Current Religious Thought and Modern Juristic Movements

Abstract

Man's attempt to obtain aid from his environment in the struggle for existence at times takes the form of religious search, at other times it assumes the character of scientific inquiry. The range of religious investigation has narrowed through the progress of science, which today does much of the work of religion in previous times;' so also in the field of law. The legal order today has wrested from religion much of its territory, either in enabling human beings to live more harmoniously with one another or in securing to them a greater surplus of the economic wealth of the group. The advance of both science and law in these directions has been made possible largely because of the liberalization of the religious mind itself as it became more intelligent in defining or delimiting these various fields. The religious spirit is, then, most vitally interested in that phase of environment which is denominated legal, and, either by positive and constructive effort or negative and destructive inertia, attempts to influence it. In attempting to show what is the influence, if any, of current theological thought upon leading developments in the law and its philosophy in the present, it must be borne in mind that from the very nature of the case mathematical certainty cannot be obtained. We live too close to the social mind of the present to obtain proper perspective; we are handicapped in our analyses by living in the midst of it. The utmost which can be safely predicated is that here in a given instance is to be found a dominant mode of religious thought, while