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Trinity and Church: Trinitarian Perspectives on the Identity of the Christian Community
Author(s) -
SAROT MARCEL
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international journal of systematic theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.149
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1468-2400
pISSN - 1463-1652
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2400.2009.00490.x
Subject(s) - prayer , body of christ , possession (linguistics) , identity (music) , christian identity , power (physics) , theology , sociology , eucharist , religious studies , christian church , christianity , philosophy , aesthetics , linguistics , physics , quantum mechanics
Starting from practical problems with praying and living a Christian life, the author argues that God's relationship with the Christian community has primacy over God's relationship with individual believers. When we conceive of the Christian community as being the body of Christ, we can uphold the high Christian ideals of prayer and living a Christian life without making them unattainable: these ideals are ideals for the community rather than for individual persons within the community. Next, the author argues that being the body of Christ is given to the Christian community not as a possession but as a task to fulfil through the power of the Holy Spirit. Finally, he shows how, in becoming the body of Christ through the Spirit, the Christian community is drawn up into the trinitarian community. He concludes that the identity of the Christian church cannot be fully understood apart from the Trinity.