On unity.

What is unity? What needs to be the case for unity to be possible? What sort of entities can the concept of unity be sensibly applied to? What things can be said to have or not have unity? It doesn’t make sense to speak of unity between a sheep and a fox because unity is not possible. It makes no sense because it is not possible. It is not possible because they are not of one. It does, however make sense, to speak of unity between a herd of sheep. It makes sense because unity is possible. It is possible because they are of one. 

 

Can we sensibly speak of the unity of a chair? No, we cannot. It makes no sense to ask whether a chair has unity just as it doesn’t make sense to speaking of the unity of a single sheep. It doesn’t make sense because they are already one with themselves. We cannot sensibly speak of the unity of something with itself. It doesn’t make sense because they are one and the same, and because they cannot not be one with themselves. It make no sense to speak of their unity because their unity is not only a possibility, but a certainty. Unity can only be applied to things that are unifiable and divisible. If it makes sense to speak of the unity of something, a herd, a people, a church then it will also make sense to speak of its division. 

 

Thus, unity is not merely a description of what is, but also what can be, of the possibilities, the potential to be unified and divided. What cannot be divided cannot be unified. What can be unified ought to be unified. 

 

Unity can only be applied to things that are not one and the same, but are of one and ought to become one. Unity is a call for the not yet but ought to be. 

 

This might be blasphemy, possibly heretic, but I’d like to think that there was no sense to be speak of the unity of God without humans and before sin. It is sin, that introduced the possibility of division, that made it possible to speak of the unity of God sensibly. Jesus is God’s attempt to unify himself, a successful attempt of self-reconciliation. What is tearing us apart, is treating him apart. What cannot tear him apart, cannot tear us apart.