those blessings promised God's sons. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Christianity as a system is but an unfolding of the conception of the Godward social capacities of mankind. From this point of view the cardinal doctrines of the incarnation, faith, atonement, justification, and immortality, cease to be abstract, and appear rather the formulation of actual religious experience and the description of psychical possibilities and phenomena.[1]
V.
In a very true sense Jesus identifies the powers of the soul that make union with God an essential of the normal man, with those that force a normal man into union with other human beings. If a man be imperfect who is apart from the divine, so is he who is apart from his fellows. Wherever Jesus holds up a picture of man's ideal, he makes this second element of the twofold extension of personality not only essential but fundamental.
(1) To begin with his conception of the kingdom. If it were allowable to anticipate somewhat the later discussion of this term, it would appear that man is to become righteous—that is, normal—through life in a normal and righteous social order. This new
- ↑ While superficially the current of theological teaching seems to have drifted away from this point of view—especially under the influence of the "Nature" philosophy of the last century—it is nevertheless true that the doctrine of the so-called Vital or Mystical Union has been characteristic of many if not most of the chief theologies. Thus Augustine (Serm. 144): "Qui ergo in Christum credit, credendo in Christum, venit in eum Christus, et quadammodo unitur in eum." So, too, Calvin, Works (Brunswick ed., 1870), IX. 30: "We coalesce with Christ in a sacred unity and the same flesh breathes life into us." The Larger Catechism, Question 66, expresses the fact more formally: "The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God's grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband; which is done in their effectual calling." See H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, 531, sq. Recently the importance in theology, not merely of this religious union but of social activity as well, has considerably increased. If one cares to see how the terminology of a theological past may yet be found full of the spirit of Jesus and applicable to modern conditions, he cannot do better than read Hyde, Social Theology. See also Freemantle, The World as the Subject of Redemption, and Wescott, Social Aspects of Christianity, and The Incarnation and Common Life.
