Koinonia and Life Together in the New Testament In the Fall 2011 issue of the Concordia Journal, Erik Herrmann offered some observations regarding how terms like “mercy” and “service” might be heard—and, more importantly, shape our own behavior.1 This essay offers some exegetical observations on the third term in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s three-fold emphasis: “Life Together.” As the Bible study produced by Albert Collver notes, “Koinonia, fellowship, and life together are perhaps both the easiest and the hardest to describe in the Church.”2 Of course, neither “fellowship” nor “life together” are adequate translations of the Greek word κοινωνία, and the latter is really more an interpretive gloss than an English equivalent. But using the phrase “life together” helpfully emphasizes some New Testament themes that “fellowship,” as commonly used in American Christianity, gets wrong. First, κοινωνία involves all of “life,” not just the “fellowship hour” after worship or the activities that take place in the “fellowship hall.” “Life together” happens before, during, and after worship; on Monday through Saturday; in homes and workplaces; and even (in its limited way) on Facebook and the blogosphere. “Together” is not only an abstract concept, it happens in “life.”3 Second, the highlighting of “together” prevents us from viewing our life in Christ as an individual, personal “relationship.” You do not have your own, personal Jesus. Rather, together we share in something that is common: Jesus Christ and life in him. A third benefit of the use of “life together” is that it gives us the opportunity to think through old questions in new ways. For example, using “life together” and not “fellowship” as a gloss for κοινωνία helps us to recognize that the theological and ecclesial use of the word “fellowship” is informed by, yet distinct from, the individual occurrences of the Greek word κοινωνία in the NT. This allows us to hear the NT on its own terms and allow it to shape (perhaps even reshape) and invigorate our practice of “fellowship.” Fundamental to an analysis of κοινωνία in the NT is the recognition that it is an event word. For such words, “in the meanings they convey, a component of activity is, in fact, present, though that is not apparent to the ‘naked eye.’”4 In contrast to words like “tree,” “pamphlet,” or “σῶμα,” which are static nouns, every example of κοινωνία entails activity between and among actors. Take the word “handoff” as a parallel example in English. A “handoff” necessarily includes actors (a quarterback and a running back) and an action (handing the ball off). Were one to snap a photo of a handoff it would be an action photo of specific players, a ball, a field of play, fans, officials, etc. A handoff is never a static event. It is the same with κοινωνία. Every time it is used, it refers to an “event” that includes specific people who are doing specific activities with specific things.
Concordia Journal/Winter 2012
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