Hill Road Journal

The Body of Yahweh

Ka-leung WONG

Recent studies on the body of the God in the Old Testament mostly focus on the question of whether God has a body and, if so, whether God's body is male or female; a related issue is how to understand human as being created in the image of God. The present paper examines a different issue relating to the body of God, namely, whether metaphors of body or any bodily part of God have been used for the people of Israel. By going through all the bodily parts that have been attributed to God in the Old Testament, it is found that this use is extremely rare. The people of Israel as a whole or in part are more often compared to things related to some bodily parts of God (mostly the hand); but even this is not common. This might have to do with the belief that the God of Israel is so radically different from humans that even though He communicates with and lives among the Israelites, no human could be compared to any bodily part of God.

Gregory of Nyssa on Human Body

Francis Ching-wah YIP

Gregory of Nyssa was an important father of the Eastern church. Faithful to the biblical tradition while critically adopting Greek thought, he affirmed the significance and goodness of the body. He stressed the close relationship between the soul and the body. The human body can express and reflect the image of God. Gregory proposed a theory of the twofold creation of humans. On the one hand, God created the whole humanity in his image. On the other hand, as he foresaw the fall of human beings, he implanted in human nature the way of sexual reproduction pertaining to animals, in order that the number of human beings would not diminish. In God's providence, even bodily death has positive, salvific significance.

The Ecumenical Foundation of the Church: From the Perspective of Historical Theology

Chun-ming FONG

Christ is the head of the church and the church is the body of Christ. Since Christ has only one body, His churches should be united in one. On what basis can all the churches be unified together? The three different bases, which we are going to examine, are as follows:

 
1. The Roman Catholic Church argues that the unification of all churches has to be based upon the “historical standard,” that is, the longer the history of the church, the more authentic she is. The Roman Church argues that she is the only church institution which has the longest history. Her origin goes back to the early church, and extends from the Middle Ages up to today's world. It follows that the Catholic Church is the only ecumenical foundation of church unity.

Since the Reformation in the sixteenth century, Protestants insist that historical standard cannot be used as the foundation of church unity. A true church is not defined by how long the history of an institution can be traced to, but by the Word of God. Since the Roman Church has abandoned the faith of the early church and does not proclaim the Word of God correctly, she cannot be regarded as a true church. Neither can she be the foundation of church unity.

The early Baptists also criticized the Roman Church's idea of an institutional unity. Church unity is not based on the authority of a church organization. Neither is it depended on the decision of “a small group of authorized people” in the Roman Church, such as the pope and the Episcopal magisterium. In contrast, the church unity should start from each believer who has made a covenant with God through the sign of baptism, and then extends to various local churches that are composed of believers. The volition of all believers who have a covenantal relationship with God (such as whether they are willing to follow the Word of God) should be regarded as the supreme foundation of church unity.

 
2. Today the World Council of Churches points out that the only and most significant basis of church unity is Jesus Christ. But in today's pluralistic society this kind of saying is too general to have any strength to unify the Christian churches. The unity of the church should be based upon the Word of God or, more specifically, the core Christian beliefs that are derived from the Word of God.

 
3. The Reformer Calvin argued that church unity is based on the Word of God, which is clearly expressed through the “major doctrines” of the Reformation. Nevertheless, Calvin argued that the emphasis on the “major doctrines” is not to promote any form of strict doctrine purity. In fact, believers and church leaders need to tolerate each other for having different understandings of the “minor doctrines.” They are also demanded to allow a certain degree of liberty for various “external” practices, such as various forms of church government. In short, there is always space for the believer's conscience to acknowledge, discuss, and decide the orthodox beliefs of the Christian church.

 
Today Evangelicalism becomes the major trend of the Christian Church. JI Packer argues that since the root of Evangelicalism is derived from the Reformation, the “major doctrines” of the Reformation should be reconsidered as the entrance into any ecumenical talk. They will provide the internal strength for the evangelical churches to reunify themselves.

The Church as the Body of Christ: Exploring the Concept of Symbol according to Samuel T. Coleridge

David Y. LEE

The church is often described metaphorically in the Bible as the body of Christ. Some New Testament scholars have found that such a metaphor embraces a rich and multi-faceted meaning connecting the cosmic Christ as the head with the body, that is, the church as an eschatological community growing from Christ the head. In addition to biblical theology, there is another helpful approach to understand the meaning of the church as the body of Christ.

Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834), an English Romantic poet and Christian philosopher, offered a fresh interpretation of the church as the body of Christ emphasizing the need for a careful definition and understanding of “imagination” and “symbol”. According to Coleridge, interacting with imagination (both primary and secondary) and symbol, the interpreter could grasp a deeper sense of reality above and behind the symbol and metaphor. In addition, by faith and through the symbol, the interpreter could encounter and participate in the reality . By using symbol and Neo-platonic “idea” as his interpretive framework, Coleridge took a broad understanding of the church, connecting the English national church, the English monarchy, the clergy and various lay people, such as land owners and civil servants, together. These visible parties were interdependent and responsible for the permanency and progress of the Christian church under the unifying headship of Christ. The strengths of Coleridge's concept of the church as the body of Christ are its Christ-centeredness, its dynamism, with stress on the need for church growth and respect to church tradition, and its ability to connect English culture, politics, monarchy, clergy and economics etc. together. The weakness of his concept of symbol is that it is mainly based on his philosophical framework without objective scriptural verification. Above all, there is no warrant to form an everlasting permanent relationship between the church and British politics, including the monarchy. Nevertheless, Coleridge has helpfully demonstrated that the church understood metaphorically as Christ's body can take on a profound meaning for any contemporary church .

The Church as the Disabled Body of Christ

KUNG Lap Yan

This paper points out that the body employed as the metaphor of the church in relation to Christ is implicitly understood as a perfect body rather than a disabled body. As a result, it does not fully disclose the richness of the metaphor. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the experiences of the disabled bring us to a new imagination of life and community as well as a challenge to our understanding of Christology and soteriology. Christ is understood as the disabled Christ in a sense of mutual-dependence, and the resurrection of the flesh is understood as essentialization instead of compensation. In the light of these new imaginations, the metaphor of the church as the disabled body of Christ requires us to see the church as an accessible and inclusive community in the context of love and being loved. Besides, the metaphor challenges discrimination against the disabled in our society.

Wu Leichuan's Hermeneutics and View of the Bible

Kwong-pui CHAN

This article examines Wu Leichuan's view on the nature of the Bible and his biblical interpretation. Wu's approach is influenced by Zhu Xi's mode of thought on ethical ontological hermeneutics. Wu refuses the mono-scriptural status of the Bible. This understanding opened a way to a cross-textual hermeneutics between the Bible and the Confucian Classics. Wu also denied the inerrancy of the Bible. He claims that the authority of the Bible is based on the life and teachings of Jesus. Wu believes that readers share common human nature and “universalistic ” truth with Jesus; therefore it is possible for them to be enlightened by Jesus. Through the enlightenment, the readers would recognize the highest ideal—selflessness—as their ontological way of fully expressing their human nature and disclosing the Truth. Though Wu's understanding opens a new hermeneutic of the Bible, his ethical premises suffocates the richness, of the multi-biblical understandings too.

A Theological Reflection on Time and Narrative: The Relationship between Biblical Interpretation, Theological Construction, and Faith Traditions

Jason TS LAM

The relationship between biblical interpretation, theological construction and faith traditions is a sophisticated issue. This essay tries to appropriate the hermeneutical insights of Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative for developing a fruitful discussion. It explicates that Ricoeur's insights points to a theological agenda which embraces different kinds of biblical interpretations. Moreover, his theology of biblical intertextuality developed in the 1970s and 1980s had already made use of this idea, and regarded the Scripture as a vast web full of dynamic interaction. However it must be highlighted that according to this view, dogmatic stances of different faith traditions may have been playing very significant roles in the ongoing history of biblical interpretation and theological construction. In conclusion, this essay admits that the relationship between biblical interpretation, theological construction and faith traditions is full of tension and is affecting the constitution of the interpreters' identity. It is also open to creative possibilities through the use of our practical wisdom.