Communion of saints

SANCTORUM COMMUNIO
willing on the part of its members; it is not an ideal, but a reality.
It is a reality as truly as the church is the church of Christ and as
truly as the Body of Christ never attains to perfect representation
in history. In Christ all are one ; there are no more distinctions
there is not even any more multiplicity. All men are one, 'one
cake', as Luther puts it. 90 It is only all men together who can
possess Christ entirely, and yet each man possesses him entirely
too.
This unity arises from the fact that Christ 'is the One beyond
every other' (Barth). It must be believed, and it will always be
invisible.
This unity does not exist because the members in the
body have the same intentions ;
but they have the same intentions
only as members of Christ's body, if indeed they have any intentions
at all ; for they remain members even if they sin (cf. the
indicative sense of I Cor. 6.15). And yet there is no divine will
for men that is not realised in men, at least in its first beginnings
thus the objective unity subsisting in Christ is realised in the
persons, and it is only in being thus realised that it is objective
unity.
In Eph. 4.5 together with the 'one Lord' the 'one faith' is
mentioned—the faith in which the Lord declares himself and in
which he is present. The unity of faith is a unity 'without which
no oneness, be it of the State, of time, person, work or any other
thing whatsoever, makes a Christendom'. 91
Seen from below, it
is the very constituent of the church's unity, and this leads to
some important consequences about the necessity for a creed in
the worship of the congregation. The Christian congregation can
only assemble as a unity before God, and give practical proof by
its faith of the spiritual unity of Christ's church— 'Christ existing
as the church'—which is established by God and beyond our
sight. If it is the will of God that there is one Spirit, one Lord,
one God, constituting the church (constitutio— cives, see pp. i84f.),
then the creed is the congregation's affirmation of this constitution.
Indeed, seen purely from without, it is this constitution
itself in which the religious 'community' focuses its objective
knowledge of its own foundation, meaning and purpose, and
by which it is held together. It is another question altogether,
which we shall not discuss, whether the Apostles' Creed does
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