Over the last few weeks, I've given thought to the topic of the organic unity of the Body of Christ. I was helped in this partially by Thiselton's shorter commentary on 1 Corinthians. Thiselton re-translates 'member' as 'limbs and organs'... something to think on. We have become overly familiar with the word 'member' and its older physical meaning has faded. Then, he quotes Robinson on the topic; I've put the key part of that in bold below.
"Paul uses the analogy of the human body to elucidate his teaching that Christians form Christ's body. But the analogy holds because they are in literal fact the risen organism of Christ's person in all its concrete reality. What is arresting is his identification of this personality with the Church. But to say that the Church is the body of Christ is no more of a metaphor than to say that the flesh of the incarnate Jesus or the bread of the Eucharist is the body of Christ. None of them is 'like' His body (Paul never says this): each of them is the body of Christ, in that each is the physical complement and extension of the one and the same Person and Life. They are all expressions of a single Christology.
"It is almost impossible to exaggerate -the materialism and crudity of Paul's doctrine of the Church as literally now the resurrection body of Christ. The language of 'membership' of a body corporate has become so trite that the idea that the individual can be a 'member' has ceased to be offensive. The force of Paul's words can today perhaps be got only by paraphrasing: Ye are the body of Christ and severally membranes thereof.' The body that he has in mind is as concrete and as singular as the body of the Incarnation. His underlying conception is not of a supra-personal collective, but of a specific personal organism. He is not saying anything so weak as that the Church is a society with a common life and governor, but that its unity is that of a single physical entity: disunion is dismemberment. For it is in fact no other than the glorified body of the risen and ascended Christ." (J. A. T. Robinson)
(related post)
