Theology and the Social Consciousness Part 6

8. _The Vision of the Riches of the Life of Christ, Ethically Conditioned._--But the thought of Christ's satisfying our highest claim on life deserves to be carried further, if it is to be saved from vagueness and to have its full power with us. The highest value in the world is a personal life. So Christ has made us feel. It is finally the only value, for all other so-called values borrow their value from persons. The highest joy conceivable is entering into the riches of another's personal life through his willing self-revelation.

Now it is no fine fancy that the supremely rich life of the world's history is Christ's. G.o.d can only be known, if we are not to fall back into the vagaries of mysticism, in his concrete manifestation; and G.o.d opens out in Christ, the New Testament believes, the inexhaustible wealth of his own personal life. It is G.o.d's highest gift, the gift of himself. "No one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal him."[49] "This is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true G.o.d, and him whom thou didst send."[50] So it seemed to Paul: "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ."[51] Do we not here catch a glimpse of what the depth of that satisfaction with the inner life of G.o.d in Christ may be?

"For He who hath the heart of G.o.d sufficed, Can satisfy all hearts,--yea, thine and mine."

Only the riches of a personal life can satisfy our claim on life, our desire for life; and, ultimately, we can be fully satisfied only with G.o.d's own life in the fullest revelation he can make of it to us men.

Only this can be "the unspeakable gift." The thirst for G.o.d, for the living G.o.d, is a simply true expression of the human heart when it comes to real self-knowledge.

But the riches of the personal life of Christ are necessarily hidden to one who does not come into the sharing of Christ's purpose. The condition of the vision is ethical. The very satisfaction, therefore, of our craving for life constantly impels to a more perfect union with the will of Christ; for such complete entering into the life of another with joy implies profound agreement. The desire for life, therefore, for G.o.d's own life, for communion with G.o.d, itself impels to character. Faith does here give "the power to submit with joy to the claims of duty," and religion is ethical in the very heart of it.

9. _The Moral Law, as a Revelation of the Love of G.o.d._--The same unity of the religious and ethical life is helpfully seen, if we put the matter in one further and slightly different way. Only the Christian religion, faith in G.o.d as Father revealed in Christ, enables us to welcome the stern demands of duty and so gives us inner deliverance, joy, and liberty in the moral life; for now the moral demand is seen, not as task only, but as opportunity. For Christ, the law of G.o.d is a revelation of the love of G.o.d; it is a gracious indication--a secret whispered to us--of the lines along which we are to find our largest and richest life; it is not a limitation of life, but a way to larger life. Not, then, the avoidance, as far as possible, of the law of G.o.d, but the completest fulfilment of it is the road to life--following the hint of the law into the remotest ramifications, and into the inmost spirit, of the life.

The other att.i.tude which a.s.sumes that the law is a hindrance to life is a distinct denial of the love of G.o.d. It implies that G.o.d lays upon us demands which are not for our good. It refuses to accept as reality Christ's manifestation of G.o.d as Father. Real belief in the love of G.o.d, on the other hand, must take the fearful out of his commands. To be "freed from the law," now, has quite a different meaning: not the taking off from us of the moral demand, but the inner deliverance, that would not have the command removed, but finds life _in_ it, and obeys it freely and joyfully. Only a thoroughgoing and fundamental faith in the Fatherhood of G.o.d can bring such inner deliverance, even as we have seen that only such a faith can really ground the social consciousness. And such a faith only Christ has proved adequate to bring.

With this light, now, we feel, in every demand of duty, the presence of G.o.d, and in this presence of G.o.d the pledge of life, not a limitation of life. The religious life desires G.o.d, and it finds G.o.d never so certainly as in the purpose fully to face duty. Every one of the relations of life is, thus, turned to with joy by the religious man, as sure to be a further channel of the revelation of G.o.d. The thirst for G.o.d drives to the faithful fulfilment of the human relation. Religion becomes joyfully ethical.

Nor is there any possibility of abandonment to the will of G.o.d _in general_, as the mystic seems often to feel. G.o.d's will means particulars all along the way of our life; and there is no communion with G.o.d except in this ethical will in particulars. At no point, therefore, can the religious life withdraw itself from the daily duty and maintain its own existence. The constant inevitable condition of the religious communion is the ethical will. Our providential place is G.o.d's place to find us. Where G.o.d has put us, just there he will best find us. This is further seen in the fact that the true Christian experience is a constant paradox: G.o.d ever satisfying, and yet ever impelling--never allowing us to remain where we are, but holding up to us the always higher ideal beyond; the law is ever, "Of his fulness we all received, and grace in place of grace."[52] The deepening communion with G.o.d is only through a constantly deepening moral life.

Such a thoroughgoing ethicizing of religion as the social consciousness demands, we need not hesitate, therefore, to believe is possible. The truer religion is to its own great aspiration after G.o.d, the more certainly is it ethical.

But the social consciousness, so far as it influences religion, not only tends to draw away from the falsely mystical, and to emphasize the personal and the ethical, it also tends to emphasize in religion the concretely, historically Christian.

[43] Cf. _American Journal of Theology_, Oct., 1898, p. 824.

[44] Psalm 25:14.

[45] I John 4:7.

[46] _The Communion of the Christian with G.o.d_, p. 230.

[47] _Op. cit._, pp. 232-234.

[48] John 10:10.

[49] Matt. 11:27.

[50] John 17:3.

[51] Eph. 3:8.

[52] John 1:16. Cf. Herrmann, _Op. cit._, pp. 92, 93.

CHAPTER VIII

_THE EMPHASIS OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS UPON THE HISTORICALLY CHRISTIAN IN RELIGION_

The fact that the social consciousness tends to emphasize in religion the concretely historically Christian, has been so inevitably involved in the preceding discussions, that it can be treated very briefly.

I. THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS NEEDS HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATION

The justification of the social consciousness, we have seen,[53] must be preeminently from history. Neither nature nor speculation can satisfy it. It needs to be able to believe in a living G.o.d who is in living relation to living men. It needs just such a justification as historical Christianity, and only historical Christianity, can give; it needs the a.s.surance of an objective divine will in the world, definitely working in the line of its own ideals. It needs also to be able to give such definite content to the thought of G.o.d as shall be able to satisfy its own strong insistence upon the rational and the ethical as historical.

II. CHRISTIANITY'S RESPONSE TO THIS NEED

If religion is to be a reality to the social consciousness, then, there must be a real revelation of a real G.o.d in the real world, in actual human history, not an imaginary G.o.d, nor a dream G.o.d, nor a G.o.d of mystic contemplation. This discernment of G.o.d in the real world, in actual history, is the glory even of the Old Testament; and it came, as we have seen, along the line of the social consciousness. And it is such a real revelation of the real G.o.d that Christianity finds preeminently in Christ. It can say to the social consciousness: Make no effort to believe, but simply put yourself in the presence of a concrete, definite, actual, historical fact, with its perennial ethical appeal; put yourself in the presence of Christ--the greatest and realest of the facts of history,--and let that fact make its own legitimate impression, work its own natural work; that fact alone, of all the facts of history, gives you full and ample warrant for your own being.

If this be true, it can hardly be doubted that, so far as the social consciousness understands itself and influences religion at all, it will tend to emphasize, not to underestimate, the concretely, historically Christian.

The natural influence of the social consciousness upon religion, then, may be said to be fourfold: it tends to draw away from the falsely mystical; it tends to emphasize the personal in religion, and so to keep the truly mystical; it tends to emphasize the ethical in religion; and it needs the concretely, historically Christian.

[53] Cf above, pp. 59 ff.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS UPON THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINE

CHAPTER IX

_GENERAL RESULTS_

The question of this third division of our inquiry is this: To what changed points of view, and to what restatements of doctrine, and so to what better appreciation of Christian truth, does the social consciousness of our time lead? The question is raised here, as in the case of the conception of religion, not as one of exact historical connection, but rather as a question of sympathetic points of contact.

It means simply: With what changes in theological statements would the social consciousness naturally find itself most sympathetic?

Certain general results are clear from the start, and might be antic.i.p.ated from any one of several points of view.

I. THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY IN PERSONAL TERMS

In the first place, the social consciousness means, we have found, emphasis on the fully personal--a fresh awakening to the significance of the person and of personal relations. Its whole activity is in the sphere of personal relations. Hence, as in the conception of religion, so here, so far as the social consciousness affects theology at all, it will tend everywhere to bring the personal into prominence, and it certainly will be found in harmony ultimately with the attempt to conceive theology in terms of personal relations. These are for the social consciousness the realest of realities; and if theology is to be real to the social consciousness, then it must make much of the personal. Theology, thus, it is worth while seeing, is not to be personal _and_ social, but it will be social--it will do justice to the social consciousness--if it does justice to the fully personal; for, in the language of another, "man is social, just in so far as he is personal."[54]

The foreign and unreal seeming of many of the old forms of statement, it may well be noted in pa.s.sing, has its probable cause just here.

They were not shaped in the atmosphere of the social consciousness.

They got at things in a way we should not now think of using. The method of approach was too merely metaphysical and individualistic and mystical, and the result seems to us to have but slight ethical or religious significance. The arguments that now move us most, in this entire realm of spiritual inquiry, are moral and social rather than metaphysical and mystical. It is interesting to see, for example, how such arguments for immortality as that of the simplicity of the soul's being--and most of those used by Plato--and how such arguments even for the existence of G.o.d as those of Samuel Clarke from time and s.p.a.ce, have become for us merely matters of curious inquiry. We can hardly imagine men having given them real weight. A similar change seems to be creeping over the laborious attempts metaphysically to conceive the divinity of Christ. The question is shifting its position for both radical and conservative to a new ground--from the metaphysical and mystical to the moral and social; though some radicals who regard themselves as in the van of progress have not yet found it out, and so find fault with one for not continually defining himself in terms of the older metaphysical formulas and shibboleths.

The considerations, in all these questions and in many others, which really weigh most with us now, are considerations which belong to the sphere of the personal spiritual life. Ultimately, no doubt, a metaphysics is involved here too; but it is a metaphysics whose final reality is spirit, not an unknown substance--Locke's "something, I know not what."

The unsatisfactoriness of even so honored a symbol as the Apostles'

Creed, as a permanently adequate statement of Christian faith, must for similar reasons become increasingly clear in the atmosphere of the social consciousness. One wonders, as he goes carefully over it, that so many concrete statements could be made concerning the Christian religion, which yet are so little ethical. The creed seems almost to exclude the ethical. It has nothing to say, except by rather distant implication, of the character of G.o.d, of the character of Christ, or of the character of men. The life of Christ between his birth and his death are untouched. The considerations that really weigh most with us--as they did with the apostles--in making us Christians, certainly do not come here to prominent expression. This whole difference of atmosphere is the striking fact; and were it not that we instinctively interpret its phrases in accordance with our modern consciousness, we should feel the difference much more than we do.