Theology and the Social Consciousness Part 11

1. _Christ a Personal Revelation of G.o.d._--This recognition of the personal in Christ will mean, first, that we are to conceive Christ as a _personal_ revelation of G.o.d, rather than as containing in himself a divine substance.[96] It cannot forget, that if G.o.d is a person, and men are persons, the adequate self-revelation of G.o.d to men can be made only in a truly personal life; and that men need above all, in their relation to G.o.d, some manifestation of his ethical will, and this can be shown only in the character of a person. A merely metaphysical conception of the divinity of Christ in terms of substance or essence, as these are commonly thought, must, therefore, wholly fail to satisfy. We must be able to recognize and bow before the personal will of the personal G.o.d revealed in Christ, if we are really to find G.o.d through him. A strong sense of the personal, then, such as the social consciousness evinces, must see in Christ, above all, a personal revelation of a person.

2. _Emphasizing the Moral and Spiritual in a.s.serting the Supremacy of Christ._--This implies that the dominant sense of the value and sacredness of the person will certainly tend to bring into prominence the moral and spiritual in a.s.serting the supremacy of Christ, rather than the metaphysical or the simply miraculous. So far as these latter come into its representation at all, they will follow rather than precede, and be accepted because of the moral and spiritual, or as simply working hypotheses enabling us to bring into a thought-unity what we have to recognize in the moral and spiritual realm. If one faces the matter fully and frankly, is it not plain that Christians of all shades of belief are increasingly finding the real reason for their faith in Christ in his moral and spiritual supremacy? Many may choose to _express_ their faith in him, when once reached, in terms of the miraculous or metaphysical; but the miraculous and the metaphysical are not the primary _reasons_ for their faith. It is the inner spirit of Christ himself which really masters us and calls out our confident faith and our eager submission. And it is only when we have already gotten this sense of the stupendousness of his personality, that the so-called miraculous in his life becomes to our thought natural and fitting, and we are driven to think him standing in some unique relation to G.o.d and so requiring to be conceived in unique metaphysical terms.

It is easy, no doubt, to indulge in a false polemic against the miraculous and metaphysical. One of the surest bits of autobiography we have from Christ, the narrative of the temptations, implies, as Sanday has acutely pointed out,[97] the clear consciousness on the part of Christ of the possession of what we call supernatural powers.

It is a far less simple problem to rid the gospels of the miraculous element, than our age, with its greatly exaggerated estimate of the mathematico-mechanical view of the world, is likely to think. The so-called miraculous in connection with Christ is not to be impatiently and dogmatically set aside.[98] So, too, the demand of thought, that we form finally some metaphysical conception of the great personality which we meet in Christ cannot be denied as wholly illegitimate. All this is to be freely granted and a.s.serted.

But it is of the greatest importance for Christian thought, that it still keep Christ's own absolute subordination of both the miraculous and metaphysical to the moral and the spiritual. The same narrative of the temptation, that so clearly implies supernatural powers in Christ, has its whole point in Christ's answering determination absolutely to subordinate these supernatural powers to moral and spiritual ends. His whole ministry evinces the greatest pains upon this point. And he evidently thinks a theory of his metaphysical relation to G.o.d (as ordinarily conceived) of so little vital importance that even such slight hints as we get of it in the New Testament apparently do not come from him at all. The present tendency, therefore, naturally demanded by the social consciousness, to emphasize the moral and spiritual in Christ in a.s.serting his supremacy, is quite in harmony with Christ's own insistence. He will be followed for what he is in himself.

The real supremacy of Christ, his truest divinity, we may be sure, comes out for our time in those statements which we are able to make concerning his inner spirit. Here, and here only, the real power of his personality gets hold upon us. What are these grounds of the supremacy of Christ? How is it that we come to G.o.d through him?

3. _The Moral and Spiritual Grounds of the Supremacy of Christ._[99]--(1) In the first place, _Jesus Christ is the greatest in the greatest sphere_, that of the moral and spiritual; and this, by common consent of all men. Both the depth and the consensus of conviction concerning Christ are profoundly significant. If our earth has ever seen one of whom it could be truly said, He is a moral and spiritual authority, preeminently the one great authority in this greatest sphere,--that person is Jesus Christ. Seeing the moral problem more broadly than any other ever saw it, tracing the motives of life more deeply than any other ever traced them, applying those principles of the life which he sees with a tact and delicacy and skill that no other ever approached, speaking with an authority in this moral and spiritual sphere to which no other can for a moment lay claim,--this man is easily the greatest in the greatest sphere.

It is, perhaps, to say only the same thing in a little different way, when one says with Fairbairn, that Christ is transcendent among founders of religion, "and to be transcendent here is to be transcendent everywhere, for religion is the supreme factor in the organizing and the regulating of our personal and collective life."[100] The present age is, more than any other, the age of the scientific study of religion. The last forty years, indeed, have seen such attention to the study of comparative religion as the world never saw before. What has been the outcome of that study? To make the relative position of Jesus among the founders of religion lower? I do not so understand it. No, the outcome is such that it is a manifestly inadequate statement to say, that he is transcendent among the founders of religion. The very most that we may hope to say about the founder of any other religion is, that in some single particular at a long distance he can be brought into comparison with Jesus. But let one think for a moment what it means for a man to be a founder of religion. We talk of leadership. Do we know what a founder of religion does? He makes the light, in which millions of men look upon all the events of their life, in which they see the past of the world's history, in which they look forward to the entire future. The very mood and atmosphere of men's lives are determined by these founders of religion; and among these preeminent leaders, Jesus, beyond all mistake, is transcendent.

Let the nature of his kingdom, too, be his witness. He calmly aims to found a kingdom that shall be spiritual, universal, eternal. One must face the fact that this man of Nazareth in Syrian Galilee, purposes in coolness of deliberation to found a kingdom that shall be absolutely spiritual, that shall make no appeal to any of the lower elements of man; one must see that this man, in those temptations through which he pa.s.sed concerning the form of his work, deliberately set aside the kingdom by bread, the kingdom by marvel and ecstasy, and the kingdom by force, and purposed to found a kingdom solely upon moral and spiritual forces. And observe that he confidently expects this kingdom to be universal--appealing to men of all races and of all times, and to be eternal--still standing when all else shall have pa.s.sed away.

And upon his belief in this character of his kingdom he stakes his life, and calmly gives to himself as the goal of his life the establishment of just such a kingdom; and remains to the end confident of his success. The mere vitality of will in such a purpose is hard to take in, and alone may well give us pause.

And because he is the greatest in the greatest sphere, transcendent among founders of religion, the founder of a kingdom spiritual, universal, and eternal, he becomes for us a "personalized conscience,"

a spiritual, moral authority for us even beyond our own conscience--an authority that grows upon us with our growth, and submission to which is earth's highest moral test.

(2) And there must be added to this first proposition, that Jesus is the greatest in the greatest sphere, a second: _He alone is the sinless and impenitent one._ And it is to be noticed that it is this man who sees more clearly than any other the moral and spiritual, who knows, as no other does, what character is and what moral life means,--it is he, who claims to be the sinless one. No other ever intelligently made this claim; for no other was it ever intelligently made. The words of the great historian Ranke seem to us to be simple truth when he says: "More guiltless and more powerful, more exalted and more holy has naught ever been on earth than his conduct, his life, and his death. The human race knows nothing that could be brought even afar off into comparison with it." Only such an one could intelligently make for himself the claim of sinlessness. And for no other was this claim of sinlessness ever intelligently made. Men know each other too well to make it for others when moral consciousness has fully awakened. But he fights his battle in the wilderness, and there is no record of failure so far as he himself can see it, and none that disciple ever ascribed.

And this claim of sinlessness for Christ is to be urged, not so much because of any special statements by Christ as because of that remarkable fact to which Dr. Bushnell has called attention,--his impenitence. Jesus alone among all good men is a man of "impenitent piety;" and by this he is marked off absolutely from every other good man. What happens in the life of any other good man is this: that, as he goes forward, the sense of sin grows upon him, the ideal rises before him and he feels increasingly that his own life is inferior to it. Of Jesus this is not true. He shows no sign of consciousness of failure. There is no evidence that he feels that he has fallen short in any degree. He is absolutely without that universal characteristic of all other good men, absolutely without penitence. Contrast him for a moment with the man, who perhaps all would agree was the greatest of all his disciples, the man to whose devotion there seems to be no limit--the Apostle Paul; and notice, that years after his persecution of the church and of the cause of Jesus, with growing sense of what Jesus is, and of his own inexhaustible debt to him, there comes over him with increasing, not lessening, power the sense of his sin, and he writes to the Ephesians, "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given me that I might preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;" and in one of the very last letters that comes down to us from him, says again, "Faithful is the saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." What evidence have we that Christ ever felt in the slightest degree such penitence?

(3) But more than this is true. _With the highest ideal, Jesus not only does not consciously fall short of it, but consciously rises up to it_, and, as Herrmann says, "compels us to admit that he does rise to it." It were very much that a man with any ideal, however inferior, should be able to say to himself, I have not fallen short of this ideal; but that one, who sees more clearly than any other in the realm of the moral and spiritual, and who has an ideal of simply absolute love and of unbounded trust in G.o.d,--that he should show not only no consciousness of falling short, but should consciously rise to his ideal and compel us to admit that he rises to it: this is a fact unparalleled in the history of the world. It is far more than mere sinlessness; there is here a positiveness of moral achievement so great--a fact so tremendous--that we seem able but feebly to take it in.

(4) And even that is not all. _Jesus has such a character that we can transfer it feature by feature to G.o.d_, not only with no sense of blasphemy, not only with no sense of his coming short, but with complete satisfaction. I do not now ask at all as to any man's metaphysical theory about Jesus Christ; I only ask that it be noticed that those who question common theories altogether still get their ideal of G.o.d from Jesus Christ; and that this is the wonderful thing that has happened on our earth: that there has once lived a man--daily moving about among men, a concrete circ.u.mstantial account of whose life in many particulars we have--the features of whose character one can transfer absolutely to G.o.d and say, That is what I mean by G.o.d.

One simply cannot add anything to the character of G.o.d himself in the highest moments of his imagination, that is not already revealed in Jesus Christ. I take it that the words of Fairbairn are literally true: he was "the first being who had realized for men the idea of the Divine." When, therefore, Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us," he could only reply as he might any day to us, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."

(5) And one cannot stop here. _Jesus is consciously able to redeem all men._ With such sense of the meaning of sin and of moral conduct as no other ever had, understanding, therefore, the sin and need of men as no other ever did, and having such a vision of what it is perfectly to share the life of G.o.d as no other ever had, still, facing the ma.s.ses of men, he could say to himself, "I am able to take these men and lift them into the very presence of G.o.d and present them spotless before the throne of his glory." Have we taken in what it means, that, in the consciousness of a man in form like ourselves, there could be, even for a moment, the actual belief that he was the one that was to take away the sin of the world, and had power to redeem men absolutely unto G.o.d? In another's words: "Jesus knows no more sacred task than to point men to his own person." He is himself G.o.d's greatest gift, himself "the way, the truth, the life,"--not only fighting his own battles, but consciously able to redeem all men.

(6) This simply implies, as Dr. Denison has suggested, that _Jesus has such G.o.d-consciousness and such sense of mission as would simply topple any other brain that the world has ever known into insanity_, but which simply keeps him sweet, normal, rational, living the most wholesome and simple and n.o.ble life the world has ever seen. How are we to explain that fact? On the one hand, the sense of being of even a little importance in the kingdom of G.o.d proves singularly intoxicating to men. How often, when one is strongly possessed by the idea that he is a special channel of manifestation for G.o.d, do moral sanity, influence, and character all suffer! On the other hand, there is no burden of suffering that men can bear so great as suffering in the sin of one loved--thus bearing the sin of another. But here is one who can believe that, when men come to him and simply see him as he is, they catch their best vision of G.o.d; here is one who bears consciously the sin of all men, and who can believe that he has absolute power to revolutionize the lives of other men and make them what they were meant originally to be, children of G.o.d; and yet, believing this, can, under that consciousness, keep sweet and normal, wholesome and simple, energetically ethical and thoroughly rational,--can keep sane. Indeed, he lives a life so sane, that, to pa.s.s even from some of our best religious books into the simple atmosphere of the story of his life often seems like pa.s.sing from the super-heated, artificially lighted, heavily perfumed and exhausted atmosphere of the crowded drawing-room into the open fresh air of day under the heaven of G.o.d. In the very act of the most stupendous self-a.s.sertion, Jesus can still characterize himself as "meek and lowly of heart," and we feel no self-contradiction--so completely has he harmonized for even our unconscious feeling his transcendent self-consciousness and his humble simplicity of life. Has the world anywhere a phenomenon comparable to this?

(7) In consequence of all this, _Jesus is in fact the only person in the history of the race who can call out absolute trust_. As little children, we knew something of what it meant to have complete trust.

There were a few years when it seemed to us that there was nothing in either power or character that was not true of our fathers and mothers. We soon lost such trust, even as children. Is there any way back to the childlike spirit? Let us ponder these golden words of Herrmann: "The childlike spirit can only arise within us when our experience is the same as a child's; in other words, when we meet with a personal life which compels us to trust it without reserve. Only the person of Jesus can arouse such trust in a man who has awakened to moral self-consciousness. If such a man surrenders himself to anything or any one else, he throws away not only his trust, but himself."

There has been one life lived on earth, in whose hands one may put himself with absolute confidence and have no fear as to the result.

Jesus, and Jesus alone, can call out absolute trust.

(8) Moreover, _Jesus is the only life ever lived among men in whom G.o.d certainly finds us, and in whom we certainly find G.o.d_. And, once again, I am not now asking whether one is able to come to any theory of the nature of Christ. That is a matter of comparative indifference.

The great fact is this: That there has been lived among us men such a life that, if a man will simply put himself in the presence of it and stay there, he will have brought home to him with unmistakable conviction the fact that G.o.d is, and is touching him and that he is touching G.o.d; that, coupled with such a sense as he never had before of his sin, there will be also the sense of forgiveness and reconciliation with G.o.d, and so, such evidence of the contact of G.o.d with his life as he can find nowhere else. So Harnack believes: "When G.o.d and everything that is sacred threaten to disappear in the darkness, or our doom is p.r.o.nounced; when the mighty forces of inexorable nature seem to overwhelm us, and the bounds of good and evil to dissolve; when, weak and weary, we despair of finding G.o.d at all in this dismal world,--it is then that the personality of Christ may save us."

(9) And all this means, finally, that _Jesus is for us the ideal realized_. Let not the commonplaceness of the words rob us of their meaning. The fact is far enough from the commonplace. Philosophy must always tell us that we have no right to expect anywhere a realized ideal, except in the absolute whole of things. Certainly, we never find in any of the inferior spheres a fully realized ideal. What does it mean, then, that in this highest of all spheres, the sphere of the moral and spiritual life, we have the ideal realized; that our very highest vision is a fact? What is there that one would add to, what, that one would take away from, the life of Christ, that it might be more completely than it is the ideal realized?

"But Thee, but Thee, O Sovereign Seer of time, But Thee, O poet's Poet, wisdom's tongue, But Thee, O man's best Man, O love's best Love, O perfect life in perfect labor writ, O all men's Comrade, Servant, King or Priest,-- What _if_ or _yet_, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, What least defect or shadow of defect, What rumor, tattled by an enemy, Of inference loose, what lack of grace Even in torture's grasp, or sleep's, or death's, Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ?"

4. _Christ's Double Uniqueness._--It seems hardly possible to do justice to the facts now pa.s.sed in review, without recognizing, at least, that they point to a double uniqueness on the part of Christ in his relation to G.o.d, reflected in his own language concerning himself and in the spontaneous confessions of his disciples in all times. He alone, in the emphatic sense, is _the_ Son. The contrasts between Christ and other men, which the simple facts of the life and consciousness of Christ have compelled us to make, naturally, then, demand recognition from thought. The recognition of the facts _is_ the vital matter, but thought can hardly see them unmoved. How are we to _think_ of Christ? With clear remembrance, now, that Christian teaching itself insists upon the kinship of G.o.d and men; that absolute barriers, therefore, cannot anywhere be set up; that a revelation unrelated to all else could be no revelation; and that Christ himself often pointed out the likeness between his own life and work and those of his disciples;--still we may not ignore actual differences, and must honestly strive to do justice to them in our own conception of Christ. One may not forget that there is much here that we can hardly hope ever to fathom; and that into this secret of Christ's relation to the Father theology has often tried to press with a precision of statement that was quite beyond its possible knowledge, and that damaged rather than helped the religious consciousness; but one may try to think in simple, straightforward fashion what the facts mean.

Now these actual and momentous moral and spiritual differences already pointed out seem, at least, to a.s.sert, I say, a genuine double uniqueness in Christ. Christ's relation to G.o.d is absolutely unique, that is, in two senses: in the absolutely unique purpose of G.o.d concerning him; in the absolutely perfect response of Christ to that purpose. If one chooses to use the language, he may say, that the first uniqueness is metaphysical; the second, ethical.[101]

First, then, G.o.d has a purpose concerning Christ, that he has concerning no other, for he purposes to make in him his supreme self-manifestation. This sets him apart from all others. His transcendent sense of G.o.d and sense of mission only correspond to the absolute uniqueness of this eternal purpose of G.o.d concerning him. We are utterly unable to see that they could be borne by any being that we know as man. He is the manifested G.o.d--"the visible presentation of the invisible G.o.d." This cannot be said, in the same sense, of any other. Now, our only adequate statement of the inner reality--the essential meaning--of any being, can be given only in terms of the purpose which G.o.d calls that being to fulfil. To see, then, that G.o.d's purpose concerning Christ is absolutely unique, and that G.o.d's purpose is, to make in Christ the completest possible personal manifestation of himself, is to see that Christ's essential relation to the Father is absolutely his own, unshared by any other. And, it may be added, there is no reason why this purpose of G.o.d concerning Christ should not be regarded as an eternal purpose, eternally realized.

But Christ is as clearly unique in his simply perfect response to this purpose of G.o.d. Our facts seem to point directly to the conclusion, that in him there was no moral hindrance to the fullness of the revelation G.o.d would make through him. His life is perfectly transparent, allowing the full glory of the character of G.o.d to shine through it. The harmony of his will with G.o.d's will is complete. If it be said that this last uniqueness is, after all, only difference in degree from other men, it must be answered, first, that degree here is so vast as to be practically kind. This is the perfect of Christ set over against the varyingly imperfect of all other men. Moreover, to ask here for difference in kind in any other sense, is probably to make an unintelligent and impossible demand; for, in the nature of the case, the relations involved are spiritual and personal, and there cannot be, in strictness, in the fulfilment of such relations any real differences in kind.

5. _The Increasing Sense of Our Kinship with Christ, and of His Reality._--Side by side with this recognition of the nature of Christ's uniqueness, there deserves to be set, as another outcome of the emphasis upon conceiving Christ as a personal revelation of G.o.d, the increasing sense of our kinship with Christ and of his reality.

The connection here is by no means accidental, though it may seem almost paradoxical. We have plainly come in our day to our clearest recognition of the divinity of Christ through the sense of his transcendent character. But revelation in character requires the reality of his human life. The very route, therefore, by which we have most certainly reached our sense of Christ's divinity, leads also to an increasing sense of kinship with Christ, and so of his reality. So long as we seemed driven to conceive the divinity of Christ in terms that had no relation and no meaning for human life, just so long must he seem to us to be really moving in another world and to take on the unreality of that other world quite hidden from us. But now Christ's life has meaning; we can enter into it and feel that it is real. With all its transcendence, the life does not move now simply in the sphere of the mysterious. It is no unreal drama, no play-struggle,--utterly failing to meet our real moral and spiritual needs. Least of all, in this supreme work for man, can the revealing life be only a show. It feels real. It is real. And, with clear sense of the inevitable inadequacy of the a.n.a.logy, we still rest confidently in the conviction that G.o.d's relation to Christ may be best conceived after the a.n.a.logy of the relation of the Spirit of G.o.d to our spirits; and that, when we try to press beyond that, we are attempting to rise into that sphere of a supposed supra-personal, for which we have no possible organ of vision, and where, therefore, we are thinking not more, but less, truly.[102]

With this sense of the reality of the personal, spiritual life of Christ, there naturally comes home to us the appropriateness and _practicability of his ideals_. They are seen to belong to us more surely, and properly to make demands upon us. It is, probably, not too much to say that, under the influence of the social consciousness, there has been a definite, growing approach to Christ's way of thinking, and to his ideal of life. This means a consciousness increasingly Christian in tone, and, therefore, in turn, increasingly better able to interpret the teaching and life of Christ, and so to give promise of a more Christian theology. None of us, probably, are fully conscious of the more subtle inconsistencies of even our best theological thinking, when measured by a completely Christian spirit.

At least, with the insistence upon Christ as a personal revealer of a personal G.o.d, it must become more true that the meaning of all terms for the work of Christ shall be more clearly reasonable, more consistently ethical, and more completely spiritual; and then the immediate rooting of Christian theology in the Christian religion can be seen and felt.

III. THE RECOGNITION OF THE PERSONAL IN G.o.d

The sense of the value and sacredness of the person must lead to the special recognition of the personal not only in man and in Christ, but also in G.o.d. We have already seen reasons for believing that the social consciousness is peculiarly bound strongly to emphasize the personality of G.o.d, as in the end absolutely essential to its own justification. The social consciousness represents an ethical movement that can live only in the atmosphere of the personal.

1. _The Steady Carrying through of the Completely Personal in the Conception of G.o.d. Guarding the Conception._--This pressure of the social consciousness toward an imperative faith in the fully personal G.o.d is most valuable, as offsetting the tendency in many quarters toward a scientific or even idealistic pantheism or monism that is quite impersonal. "For," in the language of Professor Howison, "the very quality of personality is, that a person is a being who recognizes others as having a reality as unquestionable as his own, and who thus sees himself as a member of a moral republic, standing to other persons in an immutable relationship of reciprocal duties and rights, himself endowed with dignity, and acknowledging the dignity of all the rest."[103] As this is preeminently the spirit of the social consciousness, it is plain that we have in the social consciousness an increasingly powerful motive for guarding the full personality of G.o.d.

It needs particularly to be noted, that we know no _definite_ "supra-personal." Pantheism or any impersonal monism is forced, therefore, when it leaves the personal conception of G.o.d, to take a lower line of development, not a higher. The result is, that it is obliged to deny the highest attributes to G.o.d, and then, as Browning is fond of arguing, man steps at once into the place of G.o.d. Men cannot permanently remain satisfied with a philosophical view, of which that is the logical outcome. Certainly, such a view can get no support from the social consciousness, with its deep conviction of the supreme value and sacredness of the person.

Moreover, it is not to be forgotten, in estimating the value of a cosmic monism, that what the cosmological really means, ethically and religiously, to a people, must always depend upon their social ideals.

The natural in itself contains no command. For any effective vital interpretation, therefore, even of its impersonal Absolute, pantheism is constantly thrown back upon the personal.

Only a clear, steady carrying through by theology of the completely personal in its conception of G.o.d can ultimately satisfy this sense of the value and sacredness of the person. Professor Nash does not speak too strongly when he says: "To fulfil her function the church must develop the doctrine of a Divine Personality. She has not always been true to it in the past. Too often, by her sacraments, by her theology, by her theory of inspiration, she has glorified the impersonal."[104]

Now, such an attempt, it is perhaps worth saying once more, is not to be thought of as a running away from a thorough-going metaphysical investigation. It rather takes the ground, indicated in the earlier discussion, of what may be called, in Professor Howison's language, personal idealism; and holds that spirit, person, _is_ for us the ultimate metaphysical fact: the one reality to which we have immediate access; the reality from which all our metaphysical notions are originally derived; and, in consequence, the one reality which we can take as the key to the understanding of all else. And it believes that even essence and substance, the great words of the old metaphysics, can be really understood only as they are interpreted in personal terms. Ultimately, theology would hold, this would mean the interpretation of the essence of things in terms of the purpose of G.o.d concerning them--what he meant them to be.

In the attempt, then, clearly and steadily to carry through the conception of G.o.d as completely personal, theology may well guard carefully certain points. In the first place, theology does not mean to transfer to G.o.d human limitations; rather, it conceives him to be the only complete personality with perfect self-consciousness and full freedom, no part of whose being is in any degree foreign to himself.

Nor, in the second place, does it mean to forget that the personal relations in which G.o.d stands to other persons are unique, and that, in three definite respects: that conviction of the love of G.o.d, as of no other, must underlie, as a great necessary a.s.sumption, all our thinking and all our living; that G.o.d is himself the source of the moral const.i.tution of man, which must thus be regarded as an expression of the personal will of G.o.d, and the personal relation to G.o.d so have universal moral implications such as no other personal relation can have; and in that G.o.d is such in his universal love for all, that it is impossible to come into right personal relation to G.o.d, and not at the same time come into right relation to all moral beings.[105]

2. _G.o.d is Always the Completely Personal G.o.d._--If, now, theology is to do justice to the demands of the social consciousness for a full recognition of the personal in G.o.d, it must see clearly that G.o.d is _always_ the completely personal G.o.d. Certain conclusions, not always admitted, are believed to follow from this position.

(1) _The Consequent Relation of G.o.d to "Eternal Truths."_--In the first place, there can be no sphere of eternal truths, thought of as either created outright by the will of G.o.d, or as existing of themselves independently of G.o.d and only to be recognized by him.

The difficulty is not merely that at least one of these views would put G.o.d in the same dependent relation to truth as we finite beings, and thus practically put a G.o.d above G.o.d. Nor is the difficulty merely that it is impossible to think the real existence of such a sphere of eternal truth, since truths or laws can be said to exist only in one of two ways: either as the actual mode of action of reality, or as the perception and formulation in an observing mind of that mode of action. And these difficulties are both sufficiently serious.

But, from our present point of view, the great difficulty is, that trying to conceive G.o.d as either creating or coming to the recognition of truth, a.s.sumes, as Lotze points out, a _fragmentary_ G.o.d, a G.o.d for whom truth is _not yet_. It a.s.sumes an action of the will of G.o.d apart from his reason, that is, a G.o.d not yet completely personal, not yet the full G.o.d of truth and character. A G.o.d for whom truth and duty are not yet, is certainly no true person. Most, if not all, of our metaphysical puzzles connected with the relation of G.o.d to what we call eternal truths, seem to me to grow out of this thought of an essentially fragmentary G.o.d.

We are driven, consequently, to a denial of both the Scotist and Thomist positions, as ordinarily conceived. It is true neither that the truth is true and the good is good because G.o.d wills it, nor yet that G.o.d wills the true because it is true and the good because it is good. Both views alike a.s.sume the possibility of a fragmentary G.o.d, a G.o.d for whom at some time truth and goodness were not yet. But G.o.d has _always_ been the completely personal G.o.d of truth and love, never a bare will and never a bare intellect. Hence, neither as an independent object to be recognized, nor yet as the external product of his will, can we think of the realm of eternal truth and goodness. We must rather say, G.o.d alone is the eternal being and absolute source of all, always complete in the perfection of his personality; and, therefore, what we call the eternal truths are only _the eternal modes of G.o.d's actual activity_. This alone seems to the writer to give a thorough-going theistic view, free from self-contradiction.[106]

(2) _Eternal Creation._--But, further, if G.o.d is to be thought as _always_ the completely personal G.o.d, we are led, also, immediately to the doctrine of eternal creation.

If G.o.d has had always a completely personal life, his entire being must have been always in exercise. Can we really think of such a G.o.d as simply quiescent, and not as always active? Is not his activity involved in his complete personality? The thought of his possible quiescence arises probably out of an unconscious, but nevertheless unwarranted, transfer to G.o.d of our finite separation of will and act.

But G.o.d is here, too, no fragmentary G.o.d; he has always been the completely personal G.o.d, always acting.

A second consideration carries us to the same conclusion. Theologians have felt that they have made a distinct step in advance in tracing creation to love in G.o.d, as, for example, Princ.i.p.al Fairbairn does.

But this gives no real help as an explanation of creation as _beginning in time_; for one must at once ask, Was not the love of G.o.d eternal, and if this were the real reason leading to creation, must not, then, creation be eternal?

So far as I am able to see, there is nothing to lose and much to gain in clearness and satisfactoriness of thought in a frank acceptance of the doctrine of eternal creation. Not, of course, in the sense of an eternal dualism, in the sense of the thought of an eternity of matter set over against G.o.d, but in the clear sense of the eternal creative activity of G.o.d. And to such a doctrine of eternal creation, the social consciousness, in its emphasis on the completely personal, seems to me to lead.

(3) _The Unity and Unchangeableness of G.o.d._--And, once more, if G.o.d is always the completely personal G.o.d, we shall conceive his own unity not as monotonous self-ident.i.ty, but only as consistency of meaning.

We shall not, therefore, transfer to G.o.d, pluming ourselves meanwhile upon a highly philosophical view, the mechanical unchangeableness of a rock; but we shall be rather concerned with the consistency of his character and the unchangeableness of his loving will, which would be the very reasons for his changing, adapting att.i.tude toward his changing children. From this point of view, too, the sphere of law and the sphere of the actual, will seem to us, necessarily, to root in the sphere of the ideal; the _is_ and the _must_, to rest in the _ought_; though we may not hope to trace the connections in detail. In a G.o.d, then, who is a completely harmonious person, never acting in fragmentary fashion, whose will and whose reason and whose love are never at cross purposes--only in such a G.o.d can the world find its adequate and unifying source. The world itself has real unity only in so far as it is the expression of the consistency of meaning of the purpose of G.o.d concerning it.