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.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 6:13 Go To 1 Corinthians 6
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
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 procurator, especially when they are of the unbelievers.
S. Bernard (de Consid. lib. iii.) says, moralising: "The spiritual man will, before undertaking any work, ask himself three questions, Is it lawful? Is it becoming? Is it expedient? For although, it is well known in the Christian philosophy, nothing is becoming save what is lawful, and nothing is expedient save what is both lawful and becoming, nevertheless it does not follow that all that is lawful is necessarily also becoming or expedient."
Why, says S. Paul, do you enter on lawsuits for the sake of worldly good, which for the most part serves only for the belly and its meats? For food is but a perishing and mean thing, made but to be cast into the belly. The belly too is the lowest part of Prayer of Manasseh , made only to cook, digest, cast forth, and corrupt the food, and is a vessel containing all that is disgusting. Both food and belly shall be destroyed, for both shall be food for worms; and though the belly shall rise again, yet it will no linger take in food. Secondly, it should be observed that the Apostle here purposely introduces gluttony, because it is the mother of lust, which he then proceeds to condemn. So Theophylact. Hence in the passage bearing the name of S. Athanasius (qu133ad Antioch,), the belly here is understood to mean gluttony and drunkenness. The belly has its desire to drunkenness, and drunkenness to it; but he who is thus given up to serve his belly cannot serve God, but is the slave of his belly, and therefore shall be destroyed of God. This passage is plainly not the writing of S. Athanasius, for earlier (qu23) Athanasius himself is quoted, and differed from; moreover, Epiphanius and Gregory of Nyssa are quoted, who lived after Athanasius.
But God shall destroy both it and them. In death and the resurrection, in such a way that the belly will no longer be for meats, nor will there be meats to fill the belly.
Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. It was not meant, or given us, for such an end, but that with chaste body we should serve the Lord, and follow Him, our Head, with pure and holy lives. So Anselm. So also is Christ given to our body to be its head and crown. Or the Lord is for the body in another sense, according to Ambrose and Anselm, viz, that He is the reward for the body that is chaste and pure, and He will give it incorruption and immortality. The first meaning is the simpler, for S. Paul proceeds to speak of the resurrection.
