[Presented at the 2018 Princeton Theological Seminary Graduate Student Conference.]
Abridged version
It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly … We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.
Martin Luther King[1]
According to one widely used sociology textbook, the society-as-body analogy was first developed by the structuralist sociologist Herbert Spencer.[2] It claims that it was Spencer who first compared humans’ cooperation in society to the way body parts—such as the skeleton, muscles, and veins—work together as incorporated parts of an organism. This analogy helped Spencer to explicate the theory he helped to develop, called structural functionalism, which insists that society be imagined a complex system, composed of parts that work together to sustain the whole. Only by attending to social structures, structural functionalists maintain, can we understand anything about the way humans participate and cooperate in society.
Of course, just about all of us in this room know that the analogy precedes Spencer. Centuries before the Spencer offered his renowned analogy of society-as-organism, the apostle Paul beat him to the punch. Especially in his letters to the Romans and to the Corinthians, Paul memorably portrays Christian society as “one body with many parts.”[3] In so doing, he stresses the high degree to which baptized Christians’ lives are interdependent. Paul already understood the insight that Spencer and other nineteenth century sociologists theorized: you can’t understand Christian life by thinking only about individual Christian lives. Rather, one must attend to the way Christians’ lives are incorporated with one another. Paul took this idea of incorporation so far that he portrayed Christian lives as literally incorporated—fused into one singular body of Christ.
In recent decades, theological conversations have started taking this insight of Paul’s quite seriously. Those interested in theology and theological ethics have started to think critically about the way that human social systems contribute to and exacerbate human sin. We’ve started to talk about the sins of systemic racism and institutional discrimination, of the global problems to come from climate change, of prevalent rape culture. Paul can be an ally for those who insist that we think in terms of structures and systems about these wrongs. The society-as-body analogy that he used made clear that it is unproductive, and perhaps even impious, to think of individuals in isolation from one another. It’s important that we pay attention to the system in which we live, and think of it as a system.
Yet, even as committed as I am to this analogy—I’ve written on it extensively and have found it to be an impetus for much of my doctoral research here in Princeton—I also want to be attentive to its dangers. What hazards do we risk when we think about society as a body? What might be lost when we embrace this analogy tout court? And, is there any way to maintain our commitment to thinking systemically, while avoiding, or at least minimizing, the kinds of troubles that the society-as-body analogy entails? These are the questions I explore in this paper.
The paper will proceed as follows. First, I’ll review the virtues that the society-as-body analogy presents. Then, I’ll lay out the troubles that may arise in tandem with the use of the analogy. Finally, I’ll return to Paul’s use of the analogy to show how Paul himself anticipates and deflects some of these troubles. It is my hope that this will enable us to better understand and use the analogy to understand and address systemic wrongs.[4]
I. Virtues
It’s no coincidence that the Pauline language concerning “one body with many parts” emerges at the tail end of what Karl Jaspers, and many since him, have called the “Axial Age.”[5] Whatever misgivings one may have about Jaspers’ general thesis, it’s impossible to deny that major changes occurred in the few centuries before Paul’s writings appeared. Major trading routes, like the Silk Road, integrated communities across Europe and Asia for the first time; coinage emerged.[6] Cities grew larger, grew more dense, and multiplied.[7] The development of new tools during the Iron Age, which generated vastly greater harvests and, thus, greater economic surpluses, made it possible for certain persons to specialize in their labor—hence the emergence of the university instructor and the trade route patrolman. The context in which Paul was writing was one in which social interdependence was at an all-time high.
The axial age, then, perhaps was one of the first to exhibit what Emile Durkheim identified as social differentiation, which includes, among other things, the social division of labor. Though Durkheim tends to compare what he calls “primitive” and “industrialized” societies, which might give the impression of a distinction between pre-modern and modern societies, the Imperial Roman social order of Paul’s day certainly was characterized by a great degree of social differentiation.[8] Not only the trading of goods and the expansion of empire, but also Paul’s own writing and transmission of letters required cooperation and mutual aid to an extent never seen before in human history. This kind of social order generates what Durkheim called “organic solidarity.”[9] Durkheim claimed that, whereas in “primitive” societies, social groups are united by members’ identical occupations, experiences, and worldviews, in more complex societies—like ours and Paul’s—interdependence, rather than similarity, binds individuals together.[10] In such societies, individuals work together like a giant organism—hence, organic solidarity—with different people performing different tasks that keep them all able to function. Those bound in organic solidarity are bound together not by shared experiences, but by their need for one another.[11] They’re like the parts, one might say, of a body.
The irony, Durkheim explained, was that at the very same time that individuals become increasingly interdependent in such a society, because of their specialization of labor, they can develop the impression that they are self-sufficient. It’s all too easy to get so mired in our own specialized labor, that we forget that our work is of little value apart from the work of others. Of course, this impression is deeply misguided. The university instructor can’t do what she does without students and benefactors; the trade route patrolman can’t do what he does without merchants, and they can’t do what they do without silk spinners and weavers and tailors and consumers of garments. But amid such a high level of what Durkheim called the social division of labor, it’s easy to be persuaded of one’s independence, rather than focus on social interdependence. (As an illustration, consider the “you didn’t build that” controversy that arose during the 2012 presidential campaign.[12]) So, Durkheim made it one of the central objectives of his life’s work to draw attention to, and persuade his readers of, the fact and significance of their social interdependence in complex, organic society.
Paul seems to be pointing to the same thing when, in letters to inhabitants of Rome and Corinth—both extremely populous cities[13]—he insists that they think of themselves as many members of one body. “As in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function,” Paul wrote to the Romans, “so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”[14] Famously, Paul elaborated on the analogy in his first letter to the Corinthians:
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”[15]
In his dismay about the hubris that some of his flock displayed—for, it seemed, some were quite willing to say to other fellow disciples of Christ, “I have no need of you”—Paul offered the society-as-body analogy to insist that his followers pay attention to the degree to which they were incorporated into one social system. Like a theologically-inflected Durkheim, Paul wanted to ensure that his readers recognize the fact and significance of their social interdependence. There’s something that is missed, according to both Durkheim and Paul, when one imagines oneself as a self-sufficient entity in the world, removed from the complex social arrangement in which one lives. (Durkheim called this “methodological individualism,” and it was the bête noire of his life’s work.) By recognizing and identifying our participation in a more comprehensive system, we better understand ourselves and our social contexts.
I suspect, further, that it’s only by paying attention to the way humans interact and function as a system (like a body) that we can name, diagnose, and alleviate the kinds of social problems that arise specifically in the context of organic society. For, as we know well, the kinds of problems that plague our society in 2018—systemic racism, widespread rape culture, unjust international labor practices, and global climate change—are not simply the products of several individuals’ actions. Instead, they are the results of actions and choices that do not come about apart from thick networks of human cooperation. It doesn’t help to pay attention simply to what the heart, or the foot, or the ear does. By conceiving of contemporary society as a whole system, a body of many members, we can get fresh insight into the problems that concern so many of us.
II. Troubles
In point of fact, however, the society-as-body analogy faces potential problems of its own. For one portrayal of the problems that might be incurred by the society-as-body analogy, we can turn to John Rawls’ critique of utilitarianism in his classic A Theory of Justice.[16] Utilitarians adopt a certain version of the society-as-body analogy, but Rawls says that its version entails unjust premises. The problem with utilitarian ethics, says Rawls, is that it presumes to incorporate all individuals into a singular decision-maker. Adopting utilitarianism means “extending to society the principle of choice for one man [sic], and then, to make this extension work, conflating all persons into one.”[17] The view treats all of society as if it were one singular agent, making decisions for many different parts of itself. Only according to such an outlook does it becomes possible to affirm that “there is no reason in principle why the greater gains of some should not compensate for the lesser losses of others; or more importantly, why the violation of the liberty of a few might not be made right by the greater good shared by many.”[18] Thus, Rawls famously insists that “[u]tilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.”[19] Those who conceptually incorporate individuals into one coherent entity, as do the utilitarians, thus risk undervaluing individuals’ agency and basic civil rights.
An interesting parallel to this particular problem can be found in the history that informed Paul’s rhetoric in his epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians. According to Livy’s History of Rome, in the 6th century BCE, a Roman senator named Menenius Agrippa used the society-as-body analogy to justify aristocrats’ maintenance of power. Facing insurgence among the plebeian underclass, who demanded fairer treatment and an end to crippling debt policies, Menenius is said to have assuaged the plebs with a fable about a body and its members. According to the story, some parts of the body
thought it unfair that they should have the worry and the trouble and the labor of providing everything for the belly, while the belly remained quietly in their midst with nothing to do but to enjoy the good which they bestowed upon it; they therefore conspired together that hands should carry no food to the mouth, nor the mouth accept anything that was given it, nor the teeth grind up what they received. While sought in this angry spirit to starve the belly into submission, the members themselves and the whole body were reduced to utmost weakness. Hence it had become clear that even the belly had no idle task to perform, and was no more nourished than it nourished the rest, by giving out to all parts body that by which we live and thrive … [20]
The allegory, which appears in several other ancient texts—including in Plutarch, and even in Aesop’s Fables—rationalizes the subjugation of the segments of society that correspond to the “hands” and “teeth,” for the benefit of the “belly.”[21] Without even aspiring to utilitarianism’s aim of maximal utility, Menenius’ tale leverages the fact of interdependence to make a case for the hegemony of the patricians. Like the utilitarians, Menenius’ tale also fails to, in Rawls’ words, “take seriously the distinction between persons.” It never registers, on the account that Menenius presents, that the “hands” and “teeth” ought to be conceived as having any fundamental rights unto themselves.
The society-as-body analogy, then, entails serious troubles when the body or system level is either ontologically or ethically prioritized, at the expense of some of the members who constitute it. As Rawls points out, it’s important to take the distinction between persons seriously—not simply to recognize discrete personhood, but also to respect and defend personal autonomy. “Justice,” Rawls says, “denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.”[22] Equal and basic liberties must be guaranteed to all members of the body. The deployment of the society-as-body analogy is unjust apart from this affirmation.
A Better Body
The tale Menenius offered to the plebs would likely have been familiar to Paul’s readers in the first century AD.[23] So the Corinthians would have taken notice when, in a continuation of the passage offered above, Paul writes that
the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.[24]
Not only may no member of the body say “I have no need of you” to any of the others, but Paul adds that the feeblest, the least honorable, the most vulnerable are to receive special regard. Here, Paul completely inverts Menenius’ tale to draw attention to the least of these, as Christ instructed us all. There is no justification of the stomach’s incessant consumption; rather, each individual member of the body is indispensable to the entire system. All members are to offer one another the same care.[25] No member’s suffering is to be borne for the alleged good of the whole.
Paul is thus not willing to overlook the distinction between persons; rather, he highlights and rejoices in the diversity of the body’s members.[26] But he also adds that, because each member of the body is essential to the functioning of the system, no individual member’s affliction can be justified by potential benefit to other members. Paul thus anticipates and overcomes the troubles I have flagged above in part two, because while he incorporates “many members” into one body, he insists on the indispensability of each of those members.
Paul’s body
The analogy that Paul offers, which imagines society as a body, reappears throughout human history. Its use is not always virtuous. As we have seen, the conceptual incorporation of all individual members of a community into one undivided entity can be used to justify harms done to individual members, or the maintenance of power among the elite. Yet we have also begun to learn that it is imperative that we pay attention to injustices that take place at the system level, rather than confining ourselves to attending solely to the individual as our unit of analysis. With Durkheim, we may find that the organic metaphor helps us to identify both our interdependence and our participation in systems beyond our individual choice-making.
In the letters attributed to Paul, we find a formulation of the society-as-body analogy that does not fall prey to the troubles that the analogy might otherwise face. This is because Paul underscores the important role played by individual agents, even as they participate in an incorporated human community. It is my hope that, by recapturing Paul’s nuanced rendering of the society-as-body analogy, as I have tried to do here, both political theorists and Christian disciples might be able to better appreciate the relationship between an individual and her community.
[1] King, A Testament of Hope, 254.
[2] Macionis, Sociology.
[3] See Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 12:12, 14, 20.
[4] It’s worth mentioning in an aside at the outset of this paper that my broader work integrates two concurrent, but usually disconnected conversations: one that takes place among theological ethicists and another that takes place among political theorists and sociologists. Though this paper pays attention to theological reflections concerning the society-as-body analogy, I also work very hard to incorporate political theory into the account I offer. Perhaps St. Paul, Emile Durkheim, and John Rawls may appear to be odd bedfellows, but one of the goals of my work is to bring them into conversation with one another, with the expectation that doing so might provide rewarding insights.
Another related disclaimer is that there is a major distinction to be made between the communities that someone like Rawls writes about and the communities Paul writes about: one is a church, and one is not. There is not consensus as to whether these two things merit comparison. However, again, it is my hope and expectation that facilitating conversation across these disciplinary and conceptual boundaries might be generative—and so I dare to combine both discussions in my work. I do welcome further discussion about whether there are ecclesiological or pneumatological reasons for abstaining from this kind of work.
[5] See, for example, chapter nine of Graeber, Debt.
[6] See again, Graeber.
[7] According to one historian’s estimates, though in 2250 BCE there were only eight cities in the world with a population of 30,000 or more, and that number had only grown to twenty by 650 BCE, by the turn of the millennium there were seventy-five such cities, with a total urban population of over five million. See Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth. According to one estimate, Antioch had a population density of 50,000 persons per square mile—almost the same population density as modern day Calcutta!—while Rome was almost three times as dense. (Before toilets!) See Stark, Cities of God, 27.
[8] I recognize the multifarious problems with Durkheim’s language here, but nevertheless use his terms—albeit in very scary scare quotes.
[9] Durkheim was highly influenced by Spencer, the sociologist with whom this essay begins.
[10] This is discussed in the Division of Social Labor. Durkheim contrasts “organic solidarity” with what he calls “mechanical solidarity.” His terminology can be confusing—after all, shouldn’t the post-industrial period be mechanical, rather than the other way around? Yet Durkheim’s choice of words was intended to startle his readers. It may be easier to understand his language when we remember that if, say, something were to happen to the brakes on my car, they could be replaced with an identical part.
[11] We might ourselves be reminded of a passage from Martin Luther King’s last Christmas Eve sermon: “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured into your cup by a South American … And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.” In King, A Testament of Hope, 254.
[12] In his ill-fated speech, Obama declared: “The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.” For discussion, see Cline, “What ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Really Means.”
[13] Corinth had around 100,000-150,000 inhabitants at the time of Paul, living in an area of about 2.5 square miles.
[14] Romans 12:4-5.
[15] 1 Corinthians 12:14-21.
[16] Rawls, A Theory of Justice. It’s a Princeton political theory paper, and so I had to get Rawls in somehow. It’s a rule.
[17] Rawls, 24.
[18] Rawls, 23.
[19] Rawls, 24.
[20] As presented in McVay, “The Human Body as Social and Political Metaphor in Stoic Literature and Early Christian Writers,” 137.
[21] As discussed in McVay, “The Human Body as Social and Political Metaphor in Stoic Literature and Early Christian Writers.” The story also appears in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s play, Coriolanus.
[22] Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 25.
[23] McVay, “The Human Body as Social and Political Metaphor in Stoic Literature and Early Christian Writers.”
[24] 1 Cor 12:22-26.
[25] In Rawls’ modern-day, political language, we might say, the same basic rights.
[26] Recall the verse referred to above: “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?”