Bro. Don,
I was pleased to see you note in your February editorial (p. 50) that the words “of the Lord” in “not discerning the body of the Lord” (1 Co.11:29 KJV, NKJV, NIV) have little support in the Greek manuscripts. The best evidence for the words is found in the 5th Century Codex Bezae (at Cambridge, UK) but this is a Greek-Latin parallel text, and the Greek is occasionally altered to fit the Latin. The words “of the Lord” are also found in another 5th Century uncial (Codex Ephraemi), but only as the gloss of a 9th Century corrector — perhaps under the growing influence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Even if the words “of the Lord” are genuine, however, the context still shows that the “body” Paul is referring to is the ecclesia, as much as to the wounded physical frame of Jesus on the cross. This is clear from the way Paul tops and tails his comment on the bread: “We being many are one body” (I Cor. 10:16); “For as the body is one” (I Cor. 12:12). One piece of hard evidence for this interpretation, which is lost in the KJV, is that the phrase “discerning the body” (v. 29) uses the same Greek verb as “judge ourselves” in verse 31. Read this section in the NASB and it suddenly makes sense — quite shocking sense.
When Paul asked brethren to “judge the body rightly” at the breaking of bread, he was not asking them to sit with heads bowed visualizing the wounds in Christ’s hands and side (although this would have been no bad thing), he was asking them to turn their heads and regard their brethren in the Cephas or Apollos ‘fellowship’ breaking bread on the other side of the room. Today of course, our ‘one body’ does not split among antechambers of the same house but meets in separate halls, or even in separate states. Does this make Paul’s exhortation less relevant, or should it be more urgent?
Given the particular relevance of these verses to our inherited problems in many regions (not just North America), perhaps until all of us “baptized into one body” meet as one, those presiding brethren who are accustomed to read I Corinthians 11:23-29 on Sunday mornings, could read up to the end of the chapter so that Paul’s full meaning is clear.
Steven Cox writing from London, UK
Kili Kili, Philippines
Dear Bro. Don,
An article in the January, 2002, Caribbean Pioneer section referred to Islam-inspired “persecution of Christadelphians in the Philippines.” Brothers and sisters can be assured that there is no persecution of Christadelphians as such in the Philippines.
The Kili Kili ecclesia lives on the fringe of Muslim-controlled territory in a disputed area of Mindanao Island, and so has been troubled by fighting from time to time: doubtless reports of this have been misunderstood. The true story is interesting and has some encouraging lessons.
In the early 1980’s attacks by the Muslim insurgents around the town of Kili Kili were so alarming that the Australian Bible Mission (ACBM), with donations from the brotherhood in Australia and all over the world, established a farming community on choice irrigated land about 80 km away and relocated many Kili Kili members there – the Mailag ecclesia has grown slowly from that migrant community. Those who for one reason or another did not accept this help remained at Kili Kili. Their ecclesia was reduced in numbers, but was secure in the knowledge that our family in Christ would not neglect them.
They are still in danger from time to time, and on occasion have sheltered in their hall with its bullet-stopping concrete block walls; but as an ecclesia they have gone from strength to strength and are now a significant minority of the town’s population.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One