1 Corinthians 5:9
I wrote to you in an epistle, not to keep company with fornicators.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Scripsi in epistola : Ne commisceamini fornicariis :
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- Ἔγραψα ὑμῖν ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι πόρνοις,
Haydock's commentary
On verses 9 to 11
I wrote to you in an epistle. If he does not mean what he has said already in this epistle, it must have been in some other, which he had written to them before, (as some conjecture) and which is not now extant.
Now to keep company with fornicators, nor with such like public scandalous sinners, not so much as to eat with them. But you must take notice, that I mean, when they are brethren, or Christians, not when they are infidels, for this cannot be avoided, especially by those who are to labour to convert them. This admonition of the apostle, shews us how much such persons are to blame, who by their carriage encourage, applaud, and are delighted with wicked company. Them who are without the pale and fold of the Church, the apostle leaves to the great judge of the living and the dead. (Witham)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On Modesty, Chapter XVIII
For even in the Proverbs, which we call Parœmiæ, Solomon specially (treats) of the adulterer (as being) nowhere admissible to expiation. “But the adulterer,” he says, “through indigence of senses acquireth perdition to his own soul; sustaineth dolors and disgraces. His ignominy, moreover, shall not be wiped away for the age. For indignation, full of jealousy, will not spare the man in the day of judgment.” If you think this said about a heathen, at all events about believers you have already heard (it said) through Isaiah: “Go out from the midst of them, and be separate, and touch not the impure.” You have at the very outset of the Psalms, “Blessed the man who hath not gone astray in the counsel of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners, and sat in the state-chair of pestilence;” whose voice, withal, (is heard) subsequently: “I have not sat with the conclave of vanity; and with the …
St John Chrysostom Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XVI
1 Cor. v. 9-11 I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolaters, for then must ye needs go out of the world: but now I write unto you not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a drunkard, or a reviler, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. For since he had said, “Ye have not rather mourned, that such an one should be taken away;” and, “Purge out the old leaven;” and it was likely that they would surmise it to be their duty to avoid all fornicators: for if he that has sinned imparts some of his own mischief to those who have not sinned, much more is it meet to keep one’s self away from those without: (for if one ought not to spare a friend on account of such mischief arising from him, …
St Ambrose Concerning Repentance, Chapter XVII. That gentleness must be added to severity, as is shown in the case of St. Paul at Corinth. The man had been baptized, though the Novatians argue against it. And by the word “destruction” is not meant annihilation but severe chastening
94. And that we may know that this person was baptized, he added: “I wrote to you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators, not altogether with fornicators of this world.” And farther on he adds: “But now I write unto you not to keep company if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator.” Those whom he has joined together under one penalty, he willed to attain together to forgiveness. “If any be such,” he says, “with him not to eat.” How severe he is with the obstinate, how indulgent to those who seek. Against those rises up in arms the injury done to Christ, whilst the calling upon Christ aids these.
St Ambrose Epistle LXIII: To the Church at Vercellæ
11. In vain, then, does the Apostle say: “I wrote to you, in an Epistle, not to mingle with fornicators;” and lest perchance they should say, We are not speaking of all the fornicators of the world, but we say that he who has been baptized in Christ ought not now to be esteemed a fornicator, but his life, whatever it is, is accepted of God, the Apostle has added “Not at all [meaning] with the fornicators of this world,” and farther on, “If any that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one not even to eat. …