Orthodox Forge

Christian Concepts and Everyday Life

What is the Christian understanding of social cohesion?

Q1306 · Social Cohesion

Collective and individual acts of love are closely linked to spiritual worship. Worship ought to proceed from hearts that are full of love and perform these acts with joy and delight as a living expression of union with God, the Father of all, and of our unity together as members in the one body. Those who perform such acts of love consider them to be something natural emanating from their membership in the family of God, so to speak. The scholar Tertullian says, “How much more fittingly they are called and counted brothers who have been led to the knowledge of God as their common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of a common ignorance have agonized into the same light of truth! One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another.”1002