Public opinion and theology

Front matter

Class B fi ^i^X- Book ^M ^SS.

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Part I Some Real Gains CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introductory 13

II. The Divine Responsibility 32

III. Responsible to Whom ? 50

IV. God and Man and the Daily Task . . 67 V. Publicity in the Kingdom of God ... 86

VI. The Divine Friendship 109

VII. Provision for Rescue 129

Part II Some Steadying Factors

VIII. The Individual 153

IX. The Church and Society 175

X. The Book of Rebellion and Freedom 197

XI. Jesus 218

XII. The Christlike God 239

PART I SOME REAL GAINS

Chapter I Introductory

How can we adjust the claims of Christianity to be an absolutely binding religious system to a day which lays increasing stress upon the popular will as the only source of authority in society? Dogmatists of opposed types are ready with an answer. One declares that the problem is really no problem at all since the voice of the people is the voice of God. The dogmatist of the other camp oracularly replies that the sovereignty of the kingdom of God has right of way over all popular decrees whatsoever.

The dictum that the voice of the people is the voice of God does not help us much. It is very difficult to prevail upon the radical expounders of popular sovereignty to tell us what they mean by the voice of the people. A swarm of questions arise to our lips as this dictum is urged upon us. Who are the people? Is the term to be made all-inclusive? How are we to justify popular aberrations and excesses with the claim of divinity for a popular utterance? When the champion of divine sovereignty insists upon the absolute sway of the God of Christianity we are beset by a no smaller swarm of questions than before. We all know that the idea of God is influenced and modified and even definitely shaped by the peculiarities of the times in which men live. Plainly, we cannot get far as long as we give heed to the dogmatists alone.

Suppose we begin by looking at some ways in which popular thinking does unquestionably modify the rehgious conceptions of men. For the sake of at least getting a start we will think of society in its broadest terms as consisting of a mass of persons of enough Hke-mindedness to live together fairly well as one of the major groups hke a conmaonwealth or a nation, or even as a larger group that we have in mind when we speak of the civilized world or of Christendom as a whole. How does the spirit of such a group aflFect progress in thinking about God?

The most definite manner in which a social group might bring its influence to bear upon religious thinking would be in the enactment of law. Law-making is perhaps the most definite and concrete form of social activity. Let us imagine ourselves dealing with a community in which the passage of laws marks definite achievement of the popular will, the laws not being the decrees of an autocrat nor the edicts of an ohgarchy or a bureaucracy. In such a community the passage of laws would affect men's ideas of religion both directly and indirectly. Suppose that the practice of the suttee, or the burning of the widow at the funeral of the husband, had been abohshed by vote of the Indian peoples themselves, then the enactment of the law would have had a double significance. It would have marked the stage in Indian thinking at which the majority of the people had become convinced of the wrong of the suttee and had dehberately determined to put it away. The observance of the law, too, would have meant that a horrible rite which could have caused only the deadening of the sensibihties of the people was to be a common spectacle no longer. Henceforward religious thinking would move in a more human and humane atmosphere from the very fact that one abomination had ceased to be. So with popular legislation prohibiting polygamy, or the sale of harmful liquor or drugs. By this powerful exercise of the popular will in lawmaking all thought in the community is directly or indirectly affected, rehgious thought as well as any other kind. Say as much as we please about the force of abstract thinking, we know that all thinking is colored by the concrete images which actually meet our eyes. The simple consideration that, by the progressive enactment of legislation involving more and more the main ethical principles, we do not have to look upon so many horrible spectacles as we once did has meaning for our rehgious thinking.

We mention this phase of the significance of legislation for rehgion because in these days of separation of church and state, when few laws directly bearing on rehgion are passed, we are apt to ignore the indirect effect of many laws. A law is a deed of the people and a rule by which the people act. The law which says nothing about rehgion may by the type of social activity which it registers and fosters do immeasurable good for religion.

A second channel through which popular opinion influences theological discussions is the creation of a demand for certain types of ideas or for certain modes of expression of ideas. One who has any large experience of churches knows that religious thinkers do inevitably to a greater or less degree adjust themselves to the demands of congregations. The influence of a congregation itself upon preaching never has been adequately expounded. We all know, however, that be the prophet of God ever so devoted, and his message ever so original, he must get his truth into statements that fit in with the modes of thought of the people to whom he makes his appeal. Now, anything that shapes those modes of thought will in the end have its influence on the utterance of the prophet. It would be almost impossible to get a hearing in rehgious circles to-day for the type of rehgious utterance of a thousand years ago, or even of a hundred years ago. If a social group, for example, has heard enough of scientific teaching to be under the sway of complete emphasis on what we call natural law, it will be very unlikely that a teacher who lays stress on miracle will attract much attention. If the times through which particular groups are passing are predominantly tragic, theology inevitably will take on a somber hue. It would have been manifestly absurd to expect much hght play of fancy or much leisurely speculation from theologians writing just at the close of the Thirty Years' War, or from the Pilgrim Fathers strugghng with the bleakness of a New England winter. To be sure, the efficacy of a prophet's teaching cannot be judged by the size of his audiences. But before the prophet can affect the hfe of any time he must speak the language of that time ; and the language of a time may be molded by forces over which the prophet does not have the least control. The teacher finds himself inescapably noting what his hearers Hsten to, and he frames his message more and more with the aim of compelhng their attention, just as the author of the rehgious book has to consider what the pubhsher will pubhsh and the buyer will buy.

This is not to suggest anything unworthy in the province of religious teaching. We are certainly not trying to beUttle the individual. But social cohesiveness makes the power of the individual possible, and the social constitution gives the individual his chance. Those who understand their own times most deeply are very likely those who will influence the remoter times most profoundly. In fact, that vague and almost mystic something which we call the spirit of an age — ^produced as it is by the utterances of hundreds of preachers or by the play of myriads of physical and spiritual forces upon the masses, causing the multitudes to half -think or half -feel the same thing at the same time — never comes to its full force until a leader incarnates the spirit in his own Hfe and speech. Some theological utterances are achievements of a whole age or period in the world's hfe.

The situation here is somewhat parallel to that in the field of physical discovery. We would not seek to minimize the historic significance of Christopher Columbus for boldness both of thought and deed. His work stands alone forever. But every year's historical study makes it increasingly apparent that the discovery of America was the exploit of the age in which Columbus lived. Enough men were thinking about the road to the East by way of the West to beget an atmosphere of expectancy ; enough support could be found from men who believed the enterprise at least worthy of a trial; enough of a spirit of adventure was abroad in western Europe to make sure of response to a call for explorers. Moreover, western Europe flatly demanded, and demanded with growing vehemence, that every possibility of finding a route to the East be exhausted.

So in the history of thinking about God it may almost be said that some periods in the world's Hfe have peremptorily demanded that rehgious leaders find a larger conception of God. As an illustration consider the extent to which the doctrine of God has been adjusted to the evolutionary thinking of the last fifty years. If we hark back to the idea of God's method of creation which obtained before Darwin published the Origin of Species, we see a conception totally at variance with the idea of Christian thinkers to-day. There can be no question that the God of Christianity has been with measurable success fitted into the evolutionary theories of our time, or, rather, the evolutionary theories have been adjusted to the Christian conception of God. This result has been achieved not by the superhuman efforts of this or that philosopher but by the determination of the general thinking of the last fifty years to have it so. To be sure, no important question affecting any moral element in our conception of God has been before us. The problem has been as to our view of the divine method. After what we call the "Christian consciousness" became convinced that no injury could be done the New Testament teaching of the love and hohness of God by the scientists' insistence upon the evolutionary method in creation, the popular demand for the interpretation of the divine activity in evolutionary terms became irresistible. There is a sense in which the quality and the supply of theological speculation are determined by the popular demand.

To say this in other language, we may reflect for a moment that there are styles in theological formulas as well as in houses or garments. Who sets the style of house of to-day, or of hats or coats of the present season? Somebody, somewhere, gives the initial impulse, but a style does not become a style until the public sets its approval upon and adopts the fashion. Similarly, ideas become the rage, as we may say, in the realm of philosophic and reHgious discussion. In deahng with a cut of garment people soon find that there are boundaries set in the nature of things within which the style must move. It would not do for the current fashion to call for too thin a coat in the winter. This only means, however, that there are hmits of good sense within which the pubUc mind will confine itself. It becomes incumbent on anyone discussing our theme to ask if there are limitations within which pubhc thinking must remain as it considers the deeper problems of life and destiny. This problem will be the theme of the second part of this essay.

We have been treating of the spheres in which pubhc opinion shapes thought by making a definite demand for this or that type of conception. There are other and less direct roads along which popular opinion presses upon theology, the influences being all the more effective from the fact that their presence and activity are often unsuspected. We speak of types of social atmosphere in which some beliefs come to birth and grow with prodigious vitality while other beliefs die out. We have in mind the set of circumstances in which we cannot say that public opinion definitely calls for one type of belief as over against another, but in which, nevertheless, the pubhc opinion is favorable to the development of ideas which seem to spring naturally and spontaneously out of the social soil of the time.

Suppose we are dealing with a cycle in a nation's existence when the national tendencies are strongly bent toward imperiahsm. It would be too much to say that in such an era there is any popular demand for an embodiment of the doctrine of the church in imperiahstic terms. Nobody is asking that preachers or teachers phrase the preaching of the church in any such fashion as to lend force to the claim that the church is to adopt the terminology or the methods of political or military imperialism.

Yet as a matter of almost obvious historic truth imperiahsm in the church is very apt to follow imperiahsm in commercial or pohtical development. We repeat that this is all the more probable because the tendency is so unconscious on the part of ecclesiastical leaders. Many of the most devoted churchmen may not be able to detect this parallehsm between the national and the ecclesiastical movement even after it has been pointed out. It might be noted, in passing, that this is the explanation of the intense resentment of some ecclesiastics when a keen-sighted prophet puts his finger on a dangerous tendency in the activity of an imperiahstically minded group of chm'ch leaders. Those who are rebuked because of their subser\dency to politics and finance are not conscious of their subserviency. They have breathed the social atmosphere of their era as unconsciously as they have breathed the physical air.

Ideas are tied to one another by a bond of inherent kinship. If one idea dominates a given movement, a brood of similar and yet secondary ideas sweep up with it into power. We cannot go so far as the Hegelians and speak of history as unfolding with inevitable logic. It would be sheer dullness of sight, however, to fail to recognize that a regnant idea makes a path and a place for the ideas to which it is akin. A strong tendency toward a monarchical form of government carries with it almost irresistibly a notion of ecclesiastical rigidity which may become quite powerful. The propagandists for monarchy may protest that they have no interest in church questions whatsoever. But the fact is that strict monarchy and strict priestly control keep step with one another in a comfortable touch-of -elbow. If we pull one idea up into prominence in the world's thinking, we, by the same effort, drag into importance all other ideas or half -ideas with which the controlling notion is interlaced. Or, to change the figure, if we select one idea for supreme honor, that idea's boon companions — some of them poor relations, but relations nevertheless — clamor successfully for a share of the applause.

We may go farther and say that pubhc opinion shows its power not only over the ideas for which it definitely calls and which it nourishes by making a social soil and climate friendly to them, but also by tolerance toward conceptions of another sort. Toleration is one of the mighty achievements of the pubHc mind, hmited and inadequate as toleration may be. A cynic might avow that toleration is, like justice, everybody's second choice; that every man would prefer to have his own way made the way of every other man, but will consent to the other man's following his own way for the sake of like liberty himself. Cynicism apart, however, the positive insistence upon toleration means everything. There are some doctrines toward which the ordinary man probably would take a critical or a hostile attitude if he were compelled to express an opinion concerning them when he first learns of them. But pubhc opinion has back of it now a tradition of toleration in religion: the average man knows that he must be acquiescent — except that he may speak his mind. The very fact that he cannot interfere with the belief by repressive act gives the behef its chance. Then, if the belief seems to be attractive to any considerable number of people, the common man who in himself reflects the common sentiment looks upon the belief as having a title to respectable standing before the world, whether he agrees with it or not.

Look for a moment at the spread of theories of mental control of matter in this country in the last half century. There can hardly have been any very widespread demand in popular thinking for such theories as those of present-day healing by mental force, etc., though it may be that to-day's emphasis on the omnipotence of mind is inevitable as a reaction from the crude materiahsm of the later '60s and early '70s. Surely the raw advocacy of materialism of the Tyndall type ought to call for a swing toward ideaHstic opposition. But the popular thinking has not taken much account either of extreme materialists or of extreme idealists. A system which at first statement appears to be directly opposed to the ordinary man's common-sense view of things was disseminated in a land of tolerance until it had won a goodly number of devoted adherents and had accumulated to its credit a measurable degree of success in establishing its claims as to the superiority of mind over matter.

In a less tolerant age the system could hardly have got a start. So that, while we cannot say such theories have the direct sanction of the popular opinion of our time, we must admit that they thrive upon a popular acquiescence which, while possibly not approving the doctrines, would resent any attempt at persecution or at throwing them out of court. The general popular will is in all such matters the determining element. Judging by the utterances of the more acute historical observers of the processes of political government, it is permissible even to ask if every government which has ever existed — even the Oriental despotism — has not rested at last analysis upon the consent of the governed. Probably the most ironwilled autocrat ruhng over the most submissive subjects has known that there has been a Hmit to his despotism beyond which he must not pass. As people become more enlightened that hmit to oppression is more quickly reached, and even the despotism itself is sooner or later done away. This is why agitators in all ages have so often proclaimed to the masses of the people that they are responsible for their own hardships.

Such agitators always will have it that acquiescence is really a passive vote for the thing in which the pubhc mind acquiesces — though this is hardly just in theology. If our illustrations suggest that in toleration pubhc sentiment gives speculations of dubious worth their golden opportunity, the reply must be forthcoming that toleration means the keeping open of the fair field for the play of the survival of the fittest. Pubhc opinion keeps open this field at least to a degree that allows what the soldiers called some "nice fighting" always to be going on. It is the object of this essay frankly to recognize the scope of popular authority in forging rehgious thinking. There is no evading the influence of pubhc opinion over our ideas of the kingdom of God. Now, the recognition of the existence of a force is the first step toward keeping that force imder proper control. We have not thought it necessary to say much about the obvious but most important fact that the sentiment of our own time lays more and more stress upon the right of the people themselves to increasing self-government. Politically, the battle has been fought through — at least in Occidental civilization — so that the people can pohtically control themselves. And a more consequential warfare than that for pohtical freedom is being fought out before our veryeyes: the people are insisting upon economic freedom. In every stage of society those who hold the keys of economic power have stupendous control over the exercise of every other kind of power. The multitudes themselves are reahzing this more and more. Hence the insistence upon broadening the base of control in modern industry.

All this progressive conquest of independence means a sturdier approach to the problems of theology. There are some sound demands on the part of popular thinking to which the defenders of divine sovereignty will, if they are wise, give heed. In the advance toward larger freedom the hosts of mankind have made discoveries as to the worth of himian hfe itself, and as to the proper attitudes toward human life in all its phases, which must indubitably have the most powerful bearing on theological thinking. We wish to indicate the value of some of these sohder gains for religious theory. After having done this it will be in order for us to indicate some of the limits which popular authority will have to observe in its attitude toward the problems of divine sovereignty. Or we may be allowed in these earher chapters to think of those weightier moral and spiritual ideals for which popular authority can be expected to give its sanction in the long run, leaving to the later chapters a discussion of the factors which must protect these same ideals from those superficiaHties and excesses which sometimes mark the action of popular opinion in the short run — if the expression is permissible. Believing as we do that in the long run pubhc opinion will settle practically everything in theology, we may, nevertheless, find that in the short run public opinion at times is to be strenuously resisted. But this is anticipating.

Chapter II The Divine Responsibility

In the light of the truths discovered as men have moved toward nobler freedom what can popular authority rightly demand of a sovereign God? The theologians have from the beginning proclaimed the power of God. What limitations can we insist upon placing upon this power to make the idea of a sovereign God acceptable to present-day thought?

The inescapable requisite is that in working out our theories of God we represent him in terms of moral responsibihty. If a ruler is to have power, he must exercise that power under a sense of responsibility. Now, the old doctrines of arbitrary sovereignty for God are out of the question. Social criticism is here entirely just: if God is to claim the loving self-surrender of men's wills, he can base his claims only on the ground that his mighty powers are used under a bond of responsibility.

We can well enough understand how the doctrine of an arbitrary divine sovereigntygot its start. There have been times when beneficial social consequences followed the preaching of a doctrine of the most arbitrary sovereignty. In a social system falling to pieces through ruthless and lawless anarchy it might be the duty of the prophet of God to call for absolute obedience to an autocratic God just for the sake of getting things into order. But after things have come into order we quickly resent the idea of an arbitrary control over us, even if that control is exercised from the throne of the universe. Men will not be good for long because any sort of divine Being autocratically commands them to be good. The natural and fitting answer to such an edict from a ruler is the question, How good are you? Looking back over the history of the church, it is not, indeed, difficult to see how the doctrine of an arbitrary divine sovereignty got a start, but it is not easy to see how the learned doctors ever foimd a justification for their doctrine in the Scripture, for the Scriptures from the beginning to the end represent God as laboring under a consciousness of responsibility. Even if we follow the biblical students who insist that in the earliest times Yahweh was nothing but Israel's tribal God, and chiefly a God of battles at that, we must remember that we cannot dismiss a fighting God until we know what he is fighting for. From the earhest scriptural writers comes the teaching that God was fighting for Israel, and for the moral aims toward which Israel so soon began to advance.

From this beginning on through the era of the prophets who unerringly discerned the moral might of a God who was doing his utmost to discharge his moral obhgations toward his people, we have very httle suggestion of anything capricious or self-willed in the exercise of divine power. Even the passages which speak of Israel's God as jealous connect the jealousy with a passion for the welfare of men. We might obey an arbitrary divine sovereignty just as the best road out of a bad plight. We might conceivably make terms with an arbitrary universe, for the sake of getting on more comfortably, but we could never hope to win the approval of a moral community by any such acquiescence. The only correct moral attitude before such despotism is the attitude of protest. If we must have a merely arbitrary divinity, then let us recognize at the outset that any man holding power and using it under a consciousness of moral responsibility is superior to an arbitrary God. The modern popular doctrine is, and this doctrine is among the soundest moral findings of the race, that the possession of power of any sort over one's fellows puts the possessor of the power under heavy bonds. These bonds must be thought of as heavier for God than for any other ruler with power. It is interesting to glance at some of the expedients by which men have tried to evade the problem of moral responsibility presented by God's sovereignty. It is not far from the mark to assume that popular speculation conceives of God in deistic terms. God made the world and started it running. Once made, it speeds along under its own momentum. The terrible catastrophes that occur as the world rolls on hardly were foreseen by the Creator. Of course the holder of the popular deistic view never puts it just this way. He speaks of consequences as the inevitable working out of natural law, as if law went by itself. Now, there is no rehef for the Ruler of the universe in any such looseness as this. If he made the world, he made the grooves in which it rolls along, and he made all the lives that get caught and crushed. The fields of northern France are this day sown with unexploded grenades and shells and bombs. Suppose a child fifty years from now trips over a loaded shell in such fashion as to explode the shell and blow his own body to pieces, who is to blame? The nation who fifty years before caused the war that fired the shell is to blame. Merely removing the agent in time from the consequences of his deed does not touch the question of moral responsibihty. There is, indeed, a rough sort of rehef for the imagination in deistic thinking or half -thinking; but deism, if anything, makes the problem of God's responsibihty worse, for it suggests an unwilhngness on the part of the Creator to keep close to the exploding consequences of his own deed.

In more recent days there has been an obvious trend in pubhc thinking away from a crude deism to an emphasis on divine immanence. In commoner phrasings this doctrine has sought to meet the problems of the divine responsibihty by putting God immediately into all things. Things must be at bottom good or he would not be in them. This is essentially an attitude of faith in the moral God of the New Testament, and as such is substantially Christian. When the behever, however, attempts to buttress his faith in the immanent God with argument he does not get far, for immanence brings the mysterious God very close to us. Practically, the doctrine of divine immanence is often used to help us look away from the dark facts. The holder of the view picks out the beautiful or beneficial aspects of the universe and says that God is in these. This is worse than nothing for steady thinking. The utmost that the doctrine of divine immanence can do is to dehver us from the terror of a self -running machine, and make us feel that we are immediately in contact with a God who is in all things. But the further question arises as to what he is in the things for.

The doctrine of immanence has a chronic tendency to slide over into a doctrine of pantheism. Modern science has made us f amihar with the notion of one great Energymoving in and through alL The vast doctrines of ideahsm of the middle of the nineteenth century made us acquainted with immense ideas of whose unfolding the universe is the manifestation. But whether the universe be the expression of Energy or the development of Idea, both the scientific and philosophic speculations are pantheistic if they leave no room for the play of the free spirit. With the free spirit ruled out the problem of responsibihty is canceled altogether, for if God himself is not free, there is no reason for talking about his responsibihty. If he is free and men are not, why should he have created a race of human puppets? On a pantheistic scheme what we think of as good and bad are ahke products of the same force or the same idea. If we are dwellers in a pantheistic universe, the best we can do is to try to put up with it ; but the impulses to put up or not to put up, the feelings of acquiescence or the feehngs of protest, what seems to us to be sense, and what seems to be nonsense, all ahke have the same high or low origin. Curiously enough, the doctrine of pantheism has seemed to some to lend support to the modern emphasis on the value of men as masses or as members of an all-inclusive social organism. Here again the resort is to imagination rather than to thought. The divine spirit is conceived of as some vast nimbus or atmosphere inclosing all men alike: and this expansive spatial figure seems to be a help in thinking of the stirrings of the multitudes for whom men are hoping to find a door to worthier dignity. The doctrine that men are all ahke the manifestations of an underlying force is rather a precarious support for emphasis on the worth of all mankind if the play of the free human spirit is done away with.