By John Cole
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By John Cole
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SECOND CLUE The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit We will perhaps glimpse how the Holy Spirit energises those three relationships if we explore the meaning of St Paul’s word which we usually translate ‘fellowship’ and which trips off our tongue so habitually when we say the Grace: "The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the . . . (?) of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore." Is there a more suitable word than ‘fellowship’? What did St Paul mean?
St Paul’s word in Greek is koinonia. He uses it 13 times in his letters and it turns up five more times in the rest of the New Testament. Most English translators duck out of finding one word in English that can be used on every occasion. Often they re-phrase St Paul’s sentence so much that the word disappears altogether. In Acts 2:42 koinonia means the ‘common life’ that the first disciples lived together, where everything was shared. The same notion of ‘having things in common’ runs through 1 John where koinonia almost becomes the technical term for being ‘in communion’ - with other Christians (ch 1, vv 3 & 7), and with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ (ch 1, vv 3 & 6). it is a matter almost of ‘compatibility’ for we must live in the light ‘as he is in the light’ (v7). Perhaps the most startling use of the word in St Paul’s letters is when he is discussing the sharing of the bread and wine in response to Jesus’ instructions at the Last Supper - what we now know as the sacrament of Holy Communion. In 1 Corinthians 10:16 St Paul writes: "The cup of the blessing which we bless, is it not a ‘koinonia’ (‘having in common’) of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a koinonia of the Body of Christ?" St Paul then makes his point that, though we are many, we are only one ‘body’, the Body of Christ. In this context the word almost seems to mean ‘’Is it not an ‘expression of how we are identified with’ the blood and body of Christ?" The phrase ‘koinonia of the Holy Spirit’ only occurs twice, both times in phrases which hint at the Trinity. The first is familiar as the Grace at the end of St Paul’s second letter to the Christians in Corinth (ch 13, v13). The second occurs in Paul’s letter to the Philippians - in a piece of such passionate prose that it almost defies translation! The Jerusalem Bible in a footnote suggests a literal translation beginning like this: "If there is any exhortation in Christ, if there is any incentive in love . . . " (cf. ‘the love of God’ in the Grace). Paul goes straight on to invoke the third person of the Trinity in a similar vein: " . . . if there is any koinonia of the Spirit - any tenderness or sympathy - fill up my joy so that you think the same, hold the same love, ‘joint-souled’ (surely a word invented by St Paul as he wrote!) thinking the one thing, with nothing done out of strife, nothing out of conceit, but . . . etc" In both cases this koinonia is something which the Spirit provides, generating in the Philippians reference a common understanding, a compassion, a sense of community - nothing less, in fact, than the selflessness that was in Christ who emptied himself (Philippians 2:7). 2 Corinthians 9:13 is another purple passage where the significance of the use of the word koinonia is usually lost in translation. The people who receive the donations from the Corinthian Christians will, according to St Paul, be "giving glory to God for . . . (among other things) . . . the frankness/open-heartedness of koinonia shown towards them and towards everyone." This is more than a patronising generosity but a living sense of being identified with others. When he translated the Bible into Latin, St Jerome was able to find one word for most of the occasions where koinonia appears in the Greek (the exceptions being the references in 1 John and, strangely, Philippians 2). Jerome’s word is communicatio, virtually the English word ‘communication’.
Perhaps we have to accept that the single unified concept which is wrapped up in koinonia in the Greek or communicatio in the Latin has to be split off into three linked but separate ideas in English:
In all cases the ultimate aim in the relationship is ‘identification’, the making of a full and perfect connection. If this is a fruitful line of thinking, then it follows that the work of the Holy Spirit is precisely to make possible our relationships in the three ways pinpointed in the Nicene Creed and to unify them as part of the total life-giving work of God - which (as we need constantly to remind ourselves) God is always engaged in, with or without the co-operation of his church!
Take these principles into our understanding of the work of the church - and see what happens. A balanced picture emerges of what the church is about - along with some pretty clear hints of what happens when individual churches get the balance wrong! (See the sequence of OHP slides on pages 36-37) Those one-eyed churches may be a bit extreme, but they could still give us clues to help us see the bias in the life of our own local church.
Click here for a memorable quotation from the Roman Catholic statement 'Communio et progressio'
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