Theology and the Social Consciousness Part 12

And this same thought of the consistency of the meaning of the purpose of G.o.d, I have elsewhere argued,[107] saves us from the necessity of a self-contradictory conception of the miraculous or supernatural, by its recognition of the dominant spiritual order. It also enables us to see, with Professor Nash, if the word personal is given sufficient breadth, that "the true supernatural is the personal, and wheresoever the personal is discovered, whether in the life of conscience or the life of reason, whether in Israel or Greece, there the supernatural is discovered. Upon this conception of the supernatural as the personal, apologetics must found the claims of Christianity. The divine and the human personality stand within 'Nature,' that is, within the total of being. But they both, the human as well as the divine, transcend the scope and reach of visible Nature."[108]

(4) _The Limitations of the Conception of Immanence._--Indeed, it ought to be clearly recognized on all sides by those who believe in religion at all, that we cannot so exclusively emphasize the immanence of G.o.d, as many are now doing, and have a G.o.d at all, beyond the finite manifestations. When the matter is so conceived, there is no real personal G.o.d with whom there can be any personal communion.

Religion, thus, in any ordinary sense of it, is by this process made simply impossible; Positivism is the only logical result, and Frederic Harrison becomes the one sole, clear-sighted prophet among us, a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Such an outcome is possible for any, because, and in so far as, they are not true to the social consciousness in its demand for the completely personal G.o.d, who, in Martineau's language, is a genuinely "free spirit."[109]

3. _Deepening the Thought of the Fatherhood of G.o.d._--But the influence of the social consciousness in its deepening sense of the value and sacredness of the person, of obligation and of love, not only tends to insist upon the completely personal in the conception of G.o.d, but also tends to deepen our thought of the Fatherhood of G.o.d.

(1) _History no Mere Natural Process._--No mere on-going of an unfeeling Absolute, whatever name be given it, will ever satisfy the social consciousness. The new sense of the sorrow and ethical meaning of the historical process demands, in the first place, that history shall not be regarded as a mere necessitated development, but a movement in which men effectively cooperate, never more consciously and clearly than to-day; and secondly, it demands a _G.o.d_ who cares, who loves, who guides. History cannot be a mere holocaust to G.o.d.

(2) _G.o.d, the Great Servant._--Rather, as we saw in the fourth chapter, the social consciousness requires a G.o.d whose purpose shall completely support its own purpose, and so requires us, with Fairbairn, to put Fatherhood before Sovereignty, not Sovereignty before Fatherhood, and requires us definitely to conceive G.o.d after Christ, as self-giving ministering love. It is one of the anomalies of Christian history, that the church has been so slow to cast off a pagan conception of G.o.d, and to come to a truly Christian view. We can hardly take in Christ's own revelation of G.o.d without some sharing in his sympathy for men. Some experience of our own is needed to unlock the revelation. And, so, the steady deepening of the social consciousness, both as to the value of the person and as to the sense of obligation, has certainly helped us to see that if G.o.d is to be highest, he must be love, and thus the great servant, with transcendent obligations, entering really and sympathetically into all our life.

(3) _No Divine Arbitrariness._--With such a conception of G.o.d, every trace of arbitrariness disappears. Calvinism, however strenuously insisted upon, means a far different thing for any man who really feels the pressure of the modern social consciousness, who has come to some real sense of the value and sacredness of the person, that is, who really sees G.o.d in Christ. The great truth of Calvinism, that G.o.d is the ultimate source of all, was perhaps never more secure than to-day; but that G.o.d, who is the absolute and ultimate source of all, is the fully personal G.o.d, whose will is never divorced from his reason and love, who knows no such abstraction as a bare and empty omnipotence without content or direction, but who is himself always living love. The bane of much so-called Calvinism is in this supposition of a fragmentary G.o.d, like a motion without direction or rate of speed. Arbitrary decrees are conceivable only from such a fragmentary G.o.d, not yet full and complete in his reality and personality.

(4) _The Pa.s.sibility of G.o.d._--It would seem, also, that any vital defense of the Fatherhood of G.o.d, required by the social consciousness, involves further the frank admission of the pa.s.sibility of G.o.d, whether it has the look of an ancient heresy or not. We must unhesitatingly admit that, without which G.o.d can be no real G.o.d to us.

"Theology has no falser idea than that of the impa.s.sibility of G.o.d. If he is capable of sorrow, he is capable of suffering, and were he without the capacity for either he would be without any feeling of the evil of sin or the misery of man. The very truth that comes by Jesus Christ may be said to be summed up in the pa.s.sibility of G.o.d."[110]

With the growing sensitiveness of the social consciousness, the problem of suffering and of sin presses increasingly, and itself almost compels the a.s.sertion of the pa.s.sibility of G.o.d. Nothing less can satisfy our hearts, nor indeed allow us to keep our reverence for G.o.d.

Certainly, with the increasingly clear vision, which the social consciousness is giving us, of sympathetic, unselfish, definitely self-sacrificing, loving leadership even among men, we shall not rest satisfied with less in G.o.d. We must have a suffering, seeking, loving G.o.d; because our Father, suffering in our sin, bearing as a burden the sin of each, and not satisfied while one child turns away; no mere on-looker, but in all our afflictions, himself afflicted. The cross of Christ, then, is only an honest showing of the actual facts of G.o.d's seeking, suffering love.

4. _As to the Doctrine of a Social Trinity._--One inference for theology widely drawn from the social consciousness, it ought in fairness, perhaps, to be said, seems to me unjustified,--the doctrine of a so-called "Social Trinity." One must question the constant cool a.s.sumption made in these discussions of a social Trinity, that this view is the only alternative to what is called an "abstract simplicity." In any case, one would suppose, we must have in G.o.d all the richness and complexity of a complete personal life, freed from the limitations of finite personality. Something of the much that that involves we have been trying to point out. Here certainly is no "abstract simplicity."

Moreover, the conception of a social Trinity, so far as the writer can see, carries us inevitably to a tritheism of the most unmistakable kind. "Social" involves full personality. Nothing requires more complete personality than love, which the view affirms to exist between the persons of the immanent Trinity, between the distinctions in the very G.o.dhead. The relations of Christ to G.o.d were, of course, distinctly and definitely personal; but it must not be forgotten that we are not permitted, on any careful theological view, to transfer these directly to the immanent relations of the G.o.dhead.

The distinction drawn by Dr. W. N. Clarke,[111] between the doctrine of the biblical Trinity and the doctrine of the Triunity, I count of decided value; but after one has made the distinction, one may doubt the value of the contribution made by the doctrine of the Triunity.

The really immanent relations of the G.o.dhead are necessarily hidden from us, and are, also, so far as the writer can see, without ethical or religious significance for us, except in the way of possible injury through subst.i.tuting some supposed altogether mysterious and incomprehensibly sacred, for the well-known and truly sacred shown in the ethical relations of common life.

The doctrine of the Triunity seems to have been originally intended to enable the church to hold the divinity of Christ. If we now get at that and hold that from quite a different point of view, the older way becomes less essential. We must, indeed, keep the ancient treasure, but we need not keep it in the same ancient chest. None of us--not the most orthodox--really find the _reasons_ for holding the divinity of Christ in the doctrine of the Triunity. It is interesting to observe how widely separated from the doctrine of the Triunity are the considerations which really move men to faith in the divinity of Christ. That doctrine is, at the very most, only our philosophical supplement intended to bring that, which on other grounds we have come to believe, into unity with our thought of G.o.d.

But, at least, we must so conceive the divinity of Christ, as not to get two or three G.o.ds. And a "Social Trinity" does not seem to me to avoid that, except in terms. However, therefore, we are to solve our problem, we are not to take _that_ way out.

What Dr. Clarke calls the biblical doctrine of the Trinity, on the other hand, seems to me to contain the very heart of Christianity, whatever philosophical theory we put beneath it; and it became, therefore, as expressed in the baptismal and benediction formulas, the great daily confession of the church, since it strongly expresses that of which we have been speaking,--the living love of G.o.d, a life of absolutely self-giving love, of eternal ministry.

The biblical Trinity is, in truth, what it has sometimes been called, the trinity of redemption; and, for me, directly emphasizes the great facts of redemption. Here there are three great facts: First, the Fatherhood of G.o.d, that G.o.d is in his very being Father, Love, self-manifesting as light, self-giving as life, self-communicating, pouring himself out into the life of his children, wishing to share his highest life with them, every one. Second, the concrete, unmistakable revelation of the Father in Christ, revealed in full ethical perfection, as an actual fact to be known and experienced; no longer an unknown, hidden, or only partially and imperfectly revealed G.o.d, but a real, living G.o.d of character, counting as a real, appreciable, but fully spiritual fact in the real world. And, third, the Father revealing himself by his Spirit in every _individual_ heart that opens itself to him, in a constant, intimate, divine a.s.sociation, which yet is never obtrusive, but reverent of the man's personality, making possible to every man the ideal conditions of the richest life.

What metaphysical theory we put under that confession of our full Christian faith, does not seem to me to be of prime importance. Men may count it of great importance; but it can hardly be of first importance, since, at the very most, only the beginnings of such a theory can be found in the great New Testament confession of Christ.

5. _Preeminent Reverence for Personality, Characterizing all G.o.d's Relations with Men._--But the very heart of the conviction, on the part of the social consciousness, of the value and sacredness of the person, is its _reverence for personality_; and this thought has much significance for theology, for, if this judgment of the social consciousness is justified, it must be regarded as preeminently characterizing G.o.d in all his relations with men.

(1) _Reflected in Christ._--When, in the first place, we turn to Christ as the supreme revelation of G.o.d, we cannot fail to see that this reverence for the personal marks every step he takes. It begins, of course, in the priceless value which Christ gives to each person, as a child of the living, loving Father.

And it seems to determine his _whole method_ with his generation and with his disciples. It is shown in the initial battle in the temptations, as to the form his work was to take, and as to the means to be employed. There was here, as we have seen, from the start an absolute subordination of all unspiritual and unethical methods in the building of the kingdom. There is to be no over-riding of the free personality anywhere. He faced successively the temptations to place his dependence on the mere meeting of men's material needs--the kingdom by bread; the temptation to place his dependence on that which appealed most strongly to the oriental mind--the use of wonder-working power--the kingdom by marvel or ecstasy; the temptation to place his dependence on force--the kingdom by force. But Christ sees clearly that G.o.d is no mere supplier of bread; that G.o.d is no mere wonder-worker, no mere giver of wonderful experiences; and that G.o.d is not a tyrant to conquer by force. Everywhere, therefore, he sets aside whatever may override the free personality. He would replace all the attractive and seemingly rapid methods of the kingdom by bread, the kingdom by marvel, and the kingdom by force, with the slow and tedious and costly but reverent method of the spiritual kingdom by spiritual means, the kingdom of G.o.d by G.o.d's way--of a trust freely won, a humility spontaneously arising, a love gladly given. He can take no pleasure in any kingdom but one of free persons.

In the same way, in his dealings with the inner circle of his disciples, there seems to have been the most scrupulous regard for their own needed initiative. He apparently makes no clear announcement of himself as Messiah even to the disciples until late in his public ministry, and, then, only after they have been brought, through weeks, if not months, of unusually close personal contact and impression of his spirit, into their own confession of him. He steadily abjures, that is, all dogmatism about himself, and leads them along by a purely spiritual method to a confession of him, that may be truly their own.

There is no piling up of proof-texts from the Old Testament, to show that he is the Messiah. He seems never to have attempted any proof with his disciples. Indeed, he seems purposely to have chosen the rather ambiguous t.i.tle, "the Son of Man," that men might be left free to come by moral choice to him.

The surpa.s.singly significant fact, that Christ's chief work in the establishment of the kingdom of G.o.d, as seems to me beyond doubt, was his personal a.s.sociation with a few men; that, probably, a full third, perhaps more, of his very brief so-called public ministry was taken up with a period of definitely sought comparative retirement with the inner circle of the disciples--all this points to the same recognition of the fundamental importance in Christ's eyes of such a reverence for the person. The kingdom of G.o.d can be founded only by the full winning of free persons into his discipleship. The kingdom is first and last a kingdom of free persons, in Dr. Mulford's language, always a "Republic of G.o.d." Professor Peabody's emphasis on the essential importance of Christ's individualism, that "Jesus approaches life from within, through the inspiration of the individual,"[112] it need not be said, goes upon the same a.s.sumption of Christ's reverence for the person.

In his really public ministry the same spirit appears; for Jesus seems to me here constantly to be standing with a kind of moral shudder between the spirit of contempt in the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the outraged personality of the common people, even of the publicans and sinners. He feels the contempt even for these least, as a blow in his own face.

That glimpse which the Revelation gives us of Christ standing and knocking at the heart's closed door, is a true picture forevermore not only of the att.i.tude of Christ's earthly life, but of G.o.d's eternal relation to us. Men may over-ride and outrage us, and even think that they show the more love thereby; G.o.d, never. This principle, then, we may take as absolutely crucial, in our judgment of G.o.d's dealings with us.

(2) _In Creation._--It is fundamental even in creation. The very fact of the creation of persons implies it. Such a creation can have no significance, if, in the language already quoted from Howison, G.o.d's "consciousness is void of that recognition and reverence of the personal initiative of other minds which is at once the sign and the test of the true person."

And if love is, for a moment, to be thought of as the motive of creation, it required for any satisfaction of it, persons who could freely respond to that love.

The definite bestowal of the fateful gift of moral freedom, with the practical certainty of sin--the creation of beings who could choose against him--shows how deeply planted in the very being of G.o.d is this principle of reverence for the person.

Here, too, the impossibility of arbitrary divine decrees meets us.

This would be treating a person as a thing, and G.o.d himself may not do that and remain G.o.d. If a man cannot see his way to a faith both in the divine foreknowledge and in the moral initiative of men, therefore, he must not hesitate to choose even the divine nescience of the free acts of men, rather than think of G.o.d as compelling men. Our whole moral universe tumbles about our ears, if he who is the source of all is not in earnest with persons. And yet there is much theological thinking, of which the common notions of a personal reign of Christ on the earth may be taken as an example, that practically looks to a kingdom by compulsion. A kingdom of free spirits cannot be merely decreed.

(3) _In Providence._--And this same principle of reverence for personality must be felt to be the guiding motive and key, as well, in the providence and government of G.o.d. G.o.d keeps his hands off. He must so act as to call out, not to suppress, individual initiative.

This is, perhaps, the deepest reason for a sphere of law, that there may be a realm in which a person can have his own free development, uninterfered with by any moral compulsion.

If, now, this sphere of law is to be any true training ground for character, as we saw in the third chapter, results must not be forthwith set aside, the mutual influence of men must hold all along the line.

Even in the case of great evils, G.o.d does not step in at once to set things right. Character is an exceedingly costly product. This is no play-world, either as to mutual influence or as to freedom. G.o.d guards most jealously the freedom and personality of men. He never forgets that character must be from within. He will not accept, as Christ would not, a faith compelled by "signs." Hence, too, we are left to _ask_, and much is left to depend on our asking. So, also, G.o.d does not remove all difficulties and give sight in place of faith. He seems even careless, often, of how things go; for he would not only appeal to the heroic in us, but he wishes to make it impossible for us to confuse prudence and virtue in ourselves or others, and so to give us the opportunity and the joy of a real moral victory, of knowing that we have made a genuinely unselfish surrender to the right.

In the light of this deep-lying principle of G.o.d's sacred reverence for the person, one learns to hush his former complaints, and with full heart to thank G.o.d that he lives in a world where righteousness and happiness do not always seem to fall together, and where, therefore, he can "serve G.o.d for naught." Oh, let us know, that it is not that G.o.d does not care, but that he cares so much--too much to sacrifice to present comfort the character of the child he loves--too much to shut him out from his highest opportunity.

(4) _In Our Personal Religious Life._--And the same principle holds in our personal religious life. The un.o.btrusiveness of G.o.d's relation to us, of which we often complain, is rather to be taken as evidence of his sacred respect for our own moral initiative, and proof of his careful adaptation to our moral need. Wherever a strong personality is in relation to a weaker, the stronger must maintain a conscientious self-restraint, lest he dominate the personality of the other, to the other's moral injury and to the hindering of his individuality. It _is_ possible for a boy to be injuriously "tied to his mother's ap.r.o.n-strings." Much more is it necessary that G.o.d's relation to us should not be obtrusive. G.o.d must guard our freedom and our individuality. He must even take pains to hide his hand, as a strong, influential, but wise friend would do. As we go higher, our life is and must be increasingly one of faith, the Father's relation less and less obtrusive.[113] The times of vision are given to make us patient in our progress toward the goal. And after the vision comes often what Rendel Harris calls "the dark night of faith, when every step has to be taken in absolute dependence upon G.o.d and a.s.surance that the vision was truth and was no lie."[114] We need the invisible G.o.d for character.

It is for this reason, no doubt, that G.o.d makes so rare use of overwhelming experiences in the religious life. He would be chosen with clear and rational self-consciousness, and so he rarely overpowers. And even in experiences which seem most overpowering, if the person is really awake to their true ethical and spiritual import, they will probably be found delicately adapted to call out the individual's own response. But for most of us such experiences prove a real temptation, because we allow the pa.s.sively emotional to absorb our attention, and so lose the ethical and spiritual fruit. Where these marvelous experiences have been most marked, and have plainly given real help, they seem still, usually, to have been needed because of some false conception of G.o.d and the spiritual world that required a powerful corrective. Here they seem really to have been granted, as probably the transfiguration of Christ was to the disciples, as a concession to men's weakness, G.o.d consenting reluctantly to use for the time a lower line of appeal, because men are unable to rise to the higher appeal.

We have already seen the danger of the neo-platonic over-estimation of emotional experience, and of sudden and magical crises in religion; and this danger is especially seen in much that is said concerning the work of the Holy Spirit. It seems as if it were simply true, for many earnest and sincere Christians, that the superst.i.tions, which they had conscientiously put aside elsewhere in religion, all came back in their thought of the work of the Spirit. Here their relation to G.o.d has ceased to be thought of as a personal or moral or truly spiritual one; and they are looking more or less definitely for bodily thrills, for marked and overwhelming emotional experiences, or for sudden transformations--hardly to be called transformations of character--in the pa.s.sive half-magical removal of temptations altogether. That is, they are looking for moral and spiritual results from unmoral and unspiritual processes. The exact point is this: Doubtless we are not narrowly to limit what the personal influence of the personal Spirit of G.o.d may do in transforming human life--the possibilities probably far transcend what we think--but we are clearly to see that the relation is personal, that the influence is spiritual and under strictly ethical conditions, if we are to escape from simply pagan superst.i.tion. Let us see that, if G.o.d is a Personal Spirit and not an impersonal substance, then, as Herrmann says, he "communes with us through manifestations of his inner life, and when he consciously and purposely makes us feel what his mind is, then we feel himself."[115]

And, then, let us add, as has been already earlier said, that the deepening life in the Spirit becomes plainly a deepening personal friendship and communion with G.o.d, with laws--those of a growing friendship--that we may study and know and obey; and among these laws, none is of more central importance than this of the reverence for the person.

(5) _In the Judgment._--And when we turn to G.o.d's relation to us in the judgment, we can be sure, I think, of a further application of this principle, contrary to common teaching and expectation. We have no reason to look forward to a time when the secrets of all, or of any, hearts shall be laid bare to all. In so doing, G.o.d would violate, it seems to me, the principle of his entire dealing with men, and give the lie to his own revelation in Christ and in history. For myself, Dr. Clarke's words carry immediate conviction: "No man needs to know the secrets of his neighbor, and be able to trace the justice of G.o.d through his neighbor's life, and no man who respects the sacredness of individuality will desire it. Neither revelation of his own secrets nor knowledge of another's seems a good thing to a self-respecting soul."[116]

Even the judgment itself proceeds, no doubt, in clear recognition of the free personality. We are "judged by the law of liberty." And we really choose our own destiny, as Phillips Brooks suggests in one of his most striking paragraphs. "By this law we shall be judged. How simple and sublime it makes the judgment day! We stand before the great white throne and wait our verdict. We watch the closed lips of the Eternal Judge, and our hearts stand still until those lips shall open and p.r.o.nounce our fate, heaven or h.e.l.l. The lips do not open. The Judge just lifts his hand and raises from each soul before him every law of constraint whose pressure has been its education. He lifts the laws of constraint, and their results are manifest. The real intrinsic nature of each soul leaps to the surface. Each soul's law of liberty becomes supreme. And each soul, without one word of commendation or approval, by its own inner tendency, seeks its own place.... The freeing of souls is the judging of souls. A liberated nature dictates its own destiny. Could there be a more solemn judgment seat? Is it not a fearful thing to be judged by the law of liberty?"[117]

And we may be most certain, that, in any judgment by G.o.d, there can be no thought of "human waste." The man must remain for G.o.d, to the end, a child of G.o.d, a person of sacredness and value, to be dealt with always as capable of character. And it is along just this line that, independently of exegetical grounds, it seems to me, we are led to a decisive rejection of the doctrine of annihilation. And I know no more convincing putting of the matter than this brief but comprehensive statement of Fairbairn: "If there is any truth in the Fatherhood, would not annihilation be even more a punishment of G.o.d than of man?

The annihilated creature would indeed be gone forever--good and evil, shame and misery, penalty and pain, would for him all be ended with his being; but it would not be so with G.o.d--out of his memory the name of the man could never perish, and it would be, as it were, the eternal symbol of a soul he had made only to find that with it he could do nothing better than destroy it."[118]

(6) _In the Future Life._--Doubtless our difficulties are not at an end even so; but, at least, our conception of G.o.d is saved from self-contradiction; and the Father is seen as suffering in the sin of the son, and perpetually desiring and seeking his return, never satisfied so long as any child of his still refuses his place in the Father's love. This deep-going principle of reverence for personality, with which we are dealing, is the finest flower of human ethical development, and seems completely to shut out the possibility of compulsion by G.o.d at any time in the future life. A person will never be treated as a thing. The soul that turns to G.o.d must be won voluntarily.

And if, then, the abstract possibility of endless resistance to G.o.d by men cannot be denied; so neither can the possibility--perhaps one might even say, the practical probability--be denied that G.o.d, in his infinite love and patience and wisdom, may finally win them all out of their resistance. And the eternal hope is at least open; but it is open, it should be noted, only upon the fulfilment by men of precisely those moral conditions which hold now in the earthly life, and which ought now to be obeyed. There will never be an easier way to G.o.d. It is shallow thinking that supposes that, if there be any possibility of turning to G.o.d in the future life, it is of small moment that one should now put himself where he ought to be. The full results of all our evil sowing, we must receive. The utmost that on any rational theory, then, can be held out to men, is the hope that, facing a greater heritage of evil than now they face, they might return to G.o.d under the same condition of absolute moral surrender, which now holds, and the fulfilment of which is now far more easily possible to them.

And it ought not to be overlooked that, even if the principle of reverence for personality be much less far-reaching than is here affirmed, the annihilation of a soul by G.o.d could seem justified only upon the a.s.sumption that G.o.d foresaw the entire future, and knew that the soul would never turn to righteousness and G.o.d. But if the doctrine of annihilation is to be justified on _that_ ground, it is to be observed, that the same foreknowledge would have enabled G.o.d to know before creation all the finally incorrigible, if there were to be any such, and so he need not have called these into being at all. A goal, therefore, as great if not far greater, than that offered by the annihilation theory would be, thus, attainable simply upon the same a.s.sumption that must rationally be made by that theory, and, at the same time, the great objection to that theory--its violation of personality--would be avoided.

It seems probable that this very principle of reverence for personality contains the chief reason why more has not been revealed to us concerning the future life. Christianity is very far from satisfying our curiosity here. It gives little more than the absolutely needed a.s.surance of the fact and worth of the life beyond.

Details are either quite lacking, or given only in broadest symbols.

This reticent silence of revelation seems needed if our individual initiative is not to be hindered, either by excess of motive on the one hand, or by the depression of an unappreciated ideal on the other hand.

On the one hand, that is, so far as we could understand a detailed revelation of the future life, to set it forth with the realism of the present life would be to interfere with that un.o.btrusive relation of G.o.d to us, which we have seen to be so necessary to our highest moral training. We need, in this time of our training, a certain obscurity of spiritual truth; we need to walk by faith, not by sight. To be able so obviously to weigh the eternal realities against the temporal, would hinder rather than help our growth in loyal, unselfish character.

On the other hand, if a complete and indubitable revelation of the future life were given us, no doubt there would be much that could make but small appeal to us, and might even prove positively depressing, because we have not yet the experience which would interpret to us its meaning and open to us its joy. Our earthly life may furnish us an a.n.a.logy. The joy of a grown man is often preeminently in his work, but he would find it difficult to explain to a child the source of his joy. And if the child were told that there would come a time in a few years when his chief joy would be found in work, the prospect would probably not seem to him inviting. The wisest of us may be as little prepared to enter in detail into the meaning of the future life.