esus Christ and brought about by the Holy Spirit. Christ and
the Church, that is, the Holy Spirit and the holy Church, were
inseparably connected. The Church, or, in other words, the community of
all believers, attains her unity through the Holy Spirit. This unity
manifested itself in brotherly love and in the common relation to a
common ideal and a common hope.[140] The assembly of all Christians is
realised in the Kingdom of God, viz., in heaven; on earth Christians and
the Church are dispersed and in a foreign land. Hence, properly
speaking, the Church herself is a heavenly community inseparable from
the heavenly Christ. Christians believe that they belong to a real
super-terrestrial commonwealth, which, from its very nature, cannot be
realised on earth. The heavenly goal is not yet separated from the idea
of the Church; there is a holy Church on earth in so far as heaven is
her destination.[141] Every individual congregation is to be an image of
the heavenly Church.[142] Reflections were no doubt made on the contrast
between the empirical community and the heavenly Church whose earthly
likeness it was to be (Hermas); but these did not affect the theory of
the subject. Only the saints of God, whose salvation is certain, belong
to her, for the essential thing is not to be called, but to be, a
Christian. There was as yet no empirical universal Church possessing an
outward legal title that could, so to speak, be detached from the
personal Christianity of the individual Christian.[143] All the lofty
designations which Paul, the so-called Apostolic Fathers, and Justin
gathered from the Old Testament and applied to the Church, relate to the
holy community which originates in heaven and returns thither.[144]

But, in consequence of the naturalising of Christianity in the world and
the repelling of heresy, a formulated creed was made the basis of the
Church. This confession was also recognised as a foundation of her unity
and guarantee of her truth, and in certain respects as the main one.
Christendom protected itself by this conception, though no doubt at a
heavy price. To Irenaeus and Tertullian the Church rests entirely on the
apostolic, traditional faith which legitimises her.[145] But this faith
itself appeared as a _law_ and aggregate of doctrines, all of which are
of equally fundamental importance, so that their practical aim became
uncertain and threatened to vanish ("fides in regula posita est, habet
legem et salutem