Christian Cliiircli as a social wiiole, the 'one body' with many members (Ro 12^, 1 Co 12i'^- -'" etc.). Svnibolicallv the bread of the Lord's Supper is designated a'^s the body of Christ (1 Co lO'^ IT-"- ^t- -«).
2. The doctrine. — Outside of the Pauline Epistles the references to the body are few in number, and do not furnish materials for separate doctrinal treatment. It is almost wholly with St. Paul that we have to do in considering the doctrinal appli- cations of the word. His use of it is threefold — a literal use in connexion with his doctrine of man, a figurative or mystical use in his doctrine of the Church, a symbolic use in his doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
(I) The literal body. — The assumption is frequently made that St. Paul's doctrine of man was formed under Hellenistic influences, and that he sets up a rigid dualism between body and soul, matter and spirit (cf. Holtzmann, NT Theol. ii. 14 f . ). It is true that he makes use of the contrasted terms 'flesh' and 'spirit,' 'body' and 'soul,' which had become general among the Jews through famili- arity with the LXX, and were thus indirectly due to contact with the Greek world. But, notwith- standing his use of these terms, St. Paul's doctrine of man was firmly rooted in the soil of OT teach- ing, and anything like the Greek dualistic anti- thesis between body and soul was far from his thoughts. For him, as for the OT writers, the psycho-physical unity of the human personality was the fundamental feature in the conception of man. The body, no less than the soul, was essential to human nature in its completeness, though the body, as the part that links man to Nature, held a lower place than the soul or spirit by which he came into relation with God. These two strands of thought — the essentiality of the body to a comjjlete human nature, and its subordi- nation to the soul — run through all the Apostle's anthropological teaching, and come into clear view in his teaching on the subjects of sin, death, sanctification, and the future life.
(«) The body and sin. — It is here that the argu- ment for a positive dualism in the Pauline teaching regarding the body finds its strongest support. It must be admitted that St. Paul often speaks of the body and its members not only as instruments of sin, but as the seat of its power {e.g. Ro 6'- ^^ 7°--^^-). But it has been further alleged that he saw in the body the very source and principle of sin (Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, Leipzig, 1S90, p. 53 ti".). The argument depends on the interpretation given to the word 'fle.sh' [crap^) in those passages where it is employed in an ethical sense in contrast with 'spirit' (TTceCyaa). It is assumed by Pfleiderer and others that <x6.p^ in such cases simply denotes the physical or sensuous part of man, in which the Apostle finds a substance essentially antagonistic to the life of tlie spirit, making sin inevitable. But the objections to this view seem insuperable. In St. Paul's category of the 'works of the fiesh' (Gal 5"**-) most of the sins he enumerates are spiritual, not physical, in their character. When he charges the Corinthians with being ' carnal ' (1 Co 3^), he is condemning, not sensuality, biit jealousy and strife. His doctrines of the sanctifi- cation of the body (I Co 6^=- ^'^) and of the absolute sinlessness (2 Co 5'-') of one born of a woman (Gal 4^) would have been impossible if he had regarded the principle of sin as lying in mans corporeal nature. The antithesis of flesh and spirit, then, cannot be interpreted as amounting to a dualistic opposition between man's body and his soul. It is a contrast rather between the earthly and the heavenly, the natural and the supernatural, what is evolved from below and what is bestowed from above. The ' carnal ' man, with his ' mind of the flesh ' at enmity Avith God (Ro 8^), is the .same as the
'natural' man who receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (1 Co 2'-'), and so is to be distin- guished from the 'spiritual' man in whom a super- natural and Divine principle is already at work (v.i^'ff-; cf. 3>-3).
But while the Apostle does not find in the body the very principle of sin, he does regard it as a lurking- place of evil and a constant source of liability to fall (Ro 6'^ 7'^- -^). Hence his determina- tion to bring the body into subjection (1 Co 9'-''), and his summons to others to mortify its deeds (Ro Si:* ; cf. Col 3^).
(b) The body and death. — In his teaching about death, St. Paul lends no support to tlie doctrine of those Greek philosophers who saw in it a liberation of the soul from bondage to the body as such (cf. Plato, Phmdo, 64 tt'.). The emphasis he lays on the inner and spiritual side of personality enables him, it is true, to conceive of existence, and even a blessed existence, in the disembodied state (2 Co 5*). His sense, too, of the weakness of the flesh and its subjection to the forces of evil leads him to describe the present body as a tabernacle in which we groan, being burdened. But in the same passage he expresses his confidence that the house not made with hands Avill take the place of the present tabernacle, and that those w'ho have here- tofore been burdened will be so clothed upon, that what is mortal shall be swallowed up of life (2 Co o^"^). He longs not for deliverance from the body, but for its complete redemption and transforma- tion, so that it may be perfectly adapted to the life of the spirit. In his view, death was not a liberation of the soul from bondage, but an inter- ruption, due to sin (Ro 6-^), of the natural solidarity of the two component parts of human nature. But as Christ by His Spirit dwelling in us can subdue the power of sin, so also can He gain the victory over deatii — the culminating proof of sin's power (1 Co 15'-^). In Christ the promise is given of a body not only raised from tlie grave, but redeemetl from the power of evil, and thus capable of being transformed from a natural body into a soiritual body (v.-*-*; cf. Ph 3-^M.