1 Corinthians 6:12

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things, say Theodoret and Œcumenius, are through free-will lawful unto me, are in my power, e.g., to commit fornication, to rob, to be drunken, and all the other sins mentioned above. But they are not expedient for the salvation of my soul, inasmuch as they are sins.

But this rendering is rightly condemned by Ambrose, who says: "How can that be lawful which is forbidden? For surely if all things are lawful there can be nothing unlawful." In other words he says that that is said to be lawful which no law forbids. The word lawful does not apply to that which it is in the power of the will to do or leave undone. The meaning, therefore, of this passage is, all indifferent things, all not forbidden by any law, are lawful to me. So Chrysostom, who with Theophylact refers these words to the next verse. Ver. 13 Meats for the belly and the belly for meats. 1. 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 judge, 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 man, 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 (qu. 133 ad 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 (qu. 23) 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.