The Communion of Saints

Wednesday After Pentecost

Many thanks to Chris and to Jennifer for their comments. I'll respond, as usual, on Friday.

On Wednesdays the blog has been dealing with difficult things in the Apostles' Creed. There are a couple of things that I suspect many Christians don't know the exact meaning of. The Communion of Saints is one of those. When I was a kid I thought it had something to do with the people represented in the stained glass windows coming down the aisle for communion service and taking the bread and wine. I also thought that Jesus was a track and field judge. He would judge the quick and the dead.

The communion of saints is all Christians living and dead being of one holy church with Christ as its head. Here's where things start getting tricky. First problem: Who is a saint?

Although I don't remember reading this anywhere, I've always made a distinction between Saints (capital S) and saints (lower case s). For Catholics Saints are dead Christians who have met certain requirements that get them elevated to sainthood. They will be called St. Anne, for example, rather than simply Anne (It's Saint Anne in English, Anna in many other languages, including the original Aramaic). St. Anne was Jesus' grandmother (not mentioned in the Bible but in numerous other early Christian books). Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans (Episcopalians) have most of these saints but also others that they have chosen. Methodists don't have such Saints---well, actually we do, it's just that we limit our Saints to New Testament followers of Jesus. We're ok with having a St. Paul's United Methodist Church or a St. Luke's UMC, but not with, say, a St. Augustine's UMC. Catholics believe you can pray to specific Saints to intercede for you with God. I was a bit surprised, however, when I read the Roman Catholic Apostles' Creed. They have "communion of saints," rather than "communion of Saints."

Now we come to saints (lower case s). All Christians, living or dead, are saints. The word saint means "holy one." We are made holy by faith in Christ. We are all one body in Christ. This brings us to problem two: What about people who aren't Christians? Whew, I've been dealing with that one all my life. I'm pretty close to being a universal salvationist. I believe there is a Hell, but that its population is very small. Non-Christians are not automatically condemned to Hell. Check out this coming Saturday's Bible study on the blog. It will be on 1 John 2:1. Are non-Christians in the communion of saints. By the standard definition they are not. Can I be an universal salvationist and still have a restrictive communion of saints? Honestly, I have never thought about this question until now. I going to take a stab at an answer. I am open to having my mind changed. Right now, I'm going with the standard definition, that only Christians are the communion of saints. People who aren't Christians aren't necessarily in Hell, or purgatory, or something. They could  be in heaven (check out 1 Corinthians 7:12-14, which may take that further than I am).

A third problem: Does the communion of saints mean that we can be in any way be in commun--ication with our dead loved ones? Whew, I'll save that one for another time. This blog has turned out to be a lot harder thought it would. I look forward to the "resurrection of the body" next week. 

Incidentally, my favorite hymn is, "For All the Saints." Alas, we sing it only once a year, on All Saints Sunday.

Faithfully,

Christian