(2Cor 8,7.9.13-15)

2Corinthians 8:7 And as you distinguish yourselves in all things, in faith, and in speech, and in knowledge, and in all zeal, and in charity, which we have taught you, so also distinguish yourselves in this generous work.

2Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: for though he was rich, he became poor for your sake, that you might become rich through his poverty.

2Corinthians 8:13 For here it is not a question of making you poor in order to lift others up, but of making equality.

2Corinthians 8:14 For the present let your abundance make up for their destitution, that their abundance also may make up for your destitution, and there may be equality, as it is written:

2Corinthians 8:15 He that gathered much did not abound,

and he who gathered little did not have less.

Paul compliments the Corinthians by acknowledging that it is a community rich in many gifts. The Corinthians have a life that is grounded in the word, in faith, in science, in zeal, in charity. What do the Corinthians still lack? Paul seems to be saying: since you know the things, now is your chance to put them into practice. These virtues listed by Paul are either nurtured through our constant growth, or we gradually forget about them and return to our old world. It is right that we constantly question ourselves about our growth, also through our daily examination of conscience.

In fact, Paul urges them to add to their already good spiritual journey what he calls "this generous work" (v.7). They must complete the collection in favour of the church in Jerusalem, but they must do it not lightly, in a good way, giving that little just to say that they have participated. Paul wants them to be distinguished in this work, and the distinction only occurs in the abundance of the fruit, in a heartfelt participation.

This is not a test of faith, but a real examination of the consistency of their Christianity. Christianity is not the practice of a doctrine, it is not even a more or less excellent morality. Christianity is above all else the following of Christ in imitation of Him. Whoever wants to be a Christian must not only walk after Christ, he must also imitate Him, for it is in the imitation of Him that moral excellence is achieved.

Who is Jesus Christ? Paul chooses to define Jesus as a rich man who became poor. "From being rich that he was, he became poor for your sake, that you might become rich through his poverty." This is an exceptional sentence. The Christian community can become rich through Christ's poverty. Jesus was rich as God, therefore all-powerful. By renouncing this condition that was proper to him by divine nature, he made himself obedient, he made himself weak, he made himself submissive - and by this attitude, which Paul calls the 'poverty of Christ', we have the possibility of becoming rich, of taking on the quality of being divine. Bringing this example of Christ, Paul says that the Corinthians are called to imitate Christ, thus to strip themselves of themselves; they are invited to renunciation, they are put in the position of voluntarily giving up something, so that some other needy brother can benefit from their wealth.

"For here it is not a question of making you narrow in order to lift others up, but of making equality." Paul steps out of the rule of charity here, and enters the rule of justice. When one steps out of charity and enters into justice, then there is no longer goodwill that governs and determines the work, there is a much more objective rule which is that of giving and having. When there is justice to be done, one does not look at whether one is poor or whether one is rich, one looks at that there is an obligation one must fulfil and one is not just until it is fulfilled. This rule of justice, this doing of equality, demands that one does not look at the work of the collection merely as a free gift, but looks at it as the fulfilment of a debt incurred towards the church in Jerusalem.

This cannot be understood unless one starts from the real communion that reigns in the church. The church in Jerusalem gave the Corinthians the spiritual goods, the truth and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is only right that the Corinthian congregation should give as much to the church in Jerusalem as it can so that it may survive in a time of great need.

The Jerusalem church is in spiritual abundance, and this abundance is poured out upon the spiritual destitution that accompanies the Corinthian community. The community in Corinth, on the other hand, is in the abundance of material goods and must support the material destitution in which the brothers in Jerusalem have found themselves. It is this equality that Paul demands, and it is according to this equality that one must act. To do equality is not a work of charity, it is a work of justice: a duty to those who have enriched us.This principle of faith must go beyond the historical situation of Paul's time. It is perennial law in the church of God. For this principle of faith demands that he who receives spiritual goods, reciprocates with material goods.

"He who gathered much did not abound, and he who gathered little did not have less". The goal of equality is a principle taken from the book of Exodus chapter 16, regarding the manna. The rule for manna was to gather it every day and in the amount needed to eat. Everyone was to gather the amount of manna they needed to eat that day; the next day, there would be more manna and again it would be gathered. The verse serves Paul as a theological principle, and he applies these words to Christians, showing that charity must produce a certain equality among them so that all have what is needed. Both in spiritual and temporal things, they must therefore help one another.

It is only right that if one has gathered more one day, he should help with this 'more' the one who has gathered less on that day. This is the equality that Paul intends to see lived out in the Church among Christians.

Only by faith and only in faith can this teaching be lived out. 

This is not a work done out of antipathy towards Protestantism, or resentment towards evangelicals, but to defend the true faith, without warlike aspirations. I spent much of my life in the Protestant world, and late in life I discovered that I did not know the Catholic Church I was criticising at all, and it is this ignorance that leads many Catholics to allow themselves to be convinced or influenced by Protestants.  

These are divided into a myriad of denominations, some of which do not like to be called 'Protestant', but would like to be referred to only as 'Christian'. We also know that for Protestants, Catholics are not Christians, but idolaters and pagans; it follows that evangelicals in wanting to be called only 'Christians' aspire to the implicit recognition that they are the only 'true Christians'.

The problem is that only very few Protestants know the history of the Church; a great many only accuse by hearsay, but have never opened a book on Christian history over the centuries. All they need is what the pastor on duty says, a few pamphlets, and the internet to form their anti-Catholic 'culture'.

Many Protestants and/or Evangelicals, rather than being ashamed of their ignorance about Christianity, are proud of it, saying the classic phrase 'I am only interested in the Bible', a phrase that is already a whole programme. People's biblical-historical ignorance is essential in order to be able to guide them. A serious Protestant who would study the history of Christianity would have a good chance of ceasing to be a Protestant. 

In all Protestantism there is a do-it-yourself faith! The Holy Spirit guides us to understand the Bible well, it is true, but in the Protestant world, this pretext is used to cover an unrestrained and in some ways arrogant presumption, which leads every pastor to become a kind of infallible 'pope' in teaching people.

Presumption and arrogance are not immediately apparent - no one shows these faults so easily. They all seem God-fearing, observant of the Word and full of love for their neighbour. Too bad that their neighbour in most cases is the one who listens passively and does not contradict their biblical teachings. Those who dare to dissent are then no longer loved, often no longer greeted, and sometimes slandered. 

For a long time, thanks to Luther, the pope was considered the antichrist, therefore hated and accused, and so were all Catholic bishops and priests. Observant individual Catholics were also included in this climate. 

Protestants criticise papal infallibility, but in fact behave as infallibles; each in their own community, free to invent whatever they want, pulling the jacket on the Holy Spirit, as a guarantee of their doctrines! The result? A myriad of denominations with doctrines that often conflict heavily with each other.  

The problem lies in the great ignorance mixed with presumption that so many Protestants and/or Evangelicals have. Are Catholics less ignorant? No, most Catholics, unfortunately, are very ignorant in biblical matters, but at least they do not set themselves up as teachers to anyone who happens to be within their reach. The average Catholic is aware of his own ignorance, the average Protestant, on the other hand, is very presumptuous in biblical matters.

A Protestant who truly loved, as he says, the truth, would go and see for himself what the early Christians, our ancestors in the faith, wrote and how they lived, in order to understand if and how the Catholic Church is wrong, or where the Protestants are wrong in their interpretation of the Bible.    

Logically, rather than trusting a pastor who explains the Bible 2000 years later, it would be better to trust the early fathers, who learned Christian teaching directly from the voice of the apostles. Unfortunately, many Protestants do not use logic, but only anti-Catholic ideologies, cultivating a visceral dislike for everything Catholic, because they dismiss a priori the evidence of how the very first Christians lived, who lived after the apostles but before Constantine.  

The Christian faith is one, because the Spirit of God is one! So many take the wrong path, and we have a duty to understand who is in the right one and who is in the wrong one. Unity is the cohesion of the elements, of the parts that make up an entity (e.g. the cohesion between the parts of a car such as the body, the wheels, the engine, etc.) as Plotinus already said; if unity is lacking, that entity is also lacking and others may result, but no longer the entity it was before [if the cohesion of the body, wheels and engine is lacking, there is no longer the car entity, but rather the entities body, wheels, engine]. Here, Protestantism looks so much like the pile of sheet metal that a car once was. There is much criticism of the Catholic Church, but how many people know, for example, that Bultmann, a famous Lutheran Protestant theologian and exegete, reduced the resurrection to a theological symbol? Indeed, he did not consider it possible that physically Jesus was resurrected. In order to compare different biblical interpretations, one must have one's mind as clear as possible of ideologies and preconceptions. One must be open to any hypothesis if it is properly motivated and proven. If we rely on ideological prejudices that bind us to our doctrinal beliefs, we can do without reading or listening to any text or person; it is useless anyway. Our pride will prevent us from learning truths other than 'our own'. We often defend our biblical error with an impenetrable shell, we keep our truth, rejecting any other, which bangs on the shell and slips away. As soon as one touches the religious/spiritual plane, strangely enough, it is as if many pull the switch off their own mind, or at least a part of it. When Protestants converse with a Catholic, for example, they receive no information at all, only sounds that slip over their eardrums, but do not reach their brains. They do not listen.   

The history of Christianity means nothing to them, it is of no importance, except in the events to be held against them - see crusades, inquisitions, etc. - without knowing the true history of these events, and without knowing that the Protestants also had their wars, and also had their inquisitions, which were much bloodier than the Catholic ones.

They claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, but strangely enough there are many groups that receive different and contradictory information from the same Holy Spirit, inexorably losing credibility. 

I realise that the Catholic Church has neglected the problem of Protestant proselytism. Evangelicals have been successful not because they are right, but simply because they find the Catholic people very ignorant in biblical matters, incapable of defending their faith properly, taking refuge behind the classic "I have no time to lose"; perhaps they even lose their faith... but time cannot be touched.   

Many Catholics claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, but this faith of theirs is only seen in times of need: when everything runs smoothly, Jesus is forgotten, and the Bible is of no interest to anyone to read. In contexts like these, evangelicals find a people who really need to be evangelised, by them. Many Catholics do not resist this proselytism because they have no biblical answers to give, only ignorance to hide. In such terrain the Protestant conquest is easy, and it is as if they were facing an unarmed army.   

But those who study the Bible and strive to deepen their understanding of the meaning of God's word realise that in reality Protestants are not at all the biblical teachers they appear to be, but are profoundly ignorant historians and biblical scholars, plagiarised by their sect of membership. By calling them ignorant I do not mean to offend them, for otherwise I would call them "false and liars". By calling them ignorant I acknowledge their good faith, they believe in some wrong doctrines, not realising that they are wrong.  

The point is that the Holy Spirit cannot contradict Himself, and so certainly the conflicting interpretations of different denominations cannot all be true, nor all inspired. Clearly, it is not possible for the same Spirit to suggest different doctrines to each. This creates watertight compartments, each Protestant group believing it is in the truth more than the others, isolating itself and preaching its own gospel. For example, according to the Adventists, all other Christian churches have abolished the Sabbath commandment by worshipping on Sunday, and therefore everyone except them is doomed to hell if they do not abolish Sunday as the Lord's Day. Of course, they justify these accusations of theirs with certain Bible verses, interpreting them in their own way. Here, this is the point that escapes all Protestants, classical and modern: the Bible cannot be interpreted subjectively, because the Truth is not subjective at all.

But being divided into watertight compartments, not communicating with one another, it is difficult for any of them to notice the doctrinal differences with other Protestants. If anyone does notice them, they pretend that they do not, or do not give them the proper weight, just believe in Jesus as our personal saviour. Their attention is only turned towards the Catholic Church, the enemy to be defeated! It is all too convenient to proudly claim that "I understand what is written in the Bible because the Holy Spirit guides me. God has hidden the truth from the wise and revealed it to the humble'. Here, every good Protestant uses such phrases to reject the interpretative authority of the fathers and doctors of the Church.In this context, we witness scenes in which any Protestant, of any degree of culture, scoffs at the writings of Irenaeus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and does so casually, because in interpreting the Bible he feels humble enough to be guided directly by God, but at the same time he is blind enough not to realise that too many 'humble' Protestants then profess very different doctrines. They despise the Catholic, but elect a "do-it-yourself" that prides itself and says: "I do not need to read the writings of the church fathers, the Bible alone is enough for me", so the teachers of which the Apostle Paul speaks would be of no use: "It is he who established some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers" (Eph 4:11). 

One only has to read the history of the heresies that have affected Christianity throughout the centuries to realise that heretics based and always base their theses on the Bible, explaining it in their own way. People are unlikely to go poking around intertwined doctrinal and theological issues. It is easier to find a priest who has committed some human error and choose him as a target, in order to corroborate anti-Catholic theses and consider the Catholic Church as the enemy of Christianity and truth, allied with Satan to mislead souls and lead them to hell. Not even the archangel Michael flaunted such confidence in branding or judging the devil, yet it was the devil (Jd 1:9):  

The archangel Michael, when in dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, did not dare to accuse him with offensive words, but said: You condemn the Lord!

The truth is that the accuser par excellence is Satan himself; the saints do not accuse anyone, not out of respect, but because they defer to God's judgement. For a Protestant, on the other hand, it is normal to say that Catholics go to hell because they are idolaters. They set themselves up as judges, believing they know the hearts, and misunderstand the concept of worship. Any Christian should ask himself questions, to verify what he believes, and should be able to discern whether his beliefs in matters of faith are just the result of autosuggestion, induced fantasies, or whether they find confirmation in the history of Christianity and in the Bible.   

Argentino Quintavalle

 author of the books

 Argentino Quintavalle, author of the books 

- Revelation - exegetical commentary 

- The Apostle Paul and the Judaizers - Law or Gospel?

Jesus Christ true God and true Man in the Trinitarian mystery

The prophetic discourse of Jesus (Matthew 24-25)

All generations will call me blessed

 Catholics and Protestants compared - In defence of the faith

(Buyable on Amazon)