one must speak thus—in an olive-like and vine-like and wheat-like manner, and from the little fruit of the fig tree a fig tree of such size rises, and you do not laugh at this which you see in experience? And if someone says to you that from this small thing a fruit-bearing fig tree rises, having learned it by experience you do not laugh at it; but since the time has not yet come for that which will rise from the human body at the resurrection from the dead to spring up, do you not wish to wait, so that you may see this too? Or do you not know that in the case of all the other seeds as well, not every season is suitable for the seeds to spring up? But a grain of wheat rises at this season of the year; the grape-pip rises at this hour of the year; the kernel of the olive at this month, not at every time. But do you wish, in the case of the human body, in order that you may believe, that the dead rise every year like the grape-pip, like the olive, and not that you will see one extraordinary season, so that you may know the resurrection of the dead? What is the one season? At the consummation of the age.

so that after the resurrection from the dead you may no longer be in the present evil age. For Jesus Christ suffered in order to deliver us from the present evil age; and redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Well then, God also arranged this along with the other things. [Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.] [Of Origen.] Paul in the first letter to the Thessalonians calls all those like himself alive; for the God of the living is the God of Paul and of those like him. [But if Timothy comes, see that he may be with you without fear, for he is doing the work of the Lord as I also am; let no one therefore despise him. But send him forward in peace, so that he may come to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers. But concerning Apollos our brother, I urged him much to come to you with the brothers; and it was by no means his will to come now, but he will come when he has opportunity.] [Of Origen.] At the beginning of the letter he said, I hear that there are divisions among you; for each of you, he says, says, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos—concerning this man he speaks, when such faction and disturbance existed in the church of the Corinthians. This wonderful Apollos, being bishop of those at that time, fled to the apostle as to a judge. Paul was doing the things of the apostleship; it was not fitting for him, while spending time in Asia at that time, to leave the things in Asia and go to Corinth.

But instead of himself he chose Timothy and sent him to set right the things in Corinth, and necessarily, sending him with the letter, to entrust him to the church. For when the saints were present, benefiting those who heard, they did not come in weakness nor in fear nor in trembling; but when they came to the weaker, they were present in weakness and in fear and in trembling. Such were the Corinthians that it was not Paul the great who came to them, but the weak one, insofar as he said, I became to the weak as weak, that I might gain the weak. And for this reason he said, And I was with you in weakness; for this reason also he was in much fear and trembling, so that he might prevail over those who heard. Since, then, coming in fear and in trembling belongs to the one who is about to benefit his hearers, he now exhorts the Corinthians that Timothy may be without fear before them: for he does the work of the Lord as I also do. What I would have done had I come to you, this Timothy does for you. Let no one, then, despise him; for if you despise this one, you despise me too; for he does the work of the Lord as I also do. But send him forward in peace, that he may come to me. Now indeed he comes to you to make peace; for he finds faction among you in the church. But having come to agreement and been set right by the things said by him, and having taken up peace, send him forward in your concord and peace, that he may come to me. For I await him with the brothers. What brothers? Those about whom he said beforehand: Whomever you approve by letter, these I will send.

I therefore await him, hearing that he will return and report to me the things concerning you. But concerning Apollos the brother, I urged him to come to you; and altogether it was not his will to come now. He was a man, as is likely, holy, a friend of peace, and seeing division and disturbance in the church under him, he did not claim this for himself but yielded. Then the apostle urges him, having been patient, to return to his place of sojourning. But this man never saw Corinth at all, not having disobeyed the apostle; for he would not thus have commended his own opinion as not being subject. For he says, "Altogether it was not his will that he come now"; that is, it was not without the will of God that he did not come to you; but he will come when he finds opportunity. And when does he find opportunity? If you are at peace, if you do not despise Timothy. [Watch, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.] [Of Origen] For there is a certain sleep of the soul and a waking; therefore the Word, dissuading the soul from sleeping through Solomon, says, "Do not give sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids, that you may be delivered as a gazelle from snares and as a bird from the trap." And the Savior says, "Watch at all times and pray that you may be able to escape the temptations that are about to come." Stand firm: do not be shaken but become steadfast. The double-minded man does not stand firm in the faith, nor does he who doubts concerning the matters of the faith. Act like men: he speaks as to soldiers; for he says, "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil." Be strong: that is,

Take up strength, so that, having been made strong, you may be able to say, "I can do all things in Christ Jesus who strengthens me." Let all things among you be done in love: it is the mark of those being introduced to do things in fear, but of the perfect to do them in love.