2 Coríntios 11
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
2 Coríntios 11:2
Why does Paul address all these different people as a "chaste virgin," unless he is referring to their faith, hope and love? — FEAST OF THE NATIVITY 188
2 Coríntios 11:2
Do you wish to know how the church is a virgin? Hear the apostle Paul; hear the friend of the Bridegroom who is zealous not for himself but for the Bridegroom: "I betrothed you to one spouse." He spoke to the church. To which church? To all that his letter could reach. "I betrothed you to one spouse, that I might present you a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest," he said, "as the serpent seduced Eve by his guile …" That serpent never physically defiled Eve, did he? Yet he did destroy her virginity of heart. On that account Paul said: "I fear lest … your minds may be corrupted from that chastity which is in Christ." Therefore, the church is a virgin; she is a virgin, may she be a virgin. Let her beware of the deceiver, lest he turn out to be a corrupter. The church is a virgin. Are you, perhaps, going to say to me: "If the church is a virgin, how does she bring forth children? Or, if she does not bring forth children, how did we give our names so that we might be born of her?" I answer: "She is a virgin and she also brings forth children." She imitates Mary, who gave birth to the Lord. Did not the holy Mary bring forth her Child and remain a virgin? So, too, the church both brings forth children and is a virgin. And if you would give some consideration to the matter, she brings forth Christ, because they who are baptized are his members. — CONVERTS AND THE CREED 213.7
2 Coríntios 11:2
To the same church the apostle says: "For I have promised you to one spouse, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." … The church, then, like Mary, has inviolate integrity and incorrupt fecundity. What Mary merited physically, the church has guarded spiritually, with the exception that Mary brought forth one Child, while the church has many children destined to be gathered into one body by One. — FEAST OF THE NATIVITY 195.2
2 Coríntios 11:14
So powerful is the attraction of the virtue of purity that practically every human being is pleased to hear it praised, and no one is so sunk in depravity as to have lost all sense of decency. Hence, unless the malignity of the demons somewhere "transforms itself into an angel of light," as we read in our Scripture, it cannot carry out its business of deception.
2 Coríntios 11:14
These illusions are apparitions of that spirit who seeks to ensnare unhappy souls in the deceptive rites of a multitude of false gods and to turn them aside from the true worship of the true God, by whom alone they can be purified and healed. — City of God 10.10
2 Coríntios 11:14
As for the power of darkness, what is it but the power of the devil and his angels, who, after being angels of light, did not use their free will to stand in the truth but by falling from it became darkness? I am not teaching you this; I am advising you to call to mind what you know. So, the human race became subject to this power of darkness by the fall of the first man who was induced by that power to commit sin, and in him we have all fallen. — LETTER 217, TO VITALIS
2 Coríntios 11:14
Satan sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light in order to test those who need testing or to deceive those who deserve deception. Nothing but the great mercy of God can save a man from mistaking bad demons for good angels and false friends for true ones and from suffering the full damages of this diabolical deception which is all the more deadly in that it is wily beyond words. — City of God 19.9
2 Coríntios 11:26
What great complaints the apostle Paul makes of false brothers. Yet he was not defiled by their physical companionship, because he was set apart from them by this distinction: purity of heart. — LETTER 108, TO MACROBIUS
2 Coríntios 11:26
Therefore, there are some who occupy the pastoral chair in order to care for the flock of Christ, but there are others who sit in it to gratify themselves by temporal honors and worldly advantages. These are the two kinds of pastors, some dying, some being born, who must needs continue in the Catholic church itself until the end of the world and the judgment of the Lord. If there were such men in the times of the apostles, whom the apostle lamented as false brothers when he said: "Perils from false brothers," yet whom he did not proudly dismiss but bore with them and tolerated them, how much more likely is it that there should be such men in our times. Letter , To Felicia.
2 Coríntios 11:29
Paul does not mean that he was counterfeiting their weakness but that he was sympathizing with it. Letter , To Jerome.
2 Coríntios 11:33
And the apostle Paul, when he was let down from the window in a basket so that his enemy might not capture him and so escaped from his hands, did he deprive the church, which was there, of a necessary ministry, and was that duty not discharged by other brothers appointed for that purpose? The apostle so acted in deference to their wishes that he might save himself for the church, since he was the only one whom the persecutor was seeking. Therefore, let the servants of Christ, the ministers of his word and of his sacrament, do what he has commanded or permitted. Let them by all means flee from city to city when any one of them is personally sought out by persecutors, so long as the church is not abandoned by others who are not thus pursued and who may furnish nourishment to their fellow servants, knowing that otherwise these could not live. But when the danger is common to all, that is, to bishops, clerics and laity, those who depend upon others are not to be forsaken by those on whom they depend. Therefore, either all should move to places of refuge, or those who have to stay should not be abandoned by those who minister to their spiritual needs; thus all may equally live and suffer whatever the Master of the household wishes them to endure. — LETTER 228, To Honoratus