The Church the body of Christ. St Paul provides an actual theology of the body, a theology which gives us the key to understanding the true meaning of Christian ascetism and which shows how different it is from any kind of disincarnated spirituality, whether of Gnostic, Platonic or other origin.For St Paul the flesh and the body are different things: the later merits respect, whereas the former, he sees as the perishable element in man, the soil on which sin thrives. Hence the Apostle provides no list of sins of the body, but he does list the sins of the flesh (Gal 5:19). However, although the body per se has a certain dignity, the body of the Christian has an enchanced dignity, it will be changed into a glorious body ( Phil 3:21), a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:44). For this to happen we must first die and our body be resurrected. In his captivity Letters, St Paul expounds his teaching on the Church in a more developed form than previously; but his teaching in earlier (the great epistles and in a later epistles is consistent. In the captivity Letters, the Church is identified with the body of Christ. This is not an absolute identity: Christ and the Church cannot be exactly the same thing; perhaps the best way to explain it is to say that the statement” the Church is the body of Christ can be translated as follows: the Church is Christ –in –his-body, in the same sort of way as a man’s body is a man-in-his-body: it is this man in concrete, visible form, not just part of this man. The formula body of Christ applied to the Church is one which St Paul uses to emphasize the deeply mysterious relationship that exists between the Church and Christ, and it represents his attempt to plumb the deepest level of the Church and Christ, and it represents his attempt to Romans, the Apostle begins to formulate this way of understanding the Church. But it is in the Colossians and Ephesians that he really develops it. In Colossians and Ephesians, he does not just describe the Church the Church as the body of Christ; he superimposes on this image of Christ as head of the Church: Christ is distinct from the Church, but the Church is joined to him as to its head (Eph 1:22; Col 1:18). By saying that Christ is the head and the Church the body, he is not saying that the head is not part of the body; the head is being distinguished by reason of its special eminence: the head is the most important part of the body( however, it is incorrect to be speaking here of parts). Thus the Church in relation to Christ is in a subordinate position ( Eph 4:15). Christ, being the head and principle, is as it were the internal motor of the entire body. The Christian shares, truly, in the body of the Lord through Eucharistic Communion . In this way all Christians reinforce their membership of the body of Christ ( 1 Cor 12:27) and their relationship to one another ( Rom 12:5). This union of each Christian with Christ and with other Christians is a very intimate one; it goes far beyond mere external association: suffering and joy are shared; Christians edify each other by the practice of charity and the other virtues: spiritual life flows through the body in this way. This union with Christ is what rebuilds lost unity at various levels of creation—the inner unity of the individual, pulled in different directions by his passions (Rom 7:14;8:2,9); in union in marriage; for the marriage couple, their model is Christ’s union with his Church (Eph 5:25-32); unity among mankind the Holy Spirit makes people children of the same heavenly Father ( Eph 4:6); and, very particularly,unity among Christians, who having one hearth and one soul (Acts 4:32),also praise their Father God with one voice (Rom 15:5). Finally, this unity is a sign of identifying feature of the one and only Church, united on earth by the very links which join it to Christ (Eph 4:5). This view of unity of Christians and of the unity of the Church as the body of Christ does not conflict with diversity of gifts and graces. Each Christian receives specific graces, which we should faithfully use for the glory of God ( Rom 12:6-8; 1 Pet 4:10-11). In the context of this wealth of gifts, a deep unity is produced; that unity and those gifts all derive from the same source, the Spirit ( 1 Cor 12:4-11). Letters of St Paul.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:45:12 +0000