Severian of Gabala

In his own words on 1 Corinthians

• 1 Corinthians 1:20

  The wise man is the Greek, the scribe is the Jew.

  Pauline Commentary from the Greek Church

• 1 Corinthians 2:9

  One should not think that God has indiscriminately revealed the mystery to some and allowed the rest to perish in ignorance. Rather one should know and be persuaded that by the foreknowledge of his power God prepared the right thing for each person according to his deserts, for he foresees what each one will choose even before it happens.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 2:11

  God and the Holy Spirit are two persons, whereas a man and the spirit in him are not two persons but one man. What Paul means is that just as in the man there is a cohesion in knowing, so the knowledge of the Father and the Spirit is one. What the Spirit searches is therefore already known to him.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 3:2

  By "milk" Paul means moral teaching and miracles. Solid food, by contrast, is the proclamation of the doctrines of God.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 4:18

  It is clear from this that what was being said was that Paul and his companions were weak, while the Corinthians were strong.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 4:19

  Paul promises to come, so that the Corinthians can prepare themselves for correction. On the one hand he was forced by his irritation to say "I shall come," but on the other hand he added "if the Lord wills," because of his sense of dependence on God.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 4:21

  By "rod" Paul meant the compelling power of the Spirit, which he had used against Elymas and which God had used against him..

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 5:5

  When Paul says that this man must be delivered to Satan, he does not mean that he should be handed over to the power of the evil one. Rather, all the evils of this life, for example, diseases, sorrows, sufferings, and other circumstances, were attributed to Satan, and it is in this sense that Paul uses the term here. What he means is that this man should be exposed to the hardships of life.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 6:2

  The twelve apostles will judge the twelve tribes of Israel, if they have not believed and for that reason rejected Christ. The other saints, that is to say, the Gentiles, will judge those who have not abandoned idols and believed in the true God.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 6:3

  Paul is not talking here about real angels but about the priests and teachers of the people who will be judged by the saints because of their false teaching about Christ.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 6:4

  The lowest person in the church is preferable in judgment to an unbeliever.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 6:19

  The fornicator is also guilty of impiety, for by doing harm to his body he has corrupted the temple of the Holy Spirit.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:1

  This is Paul's reply to those who had written to him about this subject. He forbade fornication because it was against the law, but he allowed marriage as being holy and an antidote to fornication. However, he praised chastity as more perfect still.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:10

  Paul did not intend this to apply to those who abandon their spouses for the service of Christ.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:13

  Paul did not mean that a woman should marry an unbeliever, only that she should stay with him if she is already married.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:14

  When the children are clean and holy, uncorrupted by unbelief, the faith of the parent has won.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:19

  Circumcision means nothing by itself, but it was a command of God. On the other hand, uncircumcised is the way God made us, so there is no reward for that either.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:20

  Paul says this because it makes no difference to God either way.

  Pauline Commentary from the Greek Church

• 1 Corinthians 7:25

  It is clear that Paul says this not because he has no command to teach about virginity but because God has not told him that these people should practice chastity themselves. That is why he writes to them giving his opinion and recommending chastity, without imposing it on them.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:29

  If married people are supposed to live as if they were single, how is it possible not to prefer virginity?

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:32

  Here Paul explains why virginity is preferable to marriage. It has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of sex. Rather it is a question of anxieties which prevent the mind from concentrating on the worship of God.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 7:40

  What Paul means is that she is blessed if she marries and has a husband to protect her, but she is more blessed if, for the sake of piety, she refuses marriage and devotes herself entirely to God.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 8:6

  The Father is one, just as the Son is one. If the Son is called Lord, that does not make the Father any less Lord, just as when it is said that God the Father is one, the Son is no less God.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 10:13

  Paul did not pray that we should not be tempted, for a man who has not been tempted is untried, but that we should be able to bear our temptations as we ought.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 10:14

  You see that everything Paul has been saying up to now is to reinforce this single point.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 10:25

  The conscience referred to here is not the conscience of the one who knows that idols do not exist but the conscience of the one who sees somebody else buying food which has been sacrificed to idols and thinks that it is wrong for that reason.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 10:31

  Do everything with care so that others may glorify God through you and not be scandalized.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 11:3

  Since man did not make woman, the question here does not concern the origin of woman. Rather it concerns only [the relation of] submission. The nature of God and Christ is the same. Similarly the nature of man and woman is the same.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 11:4

  There is a difference between ancient and recent prophets, as follows. The ancients prophesied about the redemption of Israel, the calling of the Gentiles and the incarnation of Christ, whereas recent prophets prophesy about particular things or people, as Peter prophesied about Ananias, for example..

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 11:7

  From this we learn that man is not the image of God because of his soul or because of his body. If that were the case, woman would be the image of God in exactly the same way as man, because she too has a soul and a body. What we are talking about here is not nature but a relationship. For just as God has nobody over him in all creation, so man has no one over him in the natural world. But a woman does—she has man over her.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 11:19

  Paul is not talking here about doctrinal error but about moral failures.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 12:2

  Paul shows that there is a very big difference between Christian prophecy and pagan soothsaying. Pagans do not address the unclean spirit but are possessed by it and say things which they do not understand. The soothsayer's soul is darkened, and he does not know what he is saying, whereas the prophet's soul is enlightened and reveals what the prophet has learned and understood.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 12:3

  When the demoniac Legion acknowledged Jesus as Lord, he did not do so in a believing sense, but he merely confessed his knowledge of the lordship and rule of Christ over all things.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 12:8

  The utterance of wisdom means understanding what God has said through the prophets and evangelists and communicating this to those who are listening. The utterance of knowledge is the revelation of things which have been forgotten, which someone learns for the first time and then shares with others.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 12:14

  Paul says this in order not to overlook the humbler members of the church. For even if someone is lesser by nature, he still belongs to the body of the church.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 12:27

  We are not individual members who elect to join together to form a whole but rather organic members of a wider whole, which is the whole body.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 13:1

  The tongues of angels refer to the different languages spoken on earth since the destruction of the tower of Babel. As Moses says in Deuteronomy [32:8]: "God has set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of angels." It is therefore the task of each angel to defend the distinction of nations. The tongues of men on the other hand are languages which we learn; they do not come to us naturally.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 13:3

  The one who loves fulfills the law. The one who fulfills the law is well respected. The one who is well respected receives a spiritual gift.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 13:8

  Love never fails, which means that it never falls into sin.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 13:13

  Love is the greatest because it is the fulfilling of the law.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 14:10

  There is no language without meaning because all languages are human.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 14:19

  Paul wants to speak with a clear mind and in a normal language.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 14:22

  Tongues are a miracle in themselves. Prophecy, however, is a miracle in the substance of what it contains but not in the way in which it is uttered.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 14:28

  The person who speaks in the Holy Spirit speaks when he chooses to do so and then can be silent, like the prophets. But those who are possessed by an unclean spirit speak even when they do not want to. They say things that they do not understand.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 15:13

  Christ died and rose again for nothing if we are not to rise again as well.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 15:22

  Strictly speaking, not everyone has died. Enoch and Elijah, for example, never did. Some will be found alive at the second coming of the Savior.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 15:50

  Heretics get really mixed up about this. Paul did not say that flesh and blood would not rise from the dead but that they cannot inherit the kingdom of God. What this means is that the earthly flesh and blood which we now have is perishable, but it will be clothed with immortality, and in that state we shall enter the kingdom.

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH

• 1 Corinthians 15:52

  In saying this Paul is showing that the heretics who say that there is a resurrection of the soul but not of the flesh are wrong. These people blaspheme concerning the divine dispensation, thinking that Christ did not really rise again in his flesh but only appeared to do so. But if it was not real flesh, what do words like "died," "was buried" and "rose again" mean? If all this did not really happen, does it mean that we shall not really die either?

  PAULINE COMMENTARY FROM THE GREEK CHURCH