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The Body of Christ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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A body is a terrestrial thing. It exists in time. It has a shape and a locus. The Christos is the Lord's anointed. He is a being divinely ordained to realize the divine purpose, whatever that may be. The body of the Christ is, therefore (whatever else it be) a temporal and terrestrial entity with a shape and locus ordained to realise the divine purpose.

It has been clear for a long time, indeed I think it was always obvious that a book, though it be the Bible, was never adequate means to realize the divine purpose. The Torah would not be the Torah without a community to believe and practise it. If the Christos has a body, this body must be not merely a system of utterances, but at least a community of people and things, a community that embodies and is chosen or ordained to embody the divine purpose fulfilled by the Christos. The body of Christ is the economy, the ecclesia of Christ.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

Footnotes

1

The substance of a paper read to a conference of Catholics and Jews.