What is Communion in General?

I’m reading John Owen’s book Communion with God.  One of the questions I had at the outset was, “What does ‘communion’ mean?”  The things that come to my mind when I think of “communion” are things like relationship, a sense of warm closeness, fellowship, or the Lord’s Supper.  Owen has a brief section entitled “What is Communion?” and here is what he says: communion is “a joint participation in anything whatever, good or evil, duty or enjoyment, nature or actions.”  So communion is, most basically, a joint participation.  Sharing something in common, whether nature, duty, enjoyment, actions.

More specifically, Owen says “communion is the mutual communication of such good things as wherein the persons holding that communion are delighted, bottomed upon some union between them.”  At first, this made me think of shared enjoyments.  If we share our common delight together, we are communing.  It made me think of John Piper’s book, The Pleasures of God, in which he discusses some things that God enjoys.  Communion with God would be sharing in his pleasures.  Loving what he loves.  Enjoying something in common and conversing about that enjoyment.

Then I noticed the odd word “bottomed.”  What it means is “grounded in.”  This communion is grounded in some union between the persons.  Of course, as Christians we have union with God through Jesus Christ.  We have been put in an unbreakable relationship with God through our union with Christ.  Built on the bedrock of that relationship, we can share with God “the mutual communication of” what delights us.

Then a couple paragraphs later I realized my initial understanding wasn’t quite what Owen was saying.  He writes, “Our communion, then, with God consists in his communication of himself to us, with our return to him of that which he requires and accepts, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him.”  So what Owen had in mind was not necessarily the mutual enjoyment of the same thing, although I don’t think that’s wrong.  What he describes here, though, is God’s self-communication to us of what delights us about him, followed by our giving back to him what he delights in from us.

To generalize, then, communion is two people who have a relationship giving and receiving what brings joy to the other.  Owen then applies this to us and each Person of the Godhead in the rest of the book.  It occurred to me, however, that this description of communion could be applied to any relationship.  If communion were only the shared enjoyment of the same thing, it would be hard to commune with people with whom we don’t have much in common.  But if communion is giving and receiving what gives joy to the other, then we can commune with anyone, if we love them and are willing to work at it.  At a “less spiritual” level, a rabid football fan and I could have communion if I make an effort to communicate to him what he loves, namely football, and he makes an effort to communicate to me what I love, namely biblical studies.  Not that we have to talk football and theology in every conversation, me saying, “How ’bout that awesome touchdown?” and he replying, “Yes, it reminds me of the perseverance of the saints.”  Rather, in the dynamic of the relationship (that which we are “bottomed” upon, as Owen put it), we try to take an interest in what delights the other.  This requires love and should produce increasing closeness.

These thoughts made me think of the book about the “love languages,” (which I’ve never read) that basically describes how different people feel loved through different means, and we should learn how to express love in the particular ways that are meaningful to each person.  This observation has proven true in my marriage.  What makes me feel loved doesn’t work for my wife, and what makes her feel loved doesn’t work for me.  We speak different love languages.  Yet I constantly try to love her in the way that makes me feel loved.  I babble at her in my foreign love language and get annoyed when she doesn’t understand.  According to Owen, if I want to have communion with my wife, then I need to give her what brings her joy, and she needs to return to me what gives me joy.  I shouldn’t selfishly insist that she be the same as me, but in love give to her what brings her joy.  We must have “the mutual communication of such good things as wherein . . . [we] are delighted, bottomed upon some union between” us.

NOTE: It’s either David Powlison or Ed Welch (both biblical counselors) who has a critique of the love languages book, in which he notes positives and negatives, specifically that if our goal is to make a person feel loved we must be careful that we are not merely pandering to the idols of their heart.  I’ve read the critique of the book, but not the book itself, so I’m not qualified to weigh in at this point.