There is no attempt in this book to present a complete system of theology, though much of such a system is passed in review, but only to study a special phase of theological thinking. The precise theme of the book is the relations of the social consciousness to theology.
This is the subject upon which the writer was asked to lecture at the Harvard Summer School of Theology of 1901; and the book has grown out of the lectures there given. In preparing the book for the press, however, the lecture form has been entirely abandoned, and considerable material added.
The importance of the theme seems to justify a somewhat thorough going treatment. If one believes at all in the presence of God in history, and the Christian can have no doubt here, he must be profoundly interested in such a phenomenon as the steady growth of the social consciousness.
Hardly any inner characteristic of our time has a stronger historical justification than that consciousness; and it has carried the reason and conscience of the men of this generation in rare degree. Having its own comparatively independent development, and yet making an ethical demand that is thoroughly Christian, it furnishes an almost ideal standpoint from which to review our theological statements, and, at the same time, a valuable test of their really Christian quality.
In attempting, then, a careful study of the relations of the social consciousness to theology, this book aims, first, definitely to get at the real meaning of the social consciousness as the theologian must view it, and so to bring clearly into mind the unconscious assumptions of the social consciousness itself; and then to trace out the influence of the social consciousness upon the conception of religion, and upon theological doctrine.
The larger portion of the book is naturally given to the influence upon theological doctrine; and to make the discussion here as pointed as possible, the different elements of the social consciousness are considered separately.
It should be noted, however, that the question raised is not the historical one, How, as a matter of fact, has the social consciousness modified the conception of religion or the statement of theological doctrine, but the theoretical one, How should the social consciousness naturally affect religion and doctrine?
In this sense, the result might be called, in President Hyde's phrase, a "social theology"; but, as I believe that the social consciousness is at bottom only a true sense of the fully personal, I prefer myself to think of the present book as only carrying out in more detail the contention of my Reconstruction in Theology, that theology should aim at a restatement of doctrine in strictly personal terms. So conceived, in spite of its casual origin, this book follows very naturally upon the previous book. Some of the same topics necessarily recur here; and references to the Reconstruction have been freely made, in order to avoid all unnecessary repetition.
That this social sense of the fully personal has finally a real and definite contribution to make to theology, I cannot doubt. I can only hope that the present discussion may be found at least suggestive, particularly in the analysis of the social consciousness, and in the treatment of mysticism and of the ethical in religion, as well as in the consideration of the special influence of the elements of the social consciousness upon the restatement of doctrine. Of the doctrinal applications, the application to the problem of redemption may be considered, perhaps, of most significance.
