CHAPTER XII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DEEPENING SENSE OF THE VALUE AND SACREDNESS OF THE PERSON UPON THEOLOGY 179 I. The Recognition of the Personal in Man 180 1. Man's Personal Separateness from God 180 2. Emphasis upon Man's Moral Initiative 181 3. Man, a Child of God 183 II. The Recognition of the Personal in Christ 184 1. Christ, a Personal Revelation of God 184 2. Emphasizing the Moral and Spiritual in Asserting the Supremacy of Christ 185 3. The Moral and Spiritual Grounds of the Supremacy of Christ 188 (1) The Greatest in the Greatest Sphere 188 (2) The Sinless and Impenitent One 192 (3) Consciously Rises to the Highest Ideal 194 (4) Realizes the Character of God 195 (5) Consciously Able to Redeem All Men 196 (6) Complete Normality under this Transcendent God-Consciousness and Sense of Mission 197 (7) The Only Person Who can call out Absolute Trust 198 (8) The One, in Whom God Certainly Finds Us 199 (9) The Ideal Realized 200 4. Christ's Double Uniqueness 201 5. The Increasing Sense of Our Kinship with Christ, and of His Reality 205 III. The Recognition of the Personal in God. 207 1. The Steady Carrying Through of the Completely Personal in the Conception of God. Guarding the Conception 208 2. God is Always the Completely Personal God 212 (1) Consequent Relation of God to "Eternal Truths" 212 (2) Eternal Creation 214 (3) The Unity and Unchangeableness of God 216 (4) The Limitations of the Conception of Immanence 217 3. Deepening the Thought of the Fatherhood of God 218 (1) History, no Mere Natural Process 218 (2) God, the Great Servant 219 (3) No Divine Arbitrariness 220 (4) The Passibility of God 221 4. As to the Doctrine of a Social Trinity 222 5. Preëminent Reverence for Personality, Characterizing all God's Relations with Men 226 (1) Reflected in Christ 226 (2) In Creation 230 (3) In Providence 232 (4) In Our Personal Religious Life 233 (5) In the Judgment 237 (6) In the Future Life 240

THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

INTRODUCTION

_THE THEME_

No theologian can be excused to-day from a careful study of the relations of theology and the social consciousness. Whether this study becomes a formal investigation or not, the social consciousness is so deep and significant a phenomenon in the ethical life of our time, that it cannot be ignored by the theologian who means to bring his message to men really home. This book is written in the conviction that, while men are thus moved as never before by a deep sense of mutual influence and obligation, they have also as deep and genuine an interest as ever in the really greatest questions of religion and theology. Interests so significant and so akin cannot long remain isolated in the mind. They are certain soon profoundly to influence each other. And this mutual influence of theology and the social consciousness form the theme of this book.

Two questions are naturally involved in this theme. First: Has theology given any help, or has it any help to give, to the social consciousness?--the question of the first division of the book. Second: Has the social consciousness made any contribution, or has it any contribution to make, to theology?--the question of the second and third divisions. That is to say: On the one hand, Have the great facts which theology studies any help to give to the man who faces the problem of social progress--of the steady elevation of the race? On the other hand, Has the great fact of the immensely quickened social consciousness of our time, with all that it means, any help to give to the theologian in his attempt to bring the great Christian truths really home to men, to make them more real, more rational, more vital?

Or again: On the one hand, do theological doctrines--the most adequate statements we can make of the great Christian truths--best explain and best ground the social consciousness, so as best to bring our entire thought in this sphere of the social into unity? Is the Christian truth so great that it not only includes all that is true in this new social consciousness--is fully able to take it up into itself and to make it feel at home there--but also, so great that it alone can give the social consciousness its fullest meaning, alone enable it to understand itself, and alone furnish it adequate motive and power? Is the social consciousness, in truth, only a disguised statement of Christian convictions, and does it really require the Christian religion and its thoughtful expression to complete itself? Must the social consciousness say, when it comes to full self-knowledge,--I am myself an unmeaning and unjustified by-product, if there is not a God in the full Christian sense? and, so saying, confirm again the great Christian truths? This is the question of the first division.

On the other hand, since the task of any given theologian is necessarily temporary, and since any marked modification of the consciousness of men will inevitably demand some restatement of theological doctrine, the question here becomes--To what changed points of view in religion and theology, to what restatements of doctrine, and so to what truer appreciation of Christian truth, does the new social consciousness naturally lead? How do the affirmations of the social consciousness, as the outcome of a careful, inductive study of the social evolution of the race, affect our theological statements? This is the question of the second and third divisions of the book.

Our discussion must of course assume and build on the conclusions of sociology, and of New Testament theology, especially the conclusions concerning the social teaching of Jesus.

THE REAL MEANING OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THEOLOGY

INTRODUCTION

_THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE THEOLOGIAN_

First, then, what is the real meaning of the social consciousness, as the theologian must view it? The answer to this question involves a preliminary one: What is the point of view of the theologian in any investigation? One can only give his own answer.

First of all, the theologian, as such, is an _interpreter_, not a tracer of causal connections. He builds everywhere upon the scientific investigator, and takes from him the statement of facts and processes. With these he has primarily nothing to do. With reference to the social consciousness, therefore, he does not attempt to do over again the work of the sociologist; he asks only, What does the social consciousness, in the light of the whole of life and thought, mean; not, How did it come about?

The theologian, too, is a _believer in the supremacy of spiritual interests_; this is his central contention. He affirms strenuously, with the scientific worker, the place and value of the mechanical; but he is certain that the mechanical can understand itself even, only as it is seen to be simple means, and thus clearly subordinate in significance. His problem is, therefore, everywhere, that of ideal interpretation, not of mechanical explanation. But, while he has nothing to do with the scientific tracing of immediate causal connections, he recognizes causality itself as requiring an ultimate explanation, that cannot be mechanically given. The theologian must be in this, then, an _ideal_ interpreter, and an inquirer after the _ultimate_ cause.

The theologian assumes, moreover, the legitimacy and value of the fact of _religion_; for theology is simply the thoughtful, comprehensive, and unified expression of what religion means to us. The meaning of the social consciousness to the theologian involves, therefore, at once the question of its relation to religious conviction.

The point of view of the Christian theologian involves, besides, the _reality of the personal God_ in personal relation to persons. Theology is in earnest in its thought of God, and knows that God is everywhere to be taken into account; that, if there is a God at all, he is not to be exiled into some corner of his universe, but is intimately concerned in all, is at the very heart of all; and that, therefore, it is not a matter of merely curious interest or of subsidiary inquiry, whether we are to look at our questions with God in mind.

Finally, the Christian theologian tries everywhere to make his point of view _the point of view of Christ_. The theology, upon which he ultimately stakes his all, is Christ's theology. He knows that there is much concerning which he cannot refuse to think, but upon which Christ has not expressed himself either explicitly or by clear inference; but in all this unavoidable supplementary thinking he aims to be absolutely loyal to the spirit of Christ.

From this point of view of the Christian theologian, now, what does the social consciousness mean? The answer may be given under four heads: (1) the definition of the social consciousness; (2) the inadequacy of the analogy of the organism, as an expression of the social consciousness; (3) the necessity of the facts, of which the social consciousness is the reflection, if ideal interests are to be supreme; (4) the ultimate explanation and ground of the social consciousness.

These four topics form the subjects of the four chapters of the first division of our inquiry.