Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to
examine Paul’s teaching on the Church in Ephesians and Colossians with
reference to his use of the metaphor of the body. The study benefits from considering Hippocrates
and, especially, Galen’s writings on the body.
Paul could have been aware of Hippocrates' works, but Galen wrote a
century after Paul. Nevertheless, what
is presented here seems likely to be representative of the state of the
discussion in society, and no suggestion is being made that Paul is dependent
on any particular writing. My suggestion
is that we can appreciate Paul’s points more by considering the functions of
genesis, growth, and nutrition and the role of joints and ligaments in ancient
medical works. One application, not
dwelt on in this essay, is to redirect contemporary discussion of ministry as ‘leadership’
to what Paul is actually saying about the function of ministries in the Church.
Genesis, Growth, and Nutrition
The second century AD medical
author, Galen, described the three activities of living creatures as genesis (origin),
growth, and nutrition (On the Natural Faculties I.V). Genesis involves alteration and
shaping. Growth involves ‘an
increase and expansion in length, breadth, and thickness of the solid parts of
the animal’ (Ibid.). Paul’s mixed
metaphor of the Church as a temple and a body allows him to connect the notion
of the ‘temple’ as a building in which God dwells and a body made up of
people. Both have a genesis—the temple,
for example, has a foundation, and both are built or grow. The body, however, requires nutrition. Even the metaphor of a physical building has
some relation to the notion of nourishing: we might say that a temple, once
built, further requires a consecration and sanctification.
With Galen in mind, we might
examine whether Paul’s discussion of the Church employs genesis, growth, and
nutrition. I would argue that identifying
these activities of living creatures helps us to understand his points
better. (Of course, Galen writes a
century later than Paul. Galen is helpful for the ideas, not because Paul is
dependent on him.) Paul says (Ephesians 2.19-22),
So then you are no longer strangers
and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the
household of God,
[Genesis] 20 built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the
cornerstone. 21 In him the whole structure is joined together
[Growth] and grows into a
holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are
[Nutrition] built together
spiritually into a dwelling place for God.[1]
These notions also seem to be
present in Paul’s ecclesiastical prayer in Ephesians 3.16-21). Consider vv. 16-19:
I pray that, according to the
riches of his glory,
[Nutrition] he may grant
that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit,
17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,
[Genesis] as you are
being rooted and grounded in love.
[Growth] 18 I pray that you
may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length
and height and depth,
[Genesis] 19 and to know the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
[Nutrition] so that you may
be filled with all the fullness of God.
Simple and Complex Body Parts
Galen distinguished organs (organa) from parts of the body that he
calls homoioemeres.[2] In
one list of homoioemeres, he includes
cartilage, bones, nerves, membranes, ligaments, and other such things (De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis VIII.4.7-15). In another list he includes as examples of
the homoioemeres the arteries, veins,
nerves, membranes, flesh, and ligaments (De
morborum differentiis III.1). What
these have in common is that ‘all their parts are similar to each other and to
the whole’. They are, in turn, part of
more complex body parts, known as organa. Organs, such as the eye, tongue, heart, lung,
brain, stomach, spleen, kidney, or legs, are not similar in all their
parts. They carry out a complex
function.
Ligaments (syndesma),
then, are an example of homoioemeres. They do not perform the function that an
organ does but support the work of organs.
They are composed of a similar substance throughout. And they, like
tendons and cartilage, hold the structure of the body together like nails,
glue, and pegs do other structures (De
causis contentivis). In discussing
causation, Galen sees one type of cause, the synektic (cohesive) cause, as that which produces union of the homoioemeres, and cohesion of the homoiomeres within the body is said to
be caused by pneuma.
Before Galen, Hippocrates (c. 460
– c. 370 BC) wrote a work called On Joints. In it, the chief discussion is about
dislocations, such as treatment for a dislocated shoulder. This highlights the importance of joints for
the physical unity of the body. A
dislocated joint means the body is not properly unified.
That is precisely what Paul’s
point is in Colossians and Ephesians. In
Ephesians 4.16, Paul likens the Church to a body, ‘joined and knit together’ by
every ‘joint’ (ESV) [Greek: aphē][3] ‘with
which it is equipped, as each part is working properly,’ thus promoting ‘the
body’s growth in building itself up in love’ (ESV). We have already seen how ‘love’ functions as
a kind of genesis for the Church in Ephesians 3.17. The Church that is ‘rooted and grounded,’
that has its genesis in love will grow—the idea of plant growth rather than the
growth of a body seems to be in view. Ephesians
4.16’s notion of building up in love seems better understood in terms of growth
than genesis. Also, the verse has in
view growth that is possible when the parts of the body are working
properly and when they are properly joined together.
A few verses earlier (v. 11),
Paul spoke of Christ’s gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and
teachers as persons equipping ‘the saints for the work of ministry, for
building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith
and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full
stature of Christ’ (vv. 12-13, ESV). The
use of the metaphor of the body allows Paul to view the ministries listed in v.
11 as ministries of unity. This is not,
however, a social or communal unity—or, at least, it is not primarily or
firstly this type of unity that is in mind.
Rather, Paul says, ‘the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son
of God.’ What this means was cited earlier
in Ephesians 4.4-6 in a trinitarian affirmation, each with three parts:
[Spirit] There is one body
and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that
belongs to your call—
[Christ] 5 one Lord, one faith, one
baptism,
[Father] 6 one God and
Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
The apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, and teachers equip the saints for the work of ministry
through their roles in promoting this ‘one faith’ and proclaiming the knowledge
of the Son of God. Their ministries
would be misunderstood if we were to see them as types of leadership—a popular
way to think of ministry since the 1980s.
These roles are not about power, and they are not about offices. The Church is not being encouraged to follow ‘leaders’. ‘Leadership’ is, in fact, a concept of ministry
that misdirects Paul’s discussion—something applied from outside the text that
only confuses the discussion underway. These
persons are, rather, understood as the joints that help unify the Church around
the Christian faith. Only Christ is said
to be the head of the Church in any sense of unifying authority and, perhaps, nourishing
source.[4]
Colossians 2.18-19 has a parallel
passage:
Let no one disqualify you, insisting
on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed
up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head,
from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints [aphōn,
from aphē] and
ligaments [sundesmōn, from sundesmos], grows with a growth that
is from God.
Whereas we only have ‘joints’
mentioned in Ephesians, here we have both ‘joints’ and ‘ligaments,’ which are a
muscle to bone joint that makes movement possible. Notice, again, that Paul has in view nourishment
and growth. In this passage,
he does not identify the ‘joints’ and the ‘ligaments’ as ministers of the one
faith, as in Ephesians 4. The Colossians
passage actually begs the question what Paul might have in mind, suggesting to
me that he has a ‘theory’ of the Church as a body that he variously developed in
his writing and speaking. In Colossians,
his singular point is that Christ is the head, not angels and other
powers. In Ephesians, he wants to focus
on the unity of the Church and therefore elaborates more of his body metaphor.
Diseases of the Body and the
Importance of Truth and Love
In De Morborum Differentiis (On
the Differentiae of Diseases), Galen discusses diseases of various
sorts. His fifth class of disease is the
‘dissolution of union’ (XI.1). So, for
example, in the case of an avulsed fracture, when a ligament pulls a piece of
bone away, there is a dissolution of continuity in the body: the parts are no
longer united and the ligament becomes two instead of one. Ligaments are
supposed to unite the body’s parts, but they can exert their strength so much
that they fracture the body. Galen also
notes that, by their nature, nerves, tendons, muscles and ligaments are drier
than organs. This makes them stronger,
and yet, if they become too dry, they become difficult to bend, hard, and may
even become brittle and seized with spasm (On
the Causes of Symptoms III.X.7). At
another point, Galen discusses disease of the ligaments in terms of when the
ligament becomes too wet and relaxed (On
the Causes of Diseases X.1). In
addition to tension and laxity, Galen mentions further the problem of a ligament
that is ruptured (On the Differentiae of Diseases
X.1).
While Paul’s use of ‘ligaments’
is in Colossians, not Ephesians, he is concerned that members of the Church ‘speak
the truth in love’ (Ephesians 4.15). Speaking
the truth is not about being honest but about speaking the Gospel truth of
Ephesians 4.4-6. This is the truth that
the five ministries provide in the body—as joints—and that the members can then
affirm with one another. Yet this
administering of truth to establish body-unity should be done in love. Not to do so would be—to extend the metaphor—as
though the joints were too tense. And to
promote communal love without speaking the truth would be like the joints being too
lax—applying Galen’s discussion to what Paul says without the benefit of the
metaphor of the body at this point.
Conclusion
There is more to be said about
the body in Paul’s ecclesiology, particularly in reference to 1 Corinthians
12-14. However, by attending to medical
writings in antiquity, we can see how Paul’s discussion of the Church in
Colossians and, especially, Ephesians speaks to matters of genesis, growth, and
nutrition. We can also understand the
role of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers with reference
to the role of the joints and ligaments in the body: they provide the unity for the body that comes from proclaiming the truth, the Gospel. The only authoritative role in the metaphor
is that of Christ, head of the Church.
Ministers, rather than being seen as ‘leaders’, function to hold the
body together with the truth of the one Gospel.
They should do so, however, in love.
[1] Having mentioned
growth in v. 21, it seems right to understand spiritual building not so much as
growth but as nutrition. It is a
sanctifying of the temple that God might dwell there.
[3] The NRSV reads ‘ligament’,
but the Colossians 2.19 passage distinguishes this from ‘joint’—see quotation,
below.
[4] A popular
understanding of ‘head’ in Ephesians and Colossians has been to see it not as
authority but as source. This is based
on inadequate studies in the 1980s in the West that were ideologically
motivated in regard to the use of kephalē in the Greek literature of the
time. This is not the place to demonstrate
the error in these contemporary works, but I regard the argument to be easily
disproven through proper research conducted by scholars without the agenda of
trying to discount ‘headship’ in the home in Ephesians 5.21ff. Suffice one example to lay the claim that ‘head’
does not mean ‘authority’ to rest. Plato
says of the head: ‘the most divine part and reigning
over all the parts within us. To it the
gods delivered over the whole of the body they had assembled to be its
servant…’ (Timaeus 44D).
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