This communion which the saints have with Christ does not make them in any wise partakers of the substance of His Godhead; or to be equal with Christ in any respect: either of which to affirm is impious and blasphemous. Nor does their communion one with another, as saints, take away, or infringe the title or propriety which each man has in his goods and possessions.
The final paragraph of this chapter deals with two particular issues the divines evidently thought they needed to address.
1. Christians do not become partakers of the substance of the Godhead by virtue of their spiritual union with Christ. This is probably meant to counter the Eastern Orthodox concept of divinization (theosis), the teaching that the ultimate destiny of Christians is to become divine themselves, based in part on a too-literal reading of 2 Peter 1:4.
2. Christians retain individual property rights. Some have tried to make the practice of the early church as recorded in Acts normative, but they evidently overlook such qualifiers as Peter's words to Ananias in Acts 5:4. No Christian may trade on his relationship to another Christian by demanding the latter's private property. That the latter may choose to (indeed, in some circumstances should) share his material goods with the former is a matter of conscience.
Tomorrow: Introducing the sacraments.
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