Chapter 4
peccator as Stellvertreter, the Gemeinde readily accepts its title as peccatorum communio transformed by the skandalon into Sanctorum Communio, offering Jesus its sin in happy exchange for his righteousness. The peccatorum communio is forever the Gemeinde and the Gemeinde is forever at best only a transformed peccatorum communio precisely because it retains its daily need for the Holy Spirit’s purging of what it never loses—its sin as sinners. Luther’s simul restates the same principle. The Lord of the peccatorum communio is the maximus peccator. Germane to the etymological analysis, it’s useful to note Luther’s vernacular (read indigenous) to communicate theologically. So important for Luther is the element of the “common,” that his use of the ordinary-everyday defines the church. Luther’s understanding of language puts into practice his doctrine of the person of Christ, including the disputes over the Lord’s Supper. This is the practice of the ecclesia. All words are made new when they are transferred from their own to another [semantic] context . . . where this happens, there is the church (ubi verbum, ibi ecclesia).11
Westhelle argues that Luther recreated language, even if it meant a transgressing of boundaries, to give voice to the oppressed. “For Luther, the Word cannot exist without the people of God, and neither can the people of God exist without the Word of God.”12 Implicit to Westhelle’s argument is Luther’s capax where liberating grace dismisses “a worthiness for capacity” as criterion to convey the Word who became flesh. “It is therefore in language and its limits that we will find also Luther’s 11 Vitor Westhelle, “Communication and the Transgression of Language in Martin Luther,” Lutheran Quarterly Vol. XVII, Number 1 (Spring 2003): 3. 12 Ibid., 4, from WA 50:657-661. 172