6. In Heb. we have a special use of ' flesh ' to designate earthly existence — a iise which must be distinguished from those that have been already dealt with. ' In the days of his flesh ' (He 5') does not mean in the days when He possessed a body, or in the days M-hen He bore our human nature ; for the author finnly believes in the continued and complete humanity of our heavenly High Priest (4"f-). It evidently means in the days when He lived upon earth as a man amongst men. Simi- larly, ' through the veil, that is to say, his flesh ' (10-") points to His life in those same ' days of his flesh ' — the whole period of His suflering humanity ; and when the writer describes the rites of the OT Law as 'ordinances of flesh ' {diKaiu/u-ara aapKos, EV ' carnal ordinances,' 9^°) and contrasts these with the blood of Christ in respect of atoning efficacy, the antithesis in his mind, as the context shows, is not so much between the material and the spiritual as between the earthly and the heavenly, the pass- ing and the permanent, the temporal and the eternal. In the same way he draws a contrast be- tween ' the law of a carnal {(xapKivrjs) commandment' and ' the power of an endless life ' (7^®).
7. In addition to the foregoing, which may all be characterized as natural meanings of 'flesh,' we find the word used by St. Paul in a distinctly theo- logical and ethical sense to denote the seat and instrttment of sin in fallen humanity, as opposed to the ' mind,' or higher nature of man, which accepts the Law of God (Ro 7^), and the ' spirit,' which is the principle of life in the regenerate (S'"^-, Gal 5i6fr. g8)_ Jq precisely the same Avay he emploj-s the adj. 'fleshly' or 'carnal' in contrast with 'spirit- ual ' (Ro 7'\ 1 Co 3\ etc. ; see, further, Carnal). Pfleiderer and others have sought to explain this peculiar usage by supposing that in the Pauline anthropology there was a fundamental dualism be- tween ' flesh ' and ' spirit,' and that the Apostle saw in the phj^sical or sensuous part of man the very source and principle of sin. Such a view, however, is contrary to St. Paul's thoroughly Hebrew con- ception of the unity of body and soul in the human personality (see 4), and is expressly negatived by his teaching on such subjects as the sinlessness of Jesus (2 Co 5'-') and the sanctification of the body (1 Co 6'3-i*), and by his application of tiie epithet ' carnal ' (3^) and of the expression ' works of the flesh' (Gal o^^"'-) to sins in which any sensuous or physical elements are entirely wanting. The most probable explanation of this Pauline antithesis of ' flesh ' and ' spirit ' is that it amounts to a contrast between the natural and the supernatural. Sin in St. Paul's presentation of it comes in the case of fallen man through natural inheritance — all man- kind descending from Adam ' by ordinary genera- tion ' — and is therefore characterized as ' flesli ' ; while the life of holiness, as a gift of the Divine Spirit, is described as ' spirit* with reference to its source.
LiTKRATURE. — H. Cremer, Lex. of NT Greek^, Edinburgh, 1880, s.v. adpi, and art. ' Fleisch' in PRE3 ; H. H. Wendt, Die Be- griffe Fleisch u. Geist im hibl. Sprachgebrauch, Uotlia, 1878 ; J. Laidlaw, Bible Doet. of Man, new ed., Edinburghi, 1S95, p. 109 ff., and HDB ii. 14 ; W. P. Dickson, St. Paul's Use of the Terms ' Flesh' and '5?)tri«,' Glasgow, 1883; A. B. Bruce, St. Paul's Conception of Christianity, Edinburgh, 1894, eh. xiv.
J. C. Lambert.
FLOCK. — One of the most familiar pictures in the OT is that of the Church or people of God as a flock. In Gn 48'° the correlative figure is found in ' the shepherding God,' and is repeated in the Bless- ing of the Tribes (' the Shepherd of Israel,' Gn 49-* ; cf. also Ps 23 and Ezk 34^'). In Is 401^ the figure is directly employed : ' He shall feed his flock like a shepherd ' (in the OT generally iroineves \aQv meant 'civil rulers,' as in Homer, but in the NT the phrase stands for ' spiritual guides and teachers ').
The OT metaphor is carried over into the NT, where to ttoI^vlov is used exclusively in the figura- tive sense of ' church ' or ' congregation. ' It appears thus in the tender address of our Lord : fi^ <popov, TO /MLKpov TToifiviov, ' Fear Hot, little flock' (Lk 12^*). The words continued to beat like a pulse in the breast of the Church, and are renewed again and again.
(1) St. Paul says to the elders of Ephesus : irpotri' X^re iavTols Kal iravTi tw iroL.uviip . . . iroiixalveiv rrjv (KKX-r]aiav rod Oeov, ' Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock ... to feed the Church of God' (Ac 20'-^'-^). The overseers are themselves part of the flock {ev y), and this suggests the insight, sympathy, closeness of intimacy, and the personal knowledge with which the flock is to be superin- tended. ' The bishop is and remains a sheep of the flock, and must thus exercise his oversight both on himself and the whole flock' (Stier, The Words of the Apostles, 1869, p. 328). 'Feed' and 'guide,' tlierefore, include the two great tasks of the ministry.