Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
The body, being dedicated to God, will be rewarded with a spiritual reward for the merit of its ruler, which is the rational soul. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
With milk, then, the Lord's nutriment, we are nursed directly we are born; and as soon as we are regenerated, we are honoured by receiving the good news of the hope of rest, even the Jerusalem above, in which it is written that milk and honey fall in showers, receiving through what is material the pledge of the sacred food. "For meats are done away with".
But we who seek the heavenly bread must role the belly, which is beneath heaven, and much more the things which are agreeable to it, which "God shall destroy".
says the apostle, justly execrating gluttonous desires. For "meats are for the belly".
Nam cum "domino sabbati "etiamsi intemperanter vivat, nulla ratio reddenda sit, multo magis qui vitam moderate et temperate instituit, nulli erit rationi reddendae obnoxius. "Omnia enim licent, sed non omnia expediunt".
Etenim de ventre et cibis dictum est: "Escae ventri, et venter escis; Deus antem et illum et has destruet; ".
usque ad illud: "Corpus autem non fornicationi, sed Domino, et Do...
We must restrain the belly and keep it under the control of heaven. God will finally bring to nothing all that is made for the belly, as the apostle says.
Meats for the belly and the belly for meats1. Although it is lawful for me to eat every kind of food, yet I will not allow desire for any food to get the mastery over me, and make me a slave to my belly.
2. Ambrose and S. Thomas understand these words to refer to his personal expenses, and to mean—Though it is lawful for me as a preacher of the Gospel to receive from you means of support, yet I will not receive it, lest I become chargeable to any one and lose my liberty. The Apostle after his manner joins together various disconnected matters, which he knew would by intelligible in other ways to those to whom he was writing.
3. The best rendering is to refer these words, with Anselm and S. Thomas, to what had been said above about judgments: I have said these things against going to law, not because it is unlawful in itself for a man to seek to regain his own at law, but because I am unwilling for you to be brought under the power of any one, whether he be Judges , advocate, or procu...
Meat for the belly. That is, meat is necessary for the support of nature, though this or that kind of meat be indifferent: and we ought to reflect, that God in a short time will destroy both the meats, and the appetite of eating, and the body shall shortly die, but it shall rise again.
Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ. And the temple of the Holy Spirit. Man consists of soul and body; by baptism he is made a member of that same mystical body, the Church, of which Christ is the head: In baptism both the soul and body are consecrated to God: they are made the temple of the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as the spirit and grace of God inhabits in men, who are sanctified. Christ redeemed both our souls and bodies, both which he designs to sanctify, and to glorify hereafter in heaven; so that we must look upon both body and soul as belonging to Christ, and not as our own.
Shall I, then, taking the members of Christ, make them the members of an harlot, by a shameful and unlawf...
"How then is it not the utmost blasphemy to allege, that the temple of God, in which the Spirit of the Father dwells, and the members of Christ, do not partake of salvation, but are reduced to perdition? Also, that our bodies are raised not from their own substance, but by the power of God, he says to the Corinthians, "Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. But God hath both raised up the Lord, and shall raise us up by His own power."
Meats for the belly. By the belly here he means not the stomach, but the stomach's voraciousness. As when he says, Philippians 3:19 Whose God is their belly: not speaking about that part of the body, but about greediness. To prove that so it is, hear what follows: And the belly for meats; but the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord. And yet the belly also is of the body. But he puts down two pairs of things, meats and gluttony, (which he terms the belly;) Christ, and the body.
What then is the meaning of, Meats for the belly? Meats, he says, are on good terms with gluttony, and it with them. It cannot therefore lead us unto Christ, but drags towards these. For it is a strong and brutal passion, and makes us slaves, and puts us upon ministering to the belly. Why then are you excited and gaping after food, O man? For the end of that service is this, and nothing further shall be seen of it: but as one was waiting on some mistress, it abides keeping up this slavery, and advanc...
Paul is not attacking the nature of the body but the unbridled license of the mind, which abuses the body. The body was not made for the purpose of fornication, nor was it created for gluttony. It was meant to have Christ as its head, so that it might follow him. We should be overcome with shame and horrorstruck if we defile ourselves with such great evils, once we have been accounted worthy of the great honor of being members of him who sits on high.
Why does (the apostle) clothe us and Christ with symbols of the Creator's solemn rites, unless they had relation to ourselves? When, again, he warns us against fornication, he reveals the resurrection of the flesh. "The body "says he, "is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body"
