Saturday, April 29, 2023

Sang-Won (Aaron) Son: Our Corporate Union with Christ does not result in the Eradication of One's racial, social, and gender distinctives

  

Participation in the “one body” corporeity does not mean the loss of the individuality of the participants. Husband and wife remain distinct individuals while they are, at the same time, one corporate body in marriage. The “one body” union does not eliminate their individual distinctions. Otherwise, Paul’s exhortations given to husbands and wives respectively would not make sense. In the same manner, believers maintain their individuality when they form a corporate body with others and with Christ. Paul’s conception of Christ and the husband as the heads of their respective corporate bodies also draws a fine distinction between their individual and their corporate existence.

 

The corporate union with Christ has sometimes been misunderstood as referring to the eradication of the individual’s racial, social, and gender distinctives. Those who hold this view often appeal to Gal. 3:27-28: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, male and female; for you are all one (εις) in Christ Jesus.” Paul, however, does not teach in this passage that incorporation into Christ abrogates one’s racial, social, and gender distinctives. He is primarily concerned here with the corporate unity of all believers in Christ, which in some respects transcends and transforms but does not eradicate their racial, social, and gender distinctions. (Sang-Won (Aaron) Son, Corporate Elements in Pauline Anthropology: A Study of Selected Terms, Idioms, and Concepts in the Light of Paul’s Usage and Background [Rome: Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 2001], 168)