() is a

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or ...

form of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

word , which refers to concepts such as fellowship, joint participation, the share which one has in anything, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution. It identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

church, the Body of Christ. The term may have been borrowed from the early Epicureans—as it is used by Epicurus' Principal Doctrines 37–38.Norman DeWitt argues in his book ''St Paul and Epicurus'' that many early Christian ideas were borrowed from the Epicureans. The term communion, derived from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''communio'' ('sharing in common'), is related. The term "Holy Communion" normally refers to the Christian rite also called the

Eucharist The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...

New Testament

The essential meaning of the embraces concepts conveyed in the English terms community, communion, joint participation, sharing and intimacy. can therefore refer in some contexts to a jointly contributed gift. The word appears 19 times in most editions of the Greek New Testament. In the

New American Standard Bible The New American Standard Bible (NASB) is an English translation of the Bible. Published by the Lockman Foundation, the complete NASB was released in 1971. The NASB relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew and Gre ...

, it is translated "fellowship" twelve times, "sharing" three times, and "participation" and "contribution" twice each. appears once in the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond th ...

, in Leviticus 6:2 It is found in 43 verses of the New Testament as a noun (''koinōnia'' 17x, ''koinōnos'' 10x, ''sugkoinōnos'' 4x), in its adjectival (''koinōnikos'' 1x), or verbal forms (''koinōneō'' 8x, ''sugkoinōneō'' 3x) . The word is applied, according to the context, to sharing or fellowship, or people in such relation, with: * a divine nature (), God (), the Father and His Son (), Jesus, Son of God (), his sufferings (; ), his future glory (), the Holy Spirit (; ) * the blood and the body of Christ (), pagan sacrifices and gods () * fellow Christians, their sufferings and the faith (; ; , ; ; ; , ) * a source of spiritual favours (), the gospel (), light and darkness () * others' sufferings and consolation (; ), their evangelizing work (), their graces or privileges (; ), their material needs, to remedy which assistance is given (, ; , ; ; ; ; ) * the evil deeds of others (; ; ; ; ) * the bodily human nature all have in common () * a work partnership, secular or religious (; ) Of these usages, Bromiley's International Standard Bible Encyclopedia selects as especially significant the following meanings: :I. Common life in general (only in ) :II. Communion between particular groups, the most remarkable instance of which was that between Jews and Gentiles :III. Communion in the Body and Blood of Christ :IV. Sharing in divine revelation and with God himself ().

Aspects

Sacramental meaning

The

is the sacrament of communion with one another in the one body of Christ. This was the full meaning of eucharistic in the early

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

.Hertling, L. ''Communion, Church and Papacy in Early Christianity''. Chicago: Loyola University, 1972. St.

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas, OP (; it, Tommaso d'Aquino, lit=Thomas of Aquino; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican friar and priest who was an influential philosopher, theologian and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism; he is known wi ...

wrote, "the Eucharist is the sacrament of the unity of the Church, which results from the fact that many are one in Christ."ST III, 82. 2 ad 3; cf. 82. 9 ad 2.

Between churches

By metonymy, the term is used of a group of Christian churches that have this close relationship of communion with each other. An example is the

Anglican Communion The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million members within the Church of England and other ...

. If the relationship between the churches is complete, involving fullness of "those bonds of communion – faith, sacraments and pastoral governance – that permit the Faithful to receive the life of grace within the Church", it is called full communion. However, the term "full communion" is frequently used in a broader sense, to refer instead to a relationship between Christian churches that are not united, but have only entered into an arrangement whereby members of each church have certain rights within the other. If a church recognizes that another church, with which it lacks bonds of pastoral governance, shares with it some of the beliefs and essential practices of Christianity, it may speak of "partial communion" between it and the other church.

Between the living and the dead

The

communion of saints The communion of saints (), when referred to persons, is the spiritual union of the members of the Christian Church, living and the dead, but excluding the damned. They are all part of a single " mystical body", with Christ as the head, in which ...

is the relationship that, according to the belief of Christians, exists between them as people made holy by their link with Christ. That this relationship extends not only to those still in earthly life, but also to those who have gone past death to be "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8) is a belief among some Christians. Their communion is believed to be "a vital fellowship between all the redeemed, on earth and in the next life, that is based on the common possession of the divine life of grace that comes to us through the risen Christ". Since the word rendered in English as "saints" can mean not only "holy people" but also "holy things", "communion of saints" also applies to the sharing by members of the church in the holy things of faith, sacraments (especially the

), and the other spiritual graces and gifts that they have in common. The term "communion" is applied to sharing in the Eucharist by partaking of the consecrated bread and wine, an action seen as entering into a particularly close relationship with Christ. Sometimes the term is applied not only to this partaking but to the whole of the rite or to the consecrated elements.

Between individual Christians

A Christian fellowship is a community,

social club A social club may be a group of people or the place where they meet, generally formed around a common interest, occupation, or activity. Examples include: book discussion clubs, chess clubs, anime clubs, country clubs, charity work, criminal ...

benefit society A benefit society, fraternal benefit society, fraternal benefit order, friendly society, or mutual aid society is a society, an organization or a voluntary association formed to provide mutual aid, benefit, for instance insurance for relief fr ...

, and/or a

fraternal organization A fraternity (from Latin ''frater'': "brother"; whence, " brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men associated together for various religious or secular aims. Fraternity i ...

whether formal or informal of Christians that worship, pray, cooperate, volunteer, socialize, and associate with each other on the foundation of their shared Christian faith. Members of Christian fellowships may or may not be part of the same church congregations or denominations, although many are associated with a given local church congregation (in turn possibly associated with a given denomination) or an

interdenominational Interdenominationalism is an evangelical Protestant movement of cooperation among various Christian denominations. History The movement has its origins in the founding of the London Missionary Society, a missionary society, in 1795 by variou ...

group of several local area congregations, some are established as

parachurch Parachurch organizations are Christian faith-based organizations that work outside and across denominations to engage in social welfare and evangelism. Parachurch organizations seek to come alongside the church and specialize in things that indiv ...

voluntary associations A voluntary group or union (also sometimes called a voluntary organization, common-interest association, association, or society) is a group of individuals who enter into an agreement, usually as volunteers, to form a body (or organization) to ac ...

or student societies, and others form out of casual non-denominational friend groups/social groups among individual Christians in some way affiliated with universities, colleges, schools, other educational institutions, community centers, places of employment, or at any other place, entity, or among neighbors and acquaintances, made up of people who worship, congregate, and socialize together based on shared religious beliefs.Norman DeWitt argues in his book ''St Paul and Epicurus'' that many early Christian ideas were borrowed from the Epicureans.

In popular media

was the final word to be spelled out for the 91st Scripps National Spelling Bee. It was correctly answered by Karthik Nemmani, a 14-year-old Indian-American boy from

McKinney, Texas McKinney is a city in and the county seat of Collin County, Texas. It is Collin County's third-largest city, after Plano and Frisco. A suburb of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, McKinney is about north of Dallas. The U.S. Census Bureau l ...

References

Bibliography

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External links

Lexicon entry for ''koinonia'', common domain
{{Authority control Christian terminology Ecclesiology New Testament Greek words and phrases Fellowships Types of Christian organization