Meal community

Drawing on the work of Matthias Klinghardt, Claudio Carvalhaes ( Eucharist and Globalization , 37-8) claims that in the Greco-Roman world the term koinonia had the primary meaning of “meal community.”

He adds, “Within the meal communities the values of society were upheld, developed and expanded (e.g., mutuality, joy, modest, order, peace, etc.) which were the values of charis . The banquets were schools that spread social values, teaching the individual how to behave in society and be an active citizen of the polis. The meals enforced justice, equality, and friendship: koinonia , isonomia , philia .”

At symposia, the individual experienced the order of society and received “practical knowledge of the division, social rank, and differences in society and state, and in the highest utopian ideas of homonoia , i.e., harmony, unity and peace. In this sense, community meals were enacting a utopian community held in eschatological expectations, while embracing the present experience of social reality.”

This, of course, forms an important setting for the Christian uses of the term, which also carries the connotations of shared bread and common meals that portrayed the ideal of Christian social life.