Shailer Mathews

“ As the dogmatic theologian has too often made a system of philosophy masquerade as a theology by dressing it out with a series of more or less well-fitting proof-texts, so too often modern prophets to a degenerate church, in sublime indifference to the context, time of authorship, and purpose of a New Testament book, and with an equal neglect of the personal peculiarity and vocabulary of a New Testament writer, have set forth as the word of Christianity views which were but bescriptured social denunciation and vision. ”

“ No man's teaching has equaled his in the magnitude of its social results, and there are messages in his words yet to be heard. The sociologist who disregards the teachings of Christ is as unscientific as he who in the history of philosophy should neglect Plato and Kant, or in the history of the United States of America should disregard the Constitution. ”

“ But the point of its agreement is not within the sphere of speculative or practical politics, but within that of individual duties and social regeneration. One can no more call him an anarchist because he gives no political teaching than he can call him a surgeon because he never speaks of medicines. ”

“ Advance in civilization has not been accomplished by simply producing individuals of high religious and moral character. Since the days when the law went forth forbidding the branding of criminals. Christian impulses have been quite as much social as individual. The yeast of the Kingdom has been quite as much political as personal. Is it altogether impossible that He whose teachings have upturned empires and founded new civilizations should have been altogether unsuspicious of the social and political forces that lay within his words? ”

“ Whether for weal or woe, the underlying premises of the social sciences that isolation is abnormality and that society is itself an object of study promise some day to prove as revolutionary in biblical interpretation as was the new conception of the worth of the individual in the sixteenth century. ”

“ The name has unfortunate associations, but, at least as the name of a philosophy, may stand for an ideal condition, which is to be the expression of law. But this law is no longer as with Thomas Aquinas the outflow of the divine nature, but is rather the expression of a human nature that is instinctively to do that which is good not only in the eyes of its possessor, but also in those of his neighbors.
"Anarchy is not inconsistent with association, but only with enforced association. ”

“ It may very well be that in this failure to distinguish, not only between the history of the Jews and the teachings of Christianity, but also between the teaching of Jesus and that of the apostles, men have lost some of the distinction that appears between the aims of Jesus and those of the apostles, as well as between his ideal and their more or less incomplete attempts at realizing such an ideal. ”

“ Not only was the age in which he lived innocent of any such scientific processes, but the whole career of Jesus makes it evident that while no man—not even Socrates—ever possessed a keener perception of human nature alike in its strength and weakness, his main effort was the presentation of ideals and the gift of spiritual powers through which they might be attained. ”

“ Yet Augustine does not attempt to construct any theory of the state from scriptural data. He distinctly turns away [13] from such an endeavor. The City of God is not an ideal commonwealth, but a heavenly, an eschatological reign of peace which is to be expected, but not enjoyed in this age. Priests and prophets had foretold it, the saints of Israel had prayed to see it; the sacred books were full of its ceaseless conflict with its evil counterpart, that fruit of Adam's fall, the earthly state. And before this glorious millennial age could come, this enemy must forever disappear. ”

“ And it must be admitted that at first glance there is something of similarity between Jesus' conception of his new social order and this benign and harmless political metaphysics, which, like a sheep in wolf's clothing, is doing its best by masquerading under an ill-omened name to startle the world into believing it of practical importance. ”

“ His example and life, quite as much as his spoken teachings, have universally been accepted as a basis for Christian doctrine, but nowhere are they of more importance than in the sphere of his sociology. No student of the life of Jesus would venture to predicate inconsistency between his outward act and his inward belief. It is impossible to think of him, simply as an honest man, practicing that which he would forbid his followers. ”

“ For it cannot be too strongly emphasized that Jesus was not a political thinker, and that he has left no divinely sanctioned form for political association, A government is Christian, not because it is of this or that form, but because it is attempting to realize the principles of fraternity and love that underlie the entire social teachings of Jesus. ”

“ Nothing is easier for the brain fertile in generalities and for the heart burning with sympathy and indignation than to evolve a system from a sentence or a term. In this particular Christian sociology is re-running the career of Christian theology. ”

“ Since the the Reformation the theological and exegetical study of the New Testament has been largely dominated by an individualistic philosophy. The chief aim of theology has been the discovery of an explanation of the "salvation" of each individual believer. A new man and not a new society has been the objective point of most preaching. If sometimes the theologian has been forced into a belief in the solidarity of the race, it has really been that he might have a major premise on which to base his restricted conclusion as to the fate of the individual. ”

“ Mankind is not composed of insulated individuals, but of social beings, who seek not a convenient association for exchange and other economic purposes, but an absorbing and organic union with one another as members of a family. If Jesus bids his disciples not to be called rabbi, [37] it is not only that he may teach them lessons of humility, but also because he himself is their Master. ”

“ Philosophy, it is true, should never dictate interpretation. But no conscientious exegete would dare claim absolute immunity from its influence. The results of the past may thus be supplemented by those of the present. The future of a man is known; the future of mankind is now to be discovered. And this discovery will in no small way spring from a new appreciation of the teachings of Jesus. ”

“ If men desire the sanction of Jesus for any form of government, they must appeal not to specific sayings, but to this spirit which is the basis of the ideal order. The test of a theory or a fact of government must not be Does Jesus teach it? but Does it make for that fraternity that is his ideal for society? Such a tendency is conceivably the result of almost any form of political organization. Jesus himself most naturally used the monarchical vocabulary of his people just as Plato used that of the Athenian aristocratic democracy. ”

“ For this reason, so far as a systematized and complete statement is concerned, outside of the magnificent summaries into which Jesus has compressed the essentials of religion and morals, no one can claim to have mastered Christian teaching until he has mastered its entirety. ”

“ His work was not that of the investigator, but of the revealer and inspirer. It is impossible to think of him as laboriously gathering material for a treatise upon social phenomena—a measurer of foreheads and a compiler of statistics. ”

“ If it be objected that no such government can exist, that force and not love is still the essential element of the state, the only rational reply is one of doubt that is itself hope. For it may well be doubted whether the teachings of Jesus are not more operative in politics than men think ”

“ While it is evident that Jesus has given us no system of social teachings, he certainly was no more a systematic theologian than he was a sociologist. And, a priori, it would be a singular phenomenon if Christian teaching and life which has everywhere effected the most remarkable social changes should itself be possessed of no sociological content It is not altogether a reply to say that good men must necessarily produce social improvements. Good Brahmans in India have not greatly elevated women, and good Greeks in Athens supported slavery. ”

“ It is even unsafe, as a first step, to gather only such passages as may serve as the basis of a particular doctrine. The first question is not what sociology did Jesus teach, but whether he taught anything that may properly be called sociological. Classification must logically, and generally chronologically, succeed discovery and interpretation. Let all the materials for a social teaching first be gathered. ”

“ A second obstacle in the way of formulating the social teachings of Jesus is the impatient and over-zealous publication of certain doctrines that are called Christian, but which are based, not upon exegesis, but upon a philanthropy largely unrestrained in both its prejudices and its rhetoric. Disregarding the mischievous tendency for every good man to dub as "sociology" his hasty thinking and hopes as to society ”

“ If one adopts the conventional division of the study of sociology—descriptive, static and dynamic—it at once becomes evident that little that can be termed descriptive sociology is to be found within the gospels. Jesus was not a student of society in the technical use of the term. ”

“ The principles which he enunciates are very general and scattered. Nowhere have we anything like the fullness and the explicitness that mark his teachings in regard to marriage and divorce. The most celebrated text [22] "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's," is rather an avoidance of specific teaching than an enunciation of a principle. The position in which Jesus found himself precluded any unequivocal answer. ”

“ He stands committed to no political teaching. In this particular he is unique among the great teachers who have affected the West. Others, like Plato and Mahomet, have yielded to the temptation of systematic thought or circumstances and have weighted their philosophy and their religion with political teachings that were either so ideal as to be impracticable or so practicable as to be soon outgrown. Jesus felt the force of the same temptation. ”

“ No man can escape the Zeitgeist. But in thus rightly insisting upon the need of saving faith on the part of every man, oirr religious teachers have to a considerable degree overlooked the essential sociability of human nature, and unconsciously have developed exegetical presumptions that have biased interpretation. Scriptural teachings have been applied to men as if they were insulated entities, and to society as if it were but an aggregation of easily separated wholes.
The results of such presuppositions are no less unfortunate than inevitable. ”

“ Not to plunge into the mysteries of Daniel and the Apocalypse, nothing is more fundamental in the argument one meets constantly in mediaeval documents concerned with the bitter struggle between pope and emperor, than the appeal to the two swords. ”

“ With the revival of the Roman Empire by Charlemagne, and especially with the later attempts at a dual empire during the Middle Ages, the theoretical side of politics became increasingly dependent upon scriptural supports. ”

“ As Bryce says, "Every passage was seized upon when submission to the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Cæsar [?] ”