The enlarging conception of God

Front matter

I HERBERT ALDEN YOUTZ

Class Book.

Jdl Ld j

Preface

These essays, with the exceptions of Chapters III and IV, were not originally designed to form chapters of a book. Chapter I is an address given before the New York State Conference of Religion. Chapters II and V were published in the Harvard Theological Review, by the courtesy of whose editors they are used here. The unity of theme and treatment, we believe, does not suffer from this undesigned assembling; and there is a gain in concreteness by reason of the fact that each chapter was intended to stand in its own right. Certain repetitions were almost inevitable, but all of the discussions have been revised to make the argument as concise as seemed consistent with its pedagogical purpose. The last chapter is a sermon preached to students ; and as a " laboratory " example of the theological method advocated will be more effective than a theoretical discussion

Vll viii PREFACE

of the subject. I make grateful acknowledgment here to many whose writings have helped me, from a number of whom I have quoted without specific acknowledgment

HERBERT ALDEN YOUTZ.

Auburn, N. Y.,

January 1,1914.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction i

CHAPTER

CHAPTER I The Enlarging Conception of God

Religion as we know it is not some holy thing apart, let down out of heaven, which cannot be touched with human hands. It is a human product. It is holy in the degree that it is our highest human growth. The process by which we grasp the fact of God in terms of our human, and interpret our human life in the conviction of the divine, is religion. It is a process which inevitably lays religion open to the limitations and the blunders of the experimental method, as well as to the triumphs of experience. All of the ideals by which we are experimentally feeling our way to our best life will be reflected in our religion. Our sciences, philosophies, economics, social and industrial ideals, above all our moral history, will be registered in the advance or decline of our religious consciousness.

Religion springs eternal in the heart, a germ not of our own planting. But human life is the soil, climate, sunshine, and the culture which condition and direct its growth. Religion can be smothered, distorted into grotesque forms, controlled in formal gardens, or cultivated into luxuriant, life-nourishing growth. It is not a constant quantity ; but rather it responds sensitively to the God-conception within, and the conception of God, in turn, is shaped by life's ideals as they arise. Though the ideal of God reacts powerfully upon all of our controlling ideals, it is still true that the God whom we worship is conditioned and shaped by the ideals which outline and express our whole mental and spiritual outlook.

This pragmatic shaping power of ours in the realm of religion is illustrated graphically in the history of the Christian church, where the conceptions reflected in many types of doctrinal explanation vary radically, each typical doctrine being shaped by the ruling conceptions of the time. The progress of the history illustrates the advancing stages of enlightenment and culture. The examination of this relative element is the gist of most modern historical and psychological emphasis in studying religion to-day. Why did people believe in certain religious ideals ? What factors of life impelled them to this belief ? How shall we rationally evaluate the belief ? This rational attitude toward the past is fast coming to the service of the present and the future. We have a deep concern to examine these relative forces that are shaping our God-consciousness, and to inquire into their effectiveness and validity. Do the life-forces which shaped the ideals of the past still hold us ? Do the ideals which shape our God-idea function with the ideals that control men's thinking to-day ? In a moving, changing world, the conservative attempt to hold over, in religion, conceptions that our times have left behind is paralyzing to religious vitality. The conception of God not only does, but must, reflect the ruling mental ideals of the times, if it is to feed heart-hungry men. If the living convictions of to-day do not find expression in the religion which we teach, if we never so earnestly endeavour to enforce fundamental convictions in the form of mental conceptions that controlled another age and do not hold the best belief of our day, we shall bind the religious power that we long to emancipate. Says La Touche : ' ' The most disastrous thing that could come to the spiritual life of any age is that it should not be responsive to the thought of its age."

Fruitful years of study, invention, discovery, and achievement have changed the face of the earth ; have enlarged every sphere of life ; and have bound us all up in a newly discovered unity that means new power, new responsibility, new potentialities for the blessing or the cursing of human life. With this profound movement there has come a not less profound change of thought-habits in regarding the world. New ideals of thought have come into being, new methods of study unknown to our predecessors, a new mental attitude toward life. The scientific habit, the pragmatic test of truth, the practical estimate of life's values and meanings, the deepened social sense through which we see all moral significance, — these and other ideals have so shaped the thought and consciousness of our age that the modern man already finds it hard to grasp clearly and sympathetically the ideals that prevailed before science awoke. Most textbooks written one hundred years ago seem written for some other world than ours. And they were !

The beneficence of this new and mighty thought-movement is no part of our problem. From this enlarging life, with its essentially new ideals of thought and study and method and meaning in our mental approach to the world, what have been the consequences for religion ? In this age, keyed as never before to the ideal of effectiveness, what about the problem of the religious effectiveness of the larger views ? Has the releasing of all this power, and all these ideals of method and meaning and worth found effective recognition in the field of religion ? Has religion, the most fundamental and potent force for blessing human life, kept pace with the growing life by which it is conditioned ? Has religion translated its wealth of knowledge into power?

It is not too much to say that there is maladjustment here which ought to receive the attention of every religious teacher. There is non-effectiveness, a waste of power and of possibilities for human betterment such as may well grieve the soul of the consecrated religious teacher, and stir him to alertness and reexamination of his pedagogical presuppositions. Not the least sin of the preacher may be that he does not discern the signs of his times, but is still thundering to his people concerning "the sign of the prophet Jonah.' ' The real problem here is not whether Jonah ever lived and was swallowed by a fish. It is rather whether Jonah functions with our age. It is not primarily a question of historical veracity, but of pedagogical propriety and religious effectiveness.

This maladjustment and religious non-effectiveness is manifest at two points : first, in our reluctance to give our enlarging conceptions of life a place in our conception of God ; second, in our failure to bring our enlarged conception of God into convincing, authoritative relations with life, and thus place it at the service of men.

The first phase of the problem arises from our failure to admit into religious conceptions the wealth of insight that has been won in every other field of thought. The problem roots in the fact that we are controlled by a theory of knowledge in religion which forbids our opening up and enriching our thought of God. The way men have been accustomed to think about God is uncritically assumed to be not only the final account, but also a chief consideration in keeping Him steady ! Because Abraham or Paul saw God clearly through windows of ancient architecture, we insist upon looking through their windows, whether or not we see the vision. We insist upon keeping our windows open toward Jerusalem, when they ought to open upon the life of to-day. This is a fatal mood for the man who wants to achieve effective spiritual leadership. However it may be accounted for, there is in the Christian church a strongly entrenched aversion to admitting new conceptions into theology. This is doubtless due partly to native conservatism in dealing with sacred facts ; partly to an absolute and static philosophy which contributed its spirit and method to most orthodox theology formulated in the Middle Ages.

Theology, more than any other discipline, has disregarded the laws of living thought as rooted in the life of the present. *. Too often theology, instead of being articulated into life, has thought it sufficient to repeat the formulations of the past, to quote some sacred, infallible source, thus existing in a vacuum untouched and uninfluenced by the life of to-day.

The penalty of this failure to think the living God in terms of the living conceptions of to-day is unreality in religious language and anaemia in religious living. The penalty of leading a theological student to his God-idea through the stereotyped doctrines and systems of a dead past is too often to leave him — by his own confession — ' ' without a message for the present/' The only way to bring the Living God into the life of to-day is to obey the deep laws of life, and rehabilitate this August Reality whom men worship, in the thought-garments of to-day. The time-garments of no age are sacred above those of any other. The worth of all conceptions of God is in their power to make Him real to men. The prevailing method of theology not only involves a questionable theory of knowledge, but it makes men feel that there was more of God in the past than in the present. This is the worst heresy !

The deplorable fact that the message of religion is failing to hold men has its explanation partly in the fact that religious teachers and preachers are largely engaged in presenting God and his meaning in terms of outgrown conceptions. These conceptions do not grip men and hence do not awaken and nourish the native religious impulse. The God of doctrinal teaching is not large enough to inspire our worship. The enlarging conceptions lie at hand, the thought-vehicles of our age. Our message, our meaning, our vision must be mediated in terms of these things, or we shall withhold the revelation of God from the life of to-day. If to-day's life is not seen as God's — sub specie aeternitatis — it will be recorded as an appalling age of secularism ! God must be known to men of to-day in terms of the thought and life of to-day, or not at all.

But, confessedly, the old rigidity is breaking up, and a better thought of God is dawning upon the world. The laws of valid and vital thinking are asserting themselves, and through the visions of to-day's life men are catching glimpses of the Eternal at work, blessing the life of to-day. There is an enlarging conception of God.

Still, the new vision is not definite and consistent. It is indistinct and confused. It is not yet at home in our consciousness. Men still look wistfully toward the past with its definite lines, its confident beliefs, its commanding authority. There were prophets in the past. There are so many confused voices in the present. We need translators of the visions of God, whose task it shall be to show convincingly that we are not called to follow new gods, but that the God of the past is the God of the present ; that we may think to-day's life in terms of his purpose and presence. This we must do without disturbing our religious continuity with the past. In these changing times we need to teach men security and confidence in the enlarging conception of God which is dawning ; to point out the familiar vision of the Eternal

One, the Light of all our living, the Might of all our achieving. The twilight stage, the stage of distrust, of scepticism, of secularism, calls for leadership to point out the emerging form of the Divine. Leaders of religious thought have their opportunity here to contribute to the problem of practical efficiency. The difficulty is largely a thought-difficulty. The remedy must be supplied by the thinkers.

II

The other phase of the problem has to do not with the intellectual acceptance of the enlarging conception of God, but with a matter of equally portentous concern. As a mental concept, the enlarging thought is slowly compelling acceptance. The enlarging life and the ruling ideals and thought-habits of to-day are finding recognition in our ever broadening religious ideals. Preaching is increasingly characterized by new breadth. But the new breadth is not always characterized by a new passion. Enlarging mental conceptions are compelling an enlarging conception of God ; but the newer thought of God is not yet completely at the service of the deeper, vital needs of life. We think a larger God, but we do not realize his presence. We conceive Him ; but we do not trust Him. Prayer has not kept pace with preaching. The newer ministry of the gospel of God is still conspicuously a ministry to intellectual peace. Just as the older thought of God does not function with the intellectual consciousness of to-day, so the newer, enlarging conception does not function adequately with the moral consciousness and the deep religious need. It does not bring adequately the sense of the power of the Divine to the life of to-day. This dynamic problem of religion is not merely a matter of right mental adjustment. For religious ministry which deals only with the intellectual phase of the problem soon creates a religious aristocracy, an intellectual exclusiveness, out of which indeed much wisdom may emerge, but no creative power. A deeper problem than correct and true conceptions of God is the problem of so clothing this new and better conception with power, and so endowing it with life, that the conception shall mediate to us the Divine Reality, the Living God- Scholarship has an obligation here beyond the formulations of the enlarging conception. Noblesse oblige. We must put the conception at the service of life. We must help men to a deeper realization of the presence of God.

The reality of God as power and activity is the conviction that must lay hold of society before religion can gain its august and absolute authority over life. In a time of radical readjustment of religious conceptions, the danger is that we shall lose the power of the old, and find no corresponding power in the new. This is precisely the religious malady of to-day. We have enlarging conceptions of God. But the confidence, the security, the assurance of God as a Great Companion and Helper and Co-worker, — this phase of living, commanding religion has not kept pace with our better thought. In the last analysis, I believe that this is the menace to the higher life of society. Better conceptions of God cannot take the place of the realization of the present power of God.

Moreover, I am a modern man in a modern world. It seems to me to be the first duty of optimistic thought to seek for present help in the life of the present. I distrust the mode of piety which always turns to a sacred past to find how near God comes to men. A vital problem for me is ' ' Does God come to human life now ? — and How?" There are saints a plenty who can find God in the Old Testament, and sages who can find God in the Greek lyrics, who have little sense of the presence of God in modern life. That is a dangerous heresy of the religious life, — to trace God's presence and purpose in another age, and not be confident of his presence and out-working purposes in the life of our own day!

For centuries our moral and religious convictions have grown with tendril and root about an unscientific world- view. Thought-habits have impelled us to seek the credentials of divinity in certain definite tokens. These tokens are largely discredited by modern thinking. And the result is confusion, lack of confidence, a weakened hold on the divine. The power of the Infinite is no longer at the service of our human endeavour. Intelligent leaders can no longer give unquestioning credence to the old, and they have not yet learned to trust the new implicitly. The amphibious preacher — breathing both the old atmosphere and the new, influenced both by fable and by science — does not nourish a robust spiritual life for himself, and is likely to guide his people only to an ansemic spiritual existence. The crying problem here is created by maladjustment to the enlarging conception of God.

As a first principle of solution, we may point out that just as the religion of the past found its spiritual certitudes, its religious realities, in terms of the life and thought that it knew, so must we seek in the forms of to-day's life for the credentials of the Divine, for the assurance of God. The virility of all religion is in the degree of its assimilation to the ideals and conditions of its times. If God spoke convincingly to a past civilization in terms of myth and fable congenial to that age, He will not fail to speak to us in terms of our ruling convictions of process and law which have driven out the age of myths and superstitions. That these older forms of thought are but imperfectly atrophied is evident by the pagan proofs still offered of the deeds of God in the world. The physical miracle, the visible wonder, the capricious, the arbitrary, and the unusual are still offered as the supreme evidence of the divine activity. So true is this that the word " supernaturalism " has come to designate technically the type of thought which separates God from the world, and makes the token of his presence a miraculous occurrence. This type of explanation has shaped almost every traditional account of doctrine. The most cherished portions of our sacred books are those which speak of miraculous deeds, occurrences, experiences, — for these seem to us most certainly the credentials of the divine. Alas, we do not read the signs of the times. We still demand non-spiritual proofs of spiritual reality. Now these tokens do not function with our enlarging ideals of truth, our enlarging conceptions of a spiritual God. Supernaturalism, as the designation of the divine power and presence in the human, we must indeed hold, or we emasculate religion and make it a by-word. But the reality of the supernatural activity, whether in the psychological or the social realm, or in the field of natural law, must not find its chief evidence in the miracle. We must not ask people to "turn aside" to witness burning bushes in order to convince them that they are on holy ground. The presence of God and the sacredness of life must be demonstrated to men in terms of to-day's life.

The philosophic mood which could conceive God best as transcendent, has given way to a mood which demands the vision of his immanence. Is it not within the power of our current convictions of the nature of reality to disclose God as a Living Fact ? Is not our best thought our best instrument ? Is scientific thought to be regarded as an enemy and not an ally of religious faith? It is, indeed, "becoming increasingly hard to believe in the miracle," and the evidence for to-day must function with the convictions of the men of to-day. An age trained on the one hand to seek for the manifestation of the divine in "supernatural" tokens, and trained on the other to believe that law and order express the deepest nature of the world, stands confused before the religious problem of evidence. It is a pedagogical inconsistency, a rational blunder. The consequences are disastrous for those hearts which affirm the supernatural and crave the Divine, but whose understanding can make no place for the traditional account of the supernatural. The earnest thinkers of to-day are not atheists ; they are believers in a great God. They are believing protestants against outgrown conceptions of God.

Process, law, righteousness, unselfish, loving service of fellow-men, — these are things which hold men's minds, the things in terms of which their deepest convictions of life are being shaped. Then surely the prophet of God must find the evidences of the supernatural in these things, and be able to convince the people of to-day that the Infinite touches our finite life in these things. Religious certainty ■, religious reality } must be found in the things we are doing. If we cannot convincingly show

God at work in the life of society, then no volumes of " supernatural evidences" out of the past can create religious reality. Such is the concrete demand of the scientific habit of mind. It is a right demand.

To put this criticism and counsel in concrete terms, let us frankly say that we fail to moralize our theological thinking to keep pace with our best moral consciousness. When we talk to men about God, and do not speak to the deepest moral realities that possess the men of our day, can we speak with authority to our age ? Will not thoughtful men say that we do not play the rules of the game in theological thinking ?

For these elemental moral realities know nothing of cheap absolutions, of divine interventions in the moral process, of miraculous provisions to save men from consequences. Every system of spiritual " indulgences" is ethically and rationally vicious, and betrays the presence of mechanical thinking in religion. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" is a fundamental certitude, the condition of awakening the consciousness of sin. No doctrine of God must tamper with that elemental moral conviction, but only interpret it. The habit of law, firmly fixed in the consciousness of to-day, is our ally and instrument to rebuke sin and establish righteousness. Men are not easily persuaded by religious doctrines which speak of a deity who transcends the moral law, or who abrogates it to save men from the consequences of their transgressions of law, or to lift them up to heavenly places. We know no God great enough to save men by a higher law than that of righteousness ; men must be saved morally or not at all. God conceived in terms of this deep moral reality will speak with all of the authority of the divine to men. Men believe when we teach faithfully that the wages of sin is death, and that the wages will be promptly paid on pay-day. They believe when righteousness and love and service are worn as the badge of religion, and when they are taught to see in these things the deepest truths about God. For vital religion is a matter of ethics, and not etiquette, before God. If our religious doctrines can be reinterpreted to make place for these moral realities, the consciousness of God will live again in the moral passion, and the old assurance of the divine presence will blaze forth with conquering might.

On the other hand, to dally with our best moral convictions, and to teach anything less than our best ethical insight dictates, is to trifle with the laws of religion. The passion for truth must control in theology as much as in any science. We preach God not as an almighty solver of difficulties, but because we believe He is the great Fact. We preach salvation not to salve men's consciences, but because love and righteousness are the only solvent of the problem of sin. We preach immortality, not as "dope," an anaesthetic that will enable us to comfort the sorrowing and the dying, but as the truth about the enduring nature of spiritual reality. Out of the depths of moral experience we must find the interpretation of religion which will bring the consciousness of God home with authority to the life of to-day. The enlarging conception must be moralized to keep pace with our best moral realities, if we would solve the problem of religious effectiveness by revealing the Living God. Thus the newer sense of law has done something to tone up religious thinking and lead it to deeper visions. The static attitude in theology, insisting that the old order is good enough, is giving way to a progressive insight which interprets God and his relationship to life in harmony with the moral realities which are convincing to the social consciousness of to-day. "The new righteousness,' ' " social justice," " civic conscience," — these are modern terms pregnant with revealing power, and symptomatic of our enlarging moral vision. The sense of law is leading us to see that righteousness is neither a capricious affair, nor a by-product of the world. It cannot be "imputed" by any juggling with logic. It must be achieved, not bestowed. The ethical is not an optional department of life ; it is a quality of all personal life. "Morality is not in the nature of things ; it is the nature of things." The moral law is a cosmic law, underlying all life and law. And the path to religious reality is the path of moral fidelity and obedience. The awakening of the moral passion is the condition of the vision that shall see God face to face. '

That this is no academic problem, a sympathetic knowledge of our times must surely convince us. A diagnosis of the present situation reveals a widespread paralysis or inertness in religious life as it touches social problems. There are profound social movements, not without some moral purpose, which yet have not the powerful impulse of religious conviction behind them. There are industrial and economic developments which await the direction of higher meanings, which only religion can bring. Spiritual ministry to human need was never so magnificently organized as at present ; but it awaits a dynamic passion, an inspiration commensurate with the task. Leadership of moral reform does not have the courage and majesty that come with the consciousness of " walking with the Almighty." The ethical has in too many instances descended to the plane of dull duty-doing, a "cold, hard moralism." Life itself, too often, has no outlook, no majestic setting, no comprehensive unity and goal great enough to lift it out of the commonplace, or even out of despair. ■ The temporal has crowded out the sense of the eternal. The blight of secularism is upon our splendid modern life. Life is held too cheap. There are no inspirations large enough to fill life and labour with enthusiasm, zest, and power. The people are not working with a song, but with a sigh ; not with praise, but with a protest. Life is not regarded as opportunity, but as something to be spent. Optimism, the mood that controls when men feel that the world is good at its centre, and that it is all pledged to the service of the human, — this fountain of abounding life has failed or run low, sustaining only a meagre spiritual life. Certain social forces are gathering, sullen and sinister, which no superficial treatment can allay.

The solution is the religious solution. God must be seen on the throne of the universe. Life must be seen as a Cause large enough to challenge the conquering spirit. The laws of life must be seen, not as hostile or neutral, but as God's way to reach the highest goal. Duty must be interpreted as the will of the Living God. Work and service must be interpreted as the glory of God. Leadership must be able to cry, "Thus saith the Lord." The developments of modern life must be seen as the unfolding of the divine purpose. The moral and spiritual meanings of life must be felt in their sublimity, expressing the deepest law of the universe. Our spiritual leadership, like all great leadership — the leadership of Abraham, of Isaiah, of Jesus — must be exercised under the eye of God. We must be original seers, and not second-hand scribes. God is not a great Concept ; He is the Great Toiler. As men of action, our wills must find God as Will, as Co-worker, as Co-sufferer, as Sharer in human life and work. God can be known as Present Help. Spiritual religion brings distinction and glory and power, — in short, redemption, — to our finite life, by linking it all in conscious cooperation with the Infinite Sympathy.

Our problem is, first, to teach an enlarging conception of God, helping people to conceive the divine in terms of the living ideals that control to-day's life ; second, to teach them to worship and pray, trusting life confidently to the Ancient of Days who manifested Himself in power in the faith of our fathers. The problem of religious effectiveness is ultimately that of establishing a warm, confident, living, strong relationship with the Author and Soul of all being, whose meaning and presence are found chiefly in the highest life of men. And the consequence will be that the ageless, quenchless truth of the inexhaustible divine will be at the service of the human, supplying us with the ideals, the courage, the companionship, and the power that we need to save life and bless it ; and lifting all human effort up to the most effective plane of inspiration and achievement.