Communion of saints

SANCTORUM COMMUNIO
2. The Holy Spirit and the church of Jesus Christ— the actualisation of
the essential church
The church is established in reality in and through Christ—not
in such a way that we can think of the church without Christ
himself, but he himself 'is' the church. He does not represent it,
for only what is not present can be represented. But in God's
eyes the church is present in Christ. Christ did not make the
church possible, but he realised it for eternity. If this is so, Christ
must be accorded central significance in the temporal actualisation
of the church. This place is given him through the Word,
impelled by the Spirit, of the crucified and risen Lord of the
church. The Spirit is capable of operating only through this
Word. If there were an unmediated operation of the Spirit then
the idea of the church would be individualistic, and thus be dissolved
at its very source. In the Word, however, the most profound
social relationships are established from the outset. The
Word is socially determined not only in its origin, but equally in
its aim. The linking of the Spirit with the Word expresses that
the Word is intended for a plurality of hearers, and a visible sign
is set up, by which the actualisation is to be brought about.
The Word, however, is qualified by being the Word of Christ
himself, brought by the Spirit to the hearts of the hearers as an
active force. Christ himself is in the Word; the Christ in whom
the church is consummated seeks through his Spirit to win man's
heart, in order to fit it into the actualised church of Christ. But
in the Word of Christ the actualised church is also present, just
as every Word of Christ comes from the church and exists only in
it.
If anyone should ask how the actualised church could be
present at the time of the first preaching of the Word of Christ,
before the individuals who were moved by that Word joined
together to form a church, he would be forgetting the ideas we
previously presented : that the Spirit is solely the Spirit of the
church, of the community, and that there were thus no individuals
moved by the Spirit before there was a community.
115