Tertullian, On Modesty 16
I must prove what the Apostle is like even to those people — the kind I defend in Second Corinthians, the kind I recognize in all his letters. In his first letter he was the very first to dedicate God's temple: 'Don't you know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?' (1 Cor 3:16-17). By sanctifying and purifying that temple he laid down the rule for its priest: 'If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.' So tell me — who has ever restored to God what was corrupted, that is, handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, since Paul built up this rule precisely so that 'no one should deceive himself' — meaning no one should presume that what has been corrupted before God can be restored again (1 Cor 3:17-18)?
Right alongside this, indeed before everything else, he bars fornicators, adulterers, the effeminate, and men who lie with males from inheriting the kingdom, prefacing it with: 'Do not be deceived — if you think they will inherit, you are wrong' (1 Cor 6:9-10). Those who lose the kingdom certainly lose the life that belongs to it. Then he adds: 'That is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God' (1 Cor 6:11). The more he made those sins serious before baptism, the more he makes them irremissible after baptism — since no one can be washed again.
Recognize Paul again in what follows: the immovable pillar of discipline. 'Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both' — but the body is not for sexual immorality; it is for the Lord (1 Cor 6:13). 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness' (Gen 1:26) — and God created mankind in his own image. The Lord is for the body, and the Word became flesh (John 1:14). God raised the Lord and will raise us by his power, because of the body's union with him. That is why: 'Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?' (1 Cor 6:15). Since Christ is God's temple too: 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days' (John 2:19). Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Don't you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute becomes one body with her? For 'the two will become one flesh' (Gen 2:24). But whoever is united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him (1 Cor 6:16-17). 'Flee from sexual immorality' (1 Cor 6:18). If forgiveness is revocable, how can I flee — since I would just become an adulterer again? I gain nothing by fleeing; I would still be one body with her. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body (1 Cor 6:18).
Lest this statement be hijacked as a license for immorality — so that you sin against what is yours, not the Lord's — Paul takes you away from yourself and adds you to Christ, as he arranged: 'You are not your own; you were bought at a price, the blood of the Lord. Therefore honor God with your body' (1 Cor 6:19-20). Does the one who commands this forgive the man who has dishonored the Lord and cast him out of his body — and that through incest?
If you want to swallow all the Apostle's teaching, so you can see how thoroughly he cuts down and eradicates the whole forest of lusts with the axe of censure, allowing nothing to sprout from the stumps — look at him urging souls to fast from the legitimate fruit of nature, I mean the apple of marriage. 'It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman' (1 Cor 7:1). Yet 'because of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband' (1 Cor 7:2-3). Who doesn't know that he reluctantly loosened the bond of this good precisely to oppose fornication? But if he indulges it for anyone, he breaks the counsel of his own remedy and will be held back by marriages of continence — if fornication, the very reason they are permitted, is not feared; for what is forgiven is not feared. And yet he claims to have conceded the use of marriage, not commanded it — because he wants all to cling to him. But if what is lawful is conceded, what hope is there for what is unlawful?
He also says it is good for the unmarried and widows to remain as he does; but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, 'for it is better to marry than to burn' (1 Cor 7:8-9). Burn with what fire — lust or punishment? But if fornication has forgiveness, it does not burn with lust; yet the Apostle provides for the fires of punishment. If it is punishment that burns, then fornication has no forgiveness — it remains under punishment. Meanwhile, by forbidding divorce he secures either the perseverance of widowhood or reconciliation, by the Lord's command against adultery: 'Anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery' (Matt 19:9). How many remedies the Holy Spirit establishes, so that what he refuses to forgive again may never be admitted again!
Now if he says the best thing for a man is to stay as he is: 'Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife' (1 Cor 7:27) — lest you give occasion to adultery or opportunity to yourself. Yet he permits: if you marry, and if a virgin marries, they do not sin — though such people will have trouble in the flesh. Here he permits, sparingly. Further, he sets a fixed time: 'Those who have wives should live as if they had none' (1 Cor 7:29) — for the present form of this world is passing away, and certainly not desiring 'be fruitful and multiply' (Gen 1:28). He wants us to live without anxiety, because the unmarried care about the Lord's affairs — how to please the Lord — while the married care about worldly affairs — how to please their spouse (1 Cor 7:32-34). So he declares the guardian of virginity better than the one who gives it away; he judges the woman who, having lost her husband, embraced faith and loved the opportunity of widowhood, more blessed. Thus he commends all these counsels of continence as divine: 'I think that I too have the Spirit of God' (1 Cor 7:40).
Who is this most brazen champion of all impurity, the most faithful advocate of adulterers, fornicators, and incestuous people — who has taken up their cause against the Holy Spirit, so as to bear false witness about his Apostle? Paul conceded nothing of the sort — he who tries to obliterate the whole necessity of the flesh even from legitimate grounds. He concedes marriage, not adultery; he spares marriage, not debauchery. He tries not even to concede nature, lest he flatter fault; he strives to restrain the blessed conjugal act lest he excuse the cursed one. The most he could do was purify the flesh from filth — from stains he cannot. But this is a solemn farce for the perverse, the ignorant, the heretics, and now all the 'psychics' — seizing on some ambiguous chapter to arm themselves against the entire army of sentences of the whole instrument.
Latin
Necesse est igitur usque illis Apostolum ostendi, quem ego et in secunda Corinthiorum talem defendam, qualem in omnibus literis novi, qui et in prima, primus omnium templum Dei dedicavit: Non scitis vos templum Dei esse, et in vobis Dominum habitare? qui et templo sanciendo, purificandoque aeditualem legem scripsit: Si quis templum Dei vitiaverit, vitiabit illum Deus: templum enim Dei sanctum est quod estis vos. Age jam quis omnino vitiatum Deo redintegravit, id est traditum Satanae in interitum carnis, cum idcirco substruxerit: Nemo seducat semetipsum, id est, nemo praesumat vitiatum Deo redintegrari denuo posse; sicut rursus inter caetera, imo et ante caetera, moechos et fornicatores et molles et masculorum concubitores negans regnum consecuturos, praemisit: Ne erraveritis, scilicet si putaveritis eos consecuturos. Quibus autem regnum adimitur, utique nec vita permittitur, quae inest regno. Etiam ingerens: Sed in haec quidem fuistis; sed abluti estis, sed sanctificati estis in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et in spiritu Dei nostri. Quanto delicta ista ante lavacrum accepto facit, tanto post lavacrum irremissibilia constituit; siquidem denuo ablui non licet. Agnosce et in sequentibus Paulum, columnam immobilem disciplinarum: Cibi ventri, et venter cibis; Deus et hunc et illos conficit; corpus autem non fornicationi, sed Deo. Faciamus enim hominem, ait Deus, ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram: et fecit hominem Deus ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei fecit illum. Dominus corpori; et sermo enim, caro factus est. Deus autem et Dominum suscitavit, et nos suscitabit per virtutem suam; propter corporis scilicet nexum cum illo. Et ideo: Non scitis corpora vestra membra Christi? quia et Christus Dei templum: Evertite templum hoc, et ego illud in triduo resuscitabo. Auferens membra Christi, faciam membra fornicariae? Non scitis quod qui adglutinatur fornicariae, unum corpus efficitur? Erunt enim duo in unam carnem. Qui autem adglutinatur Domino, unus est spiritus. Fugite fornicationem. Si revocabilem venia, quomodo fugiam, moechus denuo futurus? nihil profecero, si eam fugero; unum ero corpus, cui communicando adglutinabor. Omne delictum quod admiserit homo, extra corpus est; qui autem fornicatur, in corpus suum peccat. Ac ne hoc dictum in licentia fornicationis invaderes, ut in rem tuam, non Domini, delicturus, aufert te tibi, et Christo, sicut disposuerat, adjicit: Et non estis vestri; statim apponens: Empti enim estis pretio, sanguine scilicet Domini; glorificate et tollite Dominum in corpore vestro. Hoc qui praecipit, vide an ignoverit ei qui dedecoravit Dominum, et qui ejecerit eum de corpore suo, et quidem per incestum. Si vis omnem notitiam Apostoli ebibere, ut intelligas quanta securi censurae omnem sylvam libidinum caedat, et eradicet, et excaudicet, ne quidquam de recidivo fruticare permittat, adspice illum a justa fruge naturae, a matrimonii dico pomo, animas jejunare cupientem. De quibus autem scripsistis, bonum est homini mulierem non contingere: sed propter fornicationem unusquisque uxorem suam habeat; vir uxori, et uxor viro debitum reddat. Hujus boni fibulam quis illum nesciat invitum relaxasse, ut fornicationi obviam isset, quam si cui indulsit vel indulget, utique consilium remedii sui infregit, et tenebitur jam fraenandis continentiae conjugiis, si fornicatio, ob quam permittuntur, non timebitur; non enim timebitur quae ignoscetur. Et tamen ignovisse se profitetur matrimonii usum, non imperasse: vult enim omnes sibi adhaerere. Si autem licita ignoscuntur, illicita qui sperant? Innuptis quoque et viduis bonum esse dicit exemplo ejus perseverare; si vero deficerent, nubere, quia praeest nubere quam uri. Quibus oro ignibus deterius est uri? concupiscentiae, an poenae? Atquin, si fornicatio habet veniam, non urit concupiscentia ejus: Apostoli autem magis est poenae ignibus providere. Quod si poena est quae urit, ergo veniam non habet fornicatio, quam manet poena. Interea et divortium prohibens, pro eo aut viduitatis perseverantiam, aut reconciliationem pacis dominico praecepto adversus moechiam procurat, quia qui dimiserit uxorem praeter caussam moechiae, facit eam moechari; et qui dimissam a viro ducit, moechatur. Quanta remedia Spiritus Sanctus instaurat, ne id scilicet denuo admittatur, quod ignosci denuo non vult! Jam si usquequaque optimum dicit homini sic esse: Junctus es uxori, ne quaesieris solutionem, ut moechiae locum non des. Solutus es ab uxore, ne quaesieris uxorem, ut opportunitatem tibi serves. Quod et si duxeris uxorem, et si nupserit virgo, non peccat; pressuram tamen carnis habebunt hujusmodi. Et hic parcendo permittit. Caeterum, tempus in collecto constituit, ut et qui habent uxores, sic sint tanquam non habentes; praeterit enim habitus hujus mundi, jam scilicet non desiderantis: Crescite et multiplicamini. Sic vult nos praeter sollicitudinem degere, quia innupti de Domino curent, quomodo placeant Deo; nupti vero de mundo recogitent, quomodo placeant conjugio. Sic melius facere pronuntiat virginis conservatorem, quam erogatorem; sic et illam beatiorem decernit quae, amisso viro, fidem ingressa, amaverit occasionem viduitatis; sic haec omnia continentiae consilia ut divina commendat: Puto, inquit, et ego spiritum Dei habeo. Quis iste est assertor audacissimus omnis impudicitiae, moechorum et fornicatorum et incestorum plane fidelissimus advocatus, quibus honorandis suscepit hanc caussam adversus Spiritum Sanctum, ut falsum testimonium recitet de apostolo ejus? Nihil tale Paulus indulsit, qui totam carnis necessitatem de probis etiam titulis obliterare conatur. Indulget sane non adulteria, sed nuptias: parcit sane matrimoniis, non stupris: tentat ne naturae quidem ignoscere, ne culpae blandiatur; studet compescere benedictionis concubitum, ne maledictionis excusetur. Hoc ei supererat, carnem vel a sordibus purgare; a maculis enim non potest. Sed est hoc solemne perversis et idiotis et haereticis, jam et psychicis universis, alicujus capituli ancipitis occasione, adversus exercitum sententiarum instrumenti totius armari.