(c) The body and sanctification. — St. Paul's view of the body as an essential part of the human personality appears further in his doctrine of the bodily holiness of a Christian man. In Corinth the perverted notion had grown up that since the body was not a part of the true personality, bodilj- acts were morally indiflerent things (1 Co 6'^"^-). To this the Apostle opposes the doctrine that the body of a Christian belongs to the Lord, that it is a member of Christ Himself and a sanctuary of the Holy Ghost — thus making the personal life which unites us to Christ inseparable from those other manifestations of the same personal life which find expression in the bodily members. Yet this view of the communion of the body in man's spiritual life and its participation in the sanctifying powers of the Divine Spirit did not blind him to the fact that the body, as we know it, is weak and tainted, ever ready to become the instrument of temptation and an occasion of stumbling (Ro 6'^, 1 Co 9-''). And so, side by side with the truth that the body is a Divine sanctuary, he sets the demand that sin should not be allowed to reign in our mortal bodies, that we shoiild obey it in the lusts thereof (Ro &■').
(d) The body and the fnture life. — Here, again, the same two familiar lines of thought emerge. On the one hand, we have an overwhelming sense of the worth of the body for the human person- ality ; on the other, a clear recognition of its present limitations and unfitness in its earthly form to be a perfect spiritual instrument. The proof of the first is seen in St. Paul's attitude to the idea of a bodily resurrection. To him the
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BOLDNESS
resurrection of Clirist was a fact of the most ab- solute certainty (Ro l"*, 1 Co 15"*"-) ; and that fact carried ■with it the assurance that the dead are raised (v.^^*-). Had lie thought of the body as something essentially evil, had he not been per- suaded of its absolute worth, his hopes for the future life must have centred in a bare doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and not, as they actually did, in the resurrection of the body. But while he clung passionately to the hope of the resurrection, he did not believe in the resurrection of the present bodj^ of flesh and blood (1 Co 15^"). He looked for a body in which corruption had given place to incorruption (vv.*^'-^^) and humilia- tion had been changed into glory (Ph 3'-'). His doctrine of the resurrection includes the assurance that when the dead in Christ are raised (he has little to say of the pliysical resurrection of others), it will not be in the old bodies of their earthly experience, but in new ones adapted to heavenly conditions (1 Co IS'*^^-)) bodies that are no longer psychical merely, i.e. moving on the plane of man's natural experience in the world, but pneumatical (v.**^*), because redeemed from every taint of evil and fitted to be the worthy and adequate organs of a spiritual and heavenly life.
(2) The figurative or mystical body.— In 1 Co 12i2ff- (cf. Ro 125), st^ Paul describes the re- lations in which Christians stand to Cin-ist and to one another under the figure of a body and its members ; and towards the end of the chapter (v.^) he says of the Corinthian Church quite expressly, ' Now ye are a body of Christ (aQfia Xpi(TTov), and members in particular.' In ancient classical litei'ature the figui'e was frequently ap- plied to the body politic ; and the Apostle here transfers it to the Church with the view of im- pressing upon his readers the need for unity and mutual helpfulness. As yet, however, the figure is plastic, and the anarthrous cru>/j.a suggests that it is the Church of Corinth only which St. Paul has immediately in view. This may be regarded, ac- cordingly, as the preliminary sketch of that elaborated conception of the Church as Christ's mystical body which is found in two later Epistles. In Ephesians (1--'- 4'^) and Colossians (lis-^"') 'the body of Christ ' [rb o-tD/xa rod XptaTov) has become a fixed designation of the universal and ideal Church. Moreover, this further distinction is to be observed, that whereas in Rom. and 1 Cor. Christ is con- ceived of as the whole body of which individual Christians are members in particular, in Eph. and Col. the Church has become the body of which Christ as the head is ruler, saviour, and nourisher (Eph 5-^^, Col 21"). In its later form the figure suggests not only the unity of the Church as the mystical body of Christ, but its absolute depend- ence upon Him who is the Head for its strength and growth and very existence.
(3) The symbolic body.— The words, • This is my body,' applied by Jesus to the broken bread of the Supper (ISIt 2626, jyi^ U"-, Lk 22i9), are re- peated by St. Paul in his narrative of the institu- tion (1 Co 11^). And the Apostle not only repeats the Lord's words in their historical connexion, but himself describes the sacramental bread as being Christ's body. ' The bread which we break,' he writes, 'is it not a communion of the body of Christ?' (I Co W). In like manner he says that whosoever shall eat the bread of the Lord un- worthily shall be guilty of the body of the Lord (1P0> and that a participant of the Supper eats and drinks judgment unto himself 'if ho discern not the body' (v.^"). There are wide dili'erences of opinion among Christians as to the full significance of this identification of the bread of the Lord's Supper with the body of the Lord Himself. But whatever further meanings may be seen in it, and