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The important terms in this alternative interpretation are not only "the holy catholic \[visible\] church," "the invisible church," and "the communion of saints," but also "the people of God." By "the people of God," I understand (in terms analogous to Maurice's) humanity in right relation to God (or, more generally, strictly ultimate reality), even as I understand "the world" to mean humanity out of such right relation. Thus the people of God is invisible in the same sense in which the invisible church is \-\- and for the same reason: because it includes all human beings who understand themselves authentically and are therefore visible as doing so to God alone i.e., all true Christians as well as all other persons who actualize substantially the same self-understanding, albeit through means other than the specifically Christian means of salvation. By "the communion of saints," then, I understand the encompassing community of holy persons and holy things in which the invisible people of God so understood is visibly realized.

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Thus the communion of saints is the community of all whom I have sometimes distinguished as the _explicitly_ called, together with all the various means \-\- including things as well as persons \-\- through which their call has explicitly come to them. Included within this encompassing community of the explicitly religious as well as of all who have a real option of becoming such is that much smaller community properly called "the holy catholic \[visible\] church," understood as the community of all whom I distinguish from my Christian standpoint as the _decisively_ called. By the same token, the people of God is the community of all the chosen, or elect, whatever the means through which they have been called and by the right use of which through faith they have been chosen through their own choosing. Included, then, within this encompassing community of the chosen or elect is the much smaller community of the invisible church, understood as the community of all who have been chosen through the specifically Christian means of Christ and the holy catholic (visible) church with its word and sacraments \-\- and faith.

In sum: what is properly meant by "the communion of saints" may be clarified by the following analogia proportionalitatis: as the holy catholic (visible) church is to the invisible church, so the communion of saints is to the people of God.

December 1995; rev. 3 September 2003

                                                                                            "The Communion of Saints"

This phrase from the Apostles' Creed refers to the indefinitely larger community of holy persons and holy things (analogous to the visible church) in which I necessarily share precisely in being a member of the visible church. If decisive revelation sublates all other specific revelations, then one cannot share in the community that bears it without eo ipso sharing in all the other communities whose revelations are sublated by it, and thus in the indefinitely larger community embracing all such communities.

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Given such a distinction, however, I obviously need to revise the view I have previously defended in some such way as this:

              1. The rule of God is the necessary condition of the possibility both of the people of God and of the world as the two communities established respectively by authentic and inauthentic response to God's rule.

              2. Thus one could say, in a formulation parallelling but materially differing from Maurice's, that the people of God is simply humanity in right relation to God, while the world is that same human community out of right relation to God.

              3. The church, however, is to be distinguished from the people of God as a sacrament or sign is to be distinguished not only from the grace of God through Jesus Christ, but also from the Christian faith in God of which it is also the sacrament or sign. True, the church is invisible as well as visible, and it is only the visible church that can be said to be analogous to a sacrament or sign. But even the invisible church, properly so-called, is to be distinguished from the people of God, as the community of those who, having accepted the call to membership in the visible church, are also known by God, although only by God, to have a true and saving Christian faith, in distinction from all those who have otherwise, and through other means, also responded authentically to God's rule.

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3. The church in this sense, however, is the invisible church, which is to be distinguished although never separated from the visible church -- analogously to the way in which the unincarnate Christ as the implicity implicit primal source of our authentic existence is to be distinguished although never separated from the incarnate Christ through whom this source is explicitly and decisively re-presented.

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