Communion of saints

NOTES
linking together in a communion. Cf. Spann, Gesellschaftslehre,
I44f. 'The communion of saints: in it, if I understand aright, the
saints are conceived of as beholding only God directly, while among
themselves they are linked only by their similar bond with the
divine Being ... in accordance with his own wish to be a sacred,
distinct state, and not a social one.' Even in the greatest work we
have on theological sociology we find the proposition that the saints
are solely in God, and are thus linked only indirectly with each
other. (Cf. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches,
ig3 1, 56: 'In the last resort the idea of fellowship springs from
the fact that those who are being purified for the sake of God meet
in Him.') cf. Scheler, Formalismus, 519.
59. W. ed. x, Part 1.1, 100—iv, 280; Holl, Luther, 10 1.
60. W. ed. 11, 750. Sermon von dem Hochwiirdigen Sakrament des heiligen
wahren Leichnams Christi, 15 19. Here Luther presents some splendid
and profound thoughts upon the question.
61. Ibid., 749: '. . . Thus we too are truly drawn and transformed into
the spiritual body, that is, into the communion of Christ and all
saints. . . .'
750: 'That is to say transformed through love in each
other.' Baader expresses this by saying that 'with the blood of
Christ's sacrifice' the heart's blood of each individual man was
made fluid again and thus made free; in this wise man was
delivered and redeemed from the petrifaction of his selfhood.
Schriften zur Gesellschaftsphilosophie, Die Herdflamme, 781.
62. Lohmeyer, Zum ^e
S W r der religiosen Gemenschaft, 83 . . . 'This
expression of a state where all things melt into one, which no longer
knows the frontiers between the I and the Thou, because in its
religious exuberance it overlooks, as indeed it is bound to do, the
basic fact of the I's singularity.'
63. W. ed. 11, 749: 'Our sins afflict him just as in return his righteousness
is our protection.'
64. Ibid., 745.
65. Tesseradecas consolatoria pro laborantibus et oneratis, 1520. W. ed. vi,
131: onus meum portant alii, illorum virtus mea est, castitas aliorum
meae libidinis tentationem suffert, aliorum ieiunia mea lucra sunt, alterius
oratio pro me sollicita est. Atque ita vere congloriari possum in aliorum
bonis, tanquam meis propriis, atque tunc vere et mea sunt, sic gratulor et
congaudeo eis . . . eorum merita ( /) meis medebuntur peccatis.
66. Ibid., 132: quare si dolemus, si patimur, si morimur, hue feratur intutus,
etfortiter credamus ac certi simus, quod non nos aut non soli, sed Christus et
Ecclesia nobiscum dolet, patitur, moritur . . . comite tola Ecclesia viam
passionis et mortis ingredimur.
67. W. ed. 11, 745.
68. W. ed. 10. m, 1; 9th March, 1522.
229