groups and attempts to transfigure the world, coextensive with the life of the church?
Jesus gives no clear answer, but his position, to judge from the few uncertain expressions of the gospel,[1] seems to imply that the church is one form of the attempt to realize the principles embodied in the kingdom of God. But there is not a trace of any belief on his part that the two would ever be coextensive. The new social order was to be religious; historically, it has made much progress through the aid of religious organizations. But it is as much grander than the church as an ideal is grander than the actual; as much wider as social life is wider than any one institution; as much more catholic as Christianity is more catholic than ecclesiasticism.[2]
V.
Jesus, then, thinks that an ideal society is not beyond human attainment, but is the natural possibility for man's social capacities and powers. The new social order, as a spiritual fellowship between men and between God and men expressing itself in social relations, may at once be established potentially in the midst of that other social order, which is based upon a disregard of the normal religious and social capacities of men, and which becomes of necessity self-destructive, and in tendency anarchistic. In his conception of this progressively realized social order we see that two elements are essential: (1) the divine sonship as seen in the moral regeneration of the individual; and (2) the organic union of good men typified by the family. To describe in some detail the extension of these principles of sonship and brotherhood to the various phases and institutions of social life, and to show in what lie the forces that aid in their incarnation, must be left to subsequent papers.
The University of Chicago.
- ↑ Matt. 16:18; 18:17.
- ↑ For an exceedingly well balanced discussion of this point see Denny, Studies in Theology, ch. viii. See also Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 515–519; Orr. The Christian View of God and the World, especially, 402–412; Freemantle, The World as the Subject of Redemption.
