Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 12
humans have an immaterial spirit which enables them to relate to God on a personal level.
Relationally, they have the ability to enter into healthy intimate relationships with other
humans. And physically, the human's body enables them to be like God, although He is
without a body, He sees, speaks, hears, and moves. Humans are like God in more ways
than all of the rest of creation (Wilkins, 1997b). But primarily how they are alike is in
their ability to be in relationship with others and God himself in an intimate way (i.e.
sociality).
How then does being like God impact our relationship to God and our relationships
to others? Anderson, (1997) draws on the theological arguments ofBonhoeffer in an
attempt to answer this question. Bonhoeffer (1963) suggests that Jesus Christ exists in the
spiritual structure of human sociality as community rather than in the institutional form of
the church. Bonhoeffer wrote that the spirit is necessarily created in community, and the
general spirituality of a person is woven into this net of sociality.
"It will appear that all Christian and moral content;as well as the entire spirituality of (persons), is possible and real only in sociality. Not only do the concepts of sin and of the church become more profound, but a way opens up to a Christian evaluation of community life....Here we have to show that (a person's) entire so-called spirituality, which is presupposed by the Christian concept of person and has its unifying point in self-consciousness.. .is so constituted that it can only be seen as possible in sociality" (pp. 43-44).
If what Bonhoeffer is saying is true, then the reality of spirituality is first of all a
social reality rooted in the nature of human personhood. The social structure of human
personhood is intrinsically spiritual (Anderson 1997). Anderson argues that the Spirit of
God joins the human spirit at the core of its social reality. At the core of the self is human
spirituality which then develops as the self has social relations with others.
Lee (1990) describes the very essence of humanness as inseparable and ontologically
bound to actual relationships to God, to each other, and to all creation. He describes
relationships as not just an artifact of human existence, but the very essence of being
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