Unity First?

In his Gift and the Unity of Being , Antonio Lopez claims that “Christ's kenotic gift of self restores unity with God. The redemption of the gift allows man to see that unity with God is possible and that it generates a whole that is greater than its parts. St. Paul's discourse on the different gifts, according to which God calls some to be apostles, others pastors, other prophets, etc., shows the church in Corinth that the unity of participating in the same Eucharist and in the same life of the Spirit precedes particular gifts or individuals and is distinct from their total number. The body of Christ is not just a sum of its members, just as our bodies are not the result of different parts being welded together. The priority of the unity indicates that the Eucharist effects the promised indwelling of the triune God in the believer and of the latter in God. It also reveals that being in Christ means enjoying the same relation with the Father and their same glory. In this way, those who partake of this sacrificial gift become a sacramental sign of the one to whom they belong” (181-2, emphasis added).

There is much to affirm here, but one is puzzle by the “priority” and “precedes” language. Though it is of course true that a body is more than a cobbling-together of body parts (Frankenstein), it is not the case that the body is a unified body before it has its parts. It cannot be a unified body without distinct parts because a body cannot be a body without parts. That isn't simply a feature of bodies, but is precisely Paul's emphasis in the passages where he speaks of the body of Christ.

Lopez wants to stress the oneness of the Spirit who is the source of all gifts in the body. But we can't forget that this one Spirit is also (in Johannine terms) the “seven Spirits of God.”