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Bible Dictionaries
Body
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or 1. The term.-In English Version ‘body’ represents 3 different terms in the original. Once (Acts 19:12) it renders χρώς, which properly denotes the skin or the surface of the body. Thrice (Revelation 11:8-9) ‘dead body’ is the equivalent of πτῶμα, which corresponds to Lat. cadaver, Eng. ‘carcase.’ In all other cases ‘body’ stands for σῶμα in the Gr. text. Occasionally σῶμα is used of a dead body, whether of man (Acts 9:40, Judges 1:9) or beast (Hebrews 13:11), but ordinarily it denotes the living body of animals (James 3:3) or of men (1 Corinthians 6:15 etc.). When distinguished from σάρξ (English Version ‘flesh’), which applies to the material or substance of the living body (2 Corinthians 12:7), σῶμα designates the body as an organic whole, a union of related pads (1 Corinthians 12:12); but σῶμα and σάρξ are sometimes used in connexions which make them practically synonymous (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:3 with Colossians 2:5, 2 Corinthians 4:10 with 2 Corinthians 4:11). In Revelation 18:13 σώματα is rendered by ‘slaves’ (marg. [Note: margin.] ‘bodies’), the body only of the slave being taken into account by ancient law. From the literal meaning of σῶμα as an organism made up of interrelated parts comes its figurative employment to describe the Christian Church as a social whole, the ‘one body’ with many members (Romans 12:5, 1 Corinthians 12:12 ff.m 1 Corinthians 12:27 etc.). Symbolically the broad of the Lord’s Supper is designated as the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16; 1 Corinthians 11:24; 1 Corinthians 11:27; 1 Corinthians 11:29).
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 applications 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.
(1) 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. 14f.). 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 familiarity with the Septuagint , and were thus indirectly due to contact with the Greek world. But, notwithstanding his use of these terms, St. Paul’s doctrine of man was firmly rooted in the soil of OT teaching, and anything like the Greek dualistic antithesis 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 complete human nature, and its subordination 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.
(a) The body and sin.-It is here that the argument 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. Romans 6:12; Romans 6:19; Romans 7:5; Romans 7:23 f.). But it has been further alleged that be saw in the body the very source and principle of sin (Pfleiderer, Paulinismus, Leipzig, 1890, p. 53ff.). The argument depends on the interpretation given to the word ‘flesh’ (σάρξ) in those passages where it is employed in on ethical sense in contrast with ‘spirit’ (πνεῦμα). It is assumed by Pfleiderer and others that σάρξ in such cases simply denotes the physical or sensuous port of man, in which the Apostle finds a substance essentially antagonistic to the life of the spirit, making sin inevitable. But the objections to this view seem insuperable. In St. Paul’s category of the ‘works of the flesh’ (Galatians 5:19 ff.) most of the sins he enumerates are spiritual, not physical, in their character. When he charges the Corinthians with being ‘carnal’ (1 Corinthians 3:3), he is condemning, not sensuality, but jealousy and strife. His doctrines of the sanctification of the body (1 Corinthians 6:15; 1 Corinthians 6:19) and of the absolute sinlessness (2 Corinthians 5:21) of one born of a woman (Galatians 4:4) would have been impossible if he had regarded the principle of sin as lying in man’s 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 with God (Romans 8:7), is the same as the ‘natural’ man who receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14), and so is to be distinguished from the ‘spiritual’ man in whom a supernatural and Divine principle is already at work (1 Corinthians 2:13 ff.; cf. 1 Corinthians 3:1; 1 Corinthians 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 (Romans 6:6; Romans 7:23-24). Hence his determination to bring the body into subjection (1 Corinthians 9:27), and his summons to others to mortify its deeds (Romans 8:13; cf. Colossians 3:5).
(b) The body and death.-In his teaching about death, St. Paul lends no support to the doctrine of these Greek philosophers who saw in it a liberation of the soul from bondage to the body as such (cf. Plato, Phaedo, 64ff.). 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 Corinthians 5:8). 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 will take the place of the present tabernacle, and that those who have heretofore been burdened will be so clothed upon, that what is mortal shall be swallowed up of life (2 Corinthians 5:1-4). He longs not for deliverance from the body, but for its complete redemption and transformation, 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 interruption, due to sin (Romans 6:23), of the natural solidarity of the two component parts of human nature. But as Christ by His Spirit dwelling in ns can subdue the power of sin, so also can He gain the victory over death-the culminating proof of sin’s power (1 Corinthians 15:26). In Christ the promise is given of a body not only raided from the grave, but redeemed from the power of evil, and thus capable of being transformed from a natural body into a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44; cf. Philippians 3:21).
(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, bodily acts were morally indifferent things (1 Corinthians 6:13 ff.). 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 (Romans 6:19, 1 Corinthians 9:27). 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 should obey it in the lusts thereof (Romans 6:12).
(d) The body and the future 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 personality; 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 resurrection of Christ was a fact of the most absolute certainty (Romans 1:4, 1 Corinthians 15:3 ff.); and that fact carried with it the assurance that the dead are raised (1 Corinthians 15:15 ff.). Had he thought of the body as something essentially evil, had he not been persuaded 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 body of flesh and blood (1 Corinthians 15:50). He looked for a body in which corruption had given place to incorruption (1 Corinthians 15:42-43) and humiliation had been changed into glory (Philippians 3:21). His doctrine of the resurrection includes the assurance that when the dead in Christ are raised (he has little to say of the physical resurrection of others), it will not be in the old bodies of their earthly experience, but in new ones adapted to heavenly conditions (1 Corinthians 15:47 ff.), bodies that are no longer psychical merely, i.e. moving on the plane of man’s natural experience in the world, but pneumatical (1 Corinthians 15:44 ff.), 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 Corinthians 12:12 ff. (cf. Romans 12:5), St. Paul describes the relations in which Christians stand to Christ and to one another under the figure of a body and its members; and towards the end of the chapter (1 Corinthians 12:27) he says of the Corinthian Church quite expressly, ‘Now ye are a body of Christ (σῶμα Χριστοῦ), and members in particular.’ In ancient classical literature the figure was frequently applied to the body politic; and the Apostle here transfers it to the Church with the view of impressing upon his readers the need for unity and mutual helpfulness. As yet, however, the figure is plastic, and the anarthrous σῶμα suggests that it is the Church of Corinth only which St. Paul has immediately in view. This may be regarded, accordingly, 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 (Ephesians 1:22 f.; Ephesians 4:12) and Colossians (Colossians 1:18; Colossians 1:24) ‘the body of Christ’ (τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ) 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 conceived 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 (Ephesians 5:23 f., Colossians 2:19). In its later form the figure suggests not only the unity of the Church as the mystical body of Christ, but its absolute dependence 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 (Matthew 26:26, Mark 14:22, Luke 22:19), are repeated by St. Paul in his narrative of the institution (1 Corinthians 11:24). 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?’ (1 Corinthians 10:16). In like manner he says that whosoever shall eat the bread of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:27), and that a participant of the Supper eats and drinks judgment unto himself ‘if he discern not the body’ (1 Corinthians 11:29). There are wide differences 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 even under theories of a Real Presence, which is something other and more than a purely spiritual presence, the bread which Jesus broke at the Last Supper was, in the first place, a symbol of His own body of flesh and blood which was yielded to death in a sacrifice of love.
Literature.-H. Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lex.3, Edinburgh, 1880, s.v.; relevant sections in J. Laidlaw, Bible Doct. of Man, do. 1879; F. Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychology, Eng. translation , do. 1867; end the NT Theologies of Holtzmann [Tübingen, 1911], Weiss [Eng.translation , Edinburgh, 1882-83], and Beyschlag [Eng. translation , do. 1895], See, further. W. P. Dickson, St. Paul’s Use of the Terms Flesh and Spirit, Glasgow, 1883; H. H. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, Eng. translation , Edinburgh, 1892, i. 156; H. W. Robinson, ‘Heb. Psychology in relation in Pauline Anthropology,’ in Mansfield College Essays, London, 1909: F. Paget, Spirit of Discipline, do, 1891, p. 80ff.
J. C. Lambert.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Body'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/b/body.html. 1906-1918.
