Brethren, be not children in understanding: but in malice be children, but in understanding be men.
All Commentaries on 1 Corinthians 14:20 Go To 1 Corinthians 14
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Brethren, be not children in understanding. Understanding here is not the same word in the Greek as in the preceding verse: It can, with Chrysostom and Ephrem, be rendered "mind."—Do not become children in mind, judgment, and reason, so as to display your gift of tongues as children might.
Howbeit in malice be ye children. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Ephrem render this: "Let malice be as unknown to you as to infants." Song of Solomon , too, S. Augustine (qu. lxi. lib73) says: "Be, like infants, free from malice." As "infant" is derived from in, "not," and fans, "speaking," and as a child who cannot speak knows still less of malice or anything else, so too the Christian is to be an infant in evil, not to know it nor to be able to speak of it, e.g, not to know what emulation, defilement, fornication are. So Theophylact following S. Chrysostom. Tertullian (contra Valent. lib. ii.) beautifully says: "The Apostle bids us after God be children again, that we may be infants in malice through our simplicity, and at last wise in understanding." Clement of Alexandria (Pd. lib. i. c5) has pointed out that "children" here is not synonymous with "fools." The whole of his chapter, in which he points out how all Christians should be children, may be studied with advantage.
