soma christou is different from ekklesia!

Why is it important to distinguish between soma christou (Christ's body) and ekklesia (church)?

Why is it important to distinguish between soma christou (Christ's body) and ekklesia (church or community)? The answer is that two are not equal and, theologically speaking, two are different with each other in their emphasis on issues they take. If we take Paul's use of soma christou as Christ's own body or Christ's life and death, the meaning and implication of Christ's body has to do with Paul's central conviction that Christ's body serves as redemptive and corrective purposes. That is, Christ's body reminds Paul of Christ's sacrifice, solidarity with the broken, vulnerable bodies, protest against all dominant systems. As a result, ekklesia is possible -- not in the sense of permanently fixing the community (fixing who belongs here) but in the sense of ongoing participation with Christ's body. Ekklesia as a gathering of Christians is not fixed once and forever but involves mysterious and dark human experience in all aspects to the extent that Christ's body is embodied even in its ultimate form of death -- nothingness-meaningless moment of life, and that it attends to the power of God's love for all people.

If soma christou in Paul's letters is understood only in terms of an organism, we lose the great significance of Paul's theology of soma christou as mentioned above. Furthermore, the danger could be this body metaphor can function as a boundary marker which serves as excluding outsiders or non-members of the church. It is so plausible that if people choose to believe that soma christou is the church they can go anywhere with this ideology of the body -- a divine body and divinely ordained church, the only institution for that purpose. Indeed when Paul talks about the church (ekklesia) in 1 Cor, he connects it with God, that is, "the church of God" (ekklesia tou theou) in 1 Cor 11:22. In other words, Paul did not connect the church to Christ's body in 1 Cor as opposed to the later deutero-Pauline epistles (see Col 1:18, 24; 2:19; Eph 4:12; 5:23). Furthermore, Paul always thought that time is short (interim ethic) so he did not think about the long-run church as an institution. The organizational concerns and issues are observed in Ephesians and later pastoral epistles (all of these are not from Paul's own hands) so that there are issues of leadership (who can become leaders, elders or deacons; interestingly, here one should marry to be qualified for church leaders. But Paul in 1 Corinthians advises people not to marry if they can (for widows or virgins). The issue in Pastoral Epistles is to maintain the church as a unified institution (so boundary issues emerge; who belong to this body, how to belong, how to behave to belong, how to interact with society and with its own members, etc). Women are strongly discouraged in participating in the church leadership, which is very against Paul's own ministry including women's active participation (i.e., in the Corinthian community). Because of this kind of different time and different issues in these deutero-Pauline and pseudo-Pauline letters, Christ's body is subsumed under the category of organizational matters (metaphorical organism). I think it is important to reclaim Paul's authentic use of soma christou as Christ's life and death -- what he showed and is participating in God's ongoing love-drama for all humanity.

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I, as the author of this book, am very interested in stimulating a public discussion around this topic of "soma christou and ekklesia." For me the distinction between soma christou and ekklesia in Paul's letters (excluding deutero-Pauline or pastoral letters because these are considered not written by Paul) is crucial to our understanding of Paul's theology and his ministry in historical contexts. Yes he uses ekklesia and this is a gathering, or community of believers. Ekklesia is possible when believers live out Christ's body (Christ's life, sacrifice, love, solidarity, justice). Soma christou is Christ's body, not an organization but a living metaphor. "You are soma christou" (1 Cor 12:27a). You are to live out it. You are to be Christic body (attributive genitive). You are to identify with Christ's body in that sense of living metaphor. If we understand Christ's body in this way, we can recover Paul's radical, just theology of Christ's body, especially imagined through Christ crucified. Then suddenly, Paul's all letters (7 authentic ones) are nicely understood with this theme of Christ's body and with his emphasis on Christian life that needs Christic embodiment. --Yung Suk Kim