William Temple’s Doctrine of the will: the bridge between his theology and social thought

Abstract

William Temple (1881–1944) is undoubtedly one of the most influential Anglican figures of the twentieth century.

Research on Temple, however, tends to be lopsided. Studies tend to have an imbalanced focused on his social teaching because of the popularity and impact of Christianity and Social Order (CASO) to the neglect of his broader theology and doctrine. Consequently, the theological underpinnings of Temple’s social thought are obscured or downplayed. The principal claim of this dissertation is that Temple’s social teaching is fundamentally built upon and derived from his theology. We posit the category of the will as the hermeneutic of understanding Temple’s theology and specifically how it finds expression in his social thought. The will is helpful as a hermeneutic because it was central to many facets of Temple’s theology. In a Thomist or Aristotelian way, Temple understood God through an argument of first cause. Creation must be an act of volition. God is therefore construed as the Divine or Creative Will. Temple’s Christology naturally follows on in terms of the will. Christ had two wills, a human will and a divine Will, but the human will was subsumed within the divine Will and finds resolution within the person of the Logos. This was essentially the dyothelite position that was affirmed at the Council of Constantinople. Temple’s Christology rests on his theological anthropology and his concept of personality. Every human pursues the ideal of a complete personality, that is, the harmonisation of their impulses, desires, and reason under their will. Personality is also nourished by fellowship. Humans are intrinsically social and develop most fully in a community. A complete personality in the widest possible fellowship is thus the ideal state of humans. This coheres with the goal of the Church to sum up all humanity as one “person” in Christ. Temple relied on a strongly realist interpretation of the Pauline image of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Specifically, the Church is the organ or instrument of Christ’s Will in the world. This led to a confluence between the Church and the State, which could be understood as a clash of two wills. The Church is the organ of Christ’s Will whereas the State acts upon the community’s will.

Temple’s social principles and middle axioms in CASO were intended to lessen this conflict through the intermediacy of Christian citizens. Yet his key social principles advocated were personality and fellowship, which were some of his key theological concepts that were developed based on the category of the will.