To say that the being of God is the basis of human society may seem to anyone who believes in the procession of creatures from the divine, mind, conceived by his thought, made actual by his will, a statement of the obvious; indeed any theist would be likely to agree that since nature of ultimate truth must be the source of all truth and being, whatever theory of creation is held, it is from God that the shape of what concerns human destiny must descend. Any real belief in God affects our ideas about man and human society, but the Christian belief in the Trinity most profoundly tempers the structure of our thought.

The idea of society (as an unspecified notion, not tied down to this society or that, in one age or another), and of man's life in common is closely related to the mystery of divine society. It could hardly be otherwise since the fundamental doctrine of Christianity shows God knowing and loving, having within his essential unity true interchange and the mutual give-and-take indispensable to the concept of community or society.