Christianity and the Social Crisis; A Theology for the Social Gospel

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is one of the most religious of all Christian doctrines. It is not primarily a product of reflection, but of the great religious emotions and experiences. Perhaps for that very reason it has been relatively a neglected section of doctrinal theology. It deals with the most intimate and mystic experiences of the soul, and does not seem to belong to the field especially cultivated by the social gospel.

But in fact the social nature of religion is clearly demonstrated in the work of the Holy Spirit. The prophets of the Old Testament were not lonely torches set aflame by the spirit of God; they were more like a string of electric lights along a road-side, which, though far apart, are all connected and caused by the same current. They transmitted not only their ideas but their spiritual receptivity and inspiration to one another. The great men of whom we think as solitary miracles of religious power were surrounded and upborne in their day by religious groups which have now melted back into oblivion. Their prophetic consciousness was awakened and challenged by historic events affecting the social group to which they belonged. '' The burden of the Lord " was not for themselves but for their community. They knew that their

revelation was to be a message. Their religious experiences were moments of intense social consciousness.

The Christian Church began its history as a community of inspiration. The new thing in the story of Pentecost is not only the number of those who received the tongue of fire but the fact that the Holy Spirit had become the common property of a group. What had seemed to some extent the privilege of aristocratic souls was now democratized. The spirit was poured on all flesh; the young saw visions, the old dreamed dreams; even on the slave class the spirit was poured. The charismatic life of the primitive Church was highly important for its coherence and loyalty in the crucial days of its beginning. It was a chief feeder of its strong affections, its power of testimony, and its sacrificial spirit. Religion has been defined as " the life of God in the soul of man." In Christianity it became also the life of God in the fellowship of man. The mystic experience was socialized.

The doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, as we all know, has passed through profound changes in recent years. The change has all been away from religious individualism and toward a social comprehension of the religious facts.

The process of inspiration was formerly conceived as a transaction between God and the individual. The higher the doctrine of inspiration, the more solitary was the inspired individual. It would have defeated the purpose of the doctrine to admit the presence of outside influences. Even the intellect and personality of the recipient were sometimes represented as passive and quiescent. Philo, whose ideas the early Church followed, said: " A prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts as interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utterances, and as long as he is under inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason departing from its place, and yielding up the citadel of the soul, when the divine Spirit enters into it and strikes at the mechanism of the voice." In extreme orthodoxy it was a liberal concession to grant that the divine power utilized and respected the literary style and individual outlook of the writer.

The modern conception of inspiration not only recognizes the free operation and the contributions of the distinctive psychical equipment of the inspired person, but seeks in every way to get beyond the individual to the social group which produced him, to the spiritual predecessors who inspired him, and to the audience whith moved him because he hoped to move it. We might characterize the progress of the historical study of religion in the last fifty years as a progressive effort to interpret religious individuals by their social contacts. The great work of biblical criticism has been to place every biblical book in its exact historical environment as a preliminary to understanding its religious message. The *' religions geschichtliche Methode" takes up the work where the critical method drops it, and reaches out still further, beyond the ideas and purposes of the literary person to the religious drifts and desires and beliefs of his age, to which he more or less consciously reacted.

Every one who has shared in the results of this work will appreciate how helpful and fruitful this process at its best has been. It has opened up the inspiration of the past and released social values which had been completely locked away under the individualistic method of interpretation. The historical method has already done what the social gospel might wish it to do. Here we have a completed laboratory experiment proving the value and efficiency of a social understanding of religion. The only question is whether we can wan just as strong a sense of the presence of God from this complicated social process of inspiration, as when God was believed to have dictated the books by a psychological miracle. It can be done, but the interpreter needs personal acquaintance with inspiration to do it.

In another direction, however, we have not yet overcome the narrowing influence of the old, mechanical views of inspiration.

Those who have had first-hand experience of inspiration either in their own souls or in the life of others, have always combined reverence for the authority of the word of the Lord and a realization of the human frailty and liability to error in the prophet. Paul and his churches had a rich experience of inspiration. Writing to the Thessalonians he asserts the right of prophesying, but takes the duty of critical scrutiny by the hearers as a matter of course: "Quench not the spirit (in yourselves); despise not prophesying (in others); scrutinize all utterances; appropriate what is good." Inspiration did not involve infallibility when men knew it by experience.

When the inspirationalism of the primitive Church died out, the understanding of its nature grew artificial, just as the understanding of Old Testament inspiration had become centuries earlier. It was not to the interest of church leaders to emphasize that the laity had once possessed the gift of inspiration and the right of utterance. Consequently the realization of the charismatic life of the primitive Church was allowed to fade from the memory of Christians. The apostles alone stood out in the historical perspective as the possessors of inspiration. Their human frailties and fallibilities were forgotten or suppressed; they were conventionalized and fitted with haloes. Their utterances were infallible. Inspiration and infallibility were almost convertible terms. Being so high a gift, inspiration was strictly circumscribed, and was supposed to have ceased when the canon of the New Testament was completed. This, on the whole, has remained the popular orthodox view down to recent times. Now, so high a conception of inspiration discourages the stirring of the prophetic spirit in living men. A man might well claim that God had spoken to his soul and laid a message upon him. But who would want to claim that he is infallible? Psychical experiences are evoked by expectancy. If men do not expect to be regenerated, few will have the experience. If they do not expect to be inspired, few will make their way single-handed to such an experience. The Church has reversed all the maxims of Paul except the last. It has quenched the spirit; it has discountenanced prophesying; it has forbidden intellectual scrutiny of inspiration so far as the biblical books were concerned. The only thing it encouraged was to cleave to that which is good.

The old view of inspiration is supposed to be more deeply religious than the new. It did involve a more reverent and passive attitude of mind. But it robbed us of part of our consciousness of God. A religious man knows that he has no merit of his own, and that all his righteousness was wrought in him by God. To suppose that he can set his owiiwrll on God and work out his own salvation is sub-christian. We ought to have the same consciousness of God's influence on our intellectual comprehension of Christian truth. To suppose that we can work out a living knowledge of the truth from a sacred book without the enlightening energy of the spirit of God is sub-christian and rationalistic. On the other hand, to be conscious of the divine light, to listen to the inner voice, to read the inspired words of the Bible with an answering glow of fire, is part of the consciousness of God to which we are entitled. There are many degrees of clarity and power in this living inspiration, and heavy admixtures of human error, passion, and false sentiment, but the same is true of the experiences of regeneration and sanctification. It is the business of the Church to encourage, temper, and purify the intellectual, as well as the emotional and volitional experiences of its members.

At this point the social gospel coincides with the most energetic religious consciousness. Traditional theology has felt the need of inspired prophets and apostles chiefly in order to furnish the system of doctrine with a firm footing of inerrancy and infallibility. The doctrine of inspiration is not treated as part of the glorious results of redemption, and as the Christian salvation of the human

intellect, but as part of the prolegomena of theology. The social gospel, on the other hamTTf eels the need of present inspiration and of living prophetic spirits in order to lead humanity toward the Kingdom of God. Wherever the Church is set in the centre and her aim is to keep the body of doctrine intact as delivered to it, inspiration will be located at the beginning of the line of tradition, and at most the power of infallible interpretation will be claimed for popes and church councils. Wherever the Kingdom of God is set to the front, inspiration will spontaneously spring into life at the points where the conflict is hot and active in the present. A theology adapted to the social gospel, therefore, will recognize inspiration as an indispensable force of our religion and an essential equipment of redemption. The social order can not be saved without regenerate men; neither can it be saved without inspired men.

The value of the regenerate individual for the advancement of the Kingdom of God consists largely in his prophetic quality. If the Holy Spirit works on his soul so that he has a vision of the Kingdom of God and its higher laws, then to some extent he will be living ahead of his age. In the qualities of his personality and in his judgments of men and events he will be a witness to the divine order of society, and will challenge the right of the world as it now is. If this prophetic insight is not dulled by ignorance and made erratic by eccentricities of character, but is guided by education and balance of character, its social force is very great.

Individualistic religion has bred saints, missionaries, pastors, and scholars, but few prophets. Some of its so- called prophets have been expounders of the prophecy of others. Religions of authority have no real use for prophets except to furnish a supernatural basis for doctrine. Hence prophecy used to be put on a level with miracles as " evidences of the Christian religion." Where the main interest is to keep doctrine undisturbed, living prophecy seemg a dangerous and unsettling force.

Genuine prophecy springs up where fervent religious experience combines with a democratic spirit, strong social feeling, and free utterance. Some sense of antagonism between the will of God and the present order of things is necessary to ignite the spirit of the prophet.

This was the combination which produced the Hebrew prophets. We have the same combination in those manifold radical bodies which preceded and accompanied the Reformation. They all tended toward the same type, the type of primitive Christianity. Strong fraternal feeling, simplicity and democracy of organization, more or less communistic ideas about property, an attitude of passive obedience or conscientious objection toward the coercive and militaristic governments of the time, opposition to the selfish and oppressive Church, a genuine faith in the practicability of the ethics of Jesus, and, as the secret power in it all, belief in an Inner experience of regeneration and an inner light which interprets the outer word of God. These radical bodies did not produce as many great individuals as we might have expected because their intellectuals and leaders were always killed off or silenced. But their communities were prophetic. They have been the forerunners of the modern world. They stood against war, against capital punishment, against slavery, and against coercion in matters of religion before others thought of it. It was largely due to their influence that the Puritan Revolution had its prophetic elements of leadership. The Free Churches throughout the world, consciously or unconsciously, clearly or dimly, have passed beyond the official types of orthodox Protestantism and have taken on some of the characteristics of the early radicals. Great church bodies now stand as a matter of course on those principles of freedom and toleration which only the boldest once dared to assert. The power of leadership is with those organizations and movements which have some prophetic qualities and trust to the inner light.

To-day it is the social gospel which has the democratic outlook and the sense of solidarity. If it also has spiritual fervor, it will have prophetic power.

The social gospel is not a doctrine turned backward to the sources of authority, but a faith turned forward to its task. It sees before it the Kingdom of Evil to be overcome, and the Kingdom of God to be established, and it cries aloud for an inspired word of God to give faith and power and guidance. If theology is to answer to the needs of the social gospel, it ought to assign to prophecy a definite place among the permanent forces of redemption. In recognizing the need of inspiration and prophecy the social gospel is more religious than the orthodox type, and more positive than that liberal type of theology which Is chiefly interested in historical criticism.^

II shall return to this subject once more at the end of the last chapter.

The sacraments have occupied a large place in the worship and life of the Church, and a correspondingly wide room in theology. The Catholic Church is the institution of sacramental salvation. The Reformation was in large part a movement for cleansing the sacramental practices and doctrines. The disastrous split between the Lutheran and Zwinglian churches was due to differences about the significance of one of the sacraments. Large historical denominational bodies have formed about the effort to restore the genuine practice and doctrine of baptism. Evidently the conception of the sacraments has long been an active volcanic region in theology. The old controversial zeal has been followed by relative apathy. Except under " High Church " influences the importance of the sacraments in practical church life seems to be lessening and the issues are being forgotten.

Can the religious spirit of the social gospel give any fresh spiritual meaning to the ancient ordinances, or add anything to the theological interpretation of them? I confess I doubt it. The two fields of interest lie far apart at present. But as a challenge to thought perhaps the following considerations may have some use.

When the act of baptism was Initiated by John the Baptist and continued for a time by Jesus, it was not a ritual act of individual salvation, but an act of dedication to a religious and social movement. Baptism at the Jordan was not received to save the individual by himself, or in a future life; it was received in view of the impending Messianic salvation and as an act of allegiance to a new order of things. The baptism of John can not be separated from his preaching; the former received its meaning and content from the latter. His preaching called men to repent of their old way of living, to quit grafting, and to begin to live in fraternal helpfulness. Baptism was the dramatic expression of an inward consent and allegiance to the higher standards of life which were to prevail in the Messianic community. It was the symbol of a revolutionary movement.

There is no indication that Jesus or his disciples practised baptism during the Galilean period of his work. When the practice was resumed by the primitive Church, it was once more an act of obedience and faith in view of the impending Messianic Kingdom at the return of the Lord. The ritual act now got its ethical interpretation from the remembered sayings of the Master and from the fraternal life of the Christian group.

Baptism was profoundly affected by the great change which came over Christianity when it left its Jewish environment and was assimilated by Greek religious and social life. It was gradually filled with new meanings. It was an act cancelling the guilt of all past sins; an act of regeneration; an act of exorcization, cleansing from the defilement of pagan worship and life. But it was less and less "a dedication to the coming Kingdom of God. It still had a great social significance, for it was the act by