The atonement and the social process

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER I. THE SOCIAL ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES II. CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES AS SOCIAL PATTERNS Il]. THE DEATH OF CHRIST INTERPRETED IN THE MESSIANIC PATTERN ...

IV. THE DEATH OF CHRIST IN THE PATTERN OF ; DACRIFICH (i Canytunn enue (Oe eg V. THe DEATH OF CHRIST IN THE PATTERN OF ACQUITTAL STEAD NoMa oT NIRS Uw miory ai lake VI. THe DEATH OF CHRIST INTERPRETED IN THE PATTERN OF SONSHIP buvnegal hg VII. THE RISE OF THE IMPERIAL PATTERN IN WEST- ERN CHRISTIANITY Re oO) VIII. THe DEATH OF CHRIST IN THE PATTERN OF FEUDALISM. .

IX. THe DEATH OF CHRIST IN THE PATTERN OF MONARCHY IR ach a SENET de AY an X. MODIFICATIONS OF THE POLITICAL PATTERN . XI. THE FUNCTIONAL VALUE OF THE DOCTRINES | OF THE ATONEMENT .

Chapter I The Social Origin Of Christian Doctrines

RELIGIONS, like men, have their days of judgment when they are tried for their lives. Not alone in Greece has been heard the wail, “Great Pan is dead.’ Few religions have been able to withstand radical changes in the structure of society. Humanity is pragmatic. While ancient beliefs may be honored as bric-a-brac, they are not likely to be given intellectual respect, for when a religion ceases to be intellectually respectable it is senile.

It is true that the case of religion is often tried before some revolutionary tribunal more eager to condemn than to acquit. But such tribunals are seldom permanent. The really critical moment for a religion is when it is challenged by a new social mind to give reasons for its existence. Such moments come when a social order becomes so complicated that the old authorities and customs no longer furnish unquestioned moral guidance. The supreme issue is not forced by science alone. Scientific method is not necessarily the enemy of religious faith for, whether consciously or not, it presupposes faith in working hypotheses rather than absolute knowledge. The severest test to which religion can be subjected is that set by the mind-set of social groups. Into such mind-sets a great variety of elements enter. Men accept or reject religious practices and doctrines for no very clear reasons, often because of some unconscious affinity or enmity. A religion either does or does not meet the needs of which men are aware. One does not need to be a philosopher to share in the mind-set served by philosophy any more than he needs to be a musician to prefer Beethoven to jazz. But a religion, let it be repeated, must be intellectually respectable if it is to win permanent standing in a social order.

Yet intellectual respectability is not first, but second in point of time when compared with religious life itself. The attitudes that are embodied in a religious group can be shared by those who have abandoned the reasons by which the attitudes are justified. ‘They will themselves furnish their own reasons when the need of reasons is felt.

I The history of Christianity is one phase of general history. In particular it involves the development of the Christian movement from its origins to the present condition, not as something apart from the development of civilization, but as one aspect thereof. Any study of

Christianity must take into account the development of the social process which gave rise to the situations in which doctrines were developed. To some extent this has been recognized by the historians of doctrines, but too often only in an encyclopedic fashion. Instead of treating Christianity as a continuous group movement of people possessed of a common loyalty to Jesus, they seem to regard it more as a system existing apart from people. The effect of such a preconception is to center attention on doctrine and to make the great question for the theologian the truthfulness of any doctrine. This in turn leads to a discussion of the validity of the authority upon which the doctrine has been built.

Such a method ignores the fact that doctrines have not sprung up as independent systems of truth. In this respect they do not resemble philosophy so much as statutory law and especially the common law of England and the Constitution of the United States. In order to understand a doctrine one must know not only the time and place of its formulation, but also the social and religious tensions which gave rise to it. Strictly speaking, there is no history of doctrine; there is only the history of the people who made doctrines. A theology is a function of the religious life of a given period and this in turn is the expression of a social order conditioned not only by elements of culture, like philosophy, literature, and science, but also by the creative economic and political forces which engage in the production of the social order itself. One can underoe, ae es stand the history of Christianity only as a social eddy

“within the main current of the stream of history. It may become an object of special investigation, but ay as it is a phase of the social history.

When a group is aware of a tension between its religious heritage and the new conditions under which it must live, its method of procedure is likely to be one or more of the following:

It may endeavor to crush the new conditions; it may abandon its inheritances; it may undertake to evaluate and reéxpress its inheritances; it may undertake to find some pattern in which the new and the old can be combined.

The rise of theologies cannot be understood if this adjustment of tensions is neglected. The full purport of a doctrine cannot be seen until it is regarded in the light of its origins as a means of legitimatizing some element of the precious religious heritage which the group organizing the doctrine wishes to preserve.

From such point of view the test of any doctrine is

~ not absolute, but pragmatic—that is to say, its capacity to. vindicate the deepest faith and the moral conduct of that group of Christians by which it was drawn up. If a doctrine is to be appreciated it is necessary to study historically the origin of the spiritual tension from which it sprang. ‘Therein are the reasons for its existence In such case it may very likely be that a doctrine relieved a tension and legitimatized a belief which were themselves unwarranted. For example, one needs only to mention the various doctrines dealing with hell and the devil. In each case some doctrine made the acceptance of irrational beliefs tenable for the people subject to the tension.

Whoever would understand a doctrine, however, and evaluate it as an element in our modern religious life, must do something more than understand its origin and function. These are preliminary to a discussion as to whether any such tension now exists and if the doctrine historically developed meets a new tension which has resulted from the passage of Christian life and thought into a different world from that in which the doctrine was needed and developed. For religious experience is more permanent than its intellectual vindication.

It is at this point that one sees the importance of discovering what the real nature of doctrines is. In every case, with the possible exception of consubstantiability, the doctrines in Christianity are not metaphysical. They are patterns derived from that total social life with which it is the business of the church historian to become acquainted. For it is the influence of the social

_ forces in the midst of which the churches lived that

PRR es shaped the pattern which relieved the tension and, indeed, may have caused the tension itself.

As one approaches theology, therefore, from the historical point of view it is desirable not only to gauge religious needs but also to watch the pattern-making process, both from the point of view of the tension and from the point of view of its adjustment. Each study a

14 ‘THet ATONEMENT AND THE SOCIAL PROCESS is indispensable. Religious experience is antecedent to doctrines and both can be understood accurately only as they are related to a culture.

Il

It is not uncommon to confuse theology with a philosophy or a philosophy of religion. But when one actually asks not what theology might be or ought to be, but what it actually is; it is clear enough that it is very different from a philosophy. ‘Theology was born of the association of men possessed of a common loyalty, from which emerged the organization of a group belief; a philosophy is not dependent upon elements due to association but is accepted or rejected by individuals as such.”

The correctness of this distinction at once appears when one recalls the course of events through which various theologies have been formed. Without exception, one will find that our theologies, even when held by a professedly non-creedal group like the Baptists, are really the result of imitation, customs, discussion, conflict, compromise, and successive decisions of groups. At first these groups generally were small, but more or less rapidly joined, and expressed their already formulated beliefs in councils or assemblies or something similar. The theology, for example, of most Protestant

* For a discussion of the bearing of the social mind upon Christianity as a developing religion see Mathews, The Faith of Modernism. The results of that study are embodied in this chapter.

bodies gathers around some Confession which has been adopted by some church body. Many of these Confes- ‘sions were adopted by political bodies like the Parliament of England, or by bodies expressly representing some municipal unit like the Swiss cities.

If one traces these group deliverances of Christianity back to their origin, the importance of councils and other bodies grows even more distinct. The Council of Nicea made the first attempt at formulating a belief that should be held by the churches of an empire. That its decisions and those of other ecumenical councils were accepted by the total group represented appears from ' the fact that genuine ecumenical dogma has never been drawn up since the division of the Roman Empire. While the Roman church regards its councils as ecumenical, such.a view compels the reduction of the great Eastern churches into schismatics and Protestants into heretics.

Ecclesiastical decisions have usually been enforced by group authority rather than by argument. Church groups like all others seek self-preservation by compelling individuals to assent to group decisions. Excommunication from the church and punishment by civil authorities have both alike served to give success to orthodoxy. Whatever might have happened if circumstances had been different, the historical fact is that the decisions of successive councils, Greek, Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican, Presbyterian, in fact of every ecclesiastical body able to get control of the machinery of the

State, owe their success Over opposing groups or indi-

viduals to coercion.

Looking now still more closely at the history of this fact, it becomes apparent that those doctrines became permanent which were held by the dominant political and social group. Heresy is always the belief of a

defeated party. If it had succeeded it would have been orthodoxy. A striking illustration of this fact is the history of the Nicene formula during the reigns of the various Roman emperors. Arian and Athanasian doctrines were successively authoritative. But those groups who held the Athanasian views finally got control of state and church. ‘The success of later bodies which gave permanent organization to Christian teaching always lay with those who could enforce their decisions. From the exclusively historical point of view, the issue between groups holding opposing views was not so much one of truth as of ability to enforce a decision. Personally, I think that in general the decisions reached by the formers of orthodoxy were nearer the truth than the views proposed by heretics, but history is not a normative but a descriptive science.

At this point a fact of importance appears: Latin and Protestant theology is composed of the doctrines which were held by those social groups who evolved and organized Western civilization. Orthodoxy may be described as the doctrine which satisfied the needs of the more creative and constructive minds. Our Western civilization and Western theology have the same

| line of social ancestry. The social psychology of the / one is the social psychology of the other. Both are | the product of the stronger rather than the weaker gtoup life. So far is it from being true that Christianity is a plea for “defeatism.”

Ii

These facts so baldly stated become a point of departure not only for the interpretation of the religious development of an evolving social order, but also for

_ the specific doctrines as to the significance of the death of Jesus. Such doctrines, when arranged according to their origin chronologically, synchronize with the creative epochs of European history. ‘They embody the dominant characteristics and practices of the period in which they were finally organized.

In this regard they illustrate the entire development of Western Christianity as the religious aspect of Western civilization.

Western civilization has passed through several distinguishable stages. Each of these produced one or more of the great doctrines of orthodoxy.

1. The Greco-Roman world was non-political and little interested in social reform. It had noble philosophies which might have resulted in distinct social advance and an intelligent reform of fatal economical conditions, but all such influence was estopped by the fact that the Greco-Roman world was under the control of a foreign power. It was not creative, it was reflective and critical. The great period of social and political construction had already passed when Alexander died. From that day to this, the Near East has been a liability which the Western world has repeatedly tried to liquidate. Estopped from political and social creativeness, the Hellenistic mind turned almost passionately to philosophy and religion, developing an amazing loquacity which often passed for metaphysics and faith.

The Roman mind on the contrary was essentially practical, and its interest in. metaphysical speculations was acquired and never determinative. The Western world was built up by the Romans in much the same way that America has been built up by Anglo-Saxons. Its very structure was Roman. Herein it differed markedly from the East, where the Roman administration was not creative but superimposed upon older civilizations.*

The break-up of the Western civilization by the armed immigration of German tribes not only destroyed the Roman population and civilization, but it forced Europe back into a condition from which feudalism emerged as a method of social reorganization. Out from the feudal world emerged the nationalist and, because of causes which it is not necessary to specify, there came later the era of the bourgeois democracies.

* Yet sovereignty concepts were present in Eastern theologies and worship. Cf. Chrysostom’s exposition of the Eastern liturgy of his day.

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2. All these stages in the development of Western civilization found expression in the contemporary religious life. ‘The Hellenistic social mind gave us the doctrines of the Trinity and Christology and diverted Christianity from the moral goal set by Jesus to a theology. ‘The primary tests of Christian loyalty were doctrinal and without explicit moral ekements. The Roman social mind perpetuated this metaphysical interest but it also developed a great imperialistic church where creeds became to all intents and purposes law. Out from the collapse of this Roman creativeness came our doctrine of original sin and the sovereignty of God, as well as the Roman Catholic church, in form and genius a transcendentalized Roman Empite.

Feudal practice found expression in the Anselmic doctrine of the atonement, by which God is conceived of as a feudal lord, having an honor which must be satisfied before he is free to undertake the salvation of men whom he wishes to take the place of the fallen angels.

The rise of nations was accompanied by the rise of national churches which perpetuated practically the entire theological scheme of the imperialistic Roman church, but which conceived of God as a king, and his relations with men as subject to conditions identical with those found in the new states. It is no accident that Protestantism never succeeded within the boundaries of the old Roman Empire. Social inheritances there were too fundamentally imperialistic.

The bourgeois period led certain groups of Christians to emphasize the rights of man before God, just as the period itself developed the rights of man over against kings. Democracies evolved democratic churches. ‘The Congregationalists, Baptists, and Unitarians never controlled state religions like Lutheranism, Anglicanism, and Presbyterianism, and their methods of organization _ were based on the competency of the individual. With « them orthodoxy is an inheritance rather than a creation.

IV

Such facts as these make it impossible to believe that theology is a child of philosophy. It is far more correct to say that it is the intellectual legitimization of a life that sought religious help for its weakness, ideals for its energies, and satisfaction for its needs. ‘The method of this legitimization is the description of the relations of men and God as identical with those which are contemporaneously creative in a social order. The patterns of theology are given by social experience. Evidence of this is in the vocabulary of theology itself. While it is true our technical theological systems have inherited certain terms which came over from Scholasticism, these terms are incidental and technical. There are only two doctrines, the vocabulary of which does not — seem to have been taken from experience, namely, — those of the Trinity and Christology. But a study of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity will show that the primary interest of the church of the second to the fourth century was not metaphysical but soteriological. ‘The primitive Christians were Jews who cast the gospel in the terms of Jewish Messianism. In the course of a century the Christian church was a gtoup of non-Jews who had accepted the unfamiliar vocabulary of the authoritative literature of the Bible but sought to reéxpress and legitimize their experience of salvation in the thought forms of philosophical monotheism. The resulting doctrine as to God was the product of the confluence of the religious experience of the Hebrew and the Greek, later affected somewhat by the imported views of the Far East. The biblical vocabulary was forced into the thought patterns of the new Christian group. ‘‘Consubstantial,” obviously a metaphysical term, is the one metaphysical term of Christian theology. ‘‘Persona,” derived from the law coutts, gained metaphysical significance when the Greeks endeavored to give such a quality to a striking metaphor of Tertullian. And even then, as has already been pointed out, such metaphysical interest was a phase of the Graeco-Roman social mind.

Other than the term “‘consubstantial,’’ however, the vocabulary of historical orthodoxy is that of social experience. The tri-personal God issues “decrees” and publishes “law.” He “punishes” those who violate the law and prepares a blessed future for those who observe it. Man’s inability to keep the law results from a definite act of “disobedience” on the part of Adam who propagated sin and corruption among his descendants eric 2

Ate of whom he becomes a “representative.” God “elects” certain of the members of this “guilty” race to be saved and his right to “forgive” is justified by various conceptions of the atonement, all of which introduce the death. of Christ into a transcendentalized penology current in the time the doctrine is made (as, for example, the ransom, the satisfaction of the divine honor, the satisfaction of punitive justice, the payment of a debt, the vindication of the sovereignty of the law). Those who are thus elected and forgiven are said to be justified or “acquitted.” The completion of the saving process is the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

These terms are not philosophical; almost exclusively they are juridical or political. Our theology can best be described as a transcendentalized politics reproducing the group custom and institutions which have appeared in Western civilization. Vocabularies were furnished by the social patterns into which religious thought was put.

But the origin of a term is less important than its use. In the history of Christianity, an experience has preceded its explanation and definition. The first group of Christians had no theology, but they had a loyalty and a hope. This in itself was quasi-political, namely, that Jesus was to establish the kingdom of David in accordance with the current messianic hope, itself political. But this common attitude of individuals, which drew them together into a group, soon by the inevitable laws of group life demanded a vocabulary, and thus from the start words came to be the expression and symbol of the group attitude. The Christians are those of the Way, Nazarenes, the disciples of Jesus, and finally Christians. ‘The next step was to give unity to this group life and to distinguish it from others by the gradual choice of certain words as tests. They were not severely scientific; one might almost say they were sacramental, the outward symbol of an inward meaning. Thus to call Jesus “Lord’’ was to express the fundamental group attitude of loyalty and hope in him, but New Testament scholarship finds it hard to agree on any definition of the title.

Similarly with other terms. As the Christian movement extended and groups became geographically scattered, there came inevitably the effort to organize a common group attitude into a characteristic group belief by means of standardized terms. The first step was taken by relatively small and scattered groups through discussion and discipline. But discussion became widespread. What term could properly express the common group belief? Should it be the term “Logos,” or the term “Christ,” or the term ‘‘the Son of God”; if all three, in what sense could these be used? By the middle of the second century, Christian groups began to use terms in a somewhat different sense, rival groups insisting that their views were correct. For a couple of centuries discussion continued, different groups using different terms or the same words according to their own custom and fixing such usage by group action in erenae Ly synods and councils. Strictly speaking, these groups never arrived at an exact definition of the terms they used (compare the creed of Chalcedon), but in the long process of controversy, terms came to correlate different attitudes. Thus the word homoousios (of the same substance) indicated one fundamental type of religious attitude and homoiousios (of a like substance) another. It is not strange that groups characterized by the one or the other could not express their positions with thorough intelligibility, yet make each term a rallying point and banner of a party. When the party of homoousia fortunately won, it was natural that its term should be authoritative; but even a cursory knowledge of the history of post-Nicene theology shows that the word was reinterpreted and redescribed, until its real content as given by the Cappadocians was different from that given it by Athanasius. Yet it served as a legitimate symbol of a group attitude and a group belief as to Jesus, beyond question more consistent with religious efficiency and reasonableness than were those symbolized by the other term. ‘This attitude and this loyalty were definitely built into the Christian movement by the use of social patterns.

Similarly in the case of other terms. ‘They were all chosen first as striking analogies or patterns, as a means of clarifying group belief. That which was accepted as a matter of course in social experience was used to describe the relation of God and man. Terms with their new connotation became by custom the symbols of parties rather than the exact embodiment of truth.

The impatience which theological reformers show with all inherited terms is a tribute to their neglect of the laws of social psychology. Our theology is not a system of philosophy, but an extension of the forms of social experience to religious belief. It is a sort of parable in whose plot can be read the history of the social experience of centuries. Its purpose is to make religious experience consistent with other experience, and so reasonable. In failing to pay full respect to this social value of pattern-terms, theological reformers are in danger of denying the religious values which patterns embody.

V

The social origin of doctrines is also seen in the fact that many of them are the outcome of religious customs and practices of groups. How else can one account for the doctrines of the mass, baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, Sabbath observance, the worship of saints, the use of images, the infallibility of the Pope speaking ex cathedra? In all these cases customs grew up, became characteristic of groups and then of larger groups, until they became so common, significant, and sacred as to be constituent elements in religion itself. To remove them was impossible except by revolution. Rather than to face such a crisis Christian groups have explained them, made them into doctrines, and enforced them with authority. Indeed, the chief difference between various Christian groups is precisely in the field of doctrines which originated in, preserve, and systematize customs.

VI

The practical value of these facts is considerable, and may be stated as a group of corollaries.

1. Theology is functional. The Christians of each period inherited the beliefs of their predecessors. In so far as this heritage failed to satisfy new needs, they reéxamined it and found in it values which were capable of explication and restatement in new social conditions and with new social patterns.

Two conclusions follow from this fact. First, members of groups governed by the same loyalties and values can, if they choose, use the same terms with differently defined content. This situation will probably be only temporary, but it is frequent. A term like ‘Son of God,” for instance, has had a variety of definitions and usages, ranging from ‘‘Messiah” to “Second Person” in a metaphysical Trinity. But its religious value or symbolism when applied to Jesus has been constant. It has expressed the conviction that through Jesus God has been uniquely revealed. If theology were a science composed of accurate definitions, it would be necessary that all parties use the term with exactly the same understanding and content. But this is impossible and has never occurred. ‘The flag of a country has the same meaning to patriots no matter of what material it is composed, and a theology is the symbol, the banner of a common group attitude and not a mass of definitions given identical content by all members of the group.

Second, a term that no longer expresses a religious value or serves as the symbol of a group attitude should be abandoned. As a matter of fact, this generally happens in current religious discussions. Confessional theology perpetuates a vocabulary which became necessary to some system, but which may mean nothing to the religious life of to-day. ‘The reason for this is plain. It no longer connotes or symbolizes the essential attitude or loyalty.

2. If theology is functional, the same Christian attitudes and loyalties have been and still can be represented by different terms and formulas. This is evident in such words as “Christ,” “Son of God,’ “Savior,” “Lord.” But it is equally true of other terms, especially those interpreting the death of Jesus. The common divisor of Christian groups is their attitude toward God as revealed in and by Jesus. The theological patterns will vary.

Social interests are bound to develop some form of theology to-day as hitherto, but these interests may not be the same as in the past. In the place of an autocratic king, we have democracy. It is not possible for a man thoroughly in sympathy with modern tendencies to use the formulas of our inherited thology with satisfaction. He knows that the conception of a king which is reflected in the theological doctrine of the sovereignty of God is outgrown. Yet the conception of God as the ultimate reality with whom men must accord, survives. We may well expect to see this expressed in theological conceptions drawn from our democratic experience. In fact, we already are beginning to use terms which make our inherited faith in God more vital and effective. As over against the old conception of royal sovereignty external to and not dependent upon the nation, we have the conception of sovereignty immanent in the nation itself, but transcendental to that nation when expressing itself in governmental forms. In the case of American law, government with sovereignty expressed in the judicial, legislative, and executive elements, might even serve as a pattern for the Trinity. Our group experience, through free discussion, will find an analogy which will express the profound religious conviction that while God is immanent in nature he also must be thought of as expressing himself objectively to that nature, especially to humanity. ‘The process of making this theology does not involve transformation of values and attitudes which older theologies expressed for their authors, but rather the discovery of certain social practices and experiences, which as patterns will actually and constructively express our religious loyalties and — beliefs.

Theology will change but Christian experience and faith embodied in the Christian movement will continue. If prophecy be in any way justified, it would seem certain that the values which have been carried along through the evangelical theologies are those which arte to persist. Just as certain economic presuppositions have emerged from the storm and stress of the economic life of the past, and in different expositions stand tested by their satisfaction of humanity’s needs, so the great values which have been increasingly realized and expressed by successive theologies, reflecting successive social experiences, will continue to project themselves into the religious life of the future. They will give rise to new doctrines as group interests change, but Christianity will breed true to itself because it will be developed by groups of Christians whose needs and satisfactions are of the same general type. Social psychology is as inevitable as society. New social needs will give rise to new religious needs, patterns, and formulas, just as they develop new laws and governments. New occasions will not only teach new duties, but they will also teach new patterns in which to set forth the consistency of the realities of the spirit with those other realities which go to make up our world. Discussion by which new formulas for old values are shaped will be feared only by those who wish to maintain social or ecclesiastical privilege.