In this Christian perfectionism, Mr. Troeltsch seems to see the very dynamic principle of the modern age. To the salvation interest with its God-man, sin-salvation, life- and after-life conflict are traceable the mind patterns, social situation patterns through which religion has shaped a social philosophy: a creed interpreted the social situation, a faith determined the social process.1

It is impossible to overlook the meaning of this conflict as a causal category, regardless of Troeltsch's or Weber's case. Obviously this conflict has given rise to the logical polarity of a great many modern language symbols, as well as to their emotional connotations. It has endowed with its meaning the individual, interpreted for him his relationship to every one of his groups, from the family to the state: to the League of Nations even. It has determined the structural principles of his group-life as well as its function. As an accommodation group, or a fight-group, the community of believers interprets the social process in terms of the earlier situation in religion and thereby lends it meaning. The problem of salvation has thus charged the interstitial process in the largest sense with its determinism of function. If valuation in the economic field can at all be grasped as a psychological process, it will be seen that a considerable increment of value must accrue from the ethos-that the valuation process itself is to a great extent a function of the social process of religion.

The medieval Roman Catholic solution of the conflict, that synthesis of life temporal and life eternal-the "City of God"

the historical sociologist. A parallel study of Gierke's Genossenschaftsrecht and of Troeltsch's Soziologie has led the present writer to the conclusion that such concepts as that of relationship in law, of fundamental law, of prerogative (Amtsrecht) or of superpersonality-have as much to do with the structure of religious group-life in the sixteenth century and beyond as with the socialism of early Germanic law. Their preservation or modification is a historically indicated function of religion as well as of law. The subject will be taken up in a later article.

Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung, pp. 7 ff. concerning the influence of the Calvinistic salvation concept on English thought: "Dies ist die wichtigste Ursache der empiristischen und positivistischen Neigungen des angelsächsischen Geistes . . . ." on the other hand, in Germany "ist.. von Leibnitz bis Kant, Fichte, Hegel . . der Lutherische Untergrund erkennbar . . . . der die Spekulation auf Einheit und Zusammenhang der Dinge hinlenkte. tief wurzelte die deutsche Metaphysik

....

im Luthertum." Also cf. Weber, I, 101, 104; III, 124-25, 233-36, 415, 524, 538.

idea-has endowed the church concept with its basic attributes of universality, organic unity, and mystic transcendent power. The sociological scheme of Catholic Christianity, then, is herein given.' Again, the different Protestant definitions of grace and of the activation of faith have postulated each with a new church concept, a new structure of the social order. The differentiation of the idea of grace is basic for the modern social order because it has entailed different principles of socialization.2 Where the universality of sin had postulated the universal agency of redemption, the church-the personalism of salvation-now may either demand that a universal institutional church accommodate its universal sacerdotalism, or it may entail the eminent stewardship of the purposive group, the sect. The Catholic and Lutheran consciousness of sin demand an institution of grace. The Calvinistic everlasting saints, on the other hand, will ultimately consociate in a believers' church, a sect. That the medieval church and the modern church, the institutional church and the congregational, the sect, are two fundamentally different principles of socialization, one

• Troeltsch, Archiv, XXX, 41, 666. It implies two powers but not two organizations. See also Figgis, "Res publica christiana," Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. III, Vol. 5, 1911, p. 74, but compare Maitland, Lectures, pp. 101 ff. also Gierke, Genossenschaftsrecht, III, 123 ff. on the influence of the salvation concept on a unitary world: "Die Idee der immanenten Schranken aller Staatsgewalt leuchtete auf." Figgis believes that, nevertheless, the medieval world was unitary and preserved the Roman idea of sovereignty which is ours as well: "the plenitudo potestatis in the Austinian sense. . . . "it is from Rome that the modern doctrine of sovereignty arises," p. 73. Neither was Protestantism originally opposed to that doctrine, its logic was a true function of the social situation, and much depended on whether it was in power or not. The theory of limitations and of conditional federation, the present writer believes, has much to do with the reconstitution of religion as a law-trust and with the conflict between Christianity drunk and Christianity sober. It may be one of the most valuable implications of Christianity, but it does not seem to survive except as a function of the social process properly constituted thereunder. See Figgis, op. cit., p. 88, on the indicated function of multiple sectarianism. The Catholic theory like the Western (American) daughter-churches of Calvinism maintains a unitary order. Troeltsch, Soziallehren, p. 215; Gierke, Genossenschaftsrecht, III, 515-45; Hoensbroech, Mod. Staat und Röm. Kirche, 1906; Cathrein, Moral philosphie, 1911; Theod. Meyer, Christlich-ethische Soziallehrenprinzipien und Arbeiterfrage, 1904; H. Schroers, Katholische Staatsauffassung, 1919. As an organized concurrent minority, it of course insists on the Limited State. Papal Encyclics of 1881, 1885, 1889.

2

1 Archiv, XXVIII, 651-52; XXIX, 388-90. On the influence of the concept of grace on the group-concept, XXIX, 26.

sacerdotal, the other deliberative within the meaning of a grouptrust at law that is in itself a fact of the first sociological consequence. It looms large as a factor of sectionalism.

How the logic of the social process in religion goes back to the basic concepts of grace and faith, Troeltsch has shown in the cases of Luther and of Calvin. He shows how Luther was bound to accept, with the Pauline inwardness, a Pauline beloved community ideal. Luther, in his early years at least, approached this very border of congregationalism; he all but demanded the sect."

The implications of this Pauline radicalism of salvation and faith for Lutheran individualism have been as follows: (1) The theory that we are standing in two spheres of life, that we are of heaven and of the earth at once; pilgrims here below, strangers, guests in a hostelry. (2) The dissociation of the inner and outer life, "the retirement of the Christian spirit life behind the battlefront of life." Characterizing consistently each of these plural spheres of life, according to their logical polarity, Luther has come to the conclusion that in the one, the Christian spirit world, there can be no coercion. "In Gottes Reich geht man mit keinem Recht um." Conformity can theoretically spring only from the inner urge of faith. Hence the individual Christian conscience is and must be absolutely free. What else can coarticulate individuals into a social whole in this Lutheran city of God but the perfect love of the perfect faith? The beloved community, therefore, theoretically is governed by a supranatural principle of socialization and knows thereunder no law. It basks in the sunshine of grace, and like the individual, it abides in love and faithsomewhat in vacuo in splendid isolation, a feste Burg indeed.3 Unfortunately for the original beloved community ideal of Luther,

1 Archiv, XXIX, 20-26, "alle soziologischen Wirkungen folgen aus dem Kirchentypus." For a comparison of the basic church concepts of Calvin and Luther, see Soziallehren, pp. 453-68, 623-28. The basic causal factor seems the "gratia amissibilis" in the Lutheran, and predestination in the Calvinistic social order. Sect means renunciation of universality. Troeltsch, Archiv, XXVIII, 651.

2 On the decisive historical situation leading to the development of the sectarian principle within the Calvinistic world: Troeltsch, Soziallehren, p. 614. For the relationship between religious group-typology and individualism, ibid., pp. 625, 642, 652; and socialism, ibid., pp. 642, 677-81. Weber, Archiv, XXI, 5–14.

3 This Lutheran religious order is not a reflex of actual conditions but a Utopia. Troeltsch, Soziallehren, p. 594, also p. 440; Archiv, XXIX, 388–94.

I

the secular situation was not propitious: Luther, while attacking the supranatural sacerdotalism of the hierarchy, had to take issue with a social revolution: the abyssus humanae conscientiae yawned before him. He met the situation with the stark realism of the strong man of his time. He frankly admitted that the Christian' individual and his beloved community had to live in a world cursed with sin. The feste Burg, blessed by the sunshine of grace within, had to be grounded in a wrathful and stormy world without. It had to be anchored in law. But that law could not be the Bible, which was the rule of faith and not of law. Therefore, instead of trusting the community, which embodied faith, Luther trusted the state, which embodied force. Instead of relating law to some exertion of the will, he referred obedience to force. That force was more often drunk than sober, he accepted as the law of nature and of sin. Thus the "Lutheran church is against moralism which makes religion a matter of right living. It is against rationalism which makes religion a matter of understanding. It is against ritualism which makes religion an appeal to the senses. It is against emotionalism which renders religion a matter of the sensibilities. It makes religion a matter of faith only." For that

1 Archiv, XXX, 38-41. Why Luther recoiled from the congregational (Gemeinde) principle: Soziallehren, pp. 468, 627–28; also p. 457: the social situation explaining the Lutheran church type is his conflict with the sectarians and not his conflict with the Catholic church; he retained the essential institutional character of the medieval church and thus contributed much less than Calvin of the valuable principle of fellowship, of what Gierke calls the Genossenschaftliche Princip: the sociological substratum of the idea of corporateness.

2

"Die Bedeutung der Sünde hat die Gewalt ins Ungeheure gesteigert," Soziallehren, pp. 534, 535-36; also E. Kaufmann, Studien zur Staatslehre des monarchischen Prinzips," p. 96. Compare Gierke, Das Majoritäts prinzip, Oxford Essays in Legal History, 1913. Wolzendorff, Staatsrecht und Naturrecht in Untersuchungen, CXXVI. F. Kern, Gottesgnadentum und Widerstandsrecht for the full significance of the sociological articulation of the idea of corporateness in the development of a functional individualism.

The definition of such individualism in political theory and its precipitation into positive law are never unrelated to the group situation: the social realities of corporateness have always been a decisive factor in the development of organic action. They account for the difference, as Gierke has shown (Genossenschaftsrecht) between the Roman and the Germanic concept of public power: the social absolutism of the one and the social relativity of the other. It is of course the development of the police power in the modern state to which these observations are relevant.

3 Schmauck, "Hist. of the Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania," Pa. Germ. Soc. Pub., XI (1902), 12.

very reason, because it remained a matter of faith only, and not of law, the Lutheran religion did not become effective as a creative principle of law. But even so, Luther had to find a solution for the dilemma of striving for perfection where imperfection is foreordained. The result was a double system of ethics, a Gnaden Moral and a Welt Moral subject to two systems of law: the one to the higher law of faith, the other to the constitution of the world. It was his practical realism which made Luther appreciate that there is a difference, that the two will conflict. It was his desire to reform the church universal and his fear for the unity of his nation which made him substitute, for his higher law of grace morality, the written law of universal Christianity: the Bible. The social order as he found it he accepted as a part of a natural law. His synthesis he accomplished by recognizing both the Decalogue and the natural law of the world as inseparable parts of the fundamental law of God.'

The practical result of this synthesis is that Luther, who had started out to constitute a man's soul as his kingdom, decreed that the essence of sovereignty in that kingdom shall be the perfect obedience of the perfect faith. In the face of the written law of God, this means the passionate literalness of the Es steht geschrieben; in the presence of the world it means Überwindung, overcoming it through the buoyancy of faith.

For the purposes of this study, two aspects of this Lutheran synthesis are of interest, the one concerning the structure of the beloved community, the church, and the other, its natural law: the structural principle of the secular order. Both obviously entail terms of accommodation for the Lutheran as a social being in a pluralistic world. A principle of federalism will accrue from this dual Weltanschauung. But the constitution of the church in Germany was clearly as much the result of a compromise with the state-result of a specific social situation-as of the foregoing synthesis. It is the constitution of the church in America: a free church, abutting on a limited state, which will concern us later—and not a Christian state church. But in the interstitial process between 1 Archiv, XXIX, 388-402. For the influence of the Lutheran natural law-concept on German Conservatism, see Soziallehren, p. 537.