Communion of saints

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS
a doctrine of original sin is to be found in the Roman Catholic
philosopher Scheler, with whom we shall have to deal briefly.
and
We take up the threads of our systematic presentation,
must attempt to understand in ethical terms some basic sociological
concepts, such as the race, ascribing or imputing, and
collective person, before we attempt to understand the meaning
of the church.
The guilt of the individual and the universality of sin should be
conceived of together. The individual's guilty act and the guilt
of the race must be joined in our thinking.
So far as we mean by
'race' the concept of the biological species, we weaken the ethical
seriousness of the concept of guilt. We must therefore find a
concept of the species which is suitable to Christian ethics. We
have to understand the human species in terms of the concept of
sin. Hitherto it has only seemed possible to understand what the
human species is, in terms of nature. Children, idiots, and normally
developed people had all, it seemed, to be included
equally. But this necessarily led to a view of sin, of sacraments,
and of the church, that was ethically indifferent. From this it
follows that the Christian concept of guilt is incompatible with a
biological concept of the species.
So the concept of guilt must not
be understood in terms of the concept of the species,
but viceversa.
In this way we reach an ethical collective concept of the
race, which is able to meet the requirements of the idea of the
race's sin. The individual is then established as the self-conscious
and self-active person, which is the presupposition for ethical
relevance. And the race is understood as consisting of such
persons.
The idea of the sin of the race and the individual must be discussed
from the standpoint of the Christian concept of the race, of
mankind. How is it possible to conceive of the individual's act
of guilt and of the guilt of the race together, without making the
one the basis for the other, that is, excusing the one by the other
Augustine evidently thought that it was the sinful general act
which formed the basis for every individual act, and basically
Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas do not advance beyond this
position. Ritschl's thought takes the directly opposite course,
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