MANY MEMBERS ALL WORKING TOGETHER (43 OF 56)
Scripture: Acts 18:18-28
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Many Members All Working Together (43 of 56)
Series: Acts 18:18-28
Wyman Richardson
Acts 18:18-28
Read Acts 18:18-28
Let us begin our consideration of this amazing passage of scripture by looking at a fairly dense but profound statement from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 1927 doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio. This is admittedly pretty heavy stuff and will require some slow and careful consideration, but I think Bonhoeffer is hitting on something here that is key to our understanding of what happened in the life of the early church and what should happen in the life of the church today.
Thus the essence of community is not 'commonality' - although formally every community has this. Rather, reciprocal will constitutes community. Communities that are really founded only on formal agreement, on commonality (lecture halls, etc.), are not communities of will, but should be considered under the sociological category of the mass, or public...'Unity' of will thus signifies an identity of content in what is intended and willed. Here a further distinction must be made. 'Unity' must exist absolutely in the willing of the community, that is, as formal unity in the sense of 'agreement' above. At first it will also exist as absolute unity in regard to content, namely the purpose that is apart from the pure will to community. But in the historical development of every community, differences of opinion arise about the realization of the aim. These often lead to substantive differences in the conception of the purpose itself, so that the unity of content can only be described as relative. Thus even the formally absolute unity of the empirical community of the church...is only relative unity as regards content...
Wills can will 'together', 'beside', and 'against' one another. Only the first leads to empirical social formation. The second is sociologically irrelevant...The third, when developed in completely pure form, does create real social vitality, but remains un ...
Series: Acts 18:18-28
Wyman Richardson
Acts 18:18-28
Read Acts 18:18-28
Let us begin our consideration of this amazing passage of scripture by looking at a fairly dense but profound statement from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's 1927 doctoral dissertation, Sanctorum Communio. This is admittedly pretty heavy stuff and will require some slow and careful consideration, but I think Bonhoeffer is hitting on something here that is key to our understanding of what happened in the life of the early church and what should happen in the life of the church today.
Thus the essence of community is not 'commonality' - although formally every community has this. Rather, reciprocal will constitutes community. Communities that are really founded only on formal agreement, on commonality (lecture halls, etc.), are not communities of will, but should be considered under the sociological category of the mass, or public...'Unity' of will thus signifies an identity of content in what is intended and willed. Here a further distinction must be made. 'Unity' must exist absolutely in the willing of the community, that is, as formal unity in the sense of 'agreement' above. At first it will also exist as absolute unity in regard to content, namely the purpose that is apart from the pure will to community. But in the historical development of every community, differences of opinion arise about the realization of the aim. These often lead to substantive differences in the conception of the purpose itself, so that the unity of content can only be described as relative. Thus even the formally absolute unity of the empirical community of the church...is only relative unity as regards content...
Wills can will 'together', 'beside', and 'against' one another. Only the first leads to empirical social formation. The second is sociologically irrelevant...The third, when developed in completely pure form, does create real social vitality, but remains un ...
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