THE KINGDOM AND ARISTOTLE

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AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION

(In writing the first two paragraphs of this post, I’ve borrowed shamelessly from The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, by Richard Rohr and Mike Morrell, p.40) The Greek philosopher Aristotle once enumerated twelve possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a proposition; he called them “categories.” For our purposes here, I want to look at just two of them: “substance,” and “relationship.” “What defined substance was that it was independent of all else -- so a tree is a substance, whereas “father” is a relationship.” Aristotle ranked substance as the highest, precisely because it was “independent,” it could stand on its own.

Aristotle 384-322 BCE

So it was that Christians in the West as early as the third century began using Aristotle's ideas to show that God, whom Christians had already come to refer to as trinity, was a substance -- much more “substantial” than a vague, abstract “relationship” God! Thus the Christian God could stand up against any rival gods in the neighborhood.

But in the New Testament, Jesus is revealed to us by calling himself the Son of the Father, and yet one with the Father. This is clearly the language of “relationship.” The idea of relationship fits perfectly with the concept of God as Trinity: God is relationship, God is family; St. John says “God is love.” These descriptions clearly refer not to some independent “stand-alone” substance, but a relationship.

“Relationship” also describes nicely Jesus’ central metaphor of the “Kingdom of God,” which, as we know, is not a place, not a nation state with borders. The Kingdom is not of this world, not a substance. The Kingdom is a new way of relating with God and with one another.

WHERE IS THE KINGDOM?

In Luke 17:21, Jesus says “the Kingdom of God is en autou,” which can be translated as “within you” or “among you.” We westerners, who emphasize the individual so much, are comfortable with the idea that the Kingdom is “within” us, so that we can go our separate, independent self-contained ways. This is perfect “substance” language.

On the other hand, if the kingdom of God is “among” us,” this sounds like relationship: the Kingdom exists in the spaces between us. We make the Kingdom real by filling those spaces with love. By our actions we choose what characterizes the spaces, the relationships between us: love or hatred, humility or pride, concern or indifference, and so on.

THE NETWORK

On Thursday, All Souls’ Day, I was really aware of this “relationship” model of the Kingdom when praying for certain people who have died. I was aware of them as members of the Kingdom to whom I still have a relationship. Relationship does not decompose in the grave the way a substance such as a human body does.

I don’t say “I’m praying for my former parents,” or “I’m remembering my former brother.” No; the relationship is still there. And on All Souls’ Day we celebrate members of the Kingdom who have passed into a different dimension of the Kingdom, but are still in relation to us on earth through their bonds of love, the bonds of the Kingdom.

I think of the Kingdom as a network of relationships of love; when someone dies, they remain part of the network, just as they were before. That accounts, in a way, for the closeness I still feel with my deceased brother and parents.

And, while we are on earth, our task is to keep building up the Kingdom, filling the spaces between one another with Love.