The Church as the Body of Christ: Exploring the Concept of Symbol according to Samuel T. Coleridge

The Church as the Body of Christ: Exploring the Concept of Symbol according to Samuel T. Coleridge

David Y. LEE

The church is often described metaphorically in the Bible as the body of Christ. Some New Testament scholars have found that such a metaphor embraces a rich and multi-faceted meaning connecting the cosmic Christ as the head with the body, that is, the church as an eschatological community growing from Christ the head. In addition to biblical theology, there is another helpful approach to understand the meaning of the church as the body of Christ.

Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834), an English Romantic poet and Christian philosopher, offered a fresh interpretation of the church as the body of Christ emphasizing the need for a careful definition and understanding of “imagination” and “symbol”. According to Coleridge, interacting with imagination (both primary and secondary) and symbol, the interpreter could grasp a deeper sense of reality above and behind the symbol and metaphor. In addition, by faith and through the symbol, the interpreter could encounter and participate in the reality . By using symbol and Neo-platonic “idea” as his interpretive framework, Coleridge took a broad understanding of the church, connecting the English national church, the English monarchy, the clergy and various lay people, such as land owners and civil servants, together. These visible parties were interdependent and responsible for the permanency and progress of the Christian church under the unifying headship of Christ. The strengths of Coleridge's concept of the church as the body of Christ are its Christ-centeredness, its dynamism, with stress on the need for church growth and respect to church tradition, and its ability to connect English culture, politics, monarchy, clergy and economics etc. together. The weakness of his concept of symbol is that it is mainly based on his philosophical framework without objective scriptural verification. Above all, there is no warrant to form an everlasting permanent relationship between the church and British politics, including the monarchy. Nevertheless, Coleridge has helpfully demonstrated that the church understood metaphorically as Christ's body can take on a profound meaning for any contemporary church .