Special thanks to Michael Hunter and The Reformed Conservative, where this was originally published, for permission to publish this on The Daily Genevan.
Natural Communities
Natural Communities
Part 1: Natural vs. Non-natural Communities
Part 2: Types of Natural Communities
Part 3: Challenges of Defining and Relating Natural Communities
Part 1: Natural vs. Non-natural Communities
In this article, I will briefly address two issues in the discussion about natural relations. First, I will address the nature of natural communities as distinct from non-natural communities. Second, I will address the types of natural communities and their relationships to each other and to non-natural communities.
First, what are divinely established natural communities? For the sake of this discussion, I am only addressing communities that include human beings.
Natural communities, first, are distinct from supernatural communities. Supernatural communities are of four kinds.
The first kind is the eschatological community, which includes all those moral, rational beings (God, angels, and men) who dwell together in eternal blessedness in the heavenly, Spiritual realm (cf. WLC Q. 90; WSC Q. 38). Though man was designed for this community from creation (cf. 1 Cor. 15:44b–46), he could only attain it through special providence, by way of covenant (cf. WCF 7.1; WLC Q. 20; WSC Q. 12), not by nature. And after the Fall, he could only attain this end through redemptive grace. Yet grace does not destroy nature; it restores and advances it. So the eschatological community, in which grace attains its end in the kingdom of glory, does not destroy natural identities and relations, but builds on and advances them. Male and female no longer marry in the eschatological state, for example, because there is no need for procreation (cf. Matt. 22:30). Yet human beings in this state remain male and female. Indeed, orthodox Christianity depends on this point. The resurrected and ascended Jesus continues to be male, and his resurrection is the pattern for our resurrection (cf. Phil. 3:21). Likewise, the resurrection does not destroy tribal, ethnic, or racial identities. Again, Jesus is the pattern. In his resurrection, he continues to be a son of David, from the tribe of Judah, an Israelite, and a Semite. So the resurrected saints will retain their familial, tribal, ethnic, and racial identities and the natural communities that depend on and arise from these identities (cf. Rev. 7:9).
The second kind of supernatural community is the intermediate heavenly community, which includes all those moral, rational beings (God, Christ [since his ascension], angels, and men’s souls) who dwell together in the heavenly realm prior to Christ’s return, the resurrection from the dead, and the eschatological state (cf. Heb. 12:22–24; WCF 32.1; WLC Q. 86; WSC Q. 37). This intermediate state is a consequence of the Fall, the end of which is death, including the separation of the soul from the body (cf. Rom. 6:23). The separation of the soul from the body is unnatural. It temporarily destroys, or at least impairs, our natural identities, on which our natural relations are grounded. Redemptive grace climaxes in the reunion of our souls and bodies, and so in the restoration of our natural identities and relations. While the chief joy of the resurrected state will be our perfect communion with God, and while we will enjoy fellowship with all God’s elect, we should be particularly eager to rise again from the dead with our own bodies, to regain our natural identities, and to reunite with our loved ones, the family and friends with whom we not only shared a supernatural, but a natural relationship on earth. And we should particularly celebrate God’s saving grace toward our tribe, nation, and race (cf. Rom. 9:3; 11:13–14).
The third kind of supernatural community is the spiritual community of God’s people on earth, which, since the Fall, is redemptive. This community is the invisible church militant and includes all human beings on earth who are united to Christ by Spirit-generated faith. As in the eschatological state, this supernatural community does not destroy or interfere with natural communities. Indeed, it cannot because it is concerned exclusively with man’s spiritual condition before God as righteous or unrighteous, not his natural identity (cf. John 3:6; 6:63; 8:15; Rom. 2:28–29; 9:3–5, 8; 11:14; 1 Cor. 15:50; 2 Cor. 4:16; 10:3–6; Gal. 3:3, 26–29; Eph. 2:11–13; 6:12; Phil. 3:3; Heb. 12:9). This is true of OT saints as well as NT saints (cf. Deut. 10:12; 30:6; 1 Sam. 16:7), so that, if natural identities and relations are important for God’s people in the OT (and they are), it is not because these natural identities and relations pertained to a man’s spiritual standing in the OT, but not in the NT. Rather, natural identity and community matter in both OT and NT because God created these natural categories and providentially works through them. For example, he communicates his covenant promises and other external elements of the covenant to families, tribes, nations, and races, at different times and to different degrees (cf. Acts 2:39; Rom. 3:1–4; 9:4–7; 11:17–24). Granted, some features of OT Israel were uniquely typico-symbolic, but natural communities were not among them. These communities are common to all humanity, and so God sometimes deals with other natural communities as he dealt with Israel’s natural communities. For example, God’s Word came to the nations of Europe and Christianized them, though not all Europeans belonged to this spiritual, redemptive community and though the Europeans who were redeemed were not redeemed on the grounds that they were European. Yet God, according to his good providence, brought his Word to the nations of Europe (which are natural communities), transformed them, and supernaturally saved many of their members while Native Americans, for example, had not heard the gospel and so remained lost in their sins. There is no room to boast here. There is nothing that we have that we did not receive (1 Cor. 4:7). But we also must not be ungrateful by ignoring the ways in which God has blessed some families, tribes, nations, and races in ways that he has not blessed others.
The fourth kind of supernatural community is the visible community of God’s people on earth, known as the visible church, the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the house and family of God (cf. WCF 25.2; WLC QQ. 62–63). At least two features distinguish this community from the third kind. First, this community includes those who “have tasted of the heavenly gift” and “have shared in the Holy Spirit,” yet who are not united to Christ by true faith and so are not among the elect and will not participate in the first two kinds of supernatural communities (Heb. 6:4–6). Second, as noted above, the invisible church, as such, does not recognize any natural categories. Regarding the spiritual state of believers, with which the invisible church is concerned, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). But in the visible church, the supernatural and the natural touch, because, though the visible church itself is a supernatural institution, it exists in a natural context. We have already noted how God providentially works through natural communities in the application of redemption, so that some families and tribes are included in the visible church long before others hear the gospel. And, indeed, the very structure of church authority reflects the intersection of the supernatural and the natural. Elders and ministers are primarily responsible for addressing spiritual affairs (Heb. 13:17), while deacons are responsible for addressing the temporal interests of the church (Acts 6:2–3). The narrative in Acts 6 demonstrates how much natural relations, not only moral qualities, can contribute to election to church office; the church chooses Hellenistic Jews, not Hebrews, as deacons to address the needs of Hellenistic Jewish widows, who were being overlooked (Acts 6:1, 5). Likewise, women, while enjoying all the spiritual benefits of union with Christ, are prohibited from holding offices in the church because of their natural condition (cf. 1 Cor. 14:34–35; 1 Tim. 2:12). And in the early church, Christian slaves, while recognized as fellow believers, were prohibited from holding ecclesiastical office for practical reasons arising from their socio-political status (cf. Apostolic Canons 82; Fifth Council of Orléans, canon 6).
Natural communities are also distinct from artificial communities.
Artificial communities are those non-supernatural communities that are not established by natural relations, but instead are humanly devised. They may be voluntary or involuntary. Examples of voluntary artificial communities include sports teams, businesses, and philanthropic organizations. Of course, antecedent natural communities and commitments may affect the membership of these artificial communities, to greater or lesser degrees. But these communities per se are artificial. Involuntary artificial communities include empires, for example, such as the Persian and Roman empires. The members of these empires are not included in the empire because of their natural relations. Rather, one people group subdues other people groups and organizes them into one political community.
The three types of community (supernatural, artificial, and natural) coexist, and a man can be a member of all three at the same time. The communities are not distinguished by chronology, but by the modes of relation in each community.
For example, a man may have a natural relationship with his son as his son, a spiritual relationship with his son as a brother in Christ, and an artificial relationship with his son as a teammate in a golf match. Of course, not all these relations are equally important, and some may inform others. But they do not destroy each other now, and even in the eschatological state, these communities will coexist. The important point here is that no one may appeal to the supernatural community and its relations to deny the reality or importance of the natural community and its relations. As noted above, spiritually, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free among those who are united to Christ by living faith. Yet Christians continue to belong to ethnic and racial groups. Christians continue to be either male or female. Christians continue to inherit certain socio-political arrangements. And these identities determine our duties in our natural communities.
Divinely established communities are distinct from manmade communities. Manmade communities are of two kinds. They are either artificial or natural. We have already addressed artificial communities above. Manmade natural communities are non-existent. They have no place in the Christian faith. Man is not the Lord of nature; God is. Whatever is natural is immediately created by God, or the providential outworking of natural principles inherent in creation. Natural communities, therefore, are not mere creations of human will, whether individual or collective, though human decisions shape the development of natural communities. Because these communities are divinely established, not manmade, they also impose obligations on us without our consent. To deny that God created and providentially governs nature, by asserting that nature is subject to man or that nature is an irrelevant accident, is essentially atheistic. Man may sinfully attempt to transcend nature and transgress its boundaries, or otherwise deny nature’s significance, but nature (or, rather, nature’s God) will always push back. We will refer to divinely established natural communities simply as natural communities, since no other kind exist.
A natural community, then, is a group of human beings bound together by characteristics either immediately created by God or providentially worked out of the natural principles inherent in creation. These communities can be divided into three types, corresponding to the kinds of natural characteristics on which they are based: communities of blood, communities of land, and communities of time. Natural communities of each type are either more general or more specific. We will discuss these natural communities in part 2.
Michael Hunter is a PhD candidate at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and an elder and licentiate in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. He received his BA in Greek from Wake Forest University, his MSt in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature from the University of Oxford, and his MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He has served as a translator or assistant editor on several projects, including Reformation Worship (2018), Disease, Scarcity, and Famine: A Reformation Perspective on God and Plagues (2021), and The Book of Ruth Explained in Twenty-Eight Homilies (2022).