S. Paul's 1 Cor 5

[crocodilina]

Hello everybody!
Could someone help me to explain S. Paul's To Corinthians 1, ch.5. ] :
 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.
2: And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.
3: For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,
4: In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
5: To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6: Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
7: Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9: I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
10: Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
11: But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12: For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13: But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
Maybe the Inquisitio had relied on that passage?

[Asteriktos]

I don't know which passages Augustine and later Fathers used to condone certain coercive tendencies, though fwiw Paul seems to be talking about excommunication here and not the death penalty (cf 2 Cor. 2:3-11)  It would indeed be interesting to see passages from Church history in which people were justifying the inquisition using Scripture.

[lubeltri]

I don't know which passages Augustine and later Fathers used to condone certain coercive tendencies, though fwiw Paul seems to be talking about excommunication here and not the death penalty (cf 2 Cor. 2:3-11)  It would indeed be interesting to see passages from Church history in which people were justifying the inquisition using Scripture.

Well, Church authorities didn't carry out the executions. They made the judgment of heresy, and the state (if heresy was a capital crime) carried out the punishment of death. I know, it's not much of a distinction, but it is one they always were careful to make.

[crocodilina]

I would like to have also your comments about the passage. I don't feel very well reading it 'to deliver a person unto satan"-it doesn't seem so christian to me...Could you imagine Jesus saying something like that?

[Asteriktos]

I'd say that it's pretty tame compared to what some Christians have said.  I think even Jesus had his angry moments. As far as this passage, perhaps people in his own time also took issue with his tone, as Paul had to defend himself in 2 Corinthians, when some claimed that "his letters... are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible." (2 Cor. 10:10) Personally, I think Paul was just an emotional man, and sometimes his rhetoric got away from him. After all, it's not like he could just hit backspace on a keyboard and rewrite the letter; and oftentimes he didn't even write the letter himself but had someone else do it. So probably however it came out of his mouth, that's how it ended up in the letter (at least in the original letter).

[cothrige]

I would like to have also your comments about the passage. I don't feel very well reading it 'to deliver a person unto satan"-it doesn't seem so christian to me...Could you imagine Jesus saying something like that?

I am not Orthodox, but rather Catholic, but I will tell you that I have always understood it in terms of excommunication.  In effect, cut the offender off from grace and that will be, in effect, to deliver them to Satan.  But, as it is done for a time in order to correct them it is only in the flesh, so that they can repent, and then when they are restored they will be able to be saved on the last day.  This is how I have always understood it.  For what you may see it as worth, here is what the Haydock Bible has in its commentary:

In the name....with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one to Satan by a sentence of excommunication, depriving him of the sacraments, the prayers, and communion, and even of the conversation of the rest of the faithful. It is likely in those times, such excommunicated persons were delivered over to Satan, so as to be corporally tormented by the devil, to strike a terror into others. See St. Chrysostom, hom. xv. and this is said to be done for the destruction, or punishment of the flesh, that the spirit, or soul, may be saved. (Witham) --- It is the opinion of most of the Greek fathers, that this man was either really possessed by the devil, or at least struck with such a complaint as a mortification, and humiliation to his body, whilst it served to purify his soul. We have seen from many instances in holy Scripture, that it was not unusual, in the origin of Christianity, for persons who had fallen into crimes of this nature, to be punished with death, some grievous sickness, or by being possessed by the devil, so as to be separated from the communion of the Church. (St. Ambrose; Estius; Just. [St. Justin Martyr?]; Menochius)

Hope this may help.

Patrick

[crocodilina]

I wonder for what reasons could the Church (Catholic or Orthodox) excommunicate a person...
And what after that?
What should someone do if he were excommunicated?

[Landon77]

Well, I'm not a theologian, but I would think from the first two verses that he is talking about handing people over to the state- who probably aren't godly- for punishment for having relations with your mother/step-mother.

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