There is no ground to sujjpose that our Lord's entrance upon tlie state of exaltation implies any further change in His bodily nature. Certainly no new quality could be developed ^vllif■h would be inconsistent with the essential cliaiaitrii-tics of a body. One of these characteri^iiis is the im- jMJSsib'ility of being in two pkucs at the same moment. As long as He was on earth His body could not be in heaven, though He was there by His Spirit ; and as long as He is in heaven His body cannot be on earth, although He is present by His Spirit, according to His promise to be with His followers where they are gathered together in His name (Mt 18™, cf. 28'"). St. Peter preached that the heavens must receive Him until the times of restoration of all things (Ac 3-') ; and Christ Himself taught the Apostles that it was expedient for thera that in bodily form He should leave them, so that the Comforter might take His place in the midst of the Church (Jn 16').
(3) Christ's mystical bodi/.—ln 1 Co 12'="f- (cf. Ro 12*) St. Paul uses the figure of a body and its mem- bei-s to describe the relations of Christian people to Christ and to one another, and then in v.-' he definitely applies the expression ' a body of Christ ' (trw/to XpiffToC) to the Corinthian Church. With reference to the body politic the figure was a familiar one in both Greek and Latin literature, and the Apostle transfers it to the Church for the purpose of^emphasizing his exhortiitions to Church unity and a sense of mutual dependence among the
people of Christ. As yet, however, the figure is quite plastic, while the anarthrous auiia suggests that it is the local Church which is immediately in view. Here, accordingly, we have in their first draft the Apostle's grand conceptions on the sub- ject of the Lord's mystical body. When we come to Ephesians ( l^s- si 412) ^nd Colossians (1"-=*) we find that his ideas have been elaborated, and that 'tlie body of Christ' (t6 o-wMa toO Xpio-roO) has become a fixed title of the Church not as local merely, but as universal, nor simjily as empiric, but as an ideal magnitude. We notice this further distinction, that in the earlier Epistles Christ is conceived of as the whole body, of which indi- vidual Christians are the particular members; while in Ephesians and Colossians He becomes the head of the Church which is His body (Eph a^- «, Col 2")— the vital and organic centre of the whole. The idea of this strikin" figure is similar to that presented by our Lord Himself in the allegory of the Vine and the Branches (Jn 15^'*). The lesson of the figure, as of the allegory, is not only that in Christ all believers are bound together into the unity of the Church, but that the spiritual vitality, indeed the very existence, of individual Christians and Christian communities depends upon the close- ness of their relations with Jesus Christ who is their head.
(4) C/d-ist's symbolic body.— On the night in which He was betrayed, Jesus, in instituting the sacrament of tlie Supper, said of the bread which He took and broke and gave to His disciples, ' This is my body ' (rovrb 4<rn t4 ffufnd ynou : Mt 26^, Mk 14--, Lk 22", 1 Co n^). Similarly St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says of the bread which is broken at the Supper, ' Is it not the communion of the body of Christ?' (1 Co 10''^) ; while in the same Epistle he describes the person who eats the sacramental bread unworthily as 'guilty of the body of the Lord' (11-'), and says that a man eats and drinks judgment unto himself ' if he discern not the l)udy '(11'^). Opinions have differed gi-eatly in the Church as to tlie full significance of this language, whether on the lijis of Jesus or of St. Paul. But whatever its further meanings may be, there can he little doubt that primarily the broken bread of the Supper is a symbol of the crucilied body of Christ. With this "symbolic use of the word ' body ' many have sought to identify the words of the Lord in the Fourtli Gospel about 'eating the flesh' of the Son of Man (Jn G""*'). But as the word o-ci/na denotes the body as an organism, while ' flesh ' Wdp^) applies only to the substance of the body, and as ffdpf is never em- ployed elsewhcic in tin' NT to describe the sacra- mental bread, it is unlikely either that Jesus would use crdpf with this inteiiliun, or that the author of the Gospel would have tailed to use (ru/to, the ordinary sacramental term, if it had been his intention to represent our Lord as furnishing in the CaiJernaum discourse a prophetic announce- ment of tlie institution of the Supper. See art. Luia.'s M iri.K.
I.ii' ! r Jlinyer, Lexicon, t.v. \ Cremer, Biblieo-
Tht'r ; taidlaw, Bible Voctritu; 0/ Ma7i,8.v.;
Salninni.' '.,■ ■ .( , ;- „;,uieo//m?Kor(oK(j/,s.ii.;'Resurr«:tion'; Ijin^'e, Lit,- uf Christ, vol. v. p. 12Bfl. : Forrest, Christ 0/ Hit- lury, pp. ioO ff., 411 ff. ; Ezpotitor's Greek Testament, paafim ; arts. 'Resurrection ' and 'Ascension * in Hostinj^s' DB.
F. Meyrick and J. C. Lambert. BOOK, — The word 'book,' representing two Greek words, /3//3Xos and /Si/SXi'ox (with dim. jit^Xapt- Stov, Rev lO-' "'■), is of fairly frequent occurrence in the NT, although it is found only nine times in the Gospels. Very probably a book in the form familiar to us did not exist in NT times. The liook of Scripture was a roll, as we may gather from such a text as Rev 5', ' A booK written within and on the back, sealed with .seven seals.'