We weren't made to be alone: finding divinity in community

In community, we fulfill the image of God within us. Writing about the social Trinity, Miroslav Volf argues: “Because the Christian God is not a lonely God, but rather a communion of three persons, faith leads human beings into the divine communion.” Such communion cannot express itself in solitary life, a private person worshiping a private deity alone. Instead, the divine communion draws us into human communion, into togetherness, into a community that practices love of God and love of neighbor.

To enter this type of community, a community modeled on the triune God, is an act of faith. Faith is not a moral accomplishment, or rigorous obedience to rigid rules, or stubborn adherence to propositions for which there is no evidence. Faith is openness to the most basic experiential truth of the universe, a way of being that is plumb with reality, the practice of which entails risk.

Jesus ascended to Abba so that the Holy Spirit Sophia, who had animated Jesus, could now animate his followers. Together, they would continue his ministry as the church. In church God is known not just in community, but as community, in the freedom of self-gift.

This concept of freedom as self-gift, self-revelation, and self-communication resists contemporary culture, in which people increasingly delay commitment to preserve what they deem to be freedom: the spontaneity of a life unencumbered by responsibility for others. Such delayed commitment can lessen the self that it seeks to indulge. Self-donation in relationships of mutuality and equality, and in communities of mutuality and equality, is self-fulfillment, not self-renunciation.

Good churches manifest agape—the universal, unconditional, egalitarian love of God. The function of church is to provide communities in which love can be equitably given, received, and shared with the world. (That is what good churches do. They don’t cause religious trauma by controlling their parishioners through fear.) This sacred exchange accesses a new realm of belonging—the domain of Sophia. Her Holy Spirit is a gratuitous energy that perpetually renews and transforms the community. Thus, the church experiences Sophia as ever heightening our quality of shared life.

The self finds itself only in community. Hence, to limit self-donation is to limit the self. This statement is not dogmatic; it is empirical and will be ratified by those willing to risk it. Paul writes, “If one member suffers, all the members suffer together with them; if one member is honored, all the members share their joy” (1 Corinthians 12:26). He believes this because “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another” (Romans 12:5 WEB).

The phrase “of one another” is one word in Greek, allēlōn (ah-LAY-loan). Allēlōn and its variations are used one hundred times in the Newer Testament, which repeatedly insists on our inseparability from one another. The church’s conviction that we are members of one another expresses itself in the doctrine of universal priesthood. Instead of a class of priests who mediate God to the laity, the church believes that there is only one High Priest, Jesus (Hebrews 4:14–16; 1 Timothy 2:5). The sole mediation of Jesus places all followers on the same spiritual plane. But it does not lower their status; it universally elevates their status to that of priest. For this reason, Bible passages refer to the fledgling church as a “holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5), “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2 ), and “priests to God” (Revelation 1:6; Revelation 5:10).

In Trinitarian community, our neighbors are portals of God. In older religions, priests offered burnt sacrifices to God to garner goodwill for the people. In contrast, the followers of Jesus are universally empowered to offer sacrifices, but of a different sort: “Keep doing good works and sharing resources. These are the sacrifices that please God” (Hebrews 13:16).

During the Protestant Reformation, leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin institutionalized this priestly status by teaching and establishing the priesthood of all believers. While certain members of the faith may be educated for and ordained to professional ministry, this status does not elevate them over other believers; it only assigns them a specific role within the universal priesthood. Pastors minister through sermons and sacraments, while doctors have a ministry of healing, laborers have a ministry of building, educators have a ministry of teaching, carpenters have a ministry of making, etc. All ministries are equally legitimate, so their (only male, alas, in the time of the Reformation) practitioners had equal standing within the democratically governed church.

The priesthood of all believers does not mean that each believer is a priest unto themselves alone, with a direct, solo line to God. Unfortunately, this misinterpretation has achieved dominance in some denominations. Prayer and Bible study in isolation, unchecked by any Christian community, is a dangerous practice, encouraging individuals to confuse their personal spirituality with divine truth. All too often, this practice produces very harmful theology that overconfident enthusiasts propagate with prophetic zeal.

Instead, the priesthood of all believers implies that we are all mediators of God to one another. God is always fully present, absolutely attentive, and perfectly solicitous. This presence is what we finite beings receive from the infinite God and what we need most. We may not be present to each other—we may be distracted or disengaged—but God is always fully present to us.

In church, we try to make the divine presence real by being fully present to one another. Such presence poses a challenge in this era of technology, when every conversation can be interrupted and the screen always beckons, offering its anaesthesia. We are plagued by the absence of presence. We need to be tended to, and we need to tend, because tending manifests grace.

Divine community is for the sacred now. This life-giving conception of the church denies that it is a waiting room for heaven. The function of the church is this-worldly, not next-worldly. God loves us here and now and wants us to thrive here and now, not delay our thriving into some distant future. Certainly, the afterlife is a true consolation for the bereaved, but not at the cost of this life. Because Abba loves us in this moment, Jesus’s message and Sophia’s counsel are both urgent: “After John’s arrest, Jesus appeared in Galilee proclaiming the Good News of God: ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand. Change your hearts and minds, and believe this Good News!’” (Mark 1:14–15).

To take on God’s way of being is not possible in isolation. We are spiritually interdependent. Recognizing this truth, Buddhism commends the sangha, Hinduism commends the ashram, Islam commends the ummah, Judaism commends the minyan, and Christianity commends the church. The religions recognize that inertia dooms privatistic faith. Individualist salvation, consumerist spirituality, and personalized piety are all deficient because we cannot realize divinized life in isolation. In response, religions create spiritual communities within which lamas, sadhus, imams, prophets, and rabbis—and fellow congregants—jar us out of complacency, from separation to union, through love. In all these institutions, we manifest God’s mode of existence by forming a spiritual family (Romans 8:29). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 213-216)

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For further reading, please see:

Boff, Leonardo. Trinity and Society. Translated by Paul Burns. 1988. Reprint. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005.

LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.

Volf, Miroslav. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age (SACRA). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.