Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- PART I FOR AND AGAINST A HOLISTIC DEFINITION OF SŌMA
- 1 Sōma as the whole person: the rise of a definition
- 2 Sōma in extra-Biblical literature
- 3 Sōma in the LXX
- 4 Sōma in the NT outside Pauline literature
- 5 The alternation of Sōma with personal pronouns in Pauline literature
- 6 Sōma elsewere in Pauline literature
- 7 Sōma in I Cor 6: 12–20
- PART II SŌMA IN THE FRAMEWORK OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL DUALITY
- PART III THE THEOLOGY OF SŌMA AS PHYSICAL BODY
- Select bibliography
- Index of passages cited
- Index of authors
6 - Sōma elsewere in Pauline literature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- PART I FOR AND AGAINST A HOLISTIC DEFINITION OF SŌMA
- 1 Sōma as the whole person: the rise of a definition
- 2 Sōma in extra-Biblical literature
- 3 Sōma in the LXX
- 4 Sōma in the NT outside Pauline literature
- 5 The alternation of Sōma with personal pronouns in Pauline literature
- 6 Sōma elsewere in Pauline literature
- 7 Sōma in I Cor 6: 12–20
- PART II SŌMA IN THE FRAMEWORK OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL DUALITY
- PART III THE THEOLOGY OF SŌMA AS PHYSICAL BODY
- Select bibliography
- Index of passages cited
- Index of authors
Summary
We have exhausted those Pauline passages where alternation of sōma and personal pronouns might be thought to enlarge the meaning of sōma. Further passages need attention, however, passages in which for other reasons sōma possibly refers to the whole person. In them a personal pronoun, though absent, would have fit in place of sōma and can easily be substituted.
I Cor 7: 4 falls into this category: ‘For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.’ We can hardly overlook the physical reference here in view of Paul's discussion of conjugal rights, but we might think that ‘the soma is not a something that outwardly clings to a man's real self (to his soul, for instance), but belongs to its very essence… soma can be translated simply “I” (or whatever personal pronoun fits the context)’. But there is no justification for the leap from the essentiality of the sōma to a supposed comprehensiveness of sōma as ‘Man, his person as a whole’ – certainly no justification in the solely sexual orientation of I Cor 7: 1–9 (‘not to touch a woman… the temptation to immorality…conjugal rights … Do not refuse one another… come together again… lack of self-control… exercise self-control… aflame with passion’).
For the same reason, an appeal to Rom I: 24 fails.
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- Information
- Soma in Biblical TheologyWith Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, pp. 34 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1976