THE WHOLE CHRIST

J. Murphy-O’Connor

One of the fundamental struggles of Paul’s ministry was to make Christ as

central to the lives of his converts as it was to his own. Their resistance is
not difficult to explain because we share it. At heart we are all theists who
pay lip service to the centrality of Christ.
What I mean is clearly illustrated by the fact that we think of our lives as
“doing the will of God” rather than as “following Christ”. We pray and make
retreats in order to “discern the will of God”. We invoke the aid of spiritual
directors to help us achieve clarity in that quest and to ensure that we do not
deceive ourselves. I have never heard a retreat master or a spiritual director
discourage such efforts to penetrate what is assumed to be a mystery by say-
ing “Imitate Christ”, even though they will admit in theory that Christ is “the
wisdom and the power of God” (1 Cor 1:24), who said, “I am the way, and
the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).
Why do we prefer obscurity when light is available? Why do we in
practice repudiate statements that we would enthusiastically affirm in
theory, e.g. “once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord”
(Eph 5:8)? The answer is very simple. Subconsciously at least we know
that God can be manipulated in a way that Christ cannot. “God wills it”
can be used to justify a Crusade in which thousands of innocents die. The
example of Christ cannot be used in this way. The will of God can be in-
voked to justify the tortures of an Inquisition. The example of Christ can-
not. The will of God can be invoked to justify murder and suicide in fringe
cults. The example of Christ cannot. The demands of duty (the will of God
enshrined in rules and regulations) can be used to exclude acts of charity
that are made imperative by the following of Christ.
In other words, commitment to the will of God offers us an ambiguity
that permits us to do exactly as we wish. Often subconsciously, sometimes
cynically, we make the discernment process reach a preconceived result.
The following of Christ permits no such ambiguity. It indicates only the
route of self-sacrifice, which we do not want to accept. Seeking the will of
God has become a way of avoiding the following of Christ.
I begin in this way in the hope of raising our consciousness of the great
bias that we bring to our reading of the Pauline letters. A subconscious wish
to play down the central and indispensable role of Christ has been rein-

LA 49 (1999) 181-194
182 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

forced by traditional spiritual formation. In consequence, Paul is read

through spectacles with strong theistic lenses, and much, if not all, of what
is said about Christ is discounted.
A brief survey of the key elements in Paul’s understanding of the world
without Christ, namely Sin, Law, and Death, is essential to a correct appre-
ciation of both his Christology and his ecclesiology. These did not develop in
a vacuum. They were his reaction to the situation with which he had to deal.

A World without Christ

The theologians of Judaism shared with their eastern contemporaries the

basic conviction that humanity was flawed. The Sumerian plea for leniency,
“Never has a sinless child been born to its mother ... a sinless workman
has not existed from of old,”1 is exactly paralleled by the Israelite petition,
“Enter not into judgment with your servant; for no living person is right-
eous before you” (Ps 143:2). Sinfulness is universal. An Akkadian incanta-
tion “who is there who has not sinned against his god? Who has kept the
commandment for ever?”2 is echoed by Solomon’s prayer at the dedication
of the Temple, “If they sin against you - for there is no one who does not
sin ...” (1 Kgs 8:46 = 2 Chr 6:36).
The underlying sense of helplessness before forces that cannot be re-
sisted was also experienced in the west. The best illustration is the popu-
larity of the Sisyphus myth. A legendary king of Corinth, he was the
archetypical trickster. When the gods finally got him into the underworld,
they were determined to keep him so busy that he could never again get
into trouble. He was condemned to roll a stone to the top of a mountain,
but each time he reached the summit it slipped from his hands, and he had
to start all over again.3 His unending task became a powerful symbol for
the futility of human effort. No matter what anyone did, nothing would
change. Existence was ‘absurd’.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the world into which Paul was born was
charged with pessimism, laden with doom. Both Jews and Greeks felt that
things had gone badly wrong. In their misery they dreamt of better worlds,
a Utopia, a new Jerusalem, a new heaven and a new earth. But in their

1. J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (3rd. ed.
with suppl.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) 590, lines 102-3.
2. W. G. Lambert, “DINGIR.SA.DIB.BA Incantations,” JNES 33 (1974) 281-82, line 132.
3. Homer, Odyssey 11. 593-600.
 THE WHOLE CHRIST 183

hearts they knew that they were only whistling in the dark to keep up their
courage. It would be folly to think that Paul did not share the debilitating
pessimism of all his contemporaries. It was part of the very air he breathed,
and he expresses it with deadly accuracy, “I can will what is right, but I
cannot do it. for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I do” (Rom 7:18-19).
Paul’s conversion brought that pessimism to an abrupt end. In Christ
God had intervened to introduce the changes of which humanity had be-
come incapable. His encounter with Christ also enabled Paul to analyze his
world with a precision impossible to his contemporaries.
The accuracy of his analysis is confirmed by our experience. Moderns
who read Paul’s dramatic evocation of the condition of humanity under the
power of Sin (Rom 7:14-24)4 without getting lost in details will find at least
two elements that resonate with their own experience.
The first is the sense of being the plaything of forces beyond our com-
prehension. We can ‘will’ what leads to ‘life’, but our ‘doing’ produces only
‘death’. For example, immense effort is put into improving the environ-
ment, but the world is becoming steadily more polluted. So uncertain is the
future that the dominant emotion of our generation is a nameless anxiety.
“I do not understand my own actions” (Rom 7:15). If we do not understand
what our own actions achieve, who understands the workings of systems
(banking, economics)?
The second is the sense of alienation. We no longer feel at home with
ourselves or with others. The self is lost in a world of alien being. “If I do
what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but Sin which dwells within
me” (Rom 7:20). The person has become a puppet in the hands of Sin.

What is Sin?

The originality of Romans, and its major contribution to Christian theol-

ogy, is not its explanation of the how of salvation, which is covered much
more thoroughly and effectively in the other letters, but its explanation of
the need for salvation.
The key element is Paul’s concept of Sin. From its very first appear-
ance, “all, both Jews and Gentiles are under Sin” (Rom 3:9), the language
indicates that Paul is thinking, not in terms of personal failings, individual

4. S. Lyonnet, “L’histoire du salut selon le chapitre vii de l’épître aux Romains,” Bib 43
(1962) 117-51.
184 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

sins, but of something radically different. Thus here, and in a whole series
of texts in which human actions are attributed to Sin, it should be capital-
ized.5 In these texts Sin manifestly functions as a myth or symbol? But
what is the meaning of the myth? What is hidden behind the symbol?
What might appear the easy and obvious answer can at once be ex-
cluded. Sin is not Satan. Satan is exclusively associated with believers,6
whereas Sin never is. Sin, on the other hand, is exclusively associated with
unbelievers, whereas Satan never is.
Paul chose the word Sin to crystallize his vision of society as the vic-
tim of a massive disorientation, because its origins were to be traced back
to the sin of one person (Rom 5:12; cf. 5:19). The point of Genesis 3 is
that at some point in the history of humanity a false decision was made.
From then on, according to Gen 4-11, evil developed exponentially (Gen
6:5). Wickedness became endemic as sinners interacted with one another.
All those born into a warped society inherit its defects. They have no
choice but to internalize its values and pass them on reinforced to the next
generation. They are enslaved to Sin (Rom 6:6), which dwells within them.
Sin is not an extra-terrestrial or super-human force, but simply the accu-
mulated power of lived assent to a false value system. “God imprisoned all
human beings in their own disobedience” (Rom 11:32).7
If Sin is the inexorable pressure of a false value-system that permeates
society, then it is not simply “in the world”; it is the world. Those who are
not in Christ “belong to the world” (Col 2:20). Being “of the world” is
equivalent to being “under the power of Sin”.

Life in Society

To identify Sin as the false value-system of society tells us nothing about

the practical problems that Paul encountered. Hence we need to ask: what
were the concrete effects Sin? It is possible here to highlight only the two
most important.
As far as Jews were concerned one of the false values they inherited
was a particular attitude towards the Law, which distorted its true purpose
(Rom 7:10). The basis of Judaism was election by grace, and obedience to
the commandments did not earn salvation. Disobedience, however, caused

5. Gal 3:22; Rom 5:12, 21; 6:6, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23; 7:8, 14, 20, 23, 25; 8:2.
6. Rom 16:20; 1 Cor 5:5; 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11; 11:14; 12:7; 1 Thess 2:18; 2 Thess 2:9.
7. On this text see especially J. D. G. Dunn, Romans (WBC 38; Dallas: Word Books, 1988) 696.
 THE WHOLE CHRIST 185

damnation. Hence, in practice all attention was focused on points of Law.

No one debated the mystery of God’s gratuitous choice. God in fact was
pushed entirely into the background, and made obedient to his own law.
According to the Babylonian Talmud, “There are twelve hours in the day;
during the first three the Holy One, blessed be He, occupies Himself with
the Torah” (Aboda Zara 3b).8 The Law, not God, was the matter of ulti-
mate concern, and the only appropriate response was total obedience.
Instead of offering guidance, the Law made all the decisions. The Jews
became its prisoners thereby loosing their freedom, “we were confined
under the Law, kept under restraint” (Gal 3:23). The point is made with
admirable clarity and brevity by St Thomas Aquinas. “Whoever moves
himself acts freely. He who is moved by another does not act freely. He,
therefore, who avoids evil, not because it is evil, but because of a com-
mandment of the Lord, is not free. He who avoids evil because it is evil is
free”.9 This reflects Paul’s view precisely. He will not give a command to
Philemon regarding Onesimus “in order that your goodness might not be
by compulsion but of your own free will” (Philem 14; cf. 2 Cor 8:8; 9:7).
Law, in consequence, is one of the structures of unredeemed existence.
“The power of Sin is the Law” (1 Cor 15:56).
As far as Gentiles were concerned the structure of unredeemed exist-
ence that struck Paul most forcibly was ‘division’. His explicit statements
that in Christ all social divisions have been abolished – “There cannot be
Jew nor Greek; there cannot be slave nor free; there cannot be male and
female” (Gal 3:28; cf. Col 3:11) – reveal that they belong to the inauthentic
mode of human existence. With great realism Paul saw his world as frag-
mented into opposed blocks. Inherited attitudes identified the other, not
only as different, but as hostile. Jews, for example, inherited disdain for
Gentiles, “As for the other nations which are descended from Adam, you
have said that they are nothing, and that they are like unto spittle, and you
have likened the abundance of them to a drop in a bucket” (4 Ezra 6:55-
56). Understandably, pagans deeply resented this arrogant assumption of
superiority and replied with outbursts of anti-Semitism.
Within the blocks listed in Gal 3:28, however, there was neither unity
nor harmony. At various points throughout his letters Paul lists the charac-

8. See also b. Baba Mezia 59b, 86a; b. Gittin 6b.

9. “Quicumque ergo agit ex seipso, libere agit; qui vero ex alio motus, not agit libere. Ille,
ergo, qui vitat mala, not quia mala, sed propter mandatum Domini, non est liber; sed qui
vitat mala, quia mala, est liber” (Super Epistolas S. Pauli lectura [8th ed. revised; ed. R.
Cai; Taurini/Roma: Marietti, 1953] 1. 464 - on 2 Cor 3:17).
186 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

teristics of unredeemed humanity. These ‘vice-lists’ appear in Rom 1:29-

31; 13:13; 1 Cor 5:10-11; 6:9-10; 2 Cor 12:20-21; Gal 5:19-20. Despite a
certain degree of overlap, it is possible to draw up a list of 41 different
vices.10 What sets Paul’s selection apart from similar lists in Jewish and
Hellenistic sources is a high percentage of vices that make genuine com-
munication impossible.11 He saw the world as a place where individuals
sealed themselves off from one another by barriers of suspicion and hostil-
ity. Instead of reaching out they repulsed the other. Instead of community
there was only a functional collectivism.
Paul sums up the effect of the power of Sin in one word, Death. He
chose this dramatic term in order to drive home his conviction that the qual-
ity of life under Sin was so bad as to be a form of non-existence. The po-
tential of humanity was unrealized. Humanity was not what it should be.
Nor could it do what it was destined to achieve. It lacked freedom, the one
ingredient essential to human dignity.

The Whole Christ

For Paul, Christ was above all the Last or New Adam. He was in truth what
Adam was intended to be. In his comportment he revealed what humans
could and should be.
Despite the skepticism of some commentators there is little doubt that
Paul had a detailed knowledge of the historical Jesus and his earthly min-
istry.12 It is all the more curious, therefore, that the only event of Jesus’ life
that Paul mentions is his death. This suggests that it was uniquely signifi-
cant. In fact, for Paul, it revealed what was most distinctive about the hu-
manity of Jesus.

10. See my Becoming Human Together. The Pastoral Anthropology of St Paul (Good News
Studies 2; Wilmington: Glazier, 1982) 133-34.
11. Compare the list of 160 mostly individualistic vices in Philo, De Sacrificiis Abelis et
Caini, n. 32.
12. Paul spent two weeks with Peter (Gal 1:18), who had been an eye witness of the
ministry of Jesus from his days with of John the Baptist (John 3:22-24). To imagine that
they talked about anything but Jesus is absurd. Apropos of Romans, J. D. G. Dunn wrote,
“The echoes of the Jesus tradition are not all of the same strength, but together they build
into an impressive case for saying that Paul must have known a substantial amount of the
Jesus tradition which was later committed to the present Gospel form by the Evangelists”
(“Paul’s Knowledge of the Jesus’ Tradition: The Evidence of Romans,” in Christus
Bezeugen [FS W. Trilling; ed. K. Kertelge et al.; Leipzig: Benno-Verlag, 1989] 193-207,
here 205.
 THE WHOLE CHRIST 187

The Death of Jesus

The assertions of Wisdom that “God did not make death” (1:13) and that
“God created humanity in a state of incorruptibility; in the image of his
own eternity he made them” (2:23) make explicit the insight of Gen 3:2-3
that death was not part of God’s plan for humanity. Death was introduced
as punishment for sin. This interpretation is consistent in Judaism both be-
fore and after Paul.13 No sin, no death.
From this theological perspective Christ did not have to die; he was
without sin (2 Cor 5:21). He did, however, die. Therefore, Paul concluded,
he must have chosen to die. This is what made Christ’s death unique. All
others can only accept death; they have no choice. His dying, therefore, set
Christ apart. The only motive that Paul could discern for this choice, par-
ticularly since it involved a horrible death by crucifixion, was love, “the
life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith/fidelity of the Son of God who
loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). What made Christ ‘alive’,
therefore, and different to all others who were ‘dead’, was self-sacrificing
love. His behaviour revealed that loving was constitutive of the genuine
humanity willed by God.

Genuine Humanity Constituted by Loving

Paul formulates this fundamental insight succinctly, “Without love I am

nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). ‘Nothing’ here does not connote ‘lack of value’ (1
Cor 7:19) or ‘lack of status’ (2 Cor 12:11), but ‘lack of existence’.14 The
meaning is “Without love I do not really exist”. This is not the judgment of
the world. For society any person who stands and talks ‘exists’. The fact of
Christ’s death gave Paul a very different standard, a much more exigent
criterion of humanity. The standpoint from which the judgment is made is
that of the divine intention for humanity manifested by Christ.

13. Sirach 25:24; Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 1. 55; 1 Enoch 69:9-11; 2 Enoch
30:17-18; 4 Ezra 3:7; 2 Baruch 23:4; 54:15; Genesis Rabbah 8. 11 on Gen 1:27.
14. The best commentary is that of C. Spicq, “Dans ce verset, c’est presque l’équivalent du
métaphysique non-être (to mê on, Platon, Soph. 238 d; Aristote, Métaph. v, 2, 1026 b, 14).
Chrétiennement, ce prophète ou gnostique sans charité n’existe pas (comparer este en
Christô, 1 Cor. i, 30)” (Agapè dans le Nouveau Testament. Analyse des textes II [EBib;
Paris: Gabalda, 1959] 71 note 2). See also G. D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians
(NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987) 632 note 33.
188 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

The ‘loving’ that makes a person truly human is not a passive accept-
ance of the other, a benign regard, but an active empowerment that reveals
the image of God. The human person is the one creative creature, formed
to reach out to enable others.15
If ‘loving’ is the basis of authentic existence, then it necessarily follows
that one cannot exist alone. Such creativity cannot operate in an individual-
istic vacuum. The relationship with the other is the very being of the Chris-
tian. In order to be as God intended us to be, we need to love and be loved,
to empower and to be empowered. The other, in consequence, enters into
the very definition of the Christian. An autonomous Christian is a contradic-
tion in terms. A Christian, an authentic human being, is one who belongs to
others as they belong to him. They need each other in order to exist.
This sense of the profound unity of the church, which is the antithesis
of the divisions of the world, surfaces for the first time in Galatians. The
‘I’ which had been alienated by Sin (Rom 7:20) is recreated by Christ. The
selfishness of ‘death’ is replaced by the creative altruism of ‘life’. “I live
now, not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). This was true, not of Paul
alone, but of every genuine believer. Hence, they were together Christ.
They have “put on Christ” and in consequence they are “one person in
Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28). In this insight we have the seeds of two fur-
ther developments, the giving of the name ‘Christ’ to this new unified real-
ity, and the clarification of its nature as ‘the body of Christ’.

The Church as a Body

The appearance of these developments in 1 Cor 6:15 is prefaced by the

question “Do you not know that ...?” Often thought to be a hint that Paul
had already instructed them in this matter, it is more likely that it betrays
his conviction that this was something the Corinthians should have worked
out for themselves.16 Paul, however, tended to assume that what had be-

15. “The full meaning of the claim that man is made to the image of God can be better
conveyed in the contemporary language of ‘existence’. What distinguishes man from other
creatures is that he ‘exists’, and to exist is to have an openness which is perhaps the best
clue to the mysterious affinity of God and man. Just as God opens himself into the creation
and pours out being, and therefore has ‘letting-be’ as his essence, so man is most truly
himself and realizes his essence in the openness of an existence in which he too can let be,
in responsibility, in creativity, and in love” (J. Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology
[London: SCM, 1966] §35, p. 212).
16. So rightly Fee, First Corinthians, 146.
 THE WHOLE CHRIST 189

come clear to him was equally obvious to others, even though he had not
previously touched on the subject or explained it adequately.
At times Paul shows that he was aware of the time-lag between con-
version and assimilation (e.g. Gal 5:1). The deep-rooted habits of a life-
time were not destroyed by an act of faith. Nonetheless, he does not seem
to have realized the all-pervasive strength of the conditioning that forced
his converts to think of everything individualistically. Only when he dis-
covered that the Corinthians were not disturbed in the slightest by divisions
in the church (1 Cor 1:12; 3:1-4) – they were endemic in every other form
of society – did Paul become aware of the need to make it clear that the
unity of those bound together in love (Col 3:14) was quite different to the
functional union of a state or army.
It was to this end that Paul devised the concept of the community as a
human body (soma). The source of this concept is debated, but J. A.
Fitzmyer certainly reflects the consensus, “It is probably derived by Paul
from contemporary Hellenistic notions about the state as the body politic.
This idea is found as early as Aristotle (Polit. 5.2.7) and became part of
Stoic philosophy”.17 Given what we have seen of Paul’s vision of society
as the antithesis of the church, it is highly unlikely that he borrowed a term
used of the former to bring out what he considered most distinctive in the
latter. It has also been pointed out that Paul does not speak of the church
simply as ‘a body’ or as ‘a body of believers’ but as ‘the body of Christ’ to
which there are no parallels in pagan thought.18
The function of the use of ‘body’ in Paul’s letters is to underline that
the unity of the church is organic. Believers do not just interact with each
other as do members of the body politic. They depend on each other in love
for their very existence. The human person truly exists only in a relation-
ship of loving an other. That Paul’s thought is operating on the level of
existence is confirmed by his use of the image of ‘grafting’ to bring out the
same idea, “if some of the branches have been broken off, and you being a
wild olive have been grafted among them and have become sharer in the
riches of the olive tree’s root” (Rom 11:17). The graft becomes a vital part
of the tree.
A tree is an organic unity as is the human body. Its component elements
are very different in both form and function, but they all share a common

17. Paul and His Theology. A Brief Sketch (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1989) 91 =
NJBC 82:122.
18. E. Best, One Body in Christ. A Study in the Relationship of the Church to Christ in the
Epistles of the Apostle Paul (London: SPCK, 1955) 83-85.
190 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

existence. An olive branch truly exists only as part of the tree. Similarly an
arm is really an arm only when it belongs to a body. A branch or a arm that is
given the status of an autonomous whole by being severed from the organ-
ism for a while looks normal, but the former cannot produce fruit nor can the
latter grip. Despite appearances they are in fact dead. Similarly, from Paul’s
perspective, those who are severed from Christ (Gal 5:4)19 are ‘dead’.
When dealing with the Body of Christ in 1 Cor 12:12-27 Paul’s concern
is to emphasize the need for a diversity of spiritual gifts among the members
of the church at Corinth. Were all to have the same gift, it would be like a
body with only one organ, i.e. an absurdity. Even though in this context his
focus is on multiplicity, Paul’s vision of the church as fundamentally a unity
comes through in a way whose impact is all the greater for being uncon-
scious. He says, “all the members of the body, though many, are one body,
so it is with Christ” (1 Cor 12:12). The formulation is consistent; compare
“Because there is one loaf we, the many, are one body” (1 Cor 10:17); “so,
the many, we are one body in Christ” (Rom 12:5). J. A. T. Robinson has
pointed out that “it is worth nothing how the fact of unity, as the basic da-
tum, always stands for Paul in the main sentence [here italicized]; the multi-
plicity, on the other hand, is expressed by a subordinate phrase or clause
[here underlined] with the sense of ‘in spite of’”.20
In other words, for Paul the organic unity of the church was obvious
and the diversity problematic, whereas for us it is the reverse. We are so
conscious of the multiplicity of members that the unity appears completely
notional and, in consequence, we tend to read what Paul says from our own
individualistic perspective, and thereby distort his thought.

The Church as Christ

Paul’s conviction of the organic unity of the local church explains why he
never speaks of his converts as ‘new men’, but always of ‘one new man’.
“You are all one man in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28); “You have put on the
new man who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Crea-
tor” (Col 3:10).

19. “Katargeô properly meaning ‘to make ineffective,’ is used in Rom 7:2, 6, and here in
the passive with apo meaning ‘to be without effect from,’ ‘to be unaffected by,’ ‘to be
without effective relation to’” (E. Burton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Epistle to the Galatians [ICC; Edinburgh: Clark, 1921] 276).
20. The Body. A Study in Pauline Theology (SBT 5; London: SCM, 1952) 60.
 THE WHOLE CHRIST 191

This new man has a name. It is ‘Christ’. This is clear in 1 Cor 12:12,
which has been cited above. What is true of the physical body is also true of
‘Christ’, which here can only mean the Body of Christ, otherwise the state-
ment would be pointless, and the subsequent reference to baptism meaning-
less. This instance is not unique. In 1 Cor 6:15 Paul asks, “Do you not know
that your bodies are members of ‘Christ’?” In other words, Paul predicates
‘Christ’, not merely of the historical Jesus, but of the Christian community.21
Recognition of this fundamental point greatly simplifies the problem of
the celebrated formula ‘in Christ’ which has caused so much ink to be spilt. It
can be used in a very weak sense where it is equivalent to ‘as a Christian’
(e.g. Rom 8:9; 1 Cor 4:10).22 It can also be used to express the instrumental-
ity of the individual Jesus Christ (e.g. Rom 3:24; 1 Cor 15:22; 2 Cor 5:19; 1
Thess 2:14). In addition, however, there are texts where ‘in Christ’ unam-
biguously means ‘in the Christian community’, e.g. “They were in Christ
before me” (Rom 16:7); “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” (2 Cor
5:17); “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail,
but faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). In the light of these passages ‘to
be baptized into Christ’ (Rom 6:3; Gal 3:27) can only mean ‘to have accepted
the rite of initiation into a Christian community’.23
It would be absurd to imagine that Paul confused the individual Jesus
Christ and the local church. Time and time again his letters make it clear
that one was not the other. The identity of predication, therefore, cannot be
explained in terms of being. The only remaining possibility is function. The
local church prolongs the ministry of Jesus. The words he spoke are not
heard in our contemporary world unless they are proclaimed by the com-
munity. The power that flowed forth from him to enable conversion is no
longer effective today unless mediated by the community. What Jesus was
in his physical presence to his world, the church is in its physical presence
in our world. It is this identity of function that justifies the double predica-
tion of ‘Christ’. The local church is Christ in the world.

Grace Is Incarnated

Ever since Johannes Weiss emphasized the interchange between ‘body’ and
the personal pronoun in 1 Cor 6:13-14,24 there has been a tendency in Pauline

21. Against L. Cerfaux, Le Christ dans la théologie de saint Paul (LD 6; Paris: Cerf, 1954) 274.
22. See R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (London: SCM, 1965) 1. 328-29.
23. Best, One Body in Christ, 73.
192 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

studies not to take ‘body’ literally but to give it a holistic sense. Bultmann threw
his tremendous authority behind this approach, insisting magisterially, “Man,
his person as a whole, can be denoted by soma,”25 an insight which J.A.T.
Robinson took a step further, “soma is the nearest equivalent to our word ‘per-
sonality’”.26 This had consequences for the understanding of ‘the body of
Christ’ insofar as it facilitated a mystical and/or sacramental understanding of
the union between the ‘body’ of Christ and the ‘bodies’ of believers.27
R. Gundry has shown this approach to ‘body’ to be completely false.28
A thorough lexicographical survey demonstrates that the term always car-
ried the normal connotation of physicality. In no case is this aspect neces-
sarily absent. Thus when ‘body’ and personal pronouns are interchanged,
the effect is to highlight the fact that the person is corporeal.
Thus when the local church is identified as the Body of Christ, it must
be understood as the physical presence of Christ in the world. Within the
framework of space and time Christ operates in and through the local
church. The Christian community is the eyes, heart, and hands of Christ.
The local church is Christ as present in the world.
This may appear to be an exaggerated claim. In fact it is confirmed by
Paul’s consistent view that grace is given, not directly, but through human
channels. The view of some commentators that theou gar esmen synergoi
“we are God’s co-workers” (1 Cor 3:9) means no more than “unity in fel-
low labor under God,”29 is contradicted by the context. God used Paul and
Apollos as instruments30 to bring the Corinthians to faith; they were “serv-

24. Der erste Korintherbrief (MeyerK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910) 160-161.
25. Theology of the New Testament, 1. 195. See K. Grobel, “Soma as ‘Self, Person’ in the
Septuagint,” in Neutestamentliche Studien für Rudolph Bultmann (BZNW 21; Berlin:
Topelmann, 1954) 52-59.
26. The Body, 28. Note the internal contradiction in Robinson’s work that developed out of
close observance of the text and this apriori approach, “when Paul took the term soma and
applied it to the Church, what it must have conveyed to him and his readers was ...
something not corporate but corporal. It directed the mind to a person”.
27. Notably P. Benoit, “Corps, tête et plérôme dans les épitres de la captivité,” RB 63 (1956)
5-44.
28. Soma in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (SNTSMS 29;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
29. Fee, First Corinthians, 134; also V. P. Furnish, “Fellow-workers in God’s Service,” JBL
80 (1961) 364-70; RSV.
30. Note the use of the neuter ti ‘what’ in 1 Cor 3:5. P46 and the Western Text have the
expected tis ‘who’, which is excluded by the appearance of ti in 1 Cor 3:7. See B. M.
Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible
Societies, 1971) 548.
 THE WHOLE CHRIST 193

ants through whom you believed” (1 Cor 3:5). Paul and Apollos are united
in their status, but by divine choice they are indispensable channels of
grace.31 It is only in this perspective that we can understand what Paul is
getting at when he writes, “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach
the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emp-
tied of its power” (1 Cor 1:17). To be effective the power of the Cross has
to pass through human channels. Believers can block the transmission of
grace. Their destiny, like that of Paul himself, is to live (= love) in such a
way as to be “a demonstration of the power of the Spirit” (1 Cor 2:4).

The Eucharist

Enough has been said to make it clear that Paul envisaged situations where
the comportment of the local church meant that it was only nominally
‘Christ’. The consequences became clear apropos of the celebration of the
Eucharist at Corinth.32
In the commentary (1 Cor 11:26) that Paul attaches to his version of
the Words of Institution (1 Cor 11:24-25), which emphasizes the idea of
‘remembrance’, he makes it clear that real ‘remembrance’ is something
much more than an intellectual glance backwards into the past. It is an ex-
istential statement which makes present the reality of Christ’s love.
The ‘proclamation’ that Paul has in mind is not verbal. It is not a retell-
ing of the passion of Jesus. The proclamation takes place in and through the
ritual acts of eating and drinking. These acts, as we know from 1 Cor 10:14-
18, are a sharing of bread and wine which produces a ‘common union’ with
Christ and the other participants. The eating and drinking ‘say’ that the com-
munity is one, and that it is ‘Christ’, whose words are used in the first per-
sonal singular. “This is my body… This cup is the new covenant in my
blood”. More than that, the sharing ‘proclaims’ the Lord’s death. For Paul
this death was above all an act of love for others. Jesus chose the horrible
death of crucifixion (Phil 2:8) in order to demonstrate the limitless love that
animated his self-giving (Gal 2:20). The community can ‘proclaim’ that love
only by actually loving each other as Christ loved us.

31. Similarly 1 Thess 3:2 and 2 Cor 6:1; see V. P. Furnish, II Corinthians (AB 32A; Garden
City: Doubleday, 1984) 341.
32. For more detail see my “Eucharist and Community in First Corinthians,” Worship 50
(1976) 370-385; 51 (1977) 56-69 = Living Bread, Saving Cup. Readings on the Eucharist
(ed. K. Seasoltz; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1982) 1-30.
194 J. MURPHY-O’CONNOR

None of this was true at Corinth. The participants no doubt ate the same
bread and drank the same wine. No doubt they pronounced the ritual words.
But there was no real sharing because there was no caring. “Each one goes
ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk” (1 Cor
11:21). The community was not animated by the love that would make it
‘Christ’ – ‘to put on Christ’ (Gal 3:27) is ‘to put on love’ (Col 3:14) – and
so it lost the power to say with real effect, ‘This is my body/blood’. Thus,
in spite of the external compliance of the Corinthians with the ritual of the
Eucharist, Paul insists, “When you meet together, it is not the Lord’s sup-
per that you eat” (1 Cor 11:20).33
Lest Paul should be considered presumptuous in fixing the conditions
for a valid celebration of the Eucharist, it should be recognized that he sim-
ply applies to the sacrifice of the New Dispensation what Jesus had said of
the sacrifices of the Old Dispensation, “If you are offering your gift at the
altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you,
leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your
brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matt 5:23-24).34
It is time to sum up and conclude. For Paul the church is intended to be
the embodiment of Christ. It is designed to be the physical presence of Christ
here and now. It is the divinely appointed means whereby the grace of Jesus
Christ is made active in the present. The destiny of the church is to be ‘Christ’
in our contemporary world. This dignity, however, has to be achieved; it is not
a given. The church can fail to be ‘Christ’, if its members are not really bound
together in creative love. In which case, the power of Jesus Christ is no longer
available to unite a divided world and to restore freedom to the captives of a
false value-system. If we are Christians in name alone, then only an ineffec-
tual nominal ‘Christ’ confronts the power of Sin.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, op
École Biblique et Archéologique Française, Jérusalem

33. From a different, but not incompatible, perspective, the behaviour of his followers
means that the Lord was not present at his table (1 Cor 10:21) to host a supper in his honour.
So C. Wolff, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther. Zweiter Teil: Auslegung der
Kapitel 8-16 (THNT 7/2; Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1982) 80.
34. Note that Matthew applies the same principle to the saying of the Lord’s Prayer, “if you
do not forgive man their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt
6:15). The Lord’s Prayer can only be said in a mutually reconciled community.