Sunday, 1 November 2015

The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Reception of Faith,
Andrew F. Walls, T&T Clark, 2002, page 77

Walls seems to see something of the weakness of his own argument, when he proclaims:

Then comes a bold change of metaphor: the Jew and Gentile are different parts of a single body, a body of which Christ is the head, the mind, the brain, under whose control the whle body works and is held together (Ephesians 4:15-16). Old believers and new believers, Jewish believers who has seen the salvation of Israel and Hellenistic ex-pagans who now worshiped Kyrios Iesous were part of a single, functioning organic life system.

The different parts of the body, as Rav Sha'ul argues in his first letter to the Corinthians, do different things, have different functions and look different. We wear wedding rings on our left hands, not on our left feet. We wash our hands before eating to keep the food that we put in our mouths clean; we don't wash our feet at the same time because they are not doing the same job.