The Corporate Christ: Re-Assessing The Jewish Background -- By: Andrew Perriman

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 50:2 (NA 1999)
Article: The Corporate Christ: Re-Assessing The Jewish Background
Author: Andrew Perriman


The Corporate Christ:
Re-Assessing The Jewish Background

Andrew Perriman

Summary

The corporate personality hypothesis is still a frequent recourse in Pauline scholarship. Despite some quite damaging criticism from Old Testament scholars it remains, in one form or another, a popular means of accounting for Paul’s understanding of the relation of believers to the risen Christ. This essay undertakes a re-assessment of the empirical data for the hypothesis. It comes to the conclusion that Paul is unlikely to have had at hand in Judaism a conceptual model for the inclusion or incorporation of believers in Christ. The phenomena that have commonly been taken as evidence for the concept either have simply been misread or may be explained by reference to other less speculative aspects of Jewish thought and literary method.

I. Introduction

It has been for many years a quite common postulate of Pauline scholarship that his understanding of the relation between Christ and believers draws in some way or other upon a peculiarly Jewish conception of the group as a unified entity that finds expression or embodiment in a singular personality. Three aspects of Paul’s thought in particular have been interpreted along these lines: the prepositional expressions ‘in Christ’ and ‘with Christ’ and associated phrases; the ‘typological’ relationship between Christ and Adam; and the description of the church as ‘body (of Christ)’. The concept of ‘corporate personality’ has been subjected to sporadic but significant criticism which has led to a refinement of the categories employed, a repudiation of some of the more reckless and anachronistic arguments used in support of it, and to some extent an abandonment of the specific terminology. Nevertheless, the idea still persists that Paul thought of Christ as being more than individual, as in some real sense including believers in himself, and that ultimately this way of thinking

had its origins in a Jewish understanding of the relation between the group and an outstanding individual figure. It appears, however, that an intriguing, but ultimately flawed, hypothesis has induced a consistent misreading of the texts. In this study, therefore, we will review and develop as concisely as possible the arguments—in particular the exegetical arguments—that have been put forward against the view that Judaism entertained a notion of corporate personality.

II. Corporate Personality And Its Critics

H. Wheeler Robinson, who coined the phrase ‘corporate personality’ and whose work has provided the ground plan for the modern discussion of the theme, defines it in the first place in terms of the unity of a group which ‘might...

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