6 Theses of Criteria for Understanding "The Church is the Body of Christ."
Halden, on his blog Inhabitatio Dei (see links to the right) has asked the brain-knocking question of why we should/should not consider the phrase "The Church is the Body of Christ," as metaphorical. This is a question that I'm sure will not be resolved anytime soon, and I am not proposing a "solution" to Halden's question so much as possible criteria that may help us guide our decisions. I do this because I think the logic behind certain solutions (both metaphorical and non-metaphorical) are often so much the focus that the greater scope of "what is at stake in the decision," becomes obfuscated. Lest we forget no piece of portion of theological inquiry is isolated from the greater whole, and as such is not "stratified," in such a way that doctrinal decisions in one area might not affect our understanding in another, these "6 thesis," are attempting to ground Halden's question within the scope demanded of it. They are an attempt to remind us why the question is important, and what are, perhaps, the prior guiding intuitions leading to such a question being broached in the first place.
1.) In the very question of "metaphorical," vs "non-metaphorical," there lies another question at its base: what is metaphor? Halden aptly describes its traditional use as "...an indirect comparison between unrelated subjects that typically uses 'is ' to join the first subjects." The use of "is", is of course also that copula distinguishing metaphor from simile (which uses "like" and "as,"). Surely this is a definition that we all need to stick with! With the outpourring of recent literary theorists, however, perhaps a longer exposition is in order to clarify the possible function of "metaphor," in language generally. The metaphorical has recently aquired something of a bad reputation. "Metaphor," or "metaphorical," has also been (not always unjustly) categorized with idea that to be "metaphoric," is to be "non-conceptual," or "non-ontological," or "non-literal." These ideas, outlined by feminist theologians Sally McFague and Elizabeth Johnson for one example, but also (and most famously) by Nietzsche who saw language as a machine fabricating false identities under the pretense of "actually" representing reality, turned metaphor against the concept. But, and this is the point of the first thesis, saying something is "metaphorical," is not to deny conceptuality, or an attempt at "ontological," definitions, or the like; rather saying language "is metaphorical," is really only pointing out an otherwise unreflected mechanism of the "concept" itself. If you and I are to take sides on this issue of the Church *as* the Body of Christ, we must be very careful (as Halden indeed has been) to define what we mean by "literal," or "metaphorical," because they do not automatically oppose one another. We can all learn from Paul Ricoeur's famously epigrammatic saying: "The symbol gives rise to thought." To say that "the Church is the Body," is a metaphor is not (necessarily) to deny that it is "ontologically" such, and when specifying that the phrase is "non-metaphorical," or even "literal," this is not to deny that part of the reality of the phrase or idea is its symbolic and plastic character to "give rise to thought" patterns and ways of living.
2.) In asking a question, it is generally helpful to ask why we ask. Of course this procedure could go on ad infinitum, but for our immediate purposes we will stubbornly stop on the first reflection: what gives rise to the understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ (putting aside for the moment what exactly that means)? Here it will not be enough to simply cite explicit Biblical texts that affirm the phraseology under question. We musn't attempt to justify the concept/metaphor merely by transferring this phrase of our traditions immediately into critical reflection, because there is a distinct possibility that once we understand the inner logic of the phrase and why it arose, justified on grounds drawn from the unique character of Jesus own course of life, we may have a better sense of how the phrase is operating. This of course all sounds vague, and indeed it is. But at the same time it is and indispensable moment of reflection. For one example (and I do not mean for this example to be definitive or, strictly speaking, that novel, but rather as a more concrete example of what I mean): To take a quote used by Halden, for the purposes of brevity 1 Cor 1:13 "Has Christ become divided?" We should note that the operation of Paul's thought of the unity of the church is based upon Christ's death (in light of the resurrection, to be sure) and so two other concepts of what "body" is when used of the Church in relation to Christ are present: crucifixion and unity. This, I would argue, gives us insight into the "why," as in "why would Paul think to use the concept of the Church as the Body?":
That the church is unified is a function of the Church "being" (in whatever sense) the body, achieved by Christ's death and resurrection. "Body," here, as elsewhere it seems to be, in Paul, is functioning in relation to Christ's revelatory capacity: If, we might say, Christ through death and resurrection has been vindicated by God, then God has affirmed that Jesus, including his Son-relation to the Father, is the final (proleptic) expression of who and what God is. But just so, if we are to assume that man's true essence is to be related properly to its end and source, then women and men are truly themselves only in relation to this Jesus. But it is not just to Jesus that our true relation stands, for the mission of Jesus was to the Father. Hence if our salvation consists of believing in Jesus that the Father has sent this One, that indeed this one's relation to the Father is the only truly proper relation, then our salvation is a relation precisely to the Father. This means, having already assumed that through the resurrection the true relation to the Father has been revealed only as Christ, OUR relation to the Father is only AS Christ. This seems to lead us back, without help, to the initial question of what "being" Christ's body means in this case. But two things should be noted: 1.) Seeing the basic logic of revelation may allow us to say that we are Christ's body because of the manner in which we reveal God, which is precisely that we have been gathered to mimesis of Christ around the event of Christ by Christ's death and resurrection. 2.) The basic expectation that the Church *is* the body of Christ, from this logic, also implies that we need to include the concept within an eschatological horizon; Christ's death and resurrection for us bears its meaning and significance only in relation to Jewish apocalypticism, Jesus' proclamation of the coming kingdom and, now, His parousia. "Body" here seems to be taking direct cues from the type of apocalyptic ideas contained in the Resurrection and Jesus' life. We might say we are the body of Christ because our unity is a revelatory anticipation of that same filial relation of Jesus to His Father that has unified us, that we ARE in the unification. (Again, these are somewhat off the cuff and only examples of trying to think through the logic that gave rise to the use of the notion of the church as the body...)
3.) Taking a little from the logic of the second thesis, I might use this third thesis to reconfirm Zizioulas' basic dictum: "Being as Communion." That the Church is the body, if we are to take this as an "empirical description," is not that we have come to posses certain "attributes." Indeed, this idea would seem to imply an ecclesiological variation of transubstantiation, where the bread and the cup substantially become Christ's body, while its "accidental" characteristics such as smell, taste, texture, etc...remain "bread-like." We are not "substantially" a multiplicit Jesus who's accidental characteristics "looks like" an assembly of people. Our being the body, if ontological, is a relational concept. And this relation is, like my convoluted prose in the second thesis was attempting to outline, a relation to the Father with Jesus (and, I might add with urgency, through the Spirit). Hence we are not autonomously "the Body" in any "substantialist" way, but are so like anything is anything: through the various relationships in which we stand to other "things." "Body-hood" as a "thingy-ness" of the church (or which IS the Church) is a description of the form and content of this relation.
4.) Again borrowing from a portion of thesis two, the fourth thesis will attempt to guide our thoughts along the lines of eschatology. Robert Jenson, as is becoming more well known, attempts to resolve the problem by redefining "body" as "one's availability to others." Hence the eucharist, for Jenson, IS Christ AS Christ's availability for us; the Church IS Christ AS Christ's availability for others. A problem with this definition is that it perhaps alleviates the first problem so much, that it creates a second. If "body" is simply "availability" to an other, this seems to devalue what we might call "the human body." This is a somewhat peculair problem. Jenson is throughout his works adamant that there is no "logos asarkos" (that is, unembodied Logos); rather the Son IS the man Jesus. What seems to be a somewhat subversive force to Jenson's logic of Jesus the Man being precisely the Son (at least ony my reading--Halden if I'm wrong correct me....) is that Jenson, because of his peculiar reading of "body," is forced to an eventual Antiochenism: if "body" is simply "availability," so that the Church and the Eucharist "are" Christ's body in this way but not the body of the man Jesus (which is itself simply an availability and not a particularity), then the presence that is "present" as "availability" through Eucharistic communion and the Church is some other Logos beyond the human-bodily Jesus. Moreover if all "body" is, is "availability," it becomes tenuous to mark a difference between the availability of the Eucharistic or Churchly Body and the body of the actual man Jesus because the physical symbols (loaf/cup/congregation/human body) despite Jenson's insistance to their irreplaceability, are all translatable into "availability" and are just so variously exchangeable to the presence they convey, whose coming we all await. This is an overreading on my part, but I use it to display what is otherwise a very prevalent notion in Jenson's thought: eschatology. If we read Body as an ontological marker for the church, this marker must remain within the tension of "already/not yet." If we are the Body of Christ, whatever this means, its "meaning" is within the horizon that its "fulness" is only eschatologically ascertained, so that the "now" of the Churchly Body exists only in relation to what it might anticipate from God, which is, not so incidentally, precisely the future-open orientation that Jesus took to His Father in the Spirit. Our being is precisely an anticipated relation to God, and just so the "being" of the Body of the church, if ontological, is in this manner an anticipation and not a wholly realized current reality.
5.) The Church is not another identity/person of the Triune God. This is a seemingly obvious fact that must be taken into account as another mediation of the concept of the Church as the Body of Christ. Nor can someone circumvent this mediation by speaking of theosis or divination; even if we are divinized (another theological hot topic) whatever this may mean, we are not "one of the Trinity," or subsumed in our identities as creatures. The difference between infinite and finite will not be absolved, because our very identity as finite is itself maintained by a truly infinite Triune God. Hence if we are again to speak of the Church as an ontological concept, our "Bodyness" as the Church needs to maintain that we are as such only because Christ nonetheless remains an identity of God, and we do not become this. We all are "Sons," and also we all who are in the Church "Bodies," because we have been brought into Christ, who remains our Head and Lord, over against us. Thus thesis five might be summarized thus: Christ does not dissolve into the church as His Body; the Church does not become Deity.
6.) Logical peculiarities result in the idea that God can be definitively identified by a particular man who is who he is both for and from a community. Jesus is from Nazareth, experienced a particular mixture of cultures and interactions, and just so was the particular person He was. From the other side, Jesus was the Son, and so is who He is through the peculiar relation he maintained between Him and His Father. We are the church as the community initiated by this particular man, who is Jesus, who is the Son. Therefore there is a moment of reciprocity between Jesus and the Church because this history is now Jesus' history, so our community as a portion of this history stands as an integral part of Jesus' identity and His relation to His Father. If we are to interpret "Body" ontologically then we must take into account that not only does Christ initiate this community, but was also a member of the community. He was related to the Father in subservience AS He was sent for the Jews and for the Gentiles, for this community of His. Therefore Christ's revelation of God in his relation to the Father was mediated by Jesus' relation to and for us. Our identity as the Church, who are the "Body" of Christ as we --somehow--reveal God as Christ did because of a manner in which we stand in relation to the Future of God, means that it must conceptually display a relation to the Father mediated to and for eachother. This is, to put it another way, because Christ's body is what it is in relation to other historical things, particularly his community. We might say we *are* Christ's body as the Church because our historical community as the Church (with Israel) is ultimately the community that shaped Christ--the lost, the broken, the helpless. We are His body, we might say, because we shaped Him, but ultimately, because He shapes us. Thus thesis 6: The history God created is our history only insofar as it is the history of the Christological redemption; if we are to think about "body," as it is related to Christ, and hence about our capacity as the church to manifest the Father via our relation to him, then we can say the Church is the body of Christ which stands in relation to the Father, and so reveals Him, because this "standing-in-relation," to the Father now occurs only in reference to Christ-for-us. Hence the redeemed are the "body" of Christ because we are Christ's own mediation of His relation to the Father, who sent Christ for us.
Of course I have resolved very little. Nonetheless I hope that these theses might help invoke thought, even if it is against that which is proposed here, so that we might better think about how to understand ourselves as Christ's Body.
Comments
On the issue of metaphorical language, I suppose I could rephrase my question a bit. Essentially what I am wanting to ask is when we say "The Church is the Body of Christ", what is the sense of "is" and "Body"?
Now, on Jenson I think you're right that he somewhat conflates "body" with "availability", which may result in some problems, namely that of physicality, which I think is the essence of your critique. If "body" is simply "availability" then "body" can be a great many things (like bread, or a community, or whatever).
However, for Jenson the church is most definitely not some "other logos" than the man, Jesus and the body that the church is is not other than the body that suckled at Mary's breast. For Jenson, the church simply is Christ's physical body, end of story. When Jenson talks about the ascension, which he only does once or twice, this is how he configures things: Christ has ascended into God's future. "Where" Christ is is in the "place" where God's future (Triune communion) is. That is what "Heaven" is for Jesnon. Now, "where" is that future? The Eucharist/Church. The church in its eucharistic being is the "place" where the future of God "is" and thus it is the location of Jesus who embodies that future.
Now, the problem here, as I think you identify, though maybe in a different way is eschatology. In effect, Jenson siphons heaven into the Eucharist and the ecclesial assembly.
Now, to be honest, I think his logic is good as far as it goes, but I think he needs to make some distinctions as well. I think his Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity should actually provide Jenson with certain modalities of thought that could solve some of the problems his position raises. If we embrace the comunicatio idiomatum, we should have no problem with seeing Christ's humanity as participating in his divine perfections. If this is the case we don't have to revert either to a logos asarkos or to a dichotomy between Christ and the church. Rather, we are able to say that Christ is able to be present precisely in his embodiment in a variety of spatial and temporal modalities, both as a member (the head) of the church-community, which thuse stand in a relationship of ontological contiguity with him - indeed as one entity - and as an individuated human body which retains its integrity vis a vis the church. This is the "eschatological reserve" (Torrance) in which Christ's full otherness-in-relation retains its partiularized reality.
Heaven may be present in the Eucharist, and Jesus and the church may indeed by one body, one entity, one organism, but there is still the eschatological tension in which the future of God, though present is not yet realized, and there is an eschatological surplus of communion and union which obtains in the communio of the Trinity that the church does not yet participate in. This surplus of Triune Love is infinitle in its depths, just as we see in Christ's death, descent into hell and resurrection from the dead. In the Father's house there are "many rooms" wherein Christ is preparing "a place" for us. That "place" is given to us now, in the church, but our ultimate inhabitation of such Triune spaces awaits the eschatological consummation. It is in those spaces that Christ exists at the Father's right hand in his distinctive over-againstness, which is ultimately his preistly advocacy for us before the Father.
Because the Trinitarian Son is the man Jesus, the reality of his bodiliness participates in the inifinty of the Triune life, thus enabling Christ to, so to speak, 'enflesh' his embodiement under different modalities through the work of the Spirit. Thus, the Trinitarian Son is the man Jesus who was born of Mary, he likewise is the community that he joins to himself by the Spirit, and he likewise is the one who is with the Father in the Spirit, who is coming to bring all creation into the fullness of the Triune Future. In short, he is the one who was, who is, and who is the come. The Alpha and the Omega.
Great response! I'm currently reading it in the library between study breaks and so dont have time to digest everything, but fully intend to respond tonight (or tomorrow, depending on homework...)
And you put very eloquently the eschatological solution! I think that this is a key aspect of, not just this discussion, but of Christian theology as a whole. An "over-realized" eschatological understanding of the Church as Christ's body can lead very easily into a somewhat "Aristotelian" notion of the immediate possesion of "attributes," and I think this can lead to some very unfortunate "us" vs "them" (i.e. those not-yet in the church). Whereas the eschatological fullness as future itself appears to direct our life, as the Body, towards the ever expanding horizon of the onrushing future, and is just so an ever-increasingly inclusive concept, rather than an exclusive immediacy of the "now" realized Body.
As to the metaphorical language thing, I hope it didn't come across like I was critiquing you. My aim was rather to attempt to "lay down the gauntlet" as it were, and demand up front specification on what one means with "metaphor," or "literal" etc... which you in fact did. Even with my limited interaction with Ecclessiological themes (an area, like many, in which I need to read much much more...) I have found many positions hampered by attempting too quickly to move on in their thought without properly setting the terminological guidelines. If anything you were doing exactly what I was attempting to say.
Anyway I don't really have much else. I look forward to more discussions!
And that's a good point about abstract omnipresence. I think we have to take omnipresence in a narrative and trinitarian mode, definitely not something substantialist. I actually don't think that Christ is in some abstract way present everywhere. The Triune God is omnipresent, but the persons themselves participate in bringing about that omnipresence (think God is an event here) in distinct ways. As I see it, Christ's modalities of presence take the form of his individuated humanity as Jesus, his ontological union with the church, and his presence in the Sacraments. So, hopefully it's not Swabian. The ubiquity of Christ is distinctly particular and always embodied. To talk about how the Triune Community as one God is omnipresent we also have to talk about the Father and the Spirit. And ultimately, we need to talk about the narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. In a very real sense we can say that God's omnipresence is something that is not yet a fulfilled reality, but an eschatological goal, that God will be all in all.
Once again I agree. If we are to talk of the "Omnipresence" of God by referencing the life of the three, do you think that there is any merit to speaking of the presence and enlivening/unifying power of the Spirit among us as what makes us the ontological Body of Christ? In other words, if Christ's ubiquity is not other than the life amongst the Three, then the fact that we are the Body because of Christ's ubiquity may in fact be another way of speaking of the Church as the Temple of the Spirit (i.e. the presence of the Spirit *of* Christ is Christ's ubiquitous presence)? If this was so, it would seem to be an interesting blending between the Lutheran communicatio and Calvin's understanding of Christ's presence (at least of the Eucharistic presence) by the power of the Spirit. Anyway, something that I will mull over.
One good way to defend your position (which is also something I hold) may be the concept of ipse-identity, so that there is no defatigation of presence in one "is" or the other, because the reiteration of the same logical subject in different ways need not rely on an abstractly identical sameness (i.e. idem-identity) but the differentiated constancy of a personal subject (ipse). What do you think about this?