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Jesus Christ and the Christian Understanding of Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

S. H. Mayor
Affiliation:
Westminster CollegeCambridge

Extract

If we are attempting to set out an ideal of society which is deserving of the name of Christian we must have some idea of what is meant by Christianity. I propose that Christianity is to be identified with Jesus Christ.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1979

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References

page 45 note 1 cf. Karl Barth: ‘The criterion of past, future and therefore present Christian utterance is thus the being of the Church, namely, Jesus Christ, God in His gracious revealing and reconciling address to man. Does Christian utterance derive from Him? Does it lead to Him? Is it conformable to Him? None of these questions can be put apart, but each is to be put with all possible force.’ Dogmatics Vol. I, Part 1, p. 4.

page 46 note 1 Contrast with this the words of Professor Keet of Stellenbosch Theological College, South Africa: ‘There is only one apartheid known to Scripture, and that is separation from sin.’ (Quoted by de Blank, Joost in Race: A Christian Symposium (ed. Hill, Clifford S. and Matthews, David), 1968, p. 123.)Google Scholar

page 48 note 1 It is interesting to note that Lindsay Dewar, in his basically conservative Moral Theology in the Modem World, arrives at a pacifist conclusion, and dismisses the doctrine of the Just War, on these grounds.

page 49 note 1 See Richardson, Alan, The Political Christ (1973), especially pp. 41–52.Google Scholar

page 49 note 2 See Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (ET 1931) Vol. 1, pp. 82ff.Google Scholar

page 50 note 1 ibid., pp. 150–161: ‘The Stoic idea of Natural Law, which the Apologists regarded as identical with the Christian moral law, provided the way out of the difficulty’ (p. 150). ‘With the aid of the theory of relative Natural Law she [the Church\ learned, on the one hand, how to tolerate the actual social situation … and, on the other hand, how to regulate it according to her theories of Natural Law’ (p. 158).

page 51 note 1 See especially pp. 205–207 (of the 1942 edition). ‘The universe, it was assumed, is the best of systems; any other system is good only in so far as it is constructed upon the same principles; and the object of tie Infinite Wisdom which had fashioned it was to attain the maximum of variety by means of inequality. Clearly, then, human society is well constituted only if, within its own limits, it tends to the realisation of the same desiderata. This was, of course, the point of the famous dictum of Pope's which has so often been misapplied for the annoyance of little boys and girls:

Order is Heav'n's first law; and this confest, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest, More rich, more wise.

This was no casual piece of Toryism on Pope's part; that “Order,” that is, hierarchic gradation, is everywhere required by the divine Reason, is a fundamental premise of the argument for optimism in the Essay on Man. The doctrine of the Chain of Being thus gave a metaphysical sanction to the injunction of the Anglican catechism: each should labour truly “to do his duty in that state of life”—whether in the cosmical or the social scale—“to which it hath pleased God to call him”. To seek to leave one's place in society is also “to invert the laws of Order”. “Cease, then, nor Order imperfection name.” Any demand for equality, in short, is “contrary to nature”.’ (Pp. 205f.)

page 53 note 1 See Troeltsch, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 50ff. ‘… It is a great mistake to treat all the ideas which underlie the preaching of Jesus as though they were primarily connected with the “Social” problem. The message of Jesus is obviously purely religious; it issues directly from a very definite idea of God, and of the Divine Will in relation to man. To Jesus the whole meaning of life is religious; His life and His teaching are wholly determined by His thought of God’ (p. 50). No one will accuse Troeltsch of neglecting the social aspect of Christianity! His book on this theme has just over 1, 000 pages.

page 57 note 1 This issue was brought to the fore especially by Dix, Gregory in his contribution to The Apostolic Ministry (ed. Kirk, Kenneth, 1946Google Scholar). Dix derived his interpretation from an article by Rengstorf, K. H. in Kittel's, Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Meuen Testament, trans, by Coates, J. R. as Apostleship in 1952Google Scholar. Dix's argument was severely handled by numerous scholars, not least by Manson, T. W. in The Church's Ministry (1948)Google Scholar, and also by distinguished Anglicans.

page 57 note 2 cf. 1 Cor. 5.1–5: The object of consigning the offender to Satan is ‘that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord’.

page 60 note 1 But about that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son; only the Father (Mark 13.32).