2 Corinthians 5:1-21

CHAPTIER 5

SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER

i. The Apostle goes on to remind the Corinthians of the glories of heaven, saying that in exile here and in the tabernacle of the flesh he longs for them, and wishes to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.

ii. He shows (ver. 9) that it is his endeavour to please not men but Christ alone, who shall come to judgment.

iii. He declares (ver. 14) that he is constrained to do this by the love of Christ, who has reconciled us by His death; and therefore that he no longer knows any one according to the flesh, but only him who is a new creature in Christ.

iv. He professes himself (ver. 18) to be a minister and ambassador of Christ, and he prays them to be reconciled to God for Christ's sake. Ver. 1. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved. If this mortal body, which is as it were a tent in which we tarry for a brief space while travelling here, be dissolved, we have a firm and lasting house in the glory of the soul and eternal life. This is the interpretation of Photius, Anselm, S. Thomas, Lyranus, and it is supported by vers. 6 and 8. From this and the explanation of the Fathers, and especially from ver. 8, we gather, against Tertullian, the Greeks, Armenians, Luther, and Calvin, that souls immediately at death are beatified, and do not sleep under the altar till the resurrection.

Secondly and more fitly we may say that this house is the body glorified by the resurrection, and this body we have, i.e., shall surely have at the resurrection. And this meaning is more in harmony with ver. 4 and the last chapter; for the Apostle is urging them to endure, in hope of the resurrection when we shall receive our glorified body, bodily mortification and suffering. So, in 1 Corinthians 15:43, he says that the body is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory, i.e., glorified. Such a body is properly the home of a beatified soul, as a mortal body is the home of a soul living and suffering here. So S. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Ambrose.

It may be said that the glory itself into which the beatified soul enters is the house of the soul, even as Christ says: "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." I answer that "enter into joy" does not mean that that joy is a house into which the soul enters, as some seem to think, but by metonymy the place of joy is called joy, and the meaning is: "Enter into the heavenly nuptials, enter into heaven, where is the place of the most perfect joy for ever." It is less accurate to speak of that glory or joy as a house into which the Blessed shall enter.

Chrysostom (Hom. 5 in Ep. ad Heb.) says that "we ought to put off our body with as much ease as we should a coat, or as Joseph left his cloak with the Egyptian woman;" and Aloysius Gonzaga, on his death-bed, spoke of his death as a mere change from one house to another.