Tertullian, On Modesty 13

We know their suspicions here perfectly well. They suspect that the apostle Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthians, granted forgiveness to the very same fornicator whom, in his first letter, he had handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh (1 Corinthians 5:5) — an impious heir to his father's marriage bed. They act as if Paul then changed his tune, writing: "If anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure — not to put it too severely — to all of you. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. That is why I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. I wrote for this very purpose: to test you and see whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs" (2 Corinthians 2:5-11).

But what is actually understood here about the fornicator, about the defiler of his father's bed, about the Christian who outdid the very shamelessness of the Gentiles? Since Paul had absolved with special mercy the very man he had condemned with special wrath. His pity is obscure; his severity is open. Yet anger is more easily turned aside than indulgence; we hesitate longer over harsh things than joyful ones. We are dealing with a moderate indulgence — which, if it were assessed today, when even the greatest gifts are not usually given without proclamation, would be all the more impossible without some sign.

And you — dragging the adulterer's penance into the church to exhort the brotherhood — you throw him down in the middle, a spectacle composed of shame and horror, before widows, before presbyters, invading every lap, licking every footstep, clutching every knee. And with every lure of mercy you can muster, you preach — good shepherd, blessed Pope — and in the parable of the sheep you go hunting for your goats, pleading for your own sheep lest it wander from the flock again, as if what was never lawful even once has now become lawful. You strike the rest with fear even while you are at your most indulgent.

Yet the apostle so openly forgave the criminal lust of fornication, weighted with incest, that he did not even demand from him that habit of penance which he ought to have learned from Paul himself. He threatened nothing about the future; he addressed nothing further. On the contrary, he actually begged them to establish love toward the man, as if making satisfaction rather than granting forgiveness — and yet I hear only of love, not of communion. Paul says the same to the Thessalonians: "If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother" (2 Thessalonians 3:14-15). So he could have said to the fornicator that love alone was conceded, not communion. But to the incestuous man — neither love, since he had ordered him removed from their midst, much less from their hearts.

Paul feared, however, that they might be cheated by Satan over the loss of this man's person — the very man Satan himself had cast out — or that he might be swallowed by excessive sorrow, the man Paul had handed over to the destruction of the flesh (1 Corinthians 5:5). Now they reinterpret that destruction of the flesh as a penitential function: as if fasts, filth, total neglect, and dedication to abusing the body — exterminating the flesh — could satisfy God. From this they argue that the fornicator, that incestuous man, was not handed over by the apostle to Satan for destruction, but for correction — as if he would later obtain forgiveness because of that destruction, that is, the conflict of the flesh, and therefore had already obtained it.

The same apostle handed Hymenaeus and Alexander over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme (1 Timothy 1:20). Yet Paul himself says a thorn was given him, a messenger of Satan, to buffet him and keep him from becoming conceited. If they press this parallel — that those handed over to Satan by Paul were for correction, not destruction — what similarity exists between blasphemy and incest, and a soul kept intact, indeed elevated from the highest sanctity and all innocence, which, if restrained in the apostle at all, was restrained by buffets, through pain, as they say, of ear or head? Incest and blasphemy handed whole men over to the possession of Satan himself, not merely to his messenger. And this matters greatly: we read that those men were handed over to Satan by the apostle; but the apostle himself was given a messenger of Satan.

Finally, when Paul pleads with the Lord, what does he hear? "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." Those who are handed over to Satan cannot hear that. But if the crime of Hymenaeus and Alexander is irremissible even in the age to come — namely blasphemy — then certainly the apostle did not hand them over to Satan against the Lord's limit, in hope of forgiveness, men already sunk from faith into blasphemy. Therefore he pronounced them shipwrecked regarding the faith, having no comfort from the ship of the Church: for forgiveness is denied to those who have plunged from faith into blasphemy. Yet Gentiles and heretics emerge daily from blasphemy.

But if Paul said, "I handed them over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme" (1 Timothy 1:20), he spoke of the others — those handed over to Satan, that is, cast out of the Church — that they should be rebuked not to blaspheme. So therefore the incestuous fornicator was not handed over to Satan for correction, but for destruction — a man who had already gone beyond the Gentiles in sinning — that they might learn not to fornicate. In the end, Paul says, "for the destruction of the flesh, not for torment" — condemning the very substance by which he had fallen, which had already perished from that point on, baptism having been lost — "that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 5:5).

The question is asked: will that man's spirit itself be saved? Therefore the spirit, polluted by so great a crime, will be saved on account of the lost flesh, so that it may be saved in punishment. A contrary interpretation would have punishment without flesh, if we lose the resurrection of the flesh. It remains, then, that Paul meant the spirit which is recognized in the Church — saved, that is, kept intact, to be presented on the day of the Lord, free from the contagion of impurities, the incestuous fornicator having been cast out. For he adds: "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" And yet incestuous fornication was not a little leaven, but a great one.