Sermons to the People 162.1–162.4

The question from the Epistle to the Corinthians of the blessed apostle Paul, where he says, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body,” I do not know whether it can be resolved clearly, although, God granting, something can be said about it with probability: so deep is it. For earlier in the same Epistle the Apostle said: “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God”; and a little after: “Do you not know,” he says, “that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Far from it. Or do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute is one body? For the two, he says, will be in one flesh. But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit. Flee sexual immorality.” And there he added: “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple in you of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a great price: glorify and carry God in your body.” So when in this chapter he had first listed many dreadful sins of men, to which the kingdom of God will not be given, and which nevertheless men cannot commit except through the body—which body, of the faithful at least, he says is the temple of the Holy Spirit, whom we have from God, and whose members, the members of our body, he asserts are members of Christ; of which, rebuking and in a way questioning, he says, “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?”, and answers himself, “Far from it”; and adds further, “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute is one body? For the two, he says, will be in one flesh; but he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit”; and concludes, “Flee sexual immorality”—he nevertheless goes on and says, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”: as though the sins he listed when he said, “Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God”—as though all these crimes and outrages could be done or carried out otherwise than through the body! Who of sound mind would deny this? For the Apostle was treating and defending that whole passage for the sake of the body itself, already bought at a great price, that is, by the precious blood of Christ, made by the Lord a temple of the Holy Spirit, so that it might not be polluted by such outrages but rather kept inviolate as God's dwelling. Why then did he want to add this, from which a difficult question would arise—that is, to say, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”—when both sexual immorality itself and other such sins, which are done only through the body and are very like shamefulness and sexual immorality, are carried out and practiced only through the body itself? For what? Can anyone be (to say nothing of the others mentioned above) a thief, or a drunkard, or a reviler, or a robber, apart from the action of this body? Although neither idolatry itself nor greed itself can attain its use and enjoyment apart from the service of this body. What then is “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”? First, because when a man is set in this body, whatever he can wickedly desire with the mind alone cannot be said to be done by the man outside this body, since it is plain that he does it with carnal sense and carnal prudence while still enclosed in this body. For also what is written in the Psalm, “The ungodly said in his heart, There is no God,” the same blessed apostle Paul certainly could not separate from bodily action, in that place where he says, “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive according to what he has done through the body, whether good or evil”: because, of course, only when set in the body could the ungodly say, “There is no God.” Not to mention that in another Epistle the Teacher of the Gentiles himself says, “Now the works of the flesh are plain,” and goes on: “which are sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, dissensions, heresies, envy, drunkenness, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, as I told you before, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God.” Do not the others he inserted there—jealousy, anger, dissensions, envy, heresies—seem to us to be done outside the body? And yet the Teacher of the Gentiles, in faith and truth, assigns these to the works of the flesh. What then is “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body,” and, naming only the one sin of sexual immorality, he says, “But he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”?

It is plain, then, to anyone however slow and dull, how difficult this question is; if the Lord deigns to shed a little light on it and reveal it to our devout attention, we shall be able to say something reasonable. For the blessed Apostle, in whom Christ spoke, seems to have wanted to exaggerate the evil of sexual immorality above all other sins: these, even if committed through the body, do not make the human mind so bound and subject to carnal desire as, in the act of bodily sexual immorality alone, the huge force of lust makes the mind mingle with the body itself and in a way be glued to it into one and bound fast; so much so that at that very moment and in the experience of so great an outrage a man is not able to think of or attend to anything else, except that the submersion, and in a way the absorption, of lust and carnal desire claims for itself the mind it subjects as a captive. So this would seem to be what was said: “But he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”: because then the heart of the man committing sexual immorality becomes properly and intimately the slave of the body, especially at the time of that most wicked act. So much so that the Apostle himself, wanting to impress more forcefully on men that this evil must be avoided, said, “Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?”, and, cursing and detesting it, answered, “Far from it. Or do you not know,” he says, “that he who joins himself to a prostitute is one body? For the two, he says, will be in one flesh.” Could this be said of any other crimes of men? For in any other crimes the human mind is free both to perform one of them and at the same time to be stretched out in thought elsewhere; but in the very act and time of sexual immorality the mind is not allowed to be free to think of anything else. For the whole man is so absorbed by and in the body itself that it can no longer be said that the mind is its own; but the whole man together can be said to be flesh, “and a spirit going and not returning.” So we can understand that “every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body,” in this way: that the Apostle, as I said, seems to have wanted to exaggerate the evil of sexual immorality so much that, in comparison with it, he held all other sins whatever to be outside the body; and said that by this evil of sexual immorality alone one sins against one's own body, because by the greater heat of lust, than which none is greater, the pleasure of the body itself holds him as a slave and makes him captive.

Let this be said about the special sexual immorality of this body. But because sexual immorality is reproved and named in the sacred Scriptures not only specially but also generally, let us try, with God's help, to say something probable on this too. General sexual immorality, then, is plainly shown in the Psalm, where it is said: “For behold, those who make themselves far from you will perish; you have destroyed everyone who commits fornication away from you.” Where, next, he added how this general fornication can be escaped and avoided, saying: “But for me it is good to cleave to God.” So from this we may easily notice that the general fornication of the human soul is that by which one, not cleaving to God, cleaves to the world. Hence the blessed apostle John says: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And the apostle James says: “Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with this world is hostile to God?” So it is briefly defined that one who has love of the world cannot have love of God, and that one who wants to be a friend of the world is an enemy of God. To this also belongs what the Lord says in the Gospel: “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will put up with the one and despise the other.” And he concludes: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” This, then, as has been said, is the general fornication of the soul, containing in itself absolutely everything, by which one does not cleave to God while cleaving to the world. So that in this way, according to this general fornication, we may also be able to understand what the Apostle says, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” For if the human soul does not commit fornication—cleaving to God, and not cleaving to the world—whatever other sins, wholly foreign to carnal desire, a man may incur through the very frailty of mortality, whether by ignorance, negligence, forgetfulness, or failure to understand, let this be what was said, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body”: because no sin of bodily or temporal desire can be found here; so any such sin seems rightly said to be outside the body. But if the worldly man, cleaving to the world, makes himself far from God, committing fornication away from God himself, he sins against his own body: because the human mind is drawn and pulled apart by bodily desire toward all things temporal and carnal, with carnal sense and prudence, “serving the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.”

In this way, then, as it seems to me, without harm to the faith, the evil of both kinds of fornication, the special as well as the universal, can be understood in this one chapter of so great and eminent a teacher, where he says, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body”: either the Apostle has exaggerated this special sexual immorality, by which one is rightly understood to sin against one's own body, because nowhere is the whole man so given over to the pleasure of the body itself, and so indescribably or inescapably fastened to it, that in comparison with so great an evil the other sins seem to be outside the body, even if they are carried out through the body; just as a certain force of imperious lust belonging to sexual immorality alone subjects a man to its condition and makes him the body's own worst slave, especially at the time of that most unclean act, so that the human mind is not free to think of or attend to anything other than what it is doing in the body. Or, if the Apostle also meant to signify the general fornication, on account of which he seems to have said, “Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits fornication sins against his own body,” it must be taken and understood thus: that anyone who does not cleave to God but cleaves to the world, loving and desiring all temporal things, is rightly said to sin against his own body—that is, having become given over and subject to all carnal desire, as a creature wholly a slave and estranged from the Creator himself, through that pride which is the beginning of all sin, of which pride the beginning is, as it is written, to apostatize from God. Whoever is free from this general evil of fornication, whatever other sin he may incur, as a man still corruptible and mortal, let it be understood to be outside the body; that is, outside the evil of all bodily and temporal desire, foreign to it, outside the body, as has often been said. For only by the evil of carnal and general desire does the soul commit fornication in everything away from God, as one entangled and bound by bodily and temporal desires and delights; it sins against its own body, serving whose desire universally it is bent down to the world and estranged from God: which is, as has been said, “The beginning of man's pride is to apostatize from God.” Because of this, the blessed John warns that the evil of general fornication must be avoided, saying: “Do not love the world, nor the things that are in the world; for the things that are in the world are the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the ambition of the world, which is not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away, and its desire. But he who does the will of God abides for ever, as he abides for ever.” So this love of the world, which contains in itself the universal desire of the world, is the general fornication by which one sins against one's own body; because the human mind ceaselessly serves all bodily, visible, and temporal desires and pleasures, abandoned and forsaken by the Creator of all things himself.