Publisher's Synopsis
Those studying Pauline "in Christ" language have for years resorted to the concept of "corporate personality" to explain these passages. The concept has often been appealed to when addressing various difficulties in the Old and New Testaments. According to the original understanding of this concept, the primitive Hebrew mentality did not conceive of individualism. People were dealt with by society on the basis of their place within a corporate group. The corporate group was understood as a unified entity. Since the original stating of the concept, several studies have redefined its limitations, showing, first, that a corporate self understanding is neither specifically primitive nor specifically Hebraic and, second, that the Old Testament from the beginning maintains a tension between group and individual responsibility.;These studies have largely been ignored by practitioners of New Testament theology, however. This volume discards the term "corporate personality" in favour of "corporate identification". It further refines the understanding of this concept, returning finally to a passage pivotal for the understanding of corporate identification in New Testament theology, Romans 6:1-14. This passage as a whole, and in particular Paul's particular choice of words in Romans 6:5, cannot be properly understood, asserts the author, without a proper grasp of the concept of corporate identification.
