1 Corinthians 12:12–31

You are the Body of Christ

Commentaries by Christina Juliet Faraday

Works of art by John Riley, Louise Bourgeois and Unknown artists

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Louise Bourgeois

Give or Take, 2002, Bronze with silver nitrate patina, 8.6 x 59.6 x 12.7 cm, Tate; AL00343, © 2021 The Easton Foundation / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; Photo: © Tate, London / Art Resource, NY

Give or Take

Commentary by Christina Juliet Faraday

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If all were a single organ, where would the body be? (1 Corinthians 12:19)

There is strength in diversity, Paul tells us: ‘If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?’ (v.17).

And if the whole body were an arm?

Louise Bourgeois presents us with this image: a useless limb, an arm with a hand at either end, one outstretched, the other clenched. This is the opposite of the body described by Paul, which is diverse in its members but unified by its relationship to the whole. Here instead the limbs are identical, but fundamentally at odds.

The arm and hands of Bourgeois’s sculpture are those of her studio assistant Jerry Gorovoy. She often represented their hands entwined together, as they must have been at times over the thirty years that they worked together in her studio. We could, then, read this sculpture as a figuration of our different roles in society—something to which Paul also alludes when he writes:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one. (vv.4–6)

God is the beggar who is clothed, and the donor who offers her cloak. Both actions, giving and taking, have the same source: done to God and inspired by him (see Matthew 25:34–40).

But the title, Give or Take, offers us a choice: what do we do with that which we have? Paul describes the right use of spiritual gifts, not for our own exaltation, but in the service of the community: ‘To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.’ (1 Corinthians 12:7). Bourgeois presents us with the same choice: keep what you have, or share it around? In the body, as in society, the part affects the whole: ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together’ (v.26). Give or take, open or closed: what will we choose?

 

References

Madden, Allan. 2014. ‘Louise Bourgeois, Give or Take, 2002’, Tate Modern Online Catalogue [accessed 27 April 2020]


John Riley

A Scullion at Christ Church College, Oxford, After 1682, Oil on canvas, 99.7 x 60.5 cm, Christ Church College, Oxford; JBS 263, Christ Church, University of Oxford

I Have Need of You

Commentary by Christina Juliet Faraday

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During the global pandemic of 2020 it was bin (wo)men, supermarket staff, public transport and delivery drivers who kept society clean, fed, and moving, often at great personal risk. The renewed attention and respect these roles subsequently received might seem in stark contrast to the abuse that many faced before and even during the pandemic: threatened, attacked, bearing the brunt of frustrations and prejudices. Alongside doctors and nurses, they were acknowledged as ‘key workers’.

Paul reminds us of the vital role played by everyone in the community, particularly those whose roles might not be recognised or respected: ‘The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”, nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you”’ (1 Corinthians 12:21).

In John Riley’s seventeenth-century portrait of a scullion, or college servant, at Christ Church College, Oxford, the viewer is asked to pay renewed attention to a person who might have been overlooked before. His dark clothing melds into the background, as it no doubt did with the shadowy corners of the halls and staircases where he served dons who were more usually the subject of the college’s portraits. But Riley illuminates his sitter’s careworn face with a radiant light. The portrait is sensitive, dignified, even sacred in its atmosphere, presenting the hard, manual labour of this man with leather protective gloves, who carries a heavy pewter dish, almost as a holy act.

It reminds us, as Paul does, that each person has different gifts, and a different role to play in society, and that each is valuable. Duties—like parts of the body—which might be considered ‘weaker’, ‘less honourable’, or ‘unpresentable’, are in fact ‘indispensable’, having ‘greater honour’ and ‘greater modesty’ (vv.22–23).

There is no doubt that a society’s enthusiasm for honouring these roles—whether through a weekly clap, or a sanctifying oil painting—can easily stray into the realm of lip-service, using superficial acknowledgment to avoid addressing deeper questions of ingrained economic and social inequality. Yet, as Paul suggests, no society—whether the microcosm of an Oxford College, or the macrocosm of a nation or Church—can function without the harmonious activity of all its members.

 

References

Thalmann, Jacqueline and Christopher Lloyd. 2008. 40 Years of Christ Church Picture Gallery: Still One of Oxford's Best Kept Secrets (Oxford: Christ Church Picture Gallery)


Unknown artists

Terracotta votives; marble finger (S 1492), from excavation at Asklepieion, 1931 (excavated), Photograph, American School of Classical Studies, Athens; bw 2917, © American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations; Photo: Petros Dellatolas, Courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations

Individually Members

Commentary by Christina Juliet Faraday

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Eyes and ears, hands and feet, breasts and genitals. Such a clamour of body parts would have greeted visitors to many ancient healing temples, suspended from walls and ceilings and lining the floor. About five centuries before Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, locals worshipped at the shrine of Asclepios, an ancient god of medicine, leaving offerings of terracotta body parts in thanks for successful cures.

These examples from Corinth were buried sometime in the fourth century BCE so would not have been seen by St Paul when he visited the city in the late first century CE. However, he probably saw similar examples elsewhere, perhaps in Ephesus where he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians.

The origins of the bodily imagery in 1 Corinthians 12 have been much discussed. In the ancient world the body was a popular metaphor for harmonious government, but the sacrifice of Christ’s body on the cross and his subsequent resurrection gave it added significance for Paul. The Incarnation, and God’s role in anatomical arrangement, blesses the human body as the post-ascension instrument of Christ in the world: ‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ (v.27).

Among the terracotta offerings unearthed at Corinth, two examples are gilded, presumably as a mark of honour: an eye and a set of male genitalia. The latter of these is identified by Paul as a ‘less honourable’ part (exposed genitals are an object of shame in the Old Testament (Genesis 9:22; Habakkuk 2:15)). Yet he complicates the hierarchy of bodily members he has inherited by arguing that such ‘inferior’ parts are—paradoxically—due ‘a greater honour’, just as those individuals within Christ’s body who seem weaker are to be the focus of special care (v.25) and rejoicing (v.26). 

Paradoxically, in the honour he bestows on the genitals, Paul seems close to those pagans who celebrated the phallus (as the gilded Corinthian terracotta genitalia show). But here he challenges and reverses a different set of assumptions—those of his contemporary Hellenistic context—for the honour he advocates is not a celebration of, say, sexual potency, but a bestowal of dignity on what would otherwise be an object of shame.

We are reminded not to assume that our expectations accord with those of other cultures, or with God’s, and that things we might consider lowly may be exalted in God’s sight.

 

References

Fee, Gordon. 1987. The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Michigan: Eerdmans), pp. 582ff.

Hill, Andrew E. 1980. ‘The Temple of Asclepius: An Alternative Source for Paul’s Body Theology?’, Journal of Biblical Literature 99.3: 437–39

Hughes, Jessica. 2017. Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion (Cambridge: CUP)

Oster, Richard E. 1992. ‘Use, Misuse and Neglect of Archaeological evidence in Some Modern Works on 1 Corinthians (1Cor 7,1-5; 8,10; 11,2-16; 12,14-26)’, Zeitschrift Für Die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft Und Die Kunde Der Älteren Kirche 83, 1–2: 52–73

Roebuck, Carl. 1951. Corinth: Volume XIV The Asklepieion and Lerna (Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

Wedderburn, A. J. M. 1971. ‘The Body of Christ and Related Concepts in 1 Corinthians’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 24.1: 74–96


Louise Bourgeois :

Give or Take, 2002 , Bronze with silver nitrate patina

John Riley :

A Scullion at Christ Church College, Oxford, After 1682 , Oil on canvas

Unknown artists :

Terracotta votives; marble finger (S 1492), from excavation at Asklepieion, 1931 (excavated) , Photograph

Body Talk

Comparative commentary by Christina Juliet Faraday

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‘Listen to your body’, we are often told, whether that’s in relation to exercise, food, or self-care. But Paul tells us to listen to our bodies in a different way, taking from them a lesson: how to exist in a community that is simultaneously diverse and unified, all working to a common goal, which is ‘the common good’ (1 Corinthians 12:7).

The bodies and body parts represented in these three images exemplify different aspects of Paul’s message. The votive offerings are diverse, fragmented parts, eyes and ears, made as discrete objects rather than as part of a larger whole, in some sense figuring Paul’s image of the body in self-destructive competition. Louise Bourgeois’s double-handed arm is in contrast strangely melded, but also at odds with itself, rendered useless by its lack of diversity. Finally, there is the dignified body of the Christ Church scullion, whose loyal service of the college community confers on him a glowing air of sanctification, even as his forehead is furrowed and his hands careworn from his labour.

One of the key messages of this passage is the importance of diversity in a well-functioning whole. In the body as also in the Christian community difference is to be honoured and celebrated. Like the parts of the body, the gifts that can be bestowed on an individual are diverse, but all are vital to the functioning of the society they find themselves in. ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together’ (v.26).

Unity is vital, but true unity can come only through diversity: though the terracotta votive offerings are varied and fragmentary, all were offered in gratitude to the deity who was believed to have restored the corresponding, real body part to health. In contrast, Bourgeois’s arm, though appearing unified, seems to struggle in opposite directions, robbed of all its functions by a lack of diversity in its members.

Paul also uses the body metaphor to invert our expectations. In Corinth the ability to speak in tongues was valued above all other spiritual gifts, but Paul puts it last on his list: a reminder that gifts which offer the prospect of personal glory are not so exalted in God’s sight (vv.22–25).

Paul asks us to hope not for the most eye-catching gifts (‘Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?’; vv.29–30) but instead to attend to the lowly, the modest, the unpresentable, the easily-forgotten, and see how all may play a vital role in the community. In seventeenth-century Oxford, portraits were usually the preserve of the middle- and upper-classes, the served and not the server, yet, by depicting a scullion, John Riley dignified labour which was often hidden or forgotten, inverting our expectations just as Paul suggests God inverts the respectability of the body. This inversion is familiar from other aspects of Christian doctrine, recalling Matthew 23:12 ‘whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted’. Riley’s unnamed sitter is the meek and loyal servant who will one day ‘inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5:5).

We have little choice in what we are good at: our abilities or gifts seem to come from elsewhere, bestowed, as Paul suggests ‘by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills’ (1 Corinthians 12:11)—that is, if we are lucky enough even to have the chance to discover our gifts. What we’re best at might not be what we would choose for ourselves, but by making good use of what we are given we can serve ‘the common good’ (v.7) and honour the giver. The tension between the self-seeking desire for a gift which personally exalts us, and a gift which allows us to serve others, is present in the straining muscles of Bourgeois’s contradictory arm, one hand open, the other closed, suggesting a choice: ‘Give or Take’. We may not be able to choose which gifts we are given, though we might pray for them, but we do have a choice in how we use them. Since Christ has ascended and is no longer incarnate on the earth, Paul transfers the responsibility to us: ‘Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ (v.27). We must be the agents of good in the world, and how we use our gifts is up to us.

 

References

Bray, Gerald Lewis. 1999. 1-2 Corinthians, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, vol. 7 (Downers Grove: IVP Academic)

Wedderburn, A. J. M. 1971. ‘The Body of Christ and Related Concepts in 1 Corinthians’, Scottish Journal of Theology, 24.1: 74–96

Next exhibition: 1 Corinthians 15:35–58

1 Corinthians 12:12–31

Revised Standard Version

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single organ, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22On the contrary, the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those parts of the body which we think less honorable we invest with the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior part, 25that there may be no discord in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31But earnestly desire the higher gifts.

And I will show you a still more excellent way.