Communion of saints

were.
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
Conscience can just as well be the ultimate prop for selfjustification
as the point at which Christ strikes home at man
Hearing the divine law in solitude and recog-
through the law.
nising his own sinfulness man comes to life again as an ethical
person, though in ethical isolation. With sin ethical atomism
enters into history.
This is essentially applicable to the spiritual
form. All the natural forms of community remain, but are
corrupt in their innermost core.
But man's perception of utter solitude in his responsibility
before God, of the utter particularity of his guilt, encounters
another perception, which, even though it seems to run directly
counter to the first, does not cancel it out, but rather deepens it
still further. The second perception is based upon an insight into
the qualitative nature of sin, that the misery caused by sin is
infinitely great; this means that it must have not only an
individual but also a supra-individual significance. Sin must be
imagined as a supra-individual deed, though of course as an
individual deed too ; it must be at the same time the deed of the
race and of the individual. Thus the perception that in sin one
is
to the highest degree alone leads to the other perception that
one's sin is to the widest extent shared, so that of inner necessity
we are once again directed from the one to the others, without
whom the existence and nature of the one could not be understood.
Two problems force themselves upon us here.
How should the
universality of sin be understood from the point of view of logic
and theology It is not enough simply to suppose it as a fact.
Secondly, how should we conceive of the empirical spreading of
sin throughout mankind The idea of the social significance of
sin has been developed dogmatically in the doctrine of original
sin.
A. ORIGINAL SIN
The doctrine of original sin assumes that sin is spread throughout
mankind, and inquires concerning the manner of its spread-
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