For if he that comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which you have not received, or another gospel, which you have not accepted, you might well bear with him.
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Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus. Christ is here put for Christianity and its perfection. If the false apostles should preach any other doctrine concerning Christ than that which I have preached, as though my preaching were insufficient for salvation and Christian perfection, then, &c. He speaks a few words further on of the same thing as another Gospel. But, in Gal. i8 , he orders that any one who should preach another Gospel was not only not to be tolerated, but was even not to be listened to, and was to be anathematised. Hence by the phrase here another Gospel, he means a clear and more spiritual explanation of the Gospel.
Or if ye receive another Spirit. If you should receive other gifts of the Holy Spirit from the false apostles besides those that you received from me, you might well suffer them. He is censuring the pride of the false apostles, who boasted that they had more to give than S. Paul (Theophylact). Where, he asks, is that other Spirit, or those other gift...
You might well bear with him. These new teachers pretended at least to preach only the doctrine of Christ. St. Paul tells them, they might in some measure be excused, if they preached a new doctrine, or another gospel that brought them greater blessings, or another Spirit accompanied with greater spiritual gifts, than they had already received by his preaching. But I think, and may say, I have nothing less than the greatest apostles, and you have received the same blessings from me, as others from them. (Witham)
And he does not say, 'Lest by any means as Adam was deceived.' but shows that those men are but women who are thus abused, for it is the part of woman to be deceived. And he did not say, 'so ye also should be deceived.' but keeping up the metaphor, he says, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is toward Christ. 'From the simplicity, I say, not from wickedness; neither out of wickedness [is it], nor out of your not believing, but out of simplicity.' But, nevertheless, not even under such circumstances are the deceived entitled to forgiveness, as Eve showed. But if this does not entitle to forgiveness, much more will it not do so, when through vain-glory any is so.
2. For if he that comes preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach: showing hereby that their deceivers were not Corinthians, but persons from some other quarter previously corrupted: wherefore he says, he that comes.
If you receive a different Spirit, if a different Gospel which you did not accept...
What probably happened was that false teachers appeared from elsewhere and added to what the apostles had already taught. Their claim would have been that the apostles had not said all that there was to say, which Paul is at pains to deny.
