Paul's Body Language in 1 Corinthians
(avg. read time: 3–7 mins.)
In anticipation of some material I will be writing about 1 Cor 15, today I will be sharing an extract of (a longer draft of) my dissertation on Paul’s use of references to the “body.” Among the many things about 1 Corinthians that culminate in ch. 15, this chapter, particularly beginning in v. 35, brings to completion Paul’s “body” language used throughout 1 Corinthians (5:3; 6:12–20; 7:4, 34; 9:27; 10:16–17; 11:24–34; 12; 13:3). The literal and metaphorical usage of such “body” language was pervasive in Paul’s context with ideas clustered around it related to politics, cosmology, ethics, mythology (especially in terms of the bodies of the gods and heroes), and so on.1 Outside of ch. 15, σῶμα in 1 Corinthians is part of a conceptual constellation linked to physical presence, food, sexuality, temple, outward action, suffering, communion, the Eucharist, and unity in diversity. What links all these points together in the letter, and what is more of a direct implication of the σῶμα language in contexts like ch. 12, is what Constantine Campbell has described as the notion of incorporative, identifying, and participatory union, which Paul also signifies by language such as ἐν Χριστῷ (1:2, 4, 30; 3:1; 4:10, 15, 17; 6:11; 10:16; 15:22, 31; 16:24) and ἐν κυρίῳ (4:17; 5:4; 7:22, 39; 9:1–2; 11:11; 15:58).2 As Paul outlines in ch. 15, the larger reality in which the σῶμα is in such a union shapes the characteristics of the σῶμα.
Although a fuller treatment of σῶμα in relation to resurrection must wait until later, it is helpful here to address briefly the debates that have surrounded the use of this term. One influential account of the use of σῶμα claims that it essentially means a “being,” “person,” or “self.”3 That is, it refers to the “totality” or “whole” of the person, rather than to any particular anthropological aspect. Rudolf Bultmann famously summarized this understanding as, “man does not have a soma; he is soma, for in not a few cases soma can be translated simply ‘I.’”4 What will be resurrected is thus the totality of the person, which is to say that the personality will be transformed by the action of resurrection.
While this view, at least as initially formulated, tends to imply a de-emphasis on the fate of the physical body, what has proven appealing about it is its emphasis on the holistic scope of redemption, that resurrection involves the whole of the person. It articulates a larger vision of reality, “in terms of the different dynamic factors of each part of the totality to which it belongs,”5 which many have also found appealing. It also seems sensible in light of the biblical tendencies in both the OT and NT to refer to anthropological aspects in ways that do not suggest watertight categories, so that M. E. Dahl could suggest, “The Old Testament has no word for ‘body’ because this totality concept makes it unnecessary.”6
However, this account features some intractable problems. First, there is no clear attestation of using σῶμα in such a holistic fashion. At most, one can argue for σῶμα as a synecdoche, but not simply as the whole itself. For the latter function, ἄνθρωπος served well enough and was readily available to Paul (he uses the term thirty-one times in this letter alone). Second, this interpretation is essentially a misguided inference from the traditional Semitic focus on the person as a whole, albeit from different angles depending on the term used, to the conclusion that a σῶμα is simply a totalized reference to that unified nature. Third, as noted before, this view de-emphasizes the physical character of such “body” language in its literal uses (and in its function as source domain for non-literal uses, which is related to what I review in my article published in JETS 65 entitled “Expectations and the Interpretation of Resurrection as ‘Bodily’”).7
Another influential account identifies σῶμα with the physical body.8 As Robert H. Gundry summarizes this view, “The sōma denotes the physical body, roughly synonymous with ‘flesh’ in the neutral sense. It forms that part of man in and through which he lives and acts in the world. It becomes the base of operations for sin in the unbeliever, for the Holy Spirit in the believer.”9 What will be resurrected is thus the physical body, or the “flesh,” as the early church understood it.10
This view benefits from greater definitional clarity. Indeed, its clarity is matched by its comprehensibility in that it comports with how “body” language is often used today. More so than Bultmann and Dahl, Gundry’s notion is built on an extensive survey of ancient usage. It also illuminates the transition from Paul’s references to the σῶμα in resurrection to the early church focus on flesh in resurrection if these terms could be synonymous.
Although Gundry’s work is an improvement on the holistic view, it is not without problems. Sarah Harding notes that Paul’s eschatological and cosmological vision that supplies context for his anthropology makes a static anthropology problematic, as, “What humans are is a function of the dominant power. Thus, with the progression from the old to the new aeon, and the introduction of the Holy Spirit, humans undergo transformation as they are caught up in the eschatological dynamic.”11 A proper articulation of what Paul says when he uses σῶμα needs to take greater account of the role of transformation in his thought, as well as the cosmological and eschatological contexts. As crucial as continuity of identity is to the notion of resurrection, Gundry’s overemphasis on it and lack of consideration of the body’s connection to the new creation context make his definition lacking, but not without value.
James D. G. Dunn attempted to address this problem by arguing that σῶμα in Paul typically refers to embodiment, rather than the physical body specifically (although the latter is part of Paul’s spectrum of meaning in his use of the term).12 In other words, “body is not a substance of which a person is composed, but a medium of existence, along with and in communication with other bodies.”13 If one can criticize Gundry’s interpretation as being too static, Dunn’s is too abstract.14 It is rather more likely that Paul’s different uses of “body” language derive from the source domain of the tangible body, and all that is thereby entailed according to the function it has in a given worldview, than that his base use is this abstract notion of embodiment.
Where Gundry and Dunn are right is in their conceptions of the relational character of the σῶμα. It is in/as σῶμα that humans interact with the world. According to Harding, “To be a σῶμα is to exist within a matrix of interconnected phenomena, bound together by cosmological powers. The σῶμα is the corporeal substratum that is determined by the power that dominates it, whether Sin or the Holy Spirit. The operation of these powers, working in and through humans, likewise determines the nature of the cosmos the σῶμα inhabits.”15 This is why Paul describes the body of the present age as a bearer, among other things, of corruptibility, mortality, and suffering.16 Particularly on an ethical level, it is also the, “visible expression of alterations occurring in the νοῦς and καρδία in response to external stimuli; and it is primarily in and through the authentic actions solidified in the σῶμα that humans become aware of what they are.”17 The σῶμα is thus both a microcosm of its world and a synecdoche representing the whole human by particular reference to corporeal, visible, tangible, relational (including ethical), and unifying characteristics.18 In fact, as Paul illustrates especially in ch. 12, it is precisely the body’s unifying characteristics—both of its different external parts, such as hands and feet, and its internal aspects, such as “mind” and “heart”—that make it a fitting synecdoche for the whole person from a particular angle, as well as a fitting source for “body” language at the corporate level.19
Despite the problems I note with the analysis of 1 Cor 15 (as in K. R. Harriman, “A Synthetic Proposal About the Corinthian Resurrection Deniers,” NovT 62 [2020]: 194–96), Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) is a generally helpful orientation to this “body” language in Paul’s context. Also see Dag Øistein Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 22–45; Endsjø, “Immortal Bodies, before Christ: Bodily Continuity in Ancient Greece and 1 Corinthians,” JSNT 30 (2008): 417–36.
Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012). Cf. 1:9, 10, 13; 3:23; 6:13–15, 17; 8:6, 11–12; 10:21; 11:1, 27; 15:23, 32, 57; 16:23. For more on such concepts of relation with Christ, see A. J. M. Wedderburn, “Some Observations on Paul’s Use of the Phrases ‘In Christ’ and ‘With Christ,’” JSNT 25 (1985): 83–97.
Marie-Emile Boismard, Our Victory Over Death: Resurrection?, trans. Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999), 36 (adding the qualifier that it is a being “inasmuch as it is made of physical elements”); Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, vol. 1 (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 192–203; M. E. Dahl, The Resurrection of the Body: A Study of I Corinthians 15, SBT 1/36 (London: SCM, 1962), esp. 10, 60–61, 94.
Bultmann, Theology, 194.
Dahl, Resurrection, 61.
Dahl, Resurrection, 71. Peter Carnley has attached much significance to the fact that the OT has no precise equivalent for σῶμα, as it instead refers to “flesh” (e.g., The Reconstruction of Resurrection Belief [Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019], 256). Dahl’s response to this idea is not on-point, but it is arguably on the right track, as discussed below.
Cf. E. Earle Ellis, “Sōma in First Corinthians,” Int 44 (1990): 133.
Robert H. Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987).
Gundry, Sōma, 50.
For more on this point, see Gundry, Sōma, 160–66.
Sarah Harding, Paul’s Eschatological Anthropology: The Dynamics of Human Transformation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), 4. For more of her specific critiques of Gundry, see Harding, Paul’s Eschatological Anthropology, 26–28.
James D. G. Dunn, “How Are the Dead Raised? With What Body Do They Come? Reflections on 1 Corinthians 15,” SwJT 45 (2002): 9.
Dunn, “How Are the Dead Raised,” 9.
Also see James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids; Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1998), 56–57.
Harding, Paul’s Eschatological Anthropology, 92–93. Cf. Lorenzo Scornaienchi, Sarx und Soma bei Paulus: Der Mensch zwischen Destruktivtät und Konstruktivität (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 82.
On the significance of the last point in particular as it relates to martyrdom and resurrection, see Claudia Janssen, Anders ist die Schönheit der Körper: Paulus und die Auferstehung in 1 Kor 15 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 82; Punt, “Paul, Body, and Resurrection,” 324.
Harding, Paul’s Eschatological Anthropology, 169. For more on the ethical/relational aspects of this “body” language, see Rodolphe Morissette, “L’expression ΣΩΜΑ en 1 Co 15 et dans la littérature paulinienne,” RSPT 56 (1972): 230–34.
Cf. Ellis, Sōma, 133–34; Harding, Paul’s Eschatological Anthropology, 183; N. T. Wright, “Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All: Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in His Complex Contexts,” in Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 470–71.
Wright similarly describes the uses of other anthropological terms: “Paul and the other early Christian writers didn’t reify their anthropological terms. Though Paul uses his language with remarkable consistency, he nowhere suggests that any of the key terms refers to a particular ‘part of the human being to be played off against any other. Each denotes the entire human being, while connoting some angle of vision on who that human is and what he or she is called to be.” Wright, “Mind, Spirit, Soul, and Body,” 471 (emphases original).