Daily Archives: February 9, 2010

Call for sources & input

Posted by on February 9, 2010 23 comments

Doing this series on the body of Christ is really getting the wheels turning for me, in the most positive way possible. It’s also sort of making things balloon, so I may actually be posting about this for a while. Thus, with this in mind I have two requests from readers:

First, I need any and all recommendations you would offer on the topic of the body of Christ. I mean this in the broadest way possible. Right now I’m reading everything from in-depth biblical studies of the metaphor to theological treatments of the three-fold body of Christ. Any sources that you consider vital to investigating this topic, in all its dimension, I want to hear about.

Second, and more importantly, I want to put out a call for contributions from my readership on this topic. Specifically, I’m wondering if any bold readers would be willing to send me some guest posts on the topic of the meaning of metaphor of the body. You could take this in any direction, addressing the three-fold body of Christ as such, or different aspects thereof, or simply doing biblical study of the meaning of the Pauline metaphor in Scripture. There is clearly a diversity of opinion on this topic, and I want those various voices to receive a hearing outside of the comment threads. So, please contact me, either by email or through the comments here if you are interested in doing a guest post on this topic.

Volf on the body of Christ, ctd.

Posted by on February 9, 2010 21 comments

So, given what we’ve seen from Volf, how does he ultimately describe the church as the body of Christ? In a rather trinitarian way:

Christ cannot be identical with the church. An element of juxtaposition obtains between Christ and the church that precisely as such is constitutive for their unity. Only as the bride can the church be the body of Christ, and not vice versa. To be sure, one should not understand the genitive Christos (“of Christ”) exclusively in the possessive since (“the body that belongs to Christ”), but rather must also interpret it in and explicative sense (“the body that is Christ”). Otherwise the church and Christ would be merely juxtaposed and their specific oneness suppressed (see 1 Cor. 6:15; 12:1-13). The identification of Christ and the church however — “your bodies [are] members of Christ” — derives from the union between Christ and Christians, a union that cannot be conceived in physical categories, however articulated, but rather in personal categories, and a union for which the enduring distinction between the two is of decisive importance. Thus the identification of Christ and the church stands for the particular kind of personal communion between Christ and Christians, a communion perhaps best described as “personal interiority”; Christ dwells in every Christian and is internal to that person as a person. Rather than being thereby suspended, the specifically Christian juxtaposition of Christ and Christians is actually first constituted through the Holy Spirit. If this is correct, then Paul’s statement that “all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28) does not mean that this “one” is “Christ himself”; they are “one” insofar as they are “in Christ” or insofar as “Christ” dwells “within” them.

Thus, for Volf, to call the church the body of Christ is to speak of the personal indwelling of Christ, by the Spirit in all Christians, thus binding them together relationally as a communion of persons. The language of the body is thus one of divine indwelling and relational giving. We are the body of Christ in that Christ, in the Spirit dwells in us and gives us to one another in the same mode of descending, self-giving love that Christ himself embodys as the ikon of the Trinity in the world.

The organic body?

Posted by on February 9, 2010 17 comments

The notion of the body of Christ seems to point towards and organic connection between Christ and the members of the church as constituting some sort of monopersonal identity. The notion of a body and its members seems to imply such a relation of organic oneness. However, this is not necessarily the case, and Paul’s language 1 Corinthians actually doesn’t seem to lend itself in this direction.

As Volf observes, the need to view the metaphor of the body organically is bound to understanding the metaphor exclusively through physicality. Thus, “if the physical nature of the body is eliminated, then the idea of the body no longer contains its organic character.” Here Volf cites Robert Gundry’s critique of J.A.T. Roberson who argues that the body of Christ in Paul must be understood in a non-physical manner. Thus, as Paul argues, “the Christian is ‘one spirit with” the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17), and precisely as such is a part of his ‘body.’” The nature of the body of Christ is profoundly qualified by the role of the Holy Spirit who brings about a miraculous spiritual union between persons bound together in relation to Christ.

So what then does the language of the body of Christ express then if not a physical, monopersonal identity? According to Volf, it expresses

certain soteriological and strictly ecclesiological relations that shape the very being of Christians; it stands for an inward and personal communion in the Holy Spirit between Christ and Christians (see 1 Cor. 6:17) or between Christ and the church (see Eph 5:22-33), and thereby also between Christians themselves (see Rom. 12:4-8; 1 Cor. 12:14-26). Precisely this metaphorical usage makes it possible for every local church to be called “the body of Christ” in an original sense. (p. 142)

This is not to say that the metaphor does not use organic or physical language, only to observe that what the metaphor indicates is not a monopersonal identity that fuses Christ and the church. Rather, the imagery, taken in the context of 1 Corinthians as a whole, speaks to the radical and intimate nature of the Spirit’s interpersonal indwelling of all Christians and the church as a whole which unites the church with Christ in a dynamic interpersonal relationship.

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