Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
By believing different things about Christ, the people have divided him. One person thought that Christ was a mere man, another that he was only God. One says that he was foretold by the prophets, while another denies it. Paul starts with himself, so that nobody will think that he is disparaging the status of others. If Christ died for us, how can we attribute his grace and blessing to men, thereby doing him a grave injustice? Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Were ye baptized in the name of Paul? Christ is one, and in His name all were alike baptized. In vain then, he says, do ye contend for us, which of us is to be the greatest, when we are but the ministers of baptism. Hence, theologians teach that the validity of Baptism and the other Sacraments depends not on the disposition of the receiver, or of the minister, but flows from the Sacrament itself.
Note 1. that to be baptized in the name of Christ is the same as to be baptized in the invocation, profession, power, merit, and baptism of Christ, and so to have a right to the name of Christ. Therefore we are called Christians from Christ, and not Paulians, or Apollinians. For the power of excellency which Christ has in Baptism and the other Sacraments, see S. Thomas.
2. S. Thomas and others, as well as the history of the Greek Church, show that that Church uses as its form of Baptism, not "I baptize thee," but "Let the servant of Christ be baptized in the name of the Father, the Song of Sol...
Was Paul crucified for you? Though says St. Augustine brothers may die for brothers, yet the blood of no martyr is shed for the remission of a brother's sin. See also St. Leo the Great, serm. xii. de pass. Dom.
Is Christ divided. What he says comes to this: You have cut in pieces Christ, and distributed His body. Here is anger! Here is chiding! Here are words full of indignation! For whenever instead of arguing he interrogates only, his doing so implies a confessed absurdity.
But some say that he glanced at something else, in saying, Christ is divided: as if he had said, He has distributed to men and parted the Church, and taken one share Himself, giving them the other. Then in what follows, he labors to overthrow this absurdity, saying, Was Paul crucified for you, or were ye baptized into the name of Paul? Observe his Christ-loving mind; how thenceforth he brings the whole matter to a point in his own name, showing, and more than showing, that this honor belongs to no one. And that no one might think it was envy which moved him to say these things, therefore he is constantly putting himself forward. Observe, too, his considerate way, in that he says not, Did Paul make the world? Did Paul ...
