A Protestant and Social View of the Church
The Church is a divine institution, just as all legitimate organizations, like the State, the university, the political party, or the private club, are divine institutions. This is the outcome of any thoroughgoing acceptance of the Protestant position of the essentially divine character of all life,...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1914
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1914, Volume: 7, Issue: 2, Pages: 193-202 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | The Church is a divine institution, just as all legitimate organizations, like the State, the university, the political party, or the private club, are divine institutions. This is the outcome of any thoroughgoing acceptance of the Protestant position of the essentially divine character of all life, the priesthood of all believers, and the rejection of local divine places. Any special claim the Church can make must be based not on its essential character but upon its purpose and aim, and its special efficiency in pursuit of some end. That some ends in life are higher than others goes without saying. The end of a private club is legitimate and praise-worthy, but it is not in the judgment of thoughtful men on the same level of importance for life as a university. It is true that any scale of importance is finally based upon judgments of value which are in the last analysis extra-rational. The end aimed at by all churches, and among them we must include synagogues, cathedrals, and the lecture-halls of the Ethical Culture Society, is the mediation to men of the unseen and eternal values of religion and ethics. And each particular church bases its claim for recognition upon its assertion that it is attempting to mediate the truest and highest of these values in the most efficient way it knows. We thus see that the Church or churches represent the community, or rather parts of the community, organized for a particular purpose. The older distincrtion between a visible and invisible church should have lost all meaning for a consistent Protestantism, because it was fundamentally based on the false assumption that our relationships with God depended upon the mediation of the church, and that outside of the church there was no salvation. Hence to account for certain obvious facts, an invisible church had to be postulated. The logic of Protestantism makes any such assumption needless. Our relationships to God and salvation are not in the keeping of any church. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000011123 |