Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
Well, the Bible does say that the Church is "the Body of Christ". This is not a parable or a figure of speech, it is a statement of fact. This is spoken by Paul in his epistles, but it is also seen in Acts where the Lord tells Paul "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest". Now the human body is organized in a wonderful way, but we wouldn't refer to the human body as an organization but as an organism. Taken in context it is not correct to say that the Bible doesn't say this.
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The fact that the Church is the Body of Christ does not imply, nor should we assume, that it is in every way or in even in most ways similar to a human body.
The reason we do not refer to the human body as an organization is that our definition of organization includes the idea of the parts of the organization consciously and cognizantly communicating and coordinating. The parts of the human body have no mental consciousness of coordination. They cannot have ideas. However, the parts of the Church, the Body of Christ, do have such consciousness. This is just one way the Body of Christ does not exactly match the picture of a human body.
Further, the Church is not just the Body. It is also the family of God, the people of God, and the army of God. All these are organizations.
So, the picture of the Body does not justify the statement "The Church is an organism, not an organization." Better to say, the Church has aspects of both.
History has borne this out. There is no reason to believe the Lord begrudges the organizational aspects of the Church, or that their existence indicates some kind of failing. Human beings are a lot more complex that human organs. For one as I've said they usually require conscious communication to come to an understanding of how they are supposed to coordinate It's naive to take the picture of the Body and assume from that you know all you need to know about how the Church is to function and operate.
It is precisely this naive interpretation of the Church as the Body which leads people to expect and search for a simplicity and spontaneity of function and operation that has probably never existed and probably was never intended to exist, and to find fault with "Christianity" as it fails to live up to that fantastical ideal.
Lee's life-talk and organic-speak produced an overblown mythology of the life aspect of the Body which allowed him, of course, to condemn the "system" of Christianity. As if his movement was not a system as well.