Individuals, Persons, Collections and Communities

I have become quite sensitive to the word "individualistic" because for me it is redolent of the nominalist view that says only particulars--that is, discrete individuals--are real. Universals, systems, institutions and communities are simply mental constructions, not realities in themselves. So instead, I use the words "persons" and "communities." (BTW, I also do not like to use the word "collective," because for me it erases the uniqueness of each person. )

1) I prefer to use the word "person" rather than "individual." Persons are unique, and irreplaceable, but they are not "individuals" in the sense of being autonomous, discrete particulars. "No man is an island" and human beings are not monads. I am incomplete--indeed, inhuman--if I think I am.

2) I also prefer to use the word "community." We can speak of communities of persons, or animals, or plants. We don't speak of communities of stamps or rocks or coins or trading cards or artwork. Louisa May Alcott and Martin Luther King participate in a universal called "America"; Dr. Fauci particpates in the medical system and Ruth Bader Ginsberg participated in the institution "The Supreme Court." But in a post-Enlightenment world, where universals, systems, institutions, and communities are seen as individually or socially constructed, we do not speak of a Mickey Mantle baseball card "participating" in a community of baseball cards, or the diamond in my wedding ring "participating" in a system of gems, or the Mona Lisa "participating" in the institution we call the Louvre.

Human beings as "individuals" reduce to their wills; human beings as "persons" are more than just their wills.

The God-given drive for community is a result of our having been made in the image of God, with the most complete community being the Kingdom. When secularization rips away religious concepts like the Trinity, the Kingdom, sacrament, participation and imaging, it leaves us with only bare particulars. The fruit of nominalism is isolation and alienation, and the dismantling of institutions--not just religious institutions, but secular ones as well. We shrink from being persons-in-community to discrete, autonomous individuals. And yet that drive for relationship persists, only now it gets twisted, and instead of an organic community, we have a collection of individuals, or "tribe," in the current sense of the word. "Almost any disconnection from organic community leads people to extremism and anger," writes Russell Moore. And no wonder, because they are no longer able to aim at and act for the common good. Freedom (that is, the total unleashing of the will) not Love (the directing of the will towards the Good and the True) becomes their end.

MY BOTTOM LINE: The point at which a religious community becomes a religious collection is the point at which it becomes a hate group.