I. THE PRESSURE OF THE PROBLEM
The social consciousness looks to the thorough ethicizing of religion. If the social consciousness is to be regarded as historically justified, it must believe that this growing sense of brotherhood and consequent obligation is simply our response to the on-working of God's own plan, God's own will expressing itself in us. The purpose to recognize the will of God, thus necessarily involves the recognition of human relations, since, as soon as conscience is strongly stirred in any direction, religion can but feel, in this demand of conscience, the demand of God, and, therefore, must bring the convictions of the social consciousness into religion. Indeed, it may be well believed that Kaftan is right in his insistence that it is exactly through the practical, that is, in the realm of the ethical, that knowledge arises from faith.[43]
In any case, it is evident that the old problem of faith and works, of religion and ethics, of the first and second commandments, meets us here in a way not to be put aside. With an ethical demand so insistent as that of the social consciousness no religion can be at peace that is not with equal insistence ethical. We are bound, then, to show how communion with God, the supreme desire to find God, necessarily carries with it active love for men. We must show how we truly commune with God in such active service. The social consciousness, thus, positively thrusts upon every religious man, who believes in it, the problem of the thorough ethicizing of religion. Or, to put the matter in a slightly different way, if the sense of the value and the sacredness of the person is one of the two greatest moral convictions of our time, then religion must be clearly seen to hold this conviction, or lose its connection with what is most real and vital to us. This is the problem.
II. THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
All will probably agree that religion is communion with God. We have seen why the social consciousness cannot accept a falsely mystical view of that communion. For similar reasons, it must make absolutely subordinate all non-ethical and simply mysterious means which make no appeal to the conscience and to the reason—the falsely sacramental. Only the person is truly sacramental. Much else may be of value, but the touch of personal life is the only absolute essential in religion. We have seen, also, why the social consciousness tends to regard religion as a strictly personal relation.
Our problem thus becomes: How does the desire for personal relation with God, the desire for God himself, lead directly into the ethical life—into the full and practical recognition of the ethical demands of the social consciousness?
To guard against any possible misconception, it is, perhaps, well to say at the start that the desire for a personal relation with God has no purpose of returning by another route to the false position of mysticism, in the claim of special private revelations that are exclusively for it. It expects, rather, personal conviction of that great revelation that is common to all, and, moreover, it knows well that no personal relation is essentially sensuous, and it certainly looks for no sensuous relation to God.
It may be worth while, too, to reverse our question for a moment, and ask how morality necessarily involves religion. The true moral life is the fulfilment of all personal relations, and as such can least of all omit the greatest and most fundamental relation which gives being and meaning and value to all the rest—the relation to God. The fully moral life, therefore, must include religion. The unity of the two may be thus seen.
But the present inquiry looks at the matter from the other side, and seeks a careful and thoroughgoing answer to the question: Why is the Christian religion, as a personal relation to God, necessarily ethical?