Ch 6 Re-image-ing the Church

You have stripped off the old from outer in with its divergent practices

The COVID-19 pandemic is teaching us vital lessons about human life, and Christians and churches should be at the forefront of this learning process. Now that the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has mutated to amplify the damage of the Delta variant, the condition of herd immunity will be even more elusive—news which many don’t want to hear. This makes the anti-vax movement, and those opposing health protocols, that much more a determinant for fragmenting our condition and keeping us from coming together to fight this pandemic. Moreover, even where there is a willingness to be vaccinated, the shortage of vaccines for the global community also factors into the equation for herd immunity. Less apparent than vaccine shortage, and likely more critical, is the global shortage of syringes and health care workers to administer the vaccine, with the inequality mostly affecting those in the developing world. How do we stop this pandemic unless our divergence and these shortages are resolved? Failure to resolve this shortcoming in the local, regional and global infrastructure renders the vaccine inadequate by itself to turn around the pandemic.

There are lessons here for the church, its infrastructure and practice in the gospel it both claims for its members in the more critical and prevailing human condition pandemic and proclaims for the world to fight the human condition endemic to the global diversity of human life.

The most profound lesson to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic is how this global condition has brought to the surface the human condition underlying humankind in all its diversity. And when Christians and churches look in the mirror of the coronavirus pandemic, they can see reflections of how Christian practice has mutated also in variants that reflect, reinforce, enable and sustain the human condition. Furthermore, in this mirror of its sociopolitical variants is reflected an image of the church variants in all their global divergence. Notably, the infrastructure of the global church mirrors the image of the human global infrastructure, with similar consequences for their respective pandemics. And the Christian counterparts composing the church today construct a systemic condition that evades the “herd immunity” necessary to redeem itself from the endemic human condition pervading the diversity of the global church.

If we (individually and collectively) learn the lessons from the pandemic, then we are not only accountable but responsible to re-image the church. To start, how could you describe the image of your own local church and its regional church? And on what basis do you think this image is determined?

The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a neutral evaluation of the existing infrastructure for government, agencies and organizations. So far, significant changes have not materialized to turn around the pandemic, though some upgrades have emerged. Churches and related organizations are also challenged to examine their infrastructure to understand whether it distinguishes the essential significance necessary to deal with both pandemics, the coronavirus and the human condition.

The infrastructure of the church was introduced by the embodied Word when he stated “on this rock [using a feminine noun] I will build my church” (Mt 16:18). The male Petro clarified the significance of the church’s foundation as determined only by Jesus Christ, who embodied “a living stone…a cornerstone chosen and precious” (1 Pet 2:4-6). In his ecclesiology of wholeness for the church, Paul made definitive the church’s infrastructure “with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (Eph 2:20). Therefore, the church’s diversity is reconciled together (2:13-14) as “members of the family household of God” (2:19) by the church’s infrastructure (cf. Col 1:19-20). As Paul fought against the fragmenting consequences of diversity promoted in the church, he corrected such attempts evolving in a divergent infrastructure: “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid” (1 Cor 3:11, cf. 1 Pet 2:7-8). The Word embodied the relational process that constitutes the church’s infrastructure (Eph 1:22-23), the implementation of which can only be enacted by the Word’s relational terms (e.g. Eph 4:25; Col 3:12-15). Thus, it is only the church’s infrastructure in the primacy of relationship together that integrally builds and grows the church as the relational whole-ly body of the Word, not the notion signifying a referential body of Christ.

The theology prevailing in most ecclesiologies centers on the metaphor for church as the body of Christ. This reference renders the church’s infrastructure without the essential significance embodied by the Word, and thus makes it only a reference point for the church rather than what distinguishes the church in its global diversity. Paul confronts this fragmenting diversity in the church in order for its ecclesiology and practice to be whole. The fragmentation was also evident in the distinction-making that evolved in the diversity of spiritual gifts, abilities and functions of those composing the church, which certainly were ranked in a comparative process. Therefore, to counter and negate any such ignorance (agnoeo, 1 Cor 12:1), misinformation, false perception or understanding, all of which diverged contrary to the Word, Paul establishes the body as the church’s essential structural infrastructure that by its organic nature is indispensable to integrate all the church’s parts together for its integral identity and function (1 Cor 12).

The body as the church’s infrastructure, however, cannot function by itself or else it becomes static to render the church’s infrastructure insignificant—as witnessed in diverse practices of body ecclesiology. This body is constituted essentially solely by the relational dynamic embodied in and by the Word, whose integral relational purpose and process are significant just to distinguish the new creation of the church family of God (as in Gal 5:6; 6:15). In other words, the organic body of the church is vivified only by and in the Word’s relational dynamic, so that the church’s structural infrastructure is always integrated with the systemic infrastructure enacted only in the relational terms of the Word’s relational work. Thus, the church’s infrastructure is complete just when its structural infrastructure is in symbiosis with the systemic infrastructure that makes functional the organic interrelations of all the church’s body parts.

The body of Christ is always static when not understood and enacted on the basis of who, what and how (i.e. the gravity of righteousness) embodied by the whole-ly Word. When Jesus declared “on this infrastructure I will build my church” (Mt 16:18), the full identity and function of his church is only distinguished when the focus is given to the process Jesus implied in his statement—which directly involves what he relationally embodied face to face in his life and practice, and which he made further evident in his post-ascension involvement with various churches (Rev 2-3). Jesus’ relational involvement and relational work went further and deeper than a gathering, regardless of a gathering’s doctrinal and moral purity, its extensive church activity and its esteemed reputation (as demonstrated by churches in Ephesus and Sardis, Rev 2:2-4; 3:1-2). In Jesus’ disclosure “I will build my church,” the term for build is oikodomeo. This term denotes building a house, derived from its root oikos meaning house, home, family, that is, a family living in a house, not merely a gathering under the same roof.

Paul later integrated these terms with their significant cognates for the church’s ontology and function, with oikos as the basis for the church as God’s household (1 Tim 3:15): oikeios, belonging specifically to God’s family (Eph 2:19); oikodome, building God’s family (Eph 2:21; 4:12); synoikodomeo, being built together as God’s family (syn and oikodomeo, Eph 2:22); oikonomos, led by persons who manage God’s family (1 Cor 4:1); and oikonomia, for which Paul was given the specific relational responsibility to administrate the relational outcome ‘already’ of God’s family (Eph 3:2; Col 1:25), which is in relational progression on an eschatological trajectory to its relational conclusion ‘not yet’ (Eph 1:10).

The relational function of these terms points to the definitive relational process of the new kinship family of God that Jesus constituted in the incarnation. That is to say, the specific relational connections Jesus made throughout the incarnation to build his family together formed the embryonic church from which the whole ontology and function of the church emerged. Jesus provided Paul, partly through the Jesus tradition and mostly by direct relationship together along with the Spirit, with the necessary relational context for the relational embodying of his church and the imperative relational process for the relational function of his church. This is the irreducible relational context and nonnegotiable relational process that the whole of Jesus vulnerably embodied progressively in the whole of God’s relational context of family by his whole relational process of family love. Thus, the church as God’s family was made definitive by Jesus even before the cross, and was fully constituted by his salvific relational work; and this relational outcome is what the Spirit, as his relational replacement, will bring to its relational conclusion—and Paul, not Peter, would engage the oikonomia to provide the ecclesiology necessary for the whole of God’s family.

Building and growing the church beyond a mere body to the relational significance of family cannot become an existential reality without the right infrastructure. For this relational purpose, Paul did not formulate the metaphor of the body in a theological vacuum or isolated in an ivory tower as an academician; rather he made definitive the church’s infrastructure necessary to integrate the diversity promoted in the church and to heal the fragmenting consequences of distinction-making (as in 1 Cor 1:11-13; 3:1-4, 21-22; 4:6). Thus, his whole ecclesiology is essential for this relational outcome.

When we think of the body of Christ, we usually think of various parts, hopefully but not necessarily that make up the complete body. Yet, in the physical body the parts are important but not primary, and how they are interrelated is the key to making the body complete. When Paul made definitive the body metaphor for the church (1 Cor12:12-31), the parts and their interrelatedness have to be understood in what’s primary in order for the body to be complete, that is, for the church to be whole. What’s primary for the church must be distinguished from and should not be confused with what’s good for the church—that is, as Eve saw “good” from the beginning.

In terms of our human body, it is evident that it has diversity of parts, each with a specific function, which hopefully yet not always serve for the well-being of the total body. This result is certainly a health issue of our body parts, their function and how well they integrate to serve the growth, development and maintenance of our physical body. What is also obvious in the body-care for most (if not all) of us is how we look at the diversity of our body parts differently, viewing their functions with different values and priorities, which then structures our body in stratified body parts whose attention and care become selective accordingly. The ongoing result of this skewed approach to the body is a fragmented body condition that struggles for well-being and is unable to be whole—in spite of good intentions, limited intervening measures, and other hopeful practices, which at best only create an illusion of well-being and try to simulate being whole. Does this sound familiar at all to how we perceive and address the body of Christ?

The fragmentation of the body (human and of Christ) emerges directly from reduced anthropology that composes persons by the parts of what they have and do, and on this fragmentary basis, determine the relationships such persons engage. When Paul unequivocally defined the body of Christ, he did not use a reduced theological anthropology. Nor did he use a reduced ontology and function of Christ to determine the body of Christ (Eph 1:23; 2:14,16; 4:12-13,16; Col 2:9-10; 3:15). The wholeness of Christ’s ontology and function was the only determinant (brabeuo, Col 3:15) for the body of Christ, and that required the theological anthropology of whole ontology and function for the persons and relationships composing the church body (again, local, regional and global). For Paul, this wholeness was irreducible for the embodied Christ and nonnegotiable for the body of Christ (e.g. by referential terms). How then did he define the diversity of parts and determine their function such that the body benefits to emerge whole, and continues to grow and develop in the wholeness in likeness of Christ’s wholeness?

Just as in the human body, the parts are important but not primary for Paul (Rom 12:4-5). Paul composed the church body with “members,” who can be seen as parts of the whole yet who must by their nature be perceived whole-ly only as persons. This perception has certainly been problematic for church membership—both by church leaders and church members in general. Parts are secondary to the primary priority of persons and it is their primacy by whom Paul composed each member of the body. This not only qualified who the parts are but also defines what the significance of the parts is and how they serve the well-being, growth and development of the whole body.

The initial focus that Paul gave to the diversity of parts involved the gifts given by the Spirit, which includes by the Son and the Father for the whole of God (1 Cor 12:4-11), that needs to be distinguished from our common notion of spiritual gifts. The latter occupies the primary way members narrowly see each other and thus prevails as the common shaping of how persons are defined and relationships are determined in the church. Like our view of the human body, the diversity of spiritual gifts are seen differently, with their functions having different values and priorities in the church (or even in the academy), which have stratified how persons are defined and relationships are determined. Paul countered this reduced theological anthropology and fragmentation of persons and relationships with the relational connection and involvement with the whole of God’s Spirit (“same Spirit, same Lord, same God”) to constitute the primacy of relationship and the relational connection necessary for persons to be distinguished beyond spiritual gifts and to belong to each other in relationship together (cf. Rom12:5).

Paul illuminated that it is the primacy of the Spirit’s integral relational presence and involvement that “is given the manifestation” (phanerosis, 1 Cor 12:7) in relational terms “to each member person” over their gifts in order to constitute the church body’s primacy in persons and relationships together—and not in, with and by the gifts given by the Spirit, as important and necessary as they are. And therefore, the only relational purpose for the Spirit’s presence and involvement is neither in the distribution of gifts nor in their needed empowerment—even though the Spirit is integral to both without our self-determination (vv.8-11)—but for the relational connection necessary to have the integrating relational outcome “for bringing together [symphero] each person in the relationships necessary for wholeness of the church body” (v.7). It is inadequate, even contrary, to render symphero as “the common good” (NRSV, NIV, ESV) for two reasons: (1) it reduces the ontology and function of the Spirit’s presence and involvement, which shifts the focus to members’ gifts over their persons, and (2) it assumes both that such gifts can have the same (or better) results as persons can, and thus that what’s good for the church can emerge from a reduced theological anthropology composing ‘good without wholeness’.

The notion of the common good for the church was never what Paul illuminated for the primacy of the Spirit’s presence and involvement with the church body and the persons and relationships composing its primacy (see also Eph 2:22). What unfolds in this relational process is reciprocal relationship together, the nature of which requires (demands as the relational imperative) this integral involvement: (1) the primary involvement of the whole person, neither fragmented by nor preoccupied with gifts, and (2) the primacy of involvement given to the whole-ly God’s Spirit in order to transform the church’s persons and relationships to wholeness in likeness of the whole-ly God. For Paul, the primacy of persons and relationships composing the church in wholeness emerges only from the primacy of the persons and relationship in the whole of God (2 Cor 3:16-17; Rom 8:6,11,14-16), and unfolds only in this primacy in likeness of this whole-ly God, the Trinity (2 Cor 3:18; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10-11). This is not to say that Paul was a trinitarian but that, ever since the Damascus road, he experienced the reality and truth of the whole-ly God, which made his monotheism complete (pleroma, Col 1:19) and the body of Christ complete in likeness as the pleroma of Christ (Eph 1:23; 4:12-13).^{^[1]}

The primacy of the church body’s persons and relationships was fully defined in Paul’s metaphor when he transitions from the diversity of gifts to the diversity of persons (1 Cor 12:12-27). This is a crucial transition for church theology and practice in order to be distinguished in what is primary to God, which should not be confused with our common views of what’s good for the church.

The primary will not and cannot be distinguished in the referentialization of the Word and by a reduced theological anthropology, because, as Paul made definitive, “the body is not composed of one member but of many”; and this counters such a narrowed-down lens that would focus on the secondary parts of members. Whether unintentionally or not, the consequence for members is that their person is subtly transposed to a secondary position and a fragmentary condition. This is not the ontology and function of members that is primary to God and that Paul makes primary in likeness for God’s church family.

Therefore, the church’s structural and systemic infrastructures are not optional or negotiable for the diversity of the global church. And it is critical for churches to examine the basis for their existing infrastructure, so that what they build is not static and what they grow is not fragmentary. This necessitates scrutinizing global theology and practice at their roots.

When the examination of global theology centers on its ecclesiology, two critical issues need to be scrutinized: (1) the inclusivity of the global church’s theological forest, and (2) the depths of that theological forest and its ecclesiological practice in global church diversity.

The perception of the diverse parts of the global church body must be examined for bias to determine how inclusively the ecclesiology forest is composed. This ecclesiology forest must be determined by insiders, whose grassroots must not be defined by outsiders—the historical perception and practice the global North has imposed on the global South to truncate the ecclesiology forest. In Vinoth Ramachandra’s theological reflections about postcolonial criticism, he points to the grassroots witness that is instrumental in the central shift of Christianity to the global South, which is not apparent both to postcolonial critics and to those in the Western institutions interested in this shift.^{^[2]}Yet, this grassroots witness does not answer the question of what those churches in the global South are filled with. Perhaps less apparent is what underlies the grassroots witness that integrally composes the witness necessary for the global church to have relational significance for the globalizing world.

The shape of the global church, as it exists today, has been narrowed down in spite of its central shift to the global South. Many of the defining experiences of Christianity in the majority world have been colonial (dominance by the West). As the global church emerges from colonialism, however, it is insufficient to have a postcolonial worldview, interpretive framework and lens without deeply understanding the nature of sin underlying colonialism and the condition of the Western church. If the global church is to enter into truly postcolonial theology and practice that are redeemed, it needs to go beyond the limits and constraints of our narrowed-down condition.^{^[3]}

Peter could not reduce the whole relational terms composing the Way (integrated with the Truth and the Life) of God’s relational response for the whole gospel, nor could he renegotiate the whole relational terms of the Way for his reciprocal relational response to the good news of the primacy of all persons and relationships together belonging to the family of the whole-ly Word. Yet, Peter struggled with his choice of the Way until he made his ontology and function vulnerable from inner out to the challenge of the whole gospel in order to be fulfilled in wholeness. The global church today struggles with its choice of the Way, still often claiming an incomplete gospel that allows the shared ontology and function among the diversity of its persons and relationships to conjointly (1) remain incompatible to the experiential truth of the whole gospel’s challenge, and (2) sustain a witness incongruent with the relational reality of the whole gospel’s fulfillment in the wholeness of persons and relationships.

Certainly, like Peter, the global church is influenced in various alternative ways of practice by diverse traditions and sociocultural contexts. The pivotal issue again is not the reality of existing diversity but most significantly the reality of existing reduced ontology and function composing diversity; and its resolution goes beyond the common notion of being counter-cultural or of multiculturalism. The subtle spectrum of reduced ontology and function prevails in human contextualization and thus pervades the plurality of traditions and sociocultural contexts. Contextualization of the gospel easily sustains this reduced ontology and function unless we can distinguish the Life’s constituting ontology and function of the whole gospel from this reduction. And we cannot distinguish the experiential truth of this whole ontology and function until our persons and relationships are distinguished by the relational reality of our ontology and function in wholeness.

From the beginning, human ontology and function have been shaped by self-determination. Even with a gospel of salvation by grace (faith not works), many of the ways of the church today continue to be shaped by self-determination—a subtle result of a reduced theological anthropology defining the person by what ones does. Compounding this process is the modern development of convenience that promotes narrowing down our ontology and function. The reality of this convenience in the church has this consequence: It increasingly constructs a gospel tailored to the convenience of persons and relationships at the grassroots and, accordingly, has shaped more and more ways of the church—all of which unavoidably reinforce and sustain reduced ontology and function in the church and its persons and relationships, whereby the wholeness of the gospel is fragmented and its relational significance is scattered.

What also fragments the gospel of wholeness and scatters its relational significance are the homogenous ways of the global church. This includes the homogeneous composition of churches according to race, ethnicity, tribe, culture, class or caste, and age, even gender—or, relatedly, having a perceptual-interpretive framework and lens based on nationalism, the use of which enforces conformity to its template. Language may require a homogeneous composition as an initial practical necessity, for example, for first generation immigrants, but this composition should not remain for the sake of convenience, particularly for succeeding generations. Discrimination, of course, forced homogeneous church gatherings out of necessity, for example, as experienced by African Americans during slavery and for years following, and also experienced by blacks in South Africa. Yet, even in such grass-root contexts, to remain homogeneous is to continue in their fragmentation of the shared ontology and function of all persons, peoples, tribes and nations, in addition to sustaining persons and relationships in their likeness of reduced ontology and function.

This consequence emerges from whatever the homogeneous composition is based on. The reality facing these contexts in their homogeneous ways is critical yet subtle: on the one hand, it becomes (or is designed to be) a convenient context too comfortable to integrate, but, on the other hand, it prevents their persons and relationships to be fulfilled in wholeness and actually scatters them without relational significance rather than gathers them in the relational significance of the whole gospel. With such a grassroots ecclesiology, a homogeneous church does not witness to the relational significance of the whole gospel and cannot witness in its persons and relationships the fulfillment of the gospel of wholeness. Therefore, those in the Lausanne Movement, among others (particularly in the academy), need whole understanding (synesis from syniemi) to address the reality that the global church in its homogeneous ways is not and cannot be “bearing witness to the whole truth of Christ in a pluralistic, globalized world.”[4]

The whole-ly Way continues to challenge the diverse yet fragmentary ways of the global church, the grassroots of which are engaged in reduced ontology and function unknowingly or not. Again, the challenge should not be considered as emerging from the notion of counter-cultural or multiculturalism. Rather, when we examine the culture of church practice today, what is the ontological and functional basis for that practice? When we examine church ministry, what is the ontology and function of persons and relationships that you see the most? When you look at the church’s witness, what is the significance of the ontology and function that is highlighted and how it is presented? When we focus on the gospel presented by our church, how compatible is it to the experiential truth of the whole gospel’s challenge and how congruent is it with the relational reality of the whole gospel’s fulfillment in the wholeness of persons and relationships? When we honestly ask ourselves what we personally get out of church, how fulfilling is it for our persons and relationships and their primacy? Of course, answering these questions assumes we are not biased by the contextualized limits and commonized constraints of reduced ontology and function. In this sense, a hermeneutic of suspicion is a helpful practice to ongoingly exercise in family love in order to examine and scrutinize more deeply.

Therefore, the global church must be rooted deeper than grassroots in order for its diversity to belong equally in its ecclesiology forest. This requires a global church infrastructure that can integrate the diverse grassroot parts of the church, as well as correct and change any divergence in those grassroot parts only on the basis of the whole-ly Word—not by grassroot or outsiders’ biases. The global church must engage directly in this essential process, so that the synergy essential for constituting the global church goes beyond its pervasive limits and constraints—the limits and constraints located structurally and found systemically in the grassroots. Otherwise, mere inclusiveness in the global church doesn’t integrate diverse identity and function into the integral forest that constitutes the global church’s diverse parts in relationship together as the family embodied by the Word.

The church as the family of the Word, not as just the body of Christ, is not an assumption that the global South should automatically make for what fills its churches. For example, African churches have shifted from a Western lens to a lens from African culture, and thus have learned to see church members as belonging to family.^{^[5]} Yet, the question remains if their persons and relationships are distinguished by their primacy in the family of the Word, or do they just have the distinction of their culture? In Asia, the emphasis of relationships is rooted in the family and at home, which then is extended or transferred to the church. Thus, Simon Chan states the following about grassroots Asian ecclesiology:

If previously an individual’s self-identity was defined by his or her network of family relationships, as a Christian he or she is now defined primarily by relation to the ecclesial community. If previously self-understanding took place primarily in the home, as a Christian self-understanding takes place primarily in the church as the communion of saints. Christianity, by introducing a new eschatological community that claims one’s ultimate (though not exclusive) allegiance, relativizes all other social relationships, including marriage and home.^{^[6]}

Yet, aside from a grassroots Asian theology, if church practice of persons and relationships is not distinguished by the theological anthropology of whole ontology and function, then it merely reflects, reinforces and sustains the limits and constraints of Asian cultures—cultures in which persons and relationships have been shaped by the contextualization and commonization from reductionism. Whether in Asia or Africa, therefore, the main issue emerges once again about what fills churches; and the global church must not assume a best-case scenario just because of a primary focus given to family and relationships.

Thus, the depths of the existing ecclesiology forest must be scrutinized in order to go beyond the grassroots of insiders and any other bias of outsiders. Without scrutiny of the global church’s infrastructure, any divergence in its diversity will not be corrected and changed but effectively “whitewashed” (cf. Eze 13:10; 22:28) to reinforce, enable and sustain the fragmentation intrinsic to the distinction-making in the identity and function of those merely associated with the body of Christ.

In Paul’s ecclesiology based on the vine-root (as in Jn 15:5), the church, that is, the whole (pleroma) of Christ, is God’s relational context of convergence for the theological dynamics in Paul’s ecclesiology forest (Eph 1:22-23), and is God’s relational context and process of relationally extending these theological-functional dynamics (Eph 2:22; 4:12-13). Pleroma (fullness, completion) is the wholeness that reflects the development not only in Paul’s thought and theology (e.g. Col 1:19) but also in the whole of Paul’s person (e.g. Col 2:10; 3:15; Eph 3:19; cf. Phil 2:1-2; 3:12, 15-16). In the academy, the experiential truth of Paul’s development is questioned or obscured by disputes over the authorship of some of these letters, notably Ephesians.

In Ephesians, Paul makes definitive the ecclesiology that by the nature of its roots emerged from antecedents prior to Paul’s letters and even predating his studies in Judaism. These antecedents were necessarily integrated into his ecclesiology. The first of these antecedents was rooted in OT Israel as the gathering of God’s people. The Septuagint (Gk translation of the OT familiar to Paul, a Roman-citizen Jew) uses ekklesia for Israel as the covenant community. This embeds the NT ekklesia (“church,” e.g., Eph 1:22; Col 1:18) in the context of God’s ongoing relational action with his chosen people and their covenant relationship together (Ex 19:5; Dt 7:6-8; Eze 11:19-20). Beyond being a mere historical root and religious heritage, this antecedent is important for understanding the whole of God’s thematic relational involvement and the theological dynamics in Paul’s ecclesiology forest enacted only for whole relationship together as God’s family (Eph 1:4-5, 14).

The term ekklesia itself, though used by Paul in his letters, appears to have only limited descriptive value for what the church is and does. As far as function is concerned, ekklesia is a static term that is neither sufficiently significant nor necessarily useful to define the church (notably the local church). A more dynamic understanding is needed for the church’s ontology and function than merely a gathering (even one called out, ekkletoi), which points to a second antecedent integrated into Paul’s ecclesiology.

Paul’s ecclesiology is rooted in what germinated with the whole of Jesus’ person and relational involvement, who relationally embodied the wholeness of God in pleroma Christology for pleroma soteriology. This pleroma is the integrally whole theological-functional dynamic that was first Paul’s experiential truth and then was the key antecedent into which Paul’s ecclesiology is integrated for the church to be the pleroma of Christ. Any ecclesiology not rooted in the Vine and integrated in pleroma Christology is insufficient to make functional the relational outcome of pleroma soteriology (what Christ also saves to), and fundamentally lacks wholeness. Such an ecclesiology is shaped by human terms rooted in human contextualization, which at best is only a gathering—an ontological simulation and epistemological illusion of the ekklesia Jesus builds. While a mere gathering may have some functional significance for those gathered, it does not have relational significance to the wholeness of God and to the inherent human need of those gathered (cf. Jn 14:9; Mt 15:8-9).

In contrast with grassroots ecclesiology, Paul’s ecclesiology is rooted in the Word’s definitive infrastructure: “I am the vine, you are the diverse branches” (Jn 15:5), whose identity and function have no significance “unless it abides relationally in the vine” (v.4) “because apart from me your diversity can do nothing of significance.” It is only on this integral relational basis that Paul composed vine-root ecclesiology for the ecclesiology forest of the global church’s branches. In this ecclesiology forest, vine-root ecclesiology is irreplaceable for church branches to be whole and not fragmented, belonging integrally to God’s relational whole family only on God’s relational terms, which is relationally embodied and whole-ly emerges as in Ephesians. Without his vine-root ecclesiology for the wholeness of the global church with all its branches rooted together, church diversity evolves from the diverse grassroots of the human condition.

Paul’s summary of his overall theological forest (Eph 1:3-14; cf. Col 1:15-22) illuminates his synesis of God’s thematic relational action in response to the human condition, which, as noted earlier, neuroscience defines also as the inherent human relational need and problem. Paul’s synesis is the whole understanding that becomes the integrating process, framework and theme for the various theological trees (the complex dynamics) in his previous letters (particularly in Romans) which makes definitive their theological forest. It is within Paul’s theological forest that the ecclesiology necessary to be whole, God’s relational whole only on God’s terms, is relationally embodied and whole-ly emerges in Ephesians. Without his ecclesiology in wholeness, Paul’s oikonomia (relational responsibility) to pleroo (complete) the word of God would not have been fulfilled (Col 1:25).

The dynamic of God’s relational communication in what is written and the relational consequence of being apart from it are the issues which Paul raises to challenge the ontology and function of his readers. For Paul, however, the most significant consequence of reducing what is written and going beyond it is the emergence of a renegotiated ecclesiology, notably as grassroots ecclesiology. Epistemic-relational orphans (those not relationally connected and belonging) renegotiate the ontology and function of the church as God’s family in the absence of the experiential truth of God’s relational communication and involvement (e.g. 1 Cor 11:17-21, 27-30), renegotiating ecclesiology in contrast and conflict with pleroma ecclesiology (10:17; 12:13).

It is also insufficient for Paul’s readers merely to acknowledge what is written as God’s communicative act. Paul assumes that this affirmation involves the reciprocal relational response necessary for the Word’s experiential truth to be the relational outcome. Without the experiential truth of God’s relational communication, readers are still left functionally in the condition of orphans, epistemic and/or relational orphans. The only recourse is to turn to the source of those words for the experiential truth of its Subject. This critical process of experiential truth—not to exclude propositional truth but going deeper than that—necessary to change from orphans to family starts with the reader’s perceptual-interpretive lens (phroneo) and what is perceived of what is written, and thus contained in the words of God. The hermeneutic by which the reader engages the word/text is determinative of what emerges from this epistemic process. Just as Jesus critically distinguished the hermeneutic of “a child” from the hermeneutic of “the wise and learned” (Lk 10:21), the epistemic results are in contrast, if not in conflict.

A limited epistemic process of mere human effort from a quantitative lens dependent on outer-in rational interpretation alone invariably separates the object of the text from its relational context and process. This reduces the ontology of the object-God by fragmenting the whole Object into its components (e.g. laws, promises, teachings, example, etc.) without whole knowledge and understanding of the object-God as communicator-Subject disclosing the whole-ly God for relationship together. The epistemic result is without the experiential truth of what is written in relational terms about the whole of who, what and how God is. This is the unequivocal relational consequence that is unavoidable, because engaging the Object of the text also as Subject is a function only of relationship.

In contrast, the hermeneutic of “a child” vulnerably engages in a relational epistemic process, not to be confused with subjectivism or fideism. This hermeneutic certainly does not eliminate reason but puts rational interpretation into congruence with its whole relational context and into compatibility with its whole relational process; thus it does not disembody the words from the author revealing object-God communicated from subject-God in relationship. For Paul, experiential truth must by its nature involve the relational epistemic process in which truth is beyond the reader as “subject” and is definitively found in the objective God of the text (notably confirmed in quantitative history). The reader cannot define and determine the object of the text without reducing the ontology and function of God as the subject; and involvement in the relational epistemic process with the Spirit is the conclusive means to disclaim any reification of the object by the reader. Yet, this does not complete the relational epistemic process for experiential truth.

It is vital not only to distinguish object-God from subject-reader but equally important to distinguish the subject-God who relationally communicates with subject-reader for relational involvement together in Subject-to-subject, face-to-face relationship. The reader as person cannot have relational connection with an object but only with the Subject, whose reciprocal involvement can be experienced just in relationship together. The relational epistemic process is complete with this reciprocal relational connection with the objective subject-God through the Spirit, and the definitive relational outcome is the experiential truth of the whole-ly God’s ontology and function in relationship together as family. It is this experiential truth of the pleroma of God’s wholeness embodied for face-to-face relationship together that is the integral basis, by the Spirit, to further embody the ontology and function of the pleroma of Christ and, with the Spirit, to ongoingly constitute the whole ontology and function of the church. Nothing less and no substitutes than wholeness is the functional basis for Paul’s pleroma vine-root ecclesiology. Anything less and any substitutes, even in correct exegesis as propositional truth or rightly integrated for doctrinal truth, are a renegotiated ecclesiology that engages a reverse dynamic of reduced ontology and function for a gathering of epistemic and/or relational orphans. This is the core issue that has to be scrutinized in grassroots ecclesiology.

Paul previously identified the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Col 1:24), yet his later dialogue on the church helps to distinguish this as nothing other than a metaphor for an organic structure and system. In Ephesians, however, Paul’s whole understanding (e.g. 3:4) provides the theological-functional clarity to distinguish the body of Christ beyond a metaphor of the church and makes functional the embodying of the church’s ontology as the pleroma of Christ (1:23; 4:12-13; cf. his prayer, 3:16-19). Christ’s wholeness is the peace (cf. tamiym) that Paul’s epistemological clarification and hermeneutic correction have illuminated to the churches throughout his letters (e.g. 1 Cor 7:15b; 14:33; Gal 6:16; Rom 14:19; Col 3:15). In contrast to a classical Greek emphasis on peace, this is not about the mere absence of conflict for Paul, despite its value in the situations he was addressing in the churches. The whole-ly Word’s peace is the presence of wholeness, even in situations of conflict, that only Jesus gives (Jn 14:27). Moreover, this is the wholeness those “in me” will have, Jesus declared (Jn 16:33); that is, the relational outcome “in Christ” Paul illuminated by the koinonia with Christ’s body and blood (1 Cor 10:16-17) and baptism in Christ’s death and resurrection through the Spirit (Rom 6:4; 8:11; 1 Cor 12:13)—the wholeness which Paul theologically and functionally clarifies in Ephesians (2:14-17; 4:3-6).

In full congruence, then, the whole ontology and function of the pleroma of God that Jesus embodied in death and the Spirit raised whole in the resurrection is also participated in by those in Christ through the Spirit. The relational outcome of this participation together also embodies them in the whole ontology and function as the pleroma of Christ, in the image and likeness of the whole-ly God (Eph 4:24; cf. 2 Cor 3:18; Rom 8:29). From the convergence of these complex theological dynamics in Paul’s vine-root ecclesiology forest emerges this reciprocating relational dynamic of embodying by the Spirit, in which the embodied pleroma of God is relationally extended in likeness not by a metaphor but by the definitive embodying of the pleroma of Christ, that is, the embodied wholeness of the ontology and function of the church (1:9-10, 22-23).

What theological-functional clarity does Paul make definitive for the whole ontology and function of the church? First of all, that the body of Christ clearly is not a metaphor, a doctrine, a truth-claim or a confession of faith. This is only the embodying of the wholeness of the church’s ontology and function in likeness of the embodied whole ontology and function in the face of the whole person of Jesus the Christ. Thus, embodying is not theoretical, an ideal, a virtual process or an intention. The embodied church of Christ is the experiential truth of the relational outcome ‘already’ and the ongoing functional reality in relational progression to ‘not yet’, both in reciprocal relationship with the Spirit. Therefore, the church is fully accountable to be whole in its ontology and function now, regardless of the diversity of its eschatology.

By its nature in the present, neither epistemic orphans without whole knowledge and understanding of who they are and whose they are, nor relational orphans with distance, detachment or separation in their relationships together can account for the embodying of the pleroma of Christ. For Paul, anything less and any substitutes of whole ontology and function cannot embody whole ecclesiology, but this reverse dynamic only composes a renegotiated ecclesiology of reduced ontology and function in all its grassroots variations—no matter how much its infrastructure is reengineered (analogous to genetic engineering). Embodying in likeness of the embodied wholeness of God is the initial function that Paul makes definitive for the church. This function is not optional for a church’s life and practice, nor is it reducible or negotiable; any function in a reverse dynamic always renders the church fragmentary. Embodying in Paul’s vine-root ecclesiology is the essential key for the emergence of the church in wholeness. Thus, for the diversity of church trees to be integrated in the ecclesiology forest, Paul’s vine-root ecclesiology keeps unfolding.

So, what emerges in this church embodying that distinguishes it clearly from all other church life and practice? Embodying should not be confused with simply an incarnational notion. Just as the incarnation of the wholeness of God is constituted in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes, so is embodying; thus, this is always in contrast and conflict with the reverse dynamic of anything less and any substitutes. That is, embodying is conjointly whole ontology irreducible to human shaping and construction, as well as whole function nonnegotiable to human terms from human contextualization, including of culture and other contextual influences. In the whole understanding of Paul, the embodying of the pleroma of Christ, by its very nature, is defined and determined by only the integrated transformation both of ‘who the church is’ to its ontology in the qualitative image of the whole-ly God, and of ‘whose the church is’ to its function in the relational likeness of the whole-ly Trinity. This integrated transformed identity of ‘who and whose the church is’ is the new creation of God’s family, which emerges only by the reciprocal relational presence, involvement and work of the Spirit. Embodying of the church, therefore, is only the new creation; otherwise, its ontology and function cannot be in likeness to the embodied wholeness of God, as Paul clearly distinguished (Eph 4:23-24; cf. Rom 8:29). Such ontology and function can be rendered at best as just an ontological simulation and/or a functional illusion by relational orphans, since their relational condition of not truly belonging cannot signify anything deeper. Rather relational orphans in the church are limited and constrained in the existential reality that neither can constitute nor do they signify the whole ontology and function of the church in vine-root ecclesiology.

The integrated transformation to the new creation that is necessary to embody the pleroma of Christ involves both individual persons and relationships. In Paul’s ecclesiology forest, the theological dynamics of this transformation process are made functional by the Spirit, and thus the transformation of persons and relationships is inseparable from the reciprocal relational involvement of the Spirit. For Paul, the Spirit is simply indispensable for the embodying of the church to emerge in whole ontology and function.

Paul reviews first the transformation of persons to whole ontology and function (Eph 2:1-10). The sin of reductionism prevailed in reduced human ontology and function, to which God’s thematic relational action of grace responded in agape involvement for the redemptive change necessary from reduced to whole ontology and function. The process from reductionism to wholeness involves the theological-functional dynamic of equalization, integration and reconciliation, or what converges integrally in redemptive reconciliation.

The redemptive change from old to new involves freeing human persons from being defined and determined by reductionism. The sin of reductionism reduces human ontology and function to be defined and determined from the outer in, for example, by what persons do and/or have. This fragments human persons and enslaves human integrity, worth and identity to these reductionist criteria, to which are ascribed human distinctions not only fragmenting but stratifying human persons as ‘better or less’. Enslavement to reductionism is the prevailing human condition redeemed by God, and persons entrenched in better-or-less distinctions are equalized before God—the redemptive process that frees them from fragmentation to be integrated and made whole in ontology and function. Transformed persons are only equalized persons who have been freed from reductionism by nothing less than this redemptive dynamic, or else they have not been freed in existential reality. Yet, having established that, transformed persons are not just free persons who have been equalized before God but who also have been equalized as persons with each other. This is crucial for Christians and churches today fighting for their freedom, regardless of their partisan bias and polarizing effects.

Thus, the nature of relationships together embodying the church necessarily also undergoes redemptive change. Transformed persons have not only been saved from reductionism but they are also irreducibly and nonegotiably saved to wholeness in relationship together as family. In other words, being equalized from better-or-less distinctions integrally and inseparably integrates persons (not merely parts of the church body) to whole ontology and function and then reconciles those transformed persons into equalized relationships in order to transform their relationships together beyond a gathering to family—just as Paul previously qualified for redeemed persons (Gal 5:1,13; 6:15-16; cf. 1 Cor 8:1).

The embodying of the pleroma of Christ involves this transformation to the new creation in likeness of God (as in 2 Cor 3:18), which necessitates transformed persons relationally involved in transformed relationships together for the church’s whole ontology and function (outlined in Eph 2:15-22). The whole function distinguishing this new creation, which Paul identified as the outcome of persons being equalized, is not merely the work of individual persons but also necessitates the collective function of persons together in relationship (Eph 2:10). This is the function that Paul qualifies as ontology and function in likeness of the whole-ly God (4:24). Paul continues to illuminate the collective function of the church in order to be whole and distinguished from the common of human contextualization (2:11-22).

Transformed persons are equalized persons who are relationally involved in transformed relationships, which clearly necessitate equalized relationships (2:11-13). Paul makes equalized relationships together in the church the relational imperative for the whole function of the church to be compatible and congruent with the wholeness that the person of Jesus the Christ himself embodied only for the embodying of the church to be whole (pleroma) in equalized relationships together (2:14-17). In the transformation process to the new creation, the relational purpose of its theological dynamic of redemption and integration is reconciliation. Without equalized relationships in the church, relationships together are not transformed to whole relationships together, thus they still labor in the fragmentation of persons and relationships defined by stratifying better-or-less distinctions (2:15-16)—distinctions which totally nullify God’s relational response of grace in Paul’s ecclesiology (2:8-9). God’s grace demands being freed from human distinctions (“the veil” in 2 Cor 3:16-18) to be in relationship with God as well as the elimination of the influence from distinctions to be in whole relationship with each other.

Without the transformed relationships of equalized relationships, what the church is saved from has lost its functional significance for what it is saved to; in addition, the gospel that Paul made definitive has lost the relational significance of what the church is saved to (3:6). This is the gospel of wholeness/peace (6:15) basic to what Jesus embodied and constitutes for the embodying of the whole church (3:6). Therefore, equalized relationships together are neither optional for church function nor negotiable for its embodying. The only alternative is variations of reductionism, the diversity of which fragments church ontology and function by its counter-relational work, notably and inevitably promoting better-or-less distinctions, even under the guise of spiritual gifts and leadership roles (as Paul will clarify, 4:11-16).

Just as embodying the whole ontology and function of the pleroma of Christ should not be confused with a conventional notion of incarnational, the transformation of the church’s ontology and function should not be confused with an increasingly common usage of the notion “transformational.” Paul continues to illuminate the transformed relationships embodying the church’s whole ontology and function, and, as he does, transformed relationships are taken deeper than equalized relationships (2:18-22). Though equalized relationships are necessary to constitute the integrated transformed relationship for the church, they are not sufficient by themselves to complete the transformed relationships involved in the whole relationships together of God’s new creation family.

Transformed relationships are relationships both with God and with each other together as family. While transformed persons are equalized persons before God, they are not in equalized relationship with the whole-ly God. Nevertheless they have a unique relationship with God to participate in God’s life. This unique involvement more deeply signifies the transformed relationships both necessary and sufficient together with God and with each other to be whole as God’s new creation family and the pleroma of Christ. Paul initially defines this unique relational involvement as having “access in one Spirit to the Father” (2:18). The term for access (prosagoge) was used for an audience granted to someone lesser by high officials and monarchs; it comes from prosago, to bring near. This involved not merely an open door but the opportunity to interact with someone greater. Access for Paul goes deeper than this notion. He defines further the nature of this relational involvement with the Father as access “to God in boldness and confidence” (3:12). “Boldness” (parresia) involves to speak all that one thinks, feels, that is, with “confidence” (pepoithesis, trust). This trust to vulnerably share one’s person openly with the Father points clearly to an intimate involvement, not merely having access to the Father. This vulnerability is the intimate connection that Paul previously defined for those who have been equalized to be relationally involved with Abba as his very own daughters and sons, and the connection which makes functional their relational belonging and ontological identity (Gal 4:4-7; Rom 8:15). Access to the Father, therefore, involves this intimate relationship together in which the whole-ly God is relationally involved by family love in being family together (2:4,22); and this intimate reciprocal involvement is reinforced by Paul’s prayer for specifically knowing God in their hearts (1:17-18; 3:16-19).

Therefore, just as important as equalized relationships for church ontology and function is this vulnerable involvement in intimate relationships together with each other. Together is not a static condition but the dynamic function of relationship. The transformation of equalized relationships provides the equal opportunity without the distance or separation of stratified relations for whole relationship together to develop, but intimate relationship is the function that vulnerably opens persons to each other from inner out for their hearts to fully come together reconciled as the new creation in likeness of the whole-ly God (4:24-25,32; 5:1-2, 18a-21). This reconciling relational function is the intimacy of hearts open to each other and coming together, as witnessed in the intimacy of the Trinity’s relationships together. Thus, only intimate relationships functionally reconcile persons who have had the distance and separation in relationships removed by equalization. Moreover, intimate relationships go deeper than just occupying time, space and activities together, even as equal persons, and take involvement to the depth of agape relational involvement in likeness of the wholeness of God (3:19; 5:1-2; cf. Col 3:14). Agape is not about what to do in relation to others but how to be relationally involved with others; and agape relational involvement goes beyond sacrifice for deeper intimate relationships together—just as Jesus vulnerably disclosed in relationship together with the Father and vulnerably embodied in relationship together with us (Jn 15:9; 17:23,26).

The experiential truth of the ontological identity of God’s new creation family depends on the function of these intimate relationships together. There is no alternative or substitute for intimate relationships that can bring persons into whole relationship together to embody God’s family. For Paul, being together is inseparable from relationship and is irreducible from the function of these relationships. Relationally belonging to each other in one body emerges only from the transformation to intimate relationships together. Relational belonging should not be confused with “belonging” to a church-group, nor should ontological identity be mistaken for church-organizational identity. Despite any cohesion of “belonging” and strength of identity in the latter, they are just simulations or illusions of the relational bond constituted only by transformed intimate relationships together (cf. 4:3).

Paul integrates the sufficiency of these intimate relationships together with the necessary equalized relationships in a dynamic interaction to complete the integrated transformed relationships together for the embodying of the whole ontology and function of the church as the intimate equalizer. These integral transformed relationships in wholeness constitute the embodying of “a holy temple…a dwelling place” for the whole-ly God’s intimate relational involvement (2:19-22; cf. Jn 14:23). In Paul’s vine-root ecclesiology, the whole ontology and function of the church can be constituted just by transformed persons agape-relationally involved in transformed relationships together; and transformed relationships are constituted only by the integral function of equalized and intimate relationships together. Therefore, church ontology and function is this new creation in likeness of the whole and holy God, nothing less and no substitutes. And the function of these transformed relationships together, both equalized and intimate, distinguishes the church unequivocally as God’s new creation family. Moreover, those who relationally belong in this definitive ontological identity are clearly distinguished from any other church gathering of relational and epistemic orphans, whose diversity pervades the church trees fragmenting the global church forest. Most importantly, this relational dynamic and outcome of wholeness emerges entirely by the ongoing reciprocal relational involvement of the Spirit (2:18,22; 4:3-4; cf. Tit 3:5), which is why the Spirit’s person is grieved by reduced ontology and function in the church (the context of 4:30).

Given Paul’s vine-root ecclesiology, some or many Christians and churches may settle for grassroots ecclesiology since the former requires hard choices and redemptive changes. I like to ask Christians what color they think they will be in heaven. Assuming our resurrected bodies will be the same as our earthly bodies, except they will be whole like Jesus, my opinion is we will have our earthly color as given or allowed by God (evolution notwithstanding). That means also that we will certainly not all be white because there is no valid basis to think that white is whole like Jesus. OK, assuming our color, then my next question is what race or ethnicity do you think you will be in heaven? If you also said what you currently are now, that would be incorrect. Existing race, ethnicity, and other such distinctions are human constructs, which, as discussed, have been ascribed a distinct value (including for gender) measured by a comparative scale—that should not be confused with God’s measuring line and plumb line (Isa 28:17). God neither makes such distinctions nor allows us to use them to define and determine our ontology and function, as Peter and the early church learned and had to change. Therefore, no such distinctions or their value attached to color and gender will exist in heaven, nor are they compatible for God’s earthly family (cf. 2 Cor 10:12). Accordingly, irreducibly and nonnegotiably, the church and its persons and relationship cannot continue to reinforce, sustain and work to continue to maintain distinctions—even with good intentions for affirming diversity and supporting differences—and expect to compose God’s whole and uncommon family on the basis of reduced ontology and function.

Equality and equalizing may raise questions and concerns that this makes being equal the top priority for the church and the highest purpose for the gospel. My short response is yes and no. No, it doesn’t if we are talking about ‘common equality’, which emerges from common peace and from social justice without the integrity of righteousness that don’t account for sin as reductionism and an underlying theological anthropology of reduced ontology and function. Yes, it does because we are only focused on uncommon equality, which unmistakably and undeniably emerges from the uncommon peace of Christ and his justice with righteousness—“He has abolished the inequitable practice of the law with its commandments and ordinances” (Eph 2:15)—in order to save us from sin as reductionism and save us to his family composed by transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate, so that persons and relationships are distinguished in their primacy of whole ontology and function and thereby belonging to the new relational order of God’s whole and uncommon family. Yes, the church in uncommon equality fulfills the relational significance of its ontology (who and whose it is), and the equalizing church fulfills the relational purpose of its function (what and how it is)—fulfills by its uncommon peace of whole ontology and function. Do you have a better gospel and a greater function for the church?

Various conversations have taken place in the church and academy about wholeness and being whole. Yet, I am not aware of deeper understanding in theology and practice emerging from this conversation. Paul and his witness to “the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15) gives substance to wholeness for the church and holds the church and its persons and relationships accountable to be whole, just as he did with Peter. If we don’t want to hear Jesus weeping over us and saying “If you, even you, only knew today what would bring you wholeness” (Lk 19:42, NIV), then we need to pay full attention to the person Jesus transformed to witness to his uncommon peace and to help unfold his equalizing church in his uncommon equality for his gospel of uncommon equality. As we pay full attention, Paul takes us further and deeper with the palpable Word—likely “immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20).

What uncommon equality, uncommon relationships and the uncommon church family share together with uncommon peace is the innermost of life centered on the very heart of persons and relationships in whole ontology and function—in likeness of the whole ontology and function of the whole and uncommon God (Eph 4:24; 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:10). What all persons, peoples, nations and all their relations have in common is reduced ontology and function. What all anthropology, whatever its variation, have at its core is this shared ontology and function. Thus the global church needs to keep this central in its theology and practice in order to respond to the heart of such concerns as Goethe’s Faust inquired, “What holds the world together in its innermost?”

With its inquiry, science has been regarded as the key to unlocking the mysteries of life and what holds the universe together in the innermost. The recent confirming discovery of the Higgs boson to explain why physical bodies exist at all has spurred physics to get to the core of dark matter in the universe. Yet, this heuristic process has not gained deeper understanding of the innermost of human life, perhaps even going in the opposite direction. Moreover, as useful as neuroscience’s findings from the human brain are, they don’t get to the heart of persons and relationships. By definition, theological anthropology should provide understanding for the innermost of life centered on the heart of persons and relationships. Unfortunately, our theological anthropology commonly tends to reflect, reinforce, enable and sustain the shared ontology and function existing in all of the above—with Jesus crying over our theological anthropology for not knowing what composes the wholeness at the very heart of persons and relationships.

Paul illuminated the good news, “the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15, cf. Isa 52:7), for the innermost of all human life (encompassing the universe) that gets to the very heart of persons and relationships, and that cosmologically “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:16-17). The wholeness of Christ is the definitive key to understanding the dark matter and fragmentation of human life, and the only solution to make whole the very heart of their ontology and function in the innermost of life together in wholeness (Col 1:19-20). What emerges from this gospel of wholeness is the good news of human equality, yet not the common equality composed still with the innermost fragmented and still of reduced ontology and function—a critical issue for those working for equality. The equality emerging from the gospel of wholeness is uncommon because (1) it involves the innermost of the fragmented human condition and (2) it restores that innermost condition at the heart of all persons and relationships to their new shared primacy in whole ontology and function.

The relational reality of what emerges from the experiential truth of the whole gospel is only the uncommon equality composed by the uncommon peace of Christ in nothing less than wholeness of ontology and function. Anything less than wholeness is no longer whole at its heart but reduced, or remains reduced, in ontology and function. And what is contrary to and in conflict with this wholeness of uncommon equality are human distinctions. Directly addressing this defining issue is the basis, reason and purpose for Paul making definitive without equivocation the following in his conjoint fight for the whole gospel and against its reduction:

“For in the uncommon peace of Christ Jesus you are all in your innermost together the family of God…transformed from inner out at the heart of your ontology and functions to the wholeness of Christ. At the heart of your whole ontology and function, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are whole together in your innermost in the wholeness of Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26-28)—whole-ly new persons and relationships together “being re-newed and made whole [anakainoo] on the basis of experiential knowledge specifically [epignosis] in likeness of the whole ontology and function of its Creator. In that new and whole condition there is no longer Greek or Jew, and any other human distinction, but the wholeness of Christ determines all persons and relationships together in all whole ontology and function (Col 3:10-11, cf. Eph 1:23).

Yet, we have to understand the often subtle reality that human distinctions are substitutes for the innermost of humanity, substitutes which fragment human life at the heart of persons and relationships in their ontology and function. This is the default condition and mode common for all humanity. These substitutes also serve as subtle simulations and illusions of ontology and function assumed to be in their primary condition, when in fact and existential reality they only compose in secondary terms the reduced ontology and function for persons and relationships. Race-ethnic relations, for example, cannot be expected to be resolved beyond a simulation or illusion from common peace, as long as those distinctions are maintained preventing getting to the heart of the problem. The most that emerges amounts to a virtual reality. The consequences of human distinctions, as discussed above, emerge along the spectrum of the human condition in its common ontology and function, with inequality the defining consequence for all persons in relationships to be apart—whether individual, collective, institutional, structural or systemic. Inequality in race-ethnic relations exists because of these distinctions, thus equality cannot be achieved with these distinctions. The solution is not to be colorblind but to address what such distinctions signify, define and determine for human life.

What underlies all human distinctions and their consequences of inequality at all levels, which they all have in common in the innermost, is the inescapable fragmentary condition of reduced ontology and function. There is no substitute, simulation or illusion that can alter this condition and therefore resolve the existing inequality of persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relationships. Accordingly, we have been recently witnessing, if not experiencing, the increasing relational consequences of inequality around the globe (mainly from macroaggressions), and notably between U.S. college students (primarily with microaggressions) and in U.S. cities between the minority population and law enforcement. Yet, the global church must not be misled in its understanding and misguided in its response. What precipitates conflict relations is comparative relations stratified by human distinctions. Whether these distinctions are self-imposed or imposed on others, or both, a deficit condition results, which may require power relations to maintain conformity or to try to change. At the center of all this fragmentation of persons and relationships is the defining practice of human distinctions; and at the heart of human distinctions are fragmented persons and relationships in reduced ontology and function needing redemptive reconciliation for transformed relationships together—the relationships composed only by persons both being equalized without distinctions and thus vulnerably involved intimately from the heart of the whole person. We should not be misguided to work for equality while distinctions are still used, which at best can only result in a common equality that lacks wholeness at the heart of persons and relationships. The distinctions of persons we use will be the equality in their relationships we get!

The good news from uncommon peace is that the pivotal breakthrough in the human relations composing the human condition, our human condition, has emerged with the gospel of uncommon equality in order for the heart of all persons and relationships to be transformed (not simply reformed) together in their primacy of nothing less than whole ontology and function. As Paul called forth the new-order church family to proclaim ‘the gospel of uncommon equality from uncommon peace’, the equalizing church must itself be determined by the relational reality of uncommon equality; this specifically involved transformed relationships both equalized and intimate, so that the church family can whole-ly witness to the experiential truth of this whole and uncommon gospel (Eph 6:15). Furthermore, as the context of Paul calling forth the equalizing church indicates (6:10-18), the equalizing church will not be equalizing unless it also fights against any and all reductionism: first, against anything less and any substitutes for ‘the gospel of uncommon equality from uncommon peace’, and next, against the inequality inherent in human distinctions that fragment persons and relationships at the heart of their ontology and function. The integral fight both for the wholeness of the gospel and against all reductionism is not optional for the equalizing church reconciling intimately, because the relational outcome of wholeness for its own persons and relationships and for all persons, peoples, nations and their relations depends on it. The good news is not that we have been saved from ‘sin without reductionism’ and saved to ‘good without wholeness’.

One qualifying note should be added to clarify the intimate equalizer church. As the new-order trinitarian church family, the intimate equalizer church is still the body of Christ. That is, the functional order that Paul outlined for the church to compose its interdependent synergism is still vital (1 Cor 12:12-31), just as synergism is essential to the interpersonal Trinity. The uncommon equality composing the church in the intimacy of uncommon wholeness does not mean that all its persons do the same thing and equally have the same resources, nor does everyone engage their practice (including worship) in the same manner. The new-order church is neither a homogeneous unit nor a monotonic composition. Diversity as nonconformity in what persons do and as nonuniformity of the resources they have are basic to the body of Christ. The key issue is not differences but distinctions associated with differences that limit and constrain persons and fragment the relational order of the church family from wholeness together. Having this nonconforming-nonuniform diversity in the church is important for the church’s interdependent synergism, but each difference is secondary from outer in and must be integrated into the primary of the whole church from inner out, that is, the vulnerably intimate church in uncommon wholeness and uncommon equality (Eph 4:11-13,16, cf. Col 2:19). When differences become the primary focus, even inadvertently, they subtly are seen with distinctions that set into motion the comparative process with its relational consequences that persons and relationships with these distinctions have to bear—the consequences Jesus saw in the temple before he reconstituted it.

Therefore, the scrutinized global church is accountable for equalizing its diversity, and then responsible for bringing and holding together all that diversity in the intimate equalizer church—regardless of the changes necessary for this integral relational outcome. Redemptive reconciliation is not optional but essential to the uncommon wholeness of who, what and how the church and its persons and relationships are to be. This is the gospel of wholeness Jesus enacted to constitute the uncommon trinitarian church family as the intimate equalizer in the dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes, thus which is nonnegotiable for the gospel to compose this essential relational outcome.

The human and commonized images by which churches have been constructed are the status quo that keeps evolving in new normals for the global church. This existential reality has disaffected many in younger generations, who don’t see the church as relevant for their faith practice or as sufficient context to address their needs.[7] What currently pervades the church accelerates the urgent need for the church to be re-image-d, not reimagined as witnessed today but re-image-d according to its vine-roots.

When Paul defines the church as being reconciled in one body (Eph 2:16) and as equalized persons relationally belonging to God’s family (oikeios, 2:19), this oikodome (church family not church building) is further defined as being “joined together” (2:21). Paul is providing further theological-functional clarity to his previous dialogue on the church (1 Cor 12:12-31; Rom 12:5). His earlier relational discourse appears to describe an organic or organizational structure of the church whose parts are interrelated and function in interdependence. Paul deepens the understanding of interrelated parts in interdependence by further defining the relational dynamic involved to make this integrally function in wholeness together (4:16).

Implied in church theology and practice biases is the worldview prevailing at the time.[8] Worldviews shape the surrounding contexts that influence the identity and function of churches as well as of God, notably as the Trinity. Understanding how worldviews get magnified in church theology and practice is critical for re-image-ing the church in contrast to reimagining it.

In the church’s perceptual-interpretive lens of the Trinity, uncommon likeness also requires the uncommon Trinity, who is not distinguished in common Trinitarianism. God’s glory encompasses the heart of the Trinity’s qualitative being functioning integrally by the glory of the Trinity’s intimate relational nature. At the heart of the Trinity, the trinitarian persons’ distinctions of roles and functions (enacted to love us downward) are indistinguishable—“whoever has seen my whole person has seen the Father,” “The Father and I are one at the heart of our being” as the embodied Word disclosed (Jn 14:9; 10:30)—and thus they are not structured together by a system of distinctions, as is commonly perceived in trinitarian theology and practice. The substantive face of the Trinity vulnerably disclosed the heart of the Trinity to distinguish the ontological One of the person-al Trinity and the relational Whole of the inter-person-al Trinity.

Intimate and equalized relationships inseparably define and integrally determine the whole ontology and function of the Trinity. The uncommon intimate whole essential to the heart of the Trinity’s ontology is constituted only by the function of whole trinitarian persons distinguished as subjects intimately involved in relationships together, which by their nature are equalized from the distinctions of their roles and functions and thus without the horizontal and vertical barriers to the uncommon wholeness essential for the Trinity to be together and not to be reduced or fragmented. Accordingly yet not simply, nothing less and no substitutes can integrally define our persons as subjects and determine our relationships to be in uncommon likeness to this Trinity—that is, unless we turn to common Trinitarianism to compose persons and shape relationships in common likeness. So, yes, the Trinity wants to know “What are you doing here?” just as Elijah was pursued (1 Kg 19:9,13).

Intimacy is not optional for the uncommon Trinity, nor can intimacy be optional for those in likeness. This means that equalized persons and relationships are also not optional, both for the whole Trinity and for those in likeness. Not having this option is problematic, for example, for churches seeking more intimacy in their contexts without addressing equalizing their persons and relationships. This is also problematic for Christians promoting social justice and working for social change by equalization without intimate connection. We can’t have one relational condition without the other relational condition, because they are inseparably integrated to compose wholeness of persons and relationships in likeness of the whole and uncommon Trinity. Yet, this whole likeness has undergone profound reductions in the framework of modernism, and the uncommon likeness has experienced ongoing fragmentation in the scope of postmodern approaches. These surrounding influences urgently amplify the Trinity’s questions (including Gen 3:9) and multiply the need to challenge the underlying assumptions of our theological anthropology and hermeneutic lens. In addition, the current condition of persons and relationships confronts our view of sin, the significance of our gospel, and what we are saved to. All of these compelling issues converge in the Trinity used in our theology and practice, since that defines the persons we get and determines the relationships we get. Based on the whole and uncommon disclosed by Jesus, only the whole who, what and how of the Trinity is essential to make current realities whole.

The most prominent realities shaping the human context and the majority of its persons and relationships—including the church context and its persons and relationships—have emerged from the narratives mostly of modernism and less so of postmodernism.

In selective summary of the modern narrative from the emergence of the Enlightenment to its unfolding in modern science, its related process of reasoning and the recent effort to quantify the heart of the human person in the brain have profoundly narrowed down the epistemic field and the perceptual-interpretive framework to the realm of physics. As a result, assumptions are made as to the validity of this epistemic process and its reliability for application to all of life, such that the theories composed generate a grand narrative for defining the universe in general and for determining persons and relationships in particular.

Based on its quantitative framework narrowing down its epistemic field and perceptual lens to the outer in, the modern narrative has irreversibly reduced human persons and relationships not to be in qualitative relational function having qualitative sensitivity and relational awareness (i.e. being apart, Gen 2:18). From the Industrial Revolution to the internet world, the development of modern technology has indelibly entrenched and literally enslaved persons and relationships on a course of human development that has reduced the primacy of their wholeness with secondary substitutes. These more-valued substitutes can only simulate who, what and how they are in a virtual likeness—notably evident in the use of digital technology—that is, in a reality without qualitative relational significance and thus in no substantive reality.

The existing condition of persons and relationships in developed countries is no mystery and its development—perceived as so-called progress—is evident in the modern narrative. In these contexts in particular, the hope for changing this condition is confounding, and the recourse to make it whole is denied or at least ignored—which is witnessed in U.S. Christians and churches today. As emerged from the beginning, the modern narrative’s sweeping assumption has been that “you will not be reduced” (Gen 3:4). And the Trinity grieves (as in Lk 19:41-42) because the modern narrative also doesn’t know what makes for wholeness, since this uncommon wholeness is beyond its perceptual lens to understand. Those persons and relationships who have subscribed to the modern narrative must live and function by the valid paradigm that reliably can be counted on for its results: the measure they use will be the measure they get—and what their reason thinks they have will evaporate from their grasp (Mk 4:24-25). Whether intentionally or inadvertently, those churches and its persons and relationships who use the modern framework and lens are subject to this paradigm because this is the existing reality that they have gotten in common likeness.

Another more recent narrative has emerged from postmodern thinking counter to the modernist narrative. The grand narrative of modernism is not accepted in postmodernism, at least not ostensibly. The variable thinking of postmodernists opts to define persons and relationships in the grassroots experience of their local contexts. Who, what and how persons and relationships are have their primacy in their particular settings, which cannot be generalized to all persons and relationships as in a grand narrative. In this sense, the epistemic field for postmodernists is narrowed down even more than modernism; yet, on the other hand, the postmodernist lens is broadened to behold a wide range of persons and relationships. Thus, what likeness of persons and relationships that emerge from the postmodern narrative is not a reduced likeness as in modernism, but it becomes fragmented likenesses of persons and relationships merely from the diversity of human contextualization. The postmodern likeness is considered reliable in itself yet not valid for general application. Given its basis and discounting of modernist assumptions, the postmodern epistemic field and hermeneutic lens are useful for diversifying (read fragmenting) global theologies and practices—particularly composed to counter Western dominance—but they are problematic for whole trinitarian theology and practice.^{^[9]}

While the postmodern narrative broadens, and perhaps deepens, its account of persons and relationships, any of its theories provide no basis for persons and relationships to be considered whole. Rather, what is proposed is merely nothing more than distinctly fragmentary likeness—the balkanization of persons and relationships in likeness. Since it affirms no general narrative beyond local human context, even though postmodern theories may make statements as if to generalize, the measure it uses can only yield the persons and relationships it gets—beyond whom it must remain silent, without knowledge and understanding of the whole needed for the human condition. And the balkanized likeness of persons and relationships remains in a condition “to be apart,” as if the face of Jesus disclosed nothing relevant or significant for persons and relationships to be in likeness. The postmodern fragmentary-balkanized likeness is problematic for trinitarian theology and practice because there is no wholeness to the Trinity that applies to all persons and relationships. While postmodern thinking has rightly challenged the assumptions of modernism, its own sweeping assumption has rendered it to the default condition and mode of reductionism.

Unlike the modernist narrative limited to the realm of physics, the emergence of the Trinity integrates the realms of physics and metaphysics to disclose the essential integral reality beyond those realms. The essential reality of the whole and uncommon Trinity composes the metanarrative integral for all life—distinguished from the grand narrative of modernism—which encompasses all persons and relationships in uncommon likeness neither reduced nor fragmented. Apart from this integral metanarrative, there is no essential basis for wholeness either for the Trinity or for persons and relationships.

This is the epistemological and hermeneutical dilemma that a postmodern narrative faces, even apart from its counterpart modern narrative. The resolution of this dilemma will only take place—and not without difficulty—when its epistemic field and hermeneutic lens account for and therefore become accountable to the whole and uncommon Trinity disclosed in the human context, yet not defined and determined by human contextualization as postmodernists depend on.

The reduced likeness from a modernist narrative may assume to be applicable to all persons and relationships, but that application can only reduce who, what and how persons and relationships are. The fragmentary-balkanized likeness from a postmodernist narrative is inapplicable to all persons and relationships and makes no explicit assumptions that it does. Yet, there appears to be an underlying assumption that the sum of all those fragments from local settings could apply to the whole of the human context. Perhaps balkanized likeness is considered analogous to diverse nations converging to form the United Nations. That sum, however, would still not equal the whole—which is greater than the sum of any parts or fragments—needed for all persons and relationships to be in essential likeness to the whole-ly Trinity.

We need to challenge our own assumptions and face the surrounding reality of reduced and fragmented likenesses; and we need to stop ignoring them or denying their influential reality in our midst, both of which keep us “to be apart” from our essential likeness. That essential likeness for human persons and relationships in life together is uncommon to all that is common, whether in a modern narrative or a postmodern narrative.

Though idolized (as in modernism) or idealized (as in postmodernism), the likeness from such narratives can only compose persons and relationships in a virtual reality of the whole who, what and how essential to be. Even the likeness from a premodern narrative involved basically the same issues for persons and relationships. Christendom evolved in the fourth century, for example, to impose its common framework for all theology and practice to conform to a reduced ontology and function in common likeness. Similar in likeness, other efforts to ensure orthodoxy and to avoid fragmentation in the church established the primacy of doctrine over the primacy of relationships together involving the whole person, which thereby composed common orthodoxy in unlikeness to the whole and uncommon Trinity. The common shaping of persons and relationship also emerged in the earliest church. Paul fought against these “fine-sounding arguments, persuasive speech” (pithanologia, Col 2:4,8,16-19, notably from the early forms of gnosticism) in order that the interrelated likeness of persons, relationships and the church would be in uncommon wholeness—integrated together with the uncommon whole ontology and function of the Trinity disclosed by Christ (Col 2:9-10, as in Eph 4:13-16).

Thus, implicit in Paul’s uncommon ecclesiology—contrary to a worldview implied in church theology and practice—is the relational dynamic that Jesus constituted in his prayer for the definitive formation of his church family (Jn 17). Paul extends the whole-ly Word’s relational dynamic in order to fulfill his prayer in the existential reality of the church that is re-image-d solely by the Trinity (17:21-23). In Paul’s pleroma ecclesiology, the functional significance of church ontology and function emerges as the church lives “created according to the likeness of God” (Eph 4:24). The church, for Paul, is the Father’s new creation family embodied in Christ and raised up by the Spirit in the relational likeness of this whole of God, who dwells intimately present and agape-relationally involved. If not created and functioning in this likeness, church becomes a gathering of human shaping or construction in likeness of some aspect of human contextualization, which then often reifies its ontological simulations and functional illusions as the body of Christ in contrast to and conflict with the relational intimacy of the Trinity.

Paul was no trinitarian in his theological development, yet his monotheism went beyond the knowledge and understanding of the Shema in Judaism. His experiential truth of Jesus and the Spirit in ongoing relationship together gave him whole knowledge and understanding of the whole of God. The relational and functional significance of Paul’s whole God constituted him as a new creation in God’s family and provided the basis for the church as God’s new creation family to be in the relational likeness of this whole-ly God whom he himself has experienced. The church in likeness of the whole of God was not a theological construct in Paul’s ecclesiology, the concept of which has growing interest in modern theology, of course, as the church in likeness of the Trinity.[10] Yet, Paul’s understanding of the church’s likeness emerged from engagement in the relational epistemic process with the whole-ly God, the synesis (whole knowledge and understanding) that appears to elude many of his readers.

Trinitarian likeness was not a theological construct or an ethereal practice for Paul. It signified the reality of his face-to-face involvement with the trinitarian persons, which composed the trinitarian relational process “with unveiled faces…being transformed into Jesus’ likeness…who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). This essential relational outcome was the whole and uncommon basis for the whole of Paul’s person and the whole in his theology and practice, which most notably composed the uncommon wholeness of the church and its persons and relationships in trinitarian likeness. In other words, since the Damascus road this monotheistic Jew vulnerably experienced the relational response of the trinitarian persons and their ongoing relational involvement in family love, so that his whole person was to be distinguished in trinitarian likeness (see also Col 3:10-11; Gal 5:6; 6:15).

Interacting functions in themselves, however, do not account for the dynamic of the trinitarian Persons’ whole relationship together, which underlies each of their functions and which integrates their uniqueness into the whole they constitute together, the whole-ly God. The ontology and function of God’s whole relationship together lives also in interdependence. In this dynamic, any distinctions of their unique functions are rendered secondary; and such distinctions should not be used to define each of them or to determine their position in the Godhead. As vulnerably disclosed, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are irreducibly defined and inseparably determined only by whole relationship together, and this relational dynamic functions in various involvements with human contextualization to enact, embody and complete the whole-ly God’s thematic relational response to make whole the human condition, that is, to save both from reductionism and to wholeness together. To highlight their distinctions, for example, by being overly christocentric, simply binitarian, or even gender-specific, is to diminish the whole of God’s ontology and to fragment the whole of God’s function.

Even though Paul was no traditional trinitarian in theology, he clearly made definitive for the church this trinitarian likeness: “There are different…but the same Spirit…but the same Lord Jesus…but it is the same God the Father”; in addition, “There is one body and one Spirit…one hope…one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph 4:4-5), and differences granted to the church are based on each person “given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (4:7) and “given the presence and involvement of the Spirit for the uncommon wholeness of the church…just as the body is one and has many members…are one ontological whole in likeness of the trinitarian persons…all our persons baptized into equalized relationships together without distinctions” (1 Cor 12:7-13). The whole of Paul and the whole in his theology for the church can only be understood in this trinitarian likeness, which transforms persons from inner out in their relationships without the veil to constitute the uncommon wholeness of the church in uncommon likeness of the whole and uncommon Trinity (as Paul made definitive in 2 Cor 3:14-18).

Churches need to understand, however, that the bond of wholeness is not simply a bond of love but is relationship-specific to whole persons in two vital nonnegotiable ways:

When Paul earlier held the church accountable to “open wide your hearts” in reciprocal likeness (2 Cor 6:11-13), it was this bond of wholeness in intimate and equalized relationships together in which he challenged their whole persons to be uncommon in trinitarian likeness. Nothing less and no substitutes for the church and its persons and relationships can be whole, just as is essential for the Trinity.

For the ontological identity of the church to be of functional significance, it cannot be shaped or constructed by human terms from human contextualization. In Paul’s ecclesiology, the church in wholeness is the new creation by the whole of God’s relational response of grace (“was given grace”) from above top-down, the dynamic of which (“descended…ascended”) Christ relationally embodied to make each one of us together to be God’s whole (“he might fill all things,” pleroo, make complete, Eph 4:7-10; cf. 1:23). This is the church in wholeness embodying the pleroma of Christ. In God’s relational response of grace, Christ also gave the relational means to church leaders for the dynamic embodying of the church (4:11), which Paul previously defined also as part of the Spirit’s relational involvement to share different charisma from the whole (not a fragmented source) for the functional significance of the church body (1 Cor 12:4-11). Paul illuminates this further to make definitive the functional significance of embodying of the church in relational likeness to the whole and holy God.

Church leaders are given the relational means for the purpose “to equip the saints” (katartismos from katartizo, to put into proper condition, to restore to former condition, make complete, 4:12). This directly points to the dynamic of transformed persons reconciled and relationally involved in transformed relationships together in relational likeness to God, and integrated in interdependence of the various church functions (“work of ministry”) necessary for the dynamic embodying (oikodome, 4:12) of the church’s whole ontology and function of “the pleroma of Christ” (4:13). This means unequivocally: For church leaders to be of functional significance, their persons must be defined by the wholeness of the new creation in the qualitative image of God from inner out, not defined by their gifts, resources or the roles and titles they have which reduce their persons to outer in; and for their leadership to be functionally significant as transformed persons, their function must be determined by agape relational involvement in transformed relationships together (both equalized and intimate) as God’s new creation family in the relational likeness of the whole-ly God, not determined by the titles and roles they perform (even with sacrifice) that make distinctions, intentionally or unintentionally, creating distance and stratification in relationships together. The latter practices by church leaders renegotiate ecclesiology from bottom-up based on a theological anthropology from outer in.

In Paul’s whole vine-root ecclesiology, church leaders in reduced ontology and function are not created or living new in the image and likeness of God and, therefore, cannot katartismos others in the interdependence necessary to be of functional significance for embodying the church in relational likeness of the whole and holy God. Nor can they proclaim the experiential truth of the gospel of wholeness (Eph 6:15). Only transformed leaders—whose persons are ongoingly being restored to the image and likeness of God (anakainoo, Col 3:10-11; cf. ananeoomai, Eph 4:23)—vulnerably involved in transformed relationships together with the Spirit can help make complete the saints—that is, katarismos emerges from conjoint interaction with anakainoo. Only whole leaders relationally serve to make complete the saints in the interdependence that is functionally significant for the church’s whole function: to dynamically embody (oikodome) the pleroma of Christ until all those relationally belonging to God’s family come to (katantao, reach, arrive) be together as one (herotes, unity), that is, whole in their relational response of trust in reciprocal relationship together and whole in specifically knowing (epignosis) the Son of God in intimate relationship, the relational outcome of which is persons without distinctions (beyond aner) who are whole-ly complete (teleios) in the qualitative depth (helikia, stature) of the pleroma embodied by Christ, therefore who together with the Spirit can embody the pleroma of Christ in functional significance of the relational likeness of the whole of God (4:12-13).

Paul is not outlining an ecclesial function of church growth models, missional models or any other ministry techniques of serving for the quantitative expansion of gatherings shaped or constructed by human terms. Paul makes definitive the theological paradigm for the whole function embodying the church’s ontology and function of who the church is and whose the church is as God’s new creation family in his qualitative image and relational likeness. This paradigm is the theological dynamic of church ontology, whose function is entirely relational and whose whole ontology and function is the functional significance of just transformed persons agape-relationally involved in transformed relationships together in interdependence, the definitive paradigm especially for its leaders.

It is unequivocal in Paul’s vine-root ecclesiology that the church in relational likeness of the whole-ly God is irreplaceable for the functional qualitative significance of its ontology and function. For the church’s ontology and function to be whole as God’s new creation family, it must (dei not opheilo) be the functional significance of both transformed relationships reconciled together and intimate interrelations integrated together in interdependence; and both of these are functionally significant only in agape relational involvement. Church whole relationships together are reconciled together by Christ with the Spirit, thus are by their nature irreducible; and its integrated relational outcome of church interdependence in relational likeness to the whole-ly God is nonnegotiable. Interdependent is how God created his new creation family, as well as created the whole human family in relationship together (cf. Gen 2:18) and integrated all of creation (cf. Col 1:20; Rom 8:19-21). Just as modern neuroscience affirms this interdependence and acknowledges the influence of reductionism to counter it, the whole ontology and function of the church embodies the functional relational significance of this new creation to fulfill the inherent human relational need and to resolve the human condition—which neuroscience can merely identify without good news for its fulfillment and resolution. Yet, the church in renegotiated ecclesiology is also without both the functional significance of the good news of what persons are and its relational significance of what persons can be saved to.

The church may not want, even though it needs, the presence and involvement of the person-al inter-person-al Trinity. The primary issue is because to be in uncommon likeness, the church and its persons and relationships have to be more vulnerable than they may want or find convenient—even though that is essential to what they need, which makes the want-need issue unavoidable. As Paul illuminated, wide-open hearts are uncommon and churches have consistently existed on a common easier path, contrary to Jesus’ intrusive relational path. Yet, to follow Jesus is neither optional nor open to negotiation for the church, despite the reality that discipleship has been presented as such by churches. Such church practice reflects a church’s limited Christology and soteriology, and evidences a theological anthropology of its persons and relationships in an ontology and function struggling (knowingly or not) to establish its identity both in the global community and within the global church—perhaps with a reputation like that of the church in Sardis, or with a track-record like that of the church in Ephesus.

The identity a church wants to establish may not be compatible or congruent with the identity the church needs to compose in likeness of the Trinity. As long as the integrity of who, what and how the church is (the whole of its righteousness) is not composed in the ontology and function that distinguishes its likeness beyond a common likeness of its surrounding context (locally, regionally and globally), that church has a major problem. That church’s presence and involvement are in a critical condition that compromises the validity of its witness to the whole-ly God and its resource to know more than a common God. Churches in this likeness need to be transformed to uncommon wholeness to be in uncommon likeness, and that’s the pivotal reason why the church may not want the presence and involvement of the person-al inter-person-al Trinity.

Can you imagine going into a church and unilaterally turning it upside down in order to restore the relational context and process of God’s uncommon temple for all persons without distinctions? Can you also imagine tearing down a church’s tradition and exposing the barriers of its practice in order to open wide relationships of intimacy and equality to compose God’s uncommon temple? Paul more than imagined these because Jesus embodied and enacted this intrusive relational path to constitute his church family in uncommon wholeness (“not as the common gives”) in uncommon likeness (“just as I do not belong to the common”) of the Trinity whole and uncommon, person-al and inter-person-al.

What jumps out in front of our face from Jesus and Paul about the church as God’s temple is the incompatibility between the uncommon and common, and that they are incongruent for any attempt to integrate them in a hybrid, not to mention irreconcilable in function and antithetical in ontology. What is ‘holy and sanctified’ has been perceived by churches throughout history with a common lens. That is, the uncommon constituting the church by Jesus and composed for the church by Paul has been shaped by terms lacking congruence with the qualitative relational significance integral to their definition and application of uncommon. The most prominent issue-conflict involves the underlying theological anthropology defining persons and determining relationships in the church on the basis of what amounts to a common ontology and function. This church theology and practice further expose an incomplete Christology of Jesus’ whole person disclosing the whole and uncommon Trinity, as well as expose a truncated soteriology not encompassing being both saved from sin as reductionism and saved to wholeness of persons in relationship together as the Trinity’s new creation family. This essential reality and relational outcome have been pervasively commonized, such that at best they are simulated with only illusions of the uncommon.

The issue-conflict of defining persons and determining relationships in the church by a common ontology and function may not be apparent in the church’s theology, doctrinal statements and decrees of faith. But its operating presence emerges in the church’s practice of its persons lack of heart-level involvement in the depth of relationships together integrally intimate and equalized in their differences and from their distinctions. Wide-open hearts in intimate reciprocal relationships is simply too uncommon and thus threatening for the church to advance for its persons—a threat also for keeping their numbers in the church—plus too difficult for the church to cultivate in its relationships without having to address all the relational issues that emerge as persons become more deeply involved. Palatable relationships are certainly much easier for persons (especially leadership) to face, just ask Jesus and Paul about their experiences related to the temple-church. The reason palatable relationships are easier to face is the fact that they don’t bring persons together in face-to-face relationships—which is the seduction of social media and the use of technology in the church. At most, palatable relationships are an association between persons in the church, gathering together essentially as relational orphans still ‘to be apart’ from the transformed relationships together both intimate and equalized in the new creation family composing the Trinity’s uncommon temple, that is, with the curtain torn away and the veil removed.

The relational context and process of the church as the Trinity’s uncommon temple have been reconstituted for the primacy of all its persons to have intimate relational connection and ongoing involvement with the Trinity and with each other face to face. For the church’s persons to have intimate relationships with the Trinity necessitates, by the nature of trinitarian relationship, the heart of the whole person, who by necessity has to be equalized from distinctions to be whole from inner out for the person’s involvement in intimate reciprocal relationship together—just ask the Samaritan woman, on the one side of this relational equation, and Peter at his footwashing on the other side. The church of uncommon likeness has no available option for palatable relationships, because the intimate and equalized relationships of the Trinity’s uncommon temple are not optional but essential for the church to be in uncommon ontology and function to distinguish it and its persons and relationships together in uncommon likeness of the person-al inter-person-al Trinity.

Until the church is re-image-d, its contextualized and commonized images will continue to mirror the sociocultural, -political, -economic, and related human orders of the surrounding context, and thereby also (1) reflect the inequality and inequity of these orders and (2) magnify how relationships are enacted. In the diversity of the global community, of course, relationships are ordered and enacted differently, but these grassroots reflect a human image and thus are contrary to the trinitarian image of church identity and function. The global church must face the reality that grassroots don’t grow in a vacuum but are cultivated in and by the human condition—namely, the counter-relational workings of reductionism fragmenting persons and relationships in reduced ontology and function. And the global church cannot presume that these grassroots can be laundered for compatibility as the church’s relational order and enactment of relationships. Any variable condition of the human order existing in the diversity of the global church needs to undergo redemptive transformation in order for it to be turned around.

Therefore, the diversity of local and regional churches, along with the collective global church, are accountable to vine-root ecclesiology, whereby they are challenged, confronted and responsible for the image of their identity and function. When churches fully embrace the whole-ly image of the Trinity, they will be re-image-d from divergent images composing the global church. For re-image-ing to be the growing vine-rooted relational reality, the diversity of the global church also needs to be re-order-ed anew.

In anticipation of the church needing first and foremost to clean out its own house so that it will unfold in the whole-ly relationships of uncommon wholeness for all persons, peoples and nations, Jesus established this priority for his family:

Before “you address the fragmentation in others” you need to “address the fragmentation in your own theology and practice. How can you say to others, ‘Let me help you out of your reductionism,’ while reductionism continues in your own life? Don’t be a role-player [hypokrites], first redeem your own life from reductionism, and then you will be clearly distinguished to help redeem others’ lives from reductionism” (Mt 7:3-5)

Redemptive change in the church is essential to be new, whole and uncommon; and there is no substitute for redemptive change that the church can use to get this relational outcome—which Jesus also made definitive in anticipation of the latitude in the diversity of its theology and practice.

Yet, the defining line between diversity and distinctions has disappeared in most church theology and practice today (including the academy’s), such that the consequences are not understood or recognized. In whatever way those consequences emerge in the church (local, regional, global), they all converge in inequality of the church’s relational order—if not explicitly then implicitly. This unequal relational order of distinctions is contrary to and in conflict with the uncommon wholeness of Christ, therefore incongruent with the whole-ly distinguished Trinity. As Paul made definitive about Jesus’ salvific work for the church (as in Eph 2:11-22), Jesus enacted the good news in order to compose the uncommon equality of his church family at the heart of its persons and relationships in whole ontology and function, and therefore unequivocally transformed them (1) to be redeemed from human distinctions and their deficit condition and (2) to be reconciled to the new relational order in uncommon transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate in their innermost, and thereby congruent in uncommon likeness with the wholeness of the Trinity.

Churches in their diversity have to face the prevailing reality pervading their condition that human distinctions are substitute for the innermost of humanity. As noted above, these substitutes fragment human life at the heart of persons and relationships in their ontology and function to compose the common default condition and mode for all humanity, which Christians fall into when not in whole ontology and function. Unintentionally, these substitutes also serve as subtle simulations and illusions of ontology and function assumed to be in their primary condition, when in fact and existential reality they only compose in secondary terms the reduced ontology and function for persons and relationships. The subtle workings of this assumption evolve in a virtual reality that at its core are persons and relationships needing redemptive reconciliation for integrated transformed relationships together. To emphasize what the Word makes emphatic: The human distinctions of persons we use in everyday life will be the extent of equality in relationships we get.

The gospel of wholeness that Jesus vulnerably enacted only in whole relational terms centered on the innermost of the child-person, who differentiated the heart of the person from inner out and, thus, who lived neither by the bias of human distinctions nor by a naïve lack of discernment. Jesus declared with excitement that the key to receiving and understanding God’s revelation is the vulnerable openness of the child-person, who is not predisposed by the limits and constraints of the epistemic bias (or trained incapacity) of those regarded as “wise and learned” (Lk 10:21). Also, Jesus disclosed in these relational terms that those who compose his family are distinguished child-persons, who have been redeemed from distinctions and thus humbly live at the heart of who, what and how they are (distinguishing their righteousness) without embellishment (Mt 18:1-4), thereby distinguishing their wholeness that can be counted on to be in relationships together. Jesus further differentiated that the heart of those child-persons compose the heart of worship and its qualitative relational significance, about which others with distinctions regarded themselves in comparison as having better practice and knowledgeable resources (Mt 21:15-16). Then, Jesus addressed his disciples’ concern for distinctions “as the greatest” and their need for redemptive change as church leaders—leadership differentiated clearly from the greatest distinctions only by the child-person signified “like the youngest” (new, neos, Lk 22:24-26).

By centering on the child-person, however, Jesus did not reverse the relational order of his church family, which servant discipleship and leadership commonly imply in narrow referential terms of what to do (e.g. misinterpreting Jesus’ footwashing). In reality, Jesus composed the new (neos) relational order for his church family of those new persons redeemed from distinctions and re-newed (anakainoo) to the wholeness of Christ (Col 3:10-11). The new persons in wholeness are the only church leaders who can “equip [katartizo, restore, put in new order and make complete] the persons and relationships of the church in its essential relational purpose and function, for building up the family of Christ, until all of us come to the whole relationship together of our faith distinguished by the whole-ly Word, to full maturity on the basis of the only measure of the fullness, completeness, wholeness [pleroma] of Christ” (Eph 4:12-13). This uncommon relational process and outcome in whole relational terms cannot emerge and unfold with, from and by distinctions, notably the greatest of Jesus’ followers in the church.

Whether human distinctions used in the church are individual or collective, they impose on persons and/or groups of persons an identity incompatible with the new creation church family. Making distinctions, for example, based on race-ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and personal abilities and resourcefulness only fragment persons and their relationships; and they counter the transformation of belonging to the new creation of God’s family (as Paul magnified, Gal 3:26-27; Col 3:10-11). The defining and pivotal reality of the new relational order composing those truly belonging to the new creation family confronts our churches today and holds our persons and relationships to be accountable for our transformation to the new with nothing less and no substitutes.

While Paul assumes the new creation ‘already’ (a present reality) and its relational outcome with the Spirit to embody the church’s whole ontology and function as God’s new creation family, he never assumes the church will live whole in its new relational order, and thereby make whole in the surrounding context of reductionism. To live in wholeness is the continuous challenge for the church because its ontology and function are ongoingly challenged by and susceptible to the counter-relational workings of reductionism. The tension and conflict between wholeness and reductionism is ongoing with deep repercussions, which is why Paul settles for nothing less and no substitutes in his whole theology.

In Paul’s transformed ecclesiology, for the church to live in wholeness is for the church to be ongoingly involved relationally with the Spirit for its belonging together “in the bond of wholeness” (Eph 4:3). This bond (syndesmos) is the whole relationships binding the church together from inner out as one interdependent body, which Jesus embodied and enacted for transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate (Eph 2:14-22). For the church to live in wholeness as God’s new creation family is to be deeply involved together in this new relational order of equalized and intimate relationships. This relational involvement of persons in their righteousness activates the gravity that holds together the church in its innermost; and apart from these relationships together with the Spirit, there is just a fragmentary condition of the church—again, even with pervasive ecclesial order. When Paul illuminated “God is not a God of fragmentation but the God of wholeness” (1 Cor 14:33), he also made unequivocal that this new church relational order is neither optional nor negotiable. The challenge for Paul’s readers, then, becomes both about his assumption of the new creation ‘already’ and if God’s new creation family is truly the church. Paul’s transformed ecclesiology clearly defines these as inseparable and irreducible. Reductionism would renegotiate church order as sufficient alternative, perhaps even with its reification as the peace of God with irenic identity markers serving to promote the mere absence of conflict. The wholeness of the global church does not emerge from such theology and practice.

Though Paul was not trinitarian in his theology, traditionally speaking, the Spirit was the key for him in his practice (cf. 1 Cor 2:9-13. The dynamic presence and involvement of the Spirit’s whole person functions while inseparably on an eschatological trajectory. Yet for Paul, this does not and must not take away from the primary focus on the Spirit’s presence and involvement for the present, just as Paul addressed the Thessalonians’ eschatological anxiety with the relational imperative not to quench the Spirit’s present relational involvement (1 Thes 5:19). The Spirit’s present concern and function is relational involvement for constituting whole ontology and function, for making functional wholeness together, and for the embodying of the whole-ly God’s new creation family in whole relationship together as the church, the completeness of Christ (as pleroma, Eph 1:22-23; 1 Cor 12:11-13)—which is why the person of the Spirit is deeply affected, grieving over any reductionism in reciprocal relational involvement together (Eph 4:30). With the new de-contextualized and de-commonized lens from the Spirit, the person perceives oneself whole-ly from the inner out and others in the same way, and is involved in relationships together on this basis, which is congruent with their experience of relational involvement from God and in likeness of how God engages relationships.

The agape relational involvement Paul defines is not about sacrificial love but family love. Clarifying and correcting misconceptions of agapē and Jesus’ love, family love submits one’s whole person from inner out to one another in equalized and intimate relationships signifying whole relationship together—love in likeness of how the whole-ly Trinity functions together and is relationally involved with us. Paul defines conclusively that in the midst of reductionism, this is the new creation church’s new relational order in which “the uncommon peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your persons from inner out in Christ Jesus from reductionism” (Phil 4:7) and by which “the God of wholeness will be relationally involved with you” (4:9).

What unfolds from Christ as the church’s uncommon peace is the relational significance of persons redeemed from their distinctions, and relationships together freed from the relational barriers keeping them in relational distance, detachment or separation. However comparative relations may be structured, Paul declares in unmistakable relational terms: “Christ has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of fragmenting differences” (Eph 2:14, NIV). The relational significance of this uncommon peace is not for the future but for this essential reality to unfold in our experience now in the church. This is the pivotal breakthrough in human relations that will transform the church to the new creation of persons redeemed and relationships reconciled in the new order uncommon for all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relations since ‘from the beginning’. “Christ’s relational purpose was to create in his wholeness one new humanity out of their fragmentation, thus making them whole in uncommon peace” (v.15). When this identity composed by the new relational order becomes the qualitative relational reality for the persons and relationships of the church, they can claim the integral salvation from sin as reductionism and salvation to wholeness together as family; and by only this existential relational reality, they can proclaim and whole-ly witness to the experiential truth of this good news for human relations. Without this essential reality, persons and relationships in the church regress in what amounts to fake news based on alternative facts.

Furthermore, and most important, this pivotal breakthrough in relationships also includes and directly involves relationship with the whole and uncommon God. “In their wholeness together to reconcile all of them having distinctions to God through his relational work on the cross, by which he redeemed their fragmenting differences” (v.16). It is indispensable for us to understand what Paul unfolds for the church here is that reconciliation is inseparable from redemption (to be freed). Redemption is integral for reconciliation in order for relationships (including with God) to come together at the heart of persons in their ontology and function from inner out, which then requires persons be redeemed from outer-in distinctions that prevent this relational connection. We cannot maintain distinctions among us and have this breakthrough in relationships for their reconciliation. This is a confronting issue for those in the church (notably its leaders), who depend on distinctions to establish their identity and self-worth. All discussion about reconciliation must include this reality or there will be no redemptive change in our relationships that brings us together face to face without the veil.

Therefore, the integral relational significance of redemptive reconciliation is for the heart of persons now to be vulnerable to each other (including God) without any veil (or masks, as in 2 Cor 3:16-18) and come together in intimate relationships. Intimate relationships are the relational outcome distinguished by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace. Paul doesn’t merely recommend the uncommon peace of Christ but makes it imperative for transformed relationships equalized and intimate in the new relational order. With God, intimate relationship involves going beyond conventional spirituality and a spiritual relationship to the following: the qualitative relational reality of the whole person vulnerably involved ongoingly with “God in boldness and confidence” (Eph 3:12), rooted in the experiential truth of being redeemed from human distinctions, from their fragmentation and the deficit condition of reduced ontology and function, and then reconciled in wholeness together belonging in God’s family—“the intimate dwelling in which the whole-ly God lives by his Spirit” (Eph 2:22, NIV cf. Jn 14:23). Accordingly and indispensably, to have this relational outcome with God and with each other requires existing relations to be transformed from the relational distance of their distinctions to intimate relationships composed by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon wholeness. This whole outcome is the gospel and the cross that Jesus enacted to fulfill for our intimacy together heart to heart, thus with-in nothing less than our complete identity as persons face to face. Mary (Martha’s sister) embodied and enacted the whole relational outcome of the gospel, in contrast and conflict with the other disciples who struggled in something less at Jesus’ expense and in their relationships together.

The relational significance of intimacy in church relationships should not be idealized, or even spiritualized, because this indeed uncommon relational outcome is at the heart of what Christ saves us to (integrally with what he saves us from). There is no good news unless the church is being transformed to intimate relationships together, no matter how clearly the gospel is defined in our theology and how much it is proclaimed in our practice. This new relational order was the only relational purpose for Jesus when he cleaned out his house for all persons, peoples, tribes and nations to have relational access to God; and the church is accountable to clean out its own house in order to “gather with me and not scatter” (Mt 12:30). To complete his only relational purpose for his house, on the cross Jesus also deconstructed his house by tearing away the prominent curtain (demolishing the holy partition) to open direct relational access face to face with the whole and uncommon God (Heb 10:19-22). This irreversible breakthrough in relationship with God included removing the veil to transform relationships both with God and with each other to intimate relationships together (2 Cor 3:16-18).

Therefore, the church and its persons and relationships are accountable for tearing down any existing holy partition that allows them to maintain practice with relational distance as if still in front of the curtain torn away by Jesus. By being involved with Jesus’ relational work enacted behind the curtain, we also are accountable for removing any existing veil over our face in order to be vulnerably involved face to face in the intimate relationships together that Christ saved us to today and not for the future. In other words, the intimate relationship of equalized persons in the church is neither optional nor negotiable but essential for the church’s whole-ly identity to be distinguished in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

For Paul, God indeed is not a God of fragmentation but the God of wholeness; therefore only nothing less and no substitutes of the person and persons together in the new relational order are functionally significant for all of the following:

To reciprocally involve the whole-ly Trinity in distinct relational terms (Eph 2:17-22), to constitute God’s relational whole as family in the Trinity’s relational likeness (Col 3:10-11,15; 2 Cor 3:18), and to embody and enact as Jesus’ whole-ly disciples the ontological identity and relational belonging that are necessary to fulfill the inherent human relational need and resolve the human problem existing both in the world and even within churches (Eph 3:6,10-12; 4:13-16).

Congruently, in the transformation embodying whole ecclesiology, the identity for all churches is distinguished beyond all surrounding contexts with nothing less and no substitutes for the following:

The church in whole ontology and function in relational terms constitutes only transformed persons relationally involved by family love in transformed relationships together integrally equalized and intimate, which composes the new relational order for the church’s whole-ly identity progressing uncommonly in wholeness in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole and holy God (Eph 4:23-25)—who is not a God of reductionism promoting ontological simulations and functional illusions that only regress.

Solely on this basis will the global church “be whole-ly as we are whole-ly,” and will its persons and relationships “become completely whole, so that the world may know that you have sent me to make them whole and have loved them intimately even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:22-23).

In Paul’s transformed whole ecclesiology, the bond of wholeness with the Spirit is embodied inner-out function of whole persons who relationally submit to one another in family love to be intimately involved in relationships together without the limits, barriers or comforts of human-shaped distinctions—signifying relationships without the veil. This relational process of intimately equalizing from inner out needs to be distinguished in the experiential truth of church ontology and function, and not remain in doctrinal truth or as a doctrinal statement of intention, or else its relational reality will be elusive and likely submerged in an alternative or even virtual reality. When doctrine causes an impasse in the church’s relational progression, its function (not necessarily its theology) must be deconstructed for the relational process to unfold. This experiential truth happens only when the church is made whole by reciprocal relationship with the Spirit in the functional significance of four key dynamics, which reconstruct the church as intimate equalizer. These key dynamics constitute the church as family to function in uncommon wholeness in the qualitative image of God and to live ongoingly in whole relationship together in the relational likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

Two of these keys for the church necessitate structural and contextual dynamics and the other two involve imperatives for individual and relational dynamics. In each dynamic, redemptive changes are necessary to go from a mere gathering of individuals to the new creation church family—changes that overlap and interact with the other key

dynamics. These are dynamics and related changes that the global church must be fully embraced into its theology and enacted whole-ly in its practice in order for its whole-ly identity to unfold in likeness.

While church access can be perceived from outer in as a static condition of a church structured with merely an “open-door policy,” or with a “welcome” sign to indicate its good intentions, access from the inner out of God’s relational context and process of family is dynamic and includes relational involvement (not just a welcome greeting)—implied, for example, in Jesus’ transformation of the temple for prayer accessible by all. When Paul made Christ’s salvific work of wholeness conclusive for the church, all persons without distinctions “have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18) for relational involvement together “in boldness and confidence” (3:12) as persons who have been equalized for intimate relationships together as God’s family (2:19-22; cf. Gal 4:4-7). Access, therefore, is the structural dynamic of the church without the stratifying barriers of distinctions that treat persons differently (denoted in diakrino, 1 Cor 4:7)—that is, without the reducing dynamic of diakrino confronted in the church by Paul—which is congruent with Christ’s relational work of wholeness (Eph 2:14-17) and is in relational likeness to God (Acts 15:9; Col 3:10-11).

The issue of access is deeply rooted in human history. Peter himself struggled with his interpretive framework (phronēma) and lens (phroneō) shaped by his tradition, whose making distinctions treated persons differently (diakrino) that denied access to those of Gentile distinction. Even after Jesus changed his theology (Acts 10:9-16), Peter struggled to change from the practice of his tradition because of his emotional investment and likely perception of losing something related to the privilege, prestige and power of having access. Such loss may not become apparent until one is placed in a lower position. Human-shaped distinctions signify having advantage in comparative relations, the absence of which precludes that advantage. After the primordial garden, the human relational condition “to be apart” became an intentional goal of human effort to secure advantage and maintain self-preservation—the ‘survival of the fittest’ syndrome masked even by religious faith. The specific resources for this relational advantage may vary from one historical context to another (cf. even the works of the law and justification by faith). Yet, privilege, prestige and power are the basic underlying issues over which these relational struggles of inequality are engaged—whether the context is family, social, economic, political or even within or among churches. Church leaders, for example, notably pursue such advantages to establish their “brand”; and most churches reinforce this subtle process of inequality by seeking personalities over persons for their leadership. Any aspects of privilege, prestige and power are advantages (and benefits) that many persons are reluctant to share, much less give up, if the perception (unreal or not) means for them to be in a position of less. The control of this distribution is threatened by equal access.

The unavoidable reality for churches is that human-shaped distinctions create and maintain advantage for some, which certainly fragments relationships together. Inescapably then in church practice, by their very nature human distinctions are an outer-in dynamic emerging from reduced ontology and function, which in itself already diminishes, minimalizes and fragments God’s relational whole (cf. the disparity in the early church, Acts 6:1). Access, however, is an inner-out dynamic signifying the relational dynamic and qualitative involvement of grace. That is, the functional significance of access is for all persons to be defined from inner out and not to be treated differently from outer in (including church leaders), in order to have the relational opportunity to be involved with God for their redemption from the human struggle of reductionism, and thereby to be equalized and intimately reconciled together to fulfill their inherent human relational need in God’s relational whole (as Paul clarifies in his polemic, Gal 3:26-29). Equal access does not threaten personness and wholeness for the church, but is a necessary key dynamic for their qualitative development whole-ly from inner out. Therefore, for a church to engage the necessary redemptive change that reconstructs its relational order and makes functionally significant ‘access without diakrino’ is relationship-specific to what whole-ly embodies church life and practice for only this relational purpose: the ongoing relational involvement with persons who are different, in order for them also to receive equally and experience intimately the ontological identity and relational belonging to the whole-ly God’s new creation family.

Second Key Dynamic: the contextual dynamic of reconciliation absorbing natural human differences and valid God-given distinctions

This is not a contradiction of the church without diakrino, but the acknowledgement of the fact of differences in natural human makeup and the reality of valid distinctions given by God, without the church engaging in the reducing dynamic of diakrino. The ancient Mediterranean world of Paul’s time was a diversity of both natural human differences and human-shaped distinctions. Yet, prior to its diaspora due to persecution (Acts 8), the early church community was a mostly homogeneous group who limited others who were different from access to be included in their house churches, table fellowships and community identity (e.g. Acts 6:1). Despite a missional program to the surrounding diversity, church practice had yet to relationally involve the reconciliation dynamic of family love to take in those persons and absorb (not dissolve) their differences, that is, on a secondary level without using any human differences (notably of the dominant group) to determine the primary level of church make-up in ontology and function (as Paul made conclusive, Col 3:15). This purposeful relational involvement necessitates a major contextual change in the church, especially for a homogeneous gathering, yet this change should not be confused with multiculturalism. Paul was pivotal in bringing such redemptive change to the church (e.g. 1 Cor 11:17-22; Gal 2:1-10), which is incompatible with any forms of reduced ontology and function.

Paul delineates a twofold reconciliation dynamic constituted by God’s relational process of family love. On the one hand, family love dissolves human-shaped distinctions and eliminates diakrino. Equally important, on the other hand, family love absorbs most natural human differences into the primacy of relationships together, but not dissolving or assimilating those differences into a dominant framework (Rom 12:4-5). The twofold nature of this reconciliation dynamic of family love is the functional significance of Paul’s integrated fight against reductionism and for wholeness (1 Cor 12:12-13). Yet, in order to be God’s relational whole, it is not adequate to include persons of difference for the purpose of diversity (e.g. to have a multicultural church). The relational process of family love extends relational involvement to those who are different, takes in and vulnerably embraces them in their difference to relationally belong integrally to the church family. This is the dynamic made essential by Paul for the church’s “unity of the Spirit in the bond of uncommon peace/wholeness” (Eph 4:3,16); and the relational outcome is not a hybrid church with a mosaic of differences but persons and relationships made uncommonly whole together in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

This reconciliation dynamic signifies the contextual change necessary for the church to be ongoingly involved in the relational process of absorbing natural human differences into the church without dissolving or assimilating those differences. Churches typically are not constructed with this design. This involves, therefore, a church’s willingness to change to adjust to differences and even to adopt some differences—that is, only those differences that are compatible with God’s relational whole and congruent with God’s relational terms. Redemptive change also involves the reflexive interaction between these contextual and structural dynamics for the necessary reconstruction of church to become the intimate equalizer in its new relational order. No claim can be made about having a church structure of access if the church’s context is not reconciling; conversely, a church cannot claim to be reconciling if equal church access is unavailable to others with differences.

In addition, just as Peter was chastened by Christ in his contextualized bias and theology, and humbled by Paul, making this contextual change functional in the church may require us to humbly accept the limitations of our current interpretive framework (phronēma) and lens (phroneō)—likely formed with a contextualized or commonized bias—to understand the significance of differences to the whole-ly God as well as of those in the whole-ly Trinity. It also requires us to honestly account for any outer-in bias necessitating the change of transformation to the whole phronēma and qualitative phroneō from the Spirit (as Paul delineated, Eph 4:22-25; Rom 8:5-6, cf. 12:2). This humility and honesty are essential for the church’s contextual dynamic of reconciliation to be of functional significance to absorb natural human differences into church life and practice as family together (cf. Eph 4:2).

The importance of these structural and contextual dynamics for the church to be whole as the intimate equalizer from inner out—distinguishing its whole-ly identity in the new relational order—also directly involve the other two interrelated key dynamics. These are dynamics for the individual person and our relationships. The four dynamics intensely interact together in reflexive relationship that suggests no set pattern of their development and function. Yet, there is a clear flow to each pair of dynamics—for example, there has to be access before differences can be absorbed—while in crucial and practical ways the latter pair will determine the extent and significance of the former’s function. The global church and all its persons and relationships, therefore, are accountable together for their ongoing involvement in these integral dynamics with the essential dynamic of nothing less and no substitutes.

Third Key Dynamic: the person’s inner-out response of freedom, faith and love to others’ differences

When a person is faced with differences in others, there is invariably some degree of tension for that person, with awareness of it or not. The tension signifies the engagement of our provincial context or ‘our little world’ we live in—that which is constructed from the limitations of the person’s perceptual-interpretive framework influenced by contextualized and commonized biases and shaped by culture in the surrounding context. This is why humbly accepting the limits of our particular way of thinking and honestly accounting for our bias in seeing other things in general and other persons in particular are both needed for the reconciliation dynamic to be whole together. What does a person(s) do with those differences in that relational context? The structural and contextual dynamics can be invoked by the church, yet their functional significance in the church interacts with and will ultimately be determined by each individual person’s response—a response whose significance must be composed in vulnerable relational terms and not be mere referential terms enhanced even with good intentions.

In everyday life, the person’s response will emerge either from outer in or inner out, and it may shift back and forth from one person and/or situation to another. What differences we pay attention to and ignore from our interpretive lens are critical to understand for the following ongoing interrelated issues: (1) what we depend on to define our person and maintain our identity; (2) then on this basis, how we engage relationships in these diverse conditions; and, thus (3), based on these two issues what level of relationship we engage in within the church. These are inescapable issues that each person must address as an individual and be accountable for, on the one hand, while the church community must account for these in practice at the same time.

Paul demonstrated the person’s inner-out response to others’ differences that is necessary both to be a whole person and to be involved in whole relationship together. In his fight for the whole gospel, Paul is also always fighting against reductionism. One aspect of the relational outcome of the gospel is the freedom that comes from being redeemed. Yet, for Paul the whole composing the gospel is not a truncated soteriology but the whole relational outcome of the full (pleroma) soteriology—what we are all saved to and not just from. This is a crucial distinction that we have yet to clearly distinguish in our theology and practice. In Paul’s whole theology and practice, he composes Christian freedom in the relational context of God’s relational whole, so that the relational purpose of Christian freedom and its functional significance would not be diminished, minimalized or abused in reductionism (Gal 5:1,13; 1 Cor 8:9). How would you assess the pervasive effort by many Christians and churches in the U.S. to exercise freedom of choice in the COVID-19 pandemic?

From this interpretive framework and lens, which counters contextualized and commonized biases, Paul highlights his own liberty and the nature of his relational response to others’ differences (1 Cor 9:19-23). As discussed earlier, the chameleon Paul deeply engaged the relational dynamic of family love in the vulnerable relational process of submitting his whole person to those persons, simply declaring “I have become all things to all people” (v.22). Clearly, by his statement Paul is not illustrating what to do with the tension in those situations created by human differences and how to handle those differences. Further clarification is needed, however, since his apparent posture can be perceived in different ways, either negatively or positively.

Given his freedom, Paul was neither obligated nor coerced to function according to the immediate context, in what appears to be an absence of self-identity in where he belongs. His response also seems to contradict his relational imperative to “Live as children of light” (Eph 5:8). Yet, in terms of the three inescapable issues for all persons (noted above), the person Paul presented to others of difference was not a variable personality who has no clear sense of his real identity (e.g. as light). Nor was Paul communicating to them a message of assimilating to their terms, and to try to fit into their level of relationship or even subtly masquerade in the context of their differences. Contrary to these reductionist practices, Paul engaged in practices of wholeness without the veil of outer-in distinctions. Since Paul did not define his person in quantitative terms from the outer in, he was free to exercise who he was from inner out and to decisively present his whole person to others even in the context of any and all of their differences (natural or not)—which always remained in secondary distinction from the primary. He openly communicated to them a confidence and trust in the whole person he was from inner out, the integrity of which would not be compromised by involvement with them in their difference and thus could be counted on by them to be that whole person in his face-to-face involvement with them—his righteousness integrated with the integrity of his identity. His involvement with them went deeper than the level of their differences and freely responded in the relational trust with the Spirit (the relational involvement of triangulation), in order to submit his whole person to them in their differences for the relational involvement of family love needed for the relational purpose “that I might by all means save some” (v.22). Paul submits his whole person to them in family love not for the mere outcome of a truncated soteriology of only being saved from—and perhaps for them to become members of a church—but for the whole relational outcome of also being saved to gained from “the whole gospel so that I may share in its blessings of whole relationship together as family” (v.23). Therefore, his inner-out response to others’ differences clearly distinguished to what and who Paul belonged.

It is essential for all in the global church to take Paul seriously and to highlight him along with Mary as the disciples of whole theology and practice necessary for the relational progression of the gospel. In the face of others’ differences, Paul neither distanced himself from them in the province of ‘his little world’ nor did he try to control them to assimilate and fit (or conform) into his world and the comforts of his framework—as witnessed historically in the Western church and presently in segments of the global church. In contrast, he acted in the relational trust of faith to venture out of his old world (and old wineskin ways of thinking, seeing and doing things) and beyond the limitations that any old interpretive framework (contextualized or commonized bias) imposes on personhood and relationships. Paul underwent such transforming (not reforming) changes in order to illuminate the wholeness of God in the midst of reductionism. In this relational process, he also illuminated the relational need of the person and persons together as church to have contextual sensitivity and responsiveness to others in their contextual differences, without losing the primacy of who and whose he was, or denigrating their own ontological identity of who and whose they were (cf. Paul in Athens, Acts 17, and Jesus at the wedding in Cana, Jn 2:1-11).

Clearly, Paul demonstrated the necessary response of the whole person from inner out to those differences in order to engage those persons in the reconciliation dynamic of family love for their experience to belong in the relational whole of God’s family. Yet, Paul’s response also demonstrated the needed changes within the individual person involving redemptive change (old wineskins, biases and practices dying and the new rising). This process addresses in oneself any outer-in ontology and function needing to be transformed from inner out (metamorphoo, as Paul delineated, Rom 12:2-3). This transformation from outer in to inner out not only frees the relational process for the new creation but directly leads to its embodying in the new relational order. Redemptive change must antecede and prevail in the relational process leading to reconciliation to the whole-ly God’s new creation family.

Change always raises issues, especially if it intrudes on our freedom to live as we want. In the freedom of the person’s inner-out response to submit one’s whole person to others in family love, the act of submitting becomes a reductionism-issue when it is obligated or coerced apart from freedom. There is a fine line between obligation and freedom, which is confused when our responses merely conform; it is also compounded in diverse contexts under the framework of honor-shame. Freedom itself, however, becomes reductionist when it is only the means for self-autonomy, self-determination or self-justification, because these are subtle yet acceptable substitutes from reductionism. Paul clarified that God never redeems us to be free for this end (Gal 5:1,13; cf. 1 Cor 7:35). God frees us from reductionism to be whole in both our persons and relationships (1 Cor 10:23-24). Redemption by Christ and what he saves from are inseparable from reconciliation and what he saves to. To summarize the relational process and outcome:

The integral function of redemptive reconciliation is the whole (nonnegotiable) relational process of the whole (untruncated) relational outcome of the whole (unfragmented) gospel. Anything less and any substitutes for any of these essential dimensions fragment the church and reduce its persons and relationships.

Therefore, it is crucial for our understanding of the inseparable functions of personness and human relationships, both within the church and in the world, to understand that deeply implicit in the wholeness of Christian freedom is being redeemed from those matters causing distance, barriers and separation in relationships—specifically in the relational condition “to be apart” from whole relationship together, which if not responded to from inner out leaves the inherent human relational need unfulfilled even within churches.

Paul’s exercise of freedom in submitting his whole person to others in family love was constituted by his whole theology and practice. This first involved the convergence of the theological dynamics of his complete Christology in full soteriology with whole pneumatology for transformed ecclesiology. This whole theology then unfolds in practice in order to be involved in the relationships together necessary for embodying the church in the relational order as intimate equalizer from inner out. This whole theology and practice are what Paul condenses in the gospel of transformation to wholeness vulnerably embodied and relationally enacted in the full-profile face of whole-ly Jesus (as in 2 Cor 4:6), which has the relational outcome ‘already’ of only whole persons agape-relationally involved in whole relationships together both equalized and intimate.

The integral function of whole persons and whole relationships together is deeply integrated, and their interaction must by their nature in relational terms emerge from inner out. For the person and persons together as church to have the functional significance of being equalized in intimate relationships, their ontology and function need to be whole from inner out—nothing less and no substitutes for the person and for relationships together. This inner-out process leads us from the key dynamic for the individual person to its interaction with the key dynamic for relationships.

Fourth Key Dynamic: relationships engaged vulnerably with others (different or not) by deepening involvement from inner out

The dynamic engaged within individual persons extends to their relationships. What Paul defined as his whole person’s inner-out response—“I have become all things to all people”—also defines his relational involvement with them by making his whole person vulnerable from inner out—“I have made my person vulnerable to all human differences for the primary purpose of inner-out relational involvement with all persons.” This decision to engage relationships vulnerably must be a free choice made with relational trust (the significance of faith in God) and in family love (the significance of experiencing God’s love), because there are risks and consequences for such involvement. On the one hand, the consequences revolve around one’s person being rejected or rendered insignificant. The risks, on the other hand, are twofold, which involves either losing something (e.g. the stability of ‘our little world’, the certainty of our interpretive framework and the identity of our belonging, the reliability of how we do relationships) or being challenged to change (e.g. the state of one’s world, the focus of one’s interpretive lens and mindset, one’s own identity and established way of doing relationships). The dynamic of ‘losing something-challenged to change’ is an ongoing issue in all relationships, and the extent of the risks depends on their perception either from outer in or from inner out.

For Paul, this is always the tension between reductionism and wholeness, that is, between relationships fragmented by limited involvement from outer in and relationships made whole by deepening involvement from inner out. Regardless of the consequences, Paul took responsibility for living whole in relationships for the inner-out involvement necessary to make relationships whole together, because the twofold risks were not of significance to those in wholeness but only to those in reductionism (cf. his personal assessment, Phil 3:7-9; also his challenge to Philemon).

As noted above, Paul appeared to qualify the extent of his vulnerable involvement in relationships by stating “I try to please everyone in everything” (1 Cor 10:33). The implication of this could be simply to do whatever others want, thereby pleasing all and not offending anyone (10:32)—obviously an unattainable goal that doesn’t keep some persons from trying, Paul not among them. Paul would not be vulnerable in relationships with this kind of involvement. Aresko means to please, make one inclined to, or to be content with. This may involve doing either what others want or what they need. Paul is not trying to look good before others for his own benefit (symphoros, 10:33). Rather he vulnerably engages them with the relational involvement from inner out that they need (not necessarily want) for all their benefit “so that they may be saved to whole relationship together in God’s family.” In his personal disclosure, Paul does not qualify the extent of his vulnerable involvement in relationship with others by safely giving them what they want. He qualifies only the depth of his vulnerable involvement by lovingly giving them what they need to be whole, even if they reject his whole person or try to render his whole function as insignificant (cf. 2 Cor 12:15). This depth for Paul enacted the first two inescapable issues that first defined his whole person and identity, and thereby engaged relationships with others’ differences—both of which mirrored how Jesus enacted his person in relationships and thus unmistakably identified Paul as his whole-ly disciple.

This deepening relational involvement from inner out to vulnerably engage others in relationship with one’s whole person certainly necessitates redemptive change from the prevailing ways of doing relationships in Christian diversity, including from a normative church interpretive lens of what is paid attention to and ignored in church gatherings and relationships together. This redemptive process then also includes the underlying biases not merely from diverse surrounding contexts but shaped by the common. If the vulnerability of family love is to be relationally involved, whether by the individual person or persons together as church, the concern cannot be about the issue of losing something—something that has no significance to the primacy of wholeness but creates tension or anxiety when the secondary is made primary. The focus on such risks will be constraining, if not controlling, and render both person and church to reduced ontology and function, hereby exposing the greater risk of our own existing condition being challenged to change and our need for it.

Therefore, our faith as relational trust in ongoing reciprocal relationship with the Spirit is critical for freeing us to determine what is primary to embrace in church life and practice and what we need to relinquish control over “for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of wholeness” (Eph 4:3; Gal 5:16,25). The bond of wholeness by its nature requires change in us: individual, relational, structural and contextual changes. With these redemptive changes for persons, relationships and churches (including infrastructure)—encompassing the three inescapable issues in their depth—the integral function of redemptive reconciliation can emerge in family love for vulnerable involvement with others (different or not) in relationships together from inner out. Such reconstruction by design becomes, lives and makes whole uncommonly in the new relational order, which is not a mere option, merely recommended or simply negotiable for churches and its persons and relationships. Anything less and any substitutes for persons, relationships and churches are no longer whole and uncommon but simply engage a reverse dynamic.

The dynamic flow of these four key dynamics is the dynamic of uncommon wholeness composing the experiential truth and relational reality of the re-image-d church’s ontology and function as the re-order-ed intimate equalizer from inner out. In ongoing tension and conflict with the church in the bond of wholeness is reductionism seeking to influence every level of the church—individual persons, relationships, its structure and context. For Paul, this is the given battle ongoingly extended into the church, against which reductionism must be exposed, confronted and made whole by redemptive change at every level of the church. While Paul presupposes the need for redemptive change given the pervasive influence of reductionism, he never assumes the redemptive-change outcome of the new emerging without the reciprocal relational involvement of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17-18; Gal 5:16; 6:8; Rom 8:6; Eph 3:16). Accordingly, the reciprocal nature of the Spirit’s relational involvement makes change in our persons, our relationships and our churches an open question. Our lack of reciprocal relational involvement makes the Spirit grieve (Eph 4:30).

God’s family has become the vulnerable dwelling of the whole and uncommon God (as Jesus made conclusive, Jn 14:23, and Paul definitively reinforced, Eph 2:19-22), yet this relational outcome has no relational significance as long as the curtain (holy partition) and veil are still present. God is vulnerably present and relationally involved for intimate relationship together. While we cannot be equal with God (perhaps the purpose for some in the practice of deification), we have to be equalized to participate in and partake of God’s life in his family together. That is, we cannot be intimately involved

with God from the basis of any of our outer-in distinctions, all of which signify the presence of the veil keeping us at relational distance. Those distinctions have to be redeemed without exception, so that we can be equalized from inner out and thereby reconciled in intimate relationship together; and this equalization is necessary to be transformed in relationships together as God’s whole and uncommon family. The transformed relationships that distinguish the church family must then be, without variation, both equalized and intimate. There can be no complete intimate involvement together as long as the veil of distinctions exists.

Distinctions focus our lens on and engage our practice from outer in, unavoidably in comparative relations that create distance, discrimination, separation and brokenness, all of which are incompatible with intimate relationships, and incongruent with equalized relationships. Therefore, the experiential truth and relational reality of the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace (never commonized) involve re-order-ing the church in the integral transformed relationships together of equalized persons in equalized relationships, the re-image-ing of those who are vulnerably involved in intimate relationships face to face, heart to heart as God’s whole and uncommon family as the intimate equalizing church.

Indeed, based on the uncommon peace of Christ that Paul makes the only determinant for the church (imperatively in Col 3:15), nothing less than equalized relationships and no substitutes for intimate relationships compose the new-order church family of Christ, whose wholeness distinguishes the church’s persons and relationships in their primacy of whole ontology and function in the qualitative image and relational likeness of the whole-ly Trinity. If we take Paul seriously, we cannot take him partially or use him out of his total context but need to embrace his whole theology and practice for ours to be whole also. Therefore, beyond any contextualized or commonized bias, what emerges from the church’s uncommon peace is the experiential truth of uncommon equality, which is the good news transforming the fragmentation and inequality of all persons, peoples, tribes, nations, and their human order and relations. The relational reality of this uncommon equality unfolds from the relational progression of this whole-ly church family as it is ongoingly involved in equalizing all persons, peoples, tribes, nations and their relationships—equalizing in whole relational terms composed by the redemptive reconciliation of uncommon peace.

Despite the extent of differences in the body of Christ, Jesus embodied the church to be nothing less than whole (complete together, pleroma, Eph 1:22-23). As the pleroma of Christ, the church body is neither a mere gathering of our differences nor merely a collection of these differences, as if their distinctions enhance the integrity of the church. In this sense, the metaphor of the body of Christ is insufficient to compose the whole-ly identity of the church as family, whose identity is composed only in the new relational order of the whole-ly Trinity.

So that the church is re-image-d unmistakably just in the Trinity and re-order-ed anew, Jesus enacted the good news for this relational purpose and outcome:

To compose the uncommon equality of his church family at the heart of its persons and relationships in whole ontology and function, and therefore unequivocally transformed them (1) to be redeemed from human distinctions and their deficit condition and (2) to be reconciled to the new relational order in uncommon transformed relationships together both equalized and intimate in their innermost, and thereby congruent in uncommon likeness with the wholeness of the Trinity.

Redemptive reconciliation is not optional but essential to the uncommon whole of who, what and how the church and its persons and relationships are to be in and for this essential work. This is the gospel of wholeness Jesus enacted to constitute the existential new creation as his uncommon church family in nothing less than the intimate equalizer.

Whether at the grassroots or as insiders, the diversity composing the global church is at a pivotal juncture for its theology and practice. For instance, in the cultural climate of the global church, though not likely in its theology, there is explicit or implicit practice that considers certain Christians as outsiders, if not designating them to this comparative status that stratifies the global church. Typically, these are not a theological decision but what evolve from the practice of a contextualized gospel. Thus, what encompasses this juncture in the global church converges in the composition of the gospel pervading this diversity, the prevalence of which should raise concern in the persons, peoples, tribes and nations of the global church.

Those in the global church have to examine the gospel we have claimed, and should wonder in the midst of our diverse condition: Do we have a different gospel and outcome determining the function for the church and its persons and relationships than the uncommon peace embodied by the Word: for “he came and proclaimed peace to you in a deficit position distinction and peace to those in a better position of distinction yet still in a reduced condition” (Eph 2:17)? Common peace affirms a variable gospel in diverse theology and practice. Consequently, this leads directly to the urgent need to determine the hue of the gospel embodied and enacted in the global church.

Therefore, when the hue of the gospel is not examined and its existential practice not scrutinized, what Christians and churches are saved to becomes elusive, which then renders the church to contextual imagining that leaves its persons and relationships in a diverse condition of a commonized order.

[1] I discuss Paul’s completeness in a previous study, The Whole of Paul and the Whole in His Theology: Theological Interpretation in Relational Epistemic Process (Paul Study, 2010). Online at http://www.4X12.org.

[2] Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues Shaping Our World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 246-47.

[3] An attempt pointed in this direction, yet still remaining within the limits and constraints of our condition, is found in Kay Higuera Smith, Jayachitra Lalitha and L. Daniel Hawk, eds., Evangelical Postcolonial Conversations: Global Awakenings in Theology and Praxis (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014).

[4] Quoted from the Lausanne Movement’s theological manifesto in The Cape Town Commitment: Part II (posted 1/28/2011). Online at https://lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment#p2-1.

[5] Discussed in Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 128-141.

[6] Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 157.

[7] See, for instance, the survey by the Barna Group, The State of Discipleship (The Navigators, 2015).

[8] David Naugle discusses worldview history and reification in Worldviews: the History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

[9] David S. Cunningham considers postmodernism an asset for developing a postmodern trinitarian theology, which would focus on a number of concerns neglected by theologians influenced by modernity. See his discussion in “The Trinity” in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 186-202.

[10] For example, see John D. Zizioulos, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985). Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991). Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).