Theology and the Social Consciousness: A Study of the Relations of the Social Consciousness to Theology (2nd ed.)King, Henry Churchill
Religion
Theology and the Social Consciousness: A Study of the Relations of the Social Consciousness to Theology (2nd ed.)
King, Henry Churchill
Christian sociology; Theology, Doctrinal -- History -- 20th century
In the attempt, then, clearly and steadily to carry through the
conception of God as completely personal, theology may well guard
carefully certain points. In the first place, theology does not mean
to transfer to God human limitations; rather, it conceives him to be
the only complete personality with perfect self-consciousness and full
freedom, no part of whose being is in any degree foreign to himself.
Nor, in the second place, does it mean to forget that the personal
relations in which God stands to other persons are unique, and that,
in three definite respects: that conviction of the love of God, as of
no other, must underlie, as a great necessary assumption, all our
thinking and all our living; that God is himself the source of the
moral constitution of man, which must thus be regarded as an
expression of the personal will of God, and the personal relation to
God so have universal moral implications such as no other personal
relation can have; and in that God is such in his universal love for
all, that it is impossible to come into right personal relation to
God, and not at the same time come into right relation to all moral
beings.[105]
2. _God is Always the Completely Personal God._--If, now, theology is
to do justice to the demands of the social consciousness for a full
recognition of the personal in God, it must see clearly that God is
_always_ the completely personal God. Certain conclusions, not always
admitted, are believed to follow from this position.
(1) _The Consequent Relation of God to "Eternal Truths."_--In the
first place, there can be no sphere of eternal truths, thought of as
either created outright by the will of God, or as existing of
themselves independently of God and only to be recognized by him.
The difficulty is not merely that at least one of these views would
put God in the same dependent relation to truth as we finite beings,
and thus practically put a God above God. Nor is the difficulty merely
that it is impossible to think the real existence of such a sphere of
eternal truth, since truths or laws can be said to exist only in one
of two ways: either as the actual mode of action of reality, or as the
perception and formulation in an observing mind of that mode of
action. And these difficulties are both sufficiently serious.
But, from our present point of view, the great difficulty is, that
trying to conceive God as either creating or coming to the recognition
of truth, assumes, as Lotze points out, a _fragmentary_ God, a God for
whom truth is _not yet_. It assumes an action of the will of God apart
from his reason, that is, a God not yet completely personal, not yet
the full God of truth and character. A God for whom truth and duty are
not yet, is certainly no true person. Most, if not all, of our
metaphysical puzzles connected with the relation of God to what we
call eternal truths, seem to me to grow out of this thought of an
essentially fragmentary God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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