passing no reflection upon the scientific theologian whose work is
being done in the field of historical criticism or archaeology or any
of the departments of scientific research into the subject-matter of
religion. Most of my readers will understand quite well what I mean.
Everyone knows that, broadly speaking, certain ways of stating
Christian truth are taken for granted both in pulpit and pew; the
popular or generally accepted theology of all the churches of
Christendom, Catholic and Protestant alike, is fundamentally the same,
and somehow the modern mind has come to distrust it. There is a
curious want of harmony between our ordinary views of life and our
conventional religious beliefs. We live our lives upon one set of
assumptions during six days of the week and a quite different set on
Sunday and in church. The average man feels this without perhaps quite
realising what is the matter. All he knows is that the propositions he
has been taught to regard as a full and perfect statement of
Christianity have little or nothing to do with his everyday experience;
they seem to belong to a different world. He does not know how
comparatively modern this popular presentation of Christianity is.
What is wanted therefore is a restatement of the essential truth of the
Christian religion in terms of the modern mind.
_The New Theology and the Immanence of God._--Where or when the name
New Theology arose I do not know, but it has been in existence for at
least one generation. It is neither of my invention nor of my choice.
It has long been in use both in this country and in America to indicate
the attitude of those who believe that the fundamentals of the
Christian faith need to be rearticulated in terms of the immanence of
God. Those who take this view do not hold that there is any need for a
new religion, but that the forms in which the religion of Jesus is
commonly presented are inadequate and misleading. What is wanted is
freshness and simplicity of statement. The New Theology is not new
except in the sense that it seeks to substitute simplicity for
complexity and to get down to moral values in its use of religious
terms. Our objection is not so much to the venerable creeds of
Christendom as to the ordinary interpretations of those creeds. And,
creeds or no creeds, we hold that the religious experience which came
to the world in Jesus of Nazareth is enough for all our needs, and only
requires to be freed from limiting statements in order to lay firm hold
once more upon the civilised world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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