The interpretation of body of Christ (soma christou) in 1 Corinthians is a pressing contextual/ideological concern for me because its predominant interpretation as an ecclesiological organism characterized by unity and homonoia (concord) serves as a boundary marker that tends to exclude the voices of marginality and diversity. This traditional reading, while plausible, ignores a deeper, ethical meaning of body of Christ that questions an ideology of hegemonic power in both the Corinthian context and today. The body of Christ re-imagined in terms of Christ crucified calls for a deconstruction of power ideology that exhorts the Corinthian community to live as a Christic body (viewed as a living metaphor) through radically identifying the body of Christ (as Christ crucified) with the broken bodies of the community and in the world.
Re-imagining a hermeneutics of embodiment based on Christ crucified and marginality requires 1) reviewing the history of interpretations of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians; 2) a postmodern hermeneutical approach to embodiment acknowledging marginalized voices; 3) recognizing voices pointing to both a hegemonic body and a democratic-inclusive body in the Greco-Roman and the Jewish world and in 1 Corinthians. This dissertation asks: When Paul talked about the body of Christ and Christ crucified, whose voice did he represent? A Was he concerned with a lack of unity in a Corinthian community? Or with the marginalization and exclusion of the weak and marginalized, because of a problematic view of body of Christ? The dissertation shows that this hermeneutics of marginality and embodiment is grounded in the figurative discursive structure of the letter, which focused on the figure of body of Christ. This analysis deconstructs power-seeking ideologies of the Corinthians (and of many readers of the letter), and reconstructs an ecclesia based on Christ crucified and others-centered love. Pauls phrase in Christ interrelates Pauls theology centered on the body of (the crucified) Christ to a way of lifean ethics of dying with Christ, or being in Christ.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-12082005-212203 |
| Date | 09 December 2005 |
| Creators | Kim, Yung Suk |
| Contributors | Daniel M. Patte, Fernando F. Segovia, Douglas Knight, Victor Anderson, Kathy Gaca |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-12082005-212203/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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