Now I praise you, brethren, because you remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 11:2 Go To 1 Corinthians 11
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things. He here passes on and paves the way for a fresh question. In the following verses he proceeds to censure the abuses of the Corinthians in suffering their women to go unveiled, and in approaching the Eucharist when full of wine and mutual discords, and according to his custom he softens his rebuke that the Corinthians may take it the more readily and kindly, in the same way that physicians sugar their pills. He says, therefore, "I praise you that ye remember me in all things," which, as Erasmus says, means "that ye keep in memory all my things," or, as Euthymius says, "that ye are mindful of everything that belongs to me" Supply "precepts, teachings, or exhortations" after "all." All these precepts, &c, must be understood with some limitation, and must mean that most of them were kept by the better sort of the Corinthians, for in other parts of this Epistle he censures some faults of the Corinthians, and especially in this chapter their abuse of the Eucharist, as a departure from the ordinance of Christ and His own precepts.
As I delivered them to you.—The Greek gives, when translated literally, as even Beza admits, "Ye keep the traditions as I delivered them to you." Hence, since these traditions were not committed to writing by the Apostles, for no previous letter to the Corinthians containing a record of them is extant, it plainly follows that not everything which concerns faith and morals has been written down in Holy Scripture, and that S. Paul and the other Apostles delivered many things by word of mouth. This is even more clearly stated in vers23,34. It is evident, moreover, from the fact that before that had been written which S. Paul here writes about the Eucharist, &c, the Corinthians were bound to obey the precepts respecting them given by Christ and S. Paul, as he says himself in ver23. The law preserved in tradition binds equally with the written law. So Chrysostom, Theophylact, and others.
