The custom of anointing the head is mentioned (figuratively) in 1 Clem. Ivi. 5 ; Ign. Eph. xvii. 1 ;
* Even if it were, Galen's ascription of psychical attributes to organs otlier than the brain would show the wide gfull between ancient and modern psychology.
t The original motive of this wide-spread practice is probably, as Crawley suggests (ERE v. 64), ' the impulse for concealment before an object of fear.'
528
HEAD
HEAET
it is crow-ned in token of honour (Kev 4* 9^ 12' 19^^ . cf. lOM- The frequent references in the Odes of Solomon to a crown on the Christian's head are best explained from the Eastern practice of placing a garland on the head of candidates for baptism (i. 1, ix. 8, XX. 7, 8, and J. H. Bernard's notes in TS viii. 3 [1912] ad locc). The seven heads of the Apoca- lyptic red dragon {i.e. Satan [Rev 12^]) apparently denote the abundance of his power ; the seven heads of his agent, the Beast (IS^ 17*), are explicitly re- ferred both to the seven hills of Rome and to seven Emperors. The head smitten to death, but healed (13^), appears to be Nero, who was widely believed not to have died in A.D. 68 (see Swete, nd loc). The lion-heads and snake-headed tails of Rev 9"- ^^ merely heighten tlie horror of the scene.
The most remarkable use of the term 'head' in apostolic literature is its application to Christ, the 'body' being the Church. This analogy is more than illustration ; it forms an argument, like the psychological analogies of Augustine in regard to the Trinity. Just as the lower level of primitive thought represented by symbolic magic often finds a real connexion in acts, because they are similar, so ancient theology (cf. the ' Recapitulation ' doc- trine of Irenseus) often finds positive argument in mere parallelism. In the Pauline use of the analogy between the human body and the Church, Christ is sometimes identified with the whole body, and sometimes with the head alone ; this will occasion no difficulty to those who remember St. Paul's doctrine of the believer's mystical union with Christ, so that his life is Christ's. In the most detailed application of the analogy (1 Co 12^2'- ; cf. Ro 12*- *), the head is simply contrasted with the feet, without special reference to Christ, the whole Church-body being identified with Him. NT com- mentators,* whilst often crediting St. Paul with the knowledge of modem physiology, usually over- look the contribution of Hebrew psychology to the elucidation of this analogy. In the OT the body is regarded as a co-operative group of quasi-inde- pendent sense-organs, each possessed of psychical and ethical, as well as physical, life (see artt. Eye, Ear, Hand, and cf. Mt S^^-^"). This gives new point to the comparison with the quasi-independent life of the members of the Church ; in the social as in the individual body, health depends on the (voluntary )subordination of this q uasi-independence to the common good. This unity of purpose St. Paul elsewhere traces to the Headship of Christ. Tlie Apostle can identify the head with Christ, without at all thinking of the brain, because the head is the most dignified part of the psycho- physical personality. As a centre of life (cf. Mt ■5**), not specially of thought or volition (which St. Paul located in the heart), the head dominates the body, the separate organs of which each contribute to the whole personality ' according to the working in due measure of each several part' (Eph 4'* ; cf. Col 2"*). Christ is ' the saviour of the body' (Eph 5-^), as it is the head on which the safety of the whole body depends, because of the special sense- organs located in it. On the other hand, llie body is necessary to the completion and fullness of the life of the head, as is the Church to Christ (Eph J.S. 23) Elsewhere, this Headship of Christ over the body denotes simply His priority of rank (Col 1'*), and this is extended to His dominion over the 'principalities and powers' of the unseen world (2'").
The bodily union of the members with Christ the Head is conceived in close relation with the initial
* E.g. J. Armitage Robinson (Epkeidans, 1903, p. 103), who bases the Pauline thouprht of Christ as Head of the body on the fact that ' that Is the seat of the brain which controls and unifies the orj^anisin, and goes on to apealt of ' the complete system of nerves and muscles by which the limbs are knit together and are connected with the head ' (p. 104).
act of baptism : ' in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body' (1 Co 12"). St. Paul's doctrine of the Spirit of God (or of Christ) as creating the spiritual unity and efficiency of the body through which it circulates from the head has an interest- ing parallel in the Pneuma doctrine of contem- porary physiology. According to this, ' spirit ' was conveyed by the arteries to the different sense- organs (H. Siebeck, Gesch. der Psychologie, 1884, ii. p. 130 f. ; G. S. Brett, A History of Psychology, 1912, p. 286 f. ). Something of this popular doctrine may, of course, have reached St. Paul through the physician Luke. It would certainly have appealed to him as an example of ' spiritual ' law in the 'natural' world, confirming and enforcing his own moral and spiritual conception of the Hebrew doc- trine of the Spirit.*