1. It is generally reported that there is among you. Those contentions having originated, as has been observed, in presumption and excessive confidence, he most appropriately proceeds to make mention of their diseases, the knowledge of which should have the effect of humbling them. First of all, he shows them what enormous wickedness it is to allow one of their society to have an illicit connection with his mother-in-law. It is not certain, whether he had seduced her from his father as a prostitute, or whether he kept her under pretense of marriage. This, however, does not much affect, the subject in hand; for, as in the former case, there would have been an abominable and execrable whoredom, so the latter would have involved an incestuous connection, abhorrent to all propriety and natural decency. Now, that he may not seem to charge them on doubtful suspicions, he says, that the case which he brings forward is well known and in general circulation. For it is in this sense that I take the particle ὅλως (generally) as intimating that it was no vague rumor, but a matter well known, and published everywhere so as to cause great scandal.
From his saying that such a kind of whoredom was not named even among the Gentiles, some are of opinion, that he refers to the incest of Reuben, (Genesis 35:22,) who, in like manner, had an incestuous connection with his mother-in-law. They are accordingly of opinion, that Paul did not make mention of Israel, because a disgraceful instance of this kind had occurred among them, as if the annals of the Gentiles did not record many incestuous connections of that kind! This, then, is an idea that is quite foreign to Paul’s intention; for in making mention of the Gentiles rather than of the Jews, he designed rather to heighten the aggravation of the crime. “You,” says he, “permit, as though it were a lawful thing, an enormity, which would not be tolerated even among the Gentiles — nay more, has always been regarded by them with horror, and looked upon as a prodigy of crime.” When, therefore, he affirms that it was not named among the Gentiles, he does not mean by this, that no such thing had ever existed among them, or was not recorded in their annals, for even tragedies have been founded upon it; (270) but that it was held in detestation by the Gentiles, as a shameful and abominable monstrosity, for it is a beastly lust, which destroys even natural modesty. Should any one ask, “Is it just to reproach all with the sin of one individual?” I answer, that the Corinthians are accused, not because one of their number has sinned, but because, as is stated afterwards, they encouraged by connivance a crime that was deserving of the severest punishment.
(270) Calvin probably had in his eye, among other instances, the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles — Ed.