ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q020 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> PAUL: When the creeds confess the church, they use the phrase, communion of saints. What does this phrase mean exactly? Is there a difference between the communion of saints and the holy Christian church? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: The question that you ask there, Paul, raises two alternatives, really. And that is whether you want to understand the Christian church, as we speak of it there in the Apostles' and the Nicene Creed, whether you understand it as the communion of people, that is, believers, all those who have been baptized, who have been sanctified by the Holy Spirit and who believe in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So you're asking me whether we could say that the Christian church is understood or is equal to the element of faith; namely, that it is a communion of believers. I think The Reformation, and especially Luther, chose to have that interpretation of the Christian church. They believed that all Christians, are embraced or do embrace the concept of church, the Christian church. The other alternative, and that seems to be one of a lesser degree in the early church, is that whether one could not understand the communion of saints or something like a fellowship around sacred things. In this sense, the word sanctorum, the Latin word, genitive plural, would be in the neutral sense, namely of things, communion of things. Here I would say, however, in the understanding of The Reformation, that the church is defined as that of faith, of believers, but at the same time we could say and add to it, as the Augsburg Confession 7 -- later on we�ll hear about it -- says namely that the church of believers is gathered around sacred things, namely, word and sacraments. But in the first place, I think we should start with the understanding of the Christian church as being the communion of believers, saints such as you and I who have been baptized and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And then we also embrace a concept that those believers are found there where the sacred things are found, namely, word and sacraments.