Religion: Niebuhr v. Sin

Like Calvin Coolidge’s legendary preacher, Reinhold Niebuhr is against sin. But Dr. Niebuhr is no simple evangelist urging good works and blind faith; his battle with sin cuts thick theological ice. He has sawed away to such effect in his 53 years that he is generally known as the No. 1 theologian of U.S. Protestantism.

Intellectual Theologian Niebuhr (pronounced Neeber) is no man for the masses: he often has Union Theological Seminary’s best students gasping In the high altitudes of his apologetics. On the other hand, he is no mere dialectician of theology: his plain & fancy thinking is as closely welded to the problems of this world’s politics as Walter Lippmann’s. Last week he once again showed his hand, calluses and all, in his eleventh book, Discerning the Signs of the Times (Scribner; $2.50).

“A Most Ingenious Paradox.”Niebuhr is at his characteristic best when he wields the flashing, two-edged sword of paradox: his book’s most brilliant chapters are titled “The Power and Weakness of God” and “Mystery and Meaning.” In the first, he cites the symbol of Christ crucified as the great reconciliation of two apparent irreconcilables—God’s all-powerful goodness, and the power of evil in the world. In God’s own willingness to submit to His creature man’s free will, says Niebuhr, His final majesty—mercy-is revealed. In “Mystery and Meaning” Niebuhr castigates modern man’s tendency to look upon life’s mysteries as too simple and life’s simplicities as too mysterious.

Signs of the Times is stiff with paradoxical Niebuhrisms. Samples:

“Jesus’ own conception of history was that all men and nations were involved in rebellion against God and that therefore the Messiah would have to be, not so much a strong and good ruler who would help the righteous to be victorious over the unrighteous, but a ‘suffering servant’ who would symbolize and reveal tne mercy of God; for only the divine forgiveness could finally overcome the contradictions of history and the enmity between man and God.. . . Both the historical conceptions of bourgeois liberalism and of Marxist utopianism are involved in errors, similar to those which Christ castigated in His day. . . . Because of [their] lack of humility . . they introduced new forms of injustice into history in the very attempt of abolishing old ones. Other Messianic classes and nations will make the same, mistake. That is why the mystery of history cannot be resolved except in the divine mercy.”

On Sin. “Pride is the religious dimension of the sin which flows from absolute power; and injustice is its social dimension. . . .

“Anger is the root of both righteousness and sin. . . . The proper attitude toward evil is anger. . . We must finally be reconciled with our foe, lest we both perish in the vicious circle of hatred.. . . We are called upon again & again to be executors of divine judgment. But in the ultimate sense [the word of St. Paul] is true: ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'”

On Humor. “Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer. . . . The intimate relation between humor and faith is derived from the fact that both deal with the incongruities of our existence.. . . Laughter is … not only the vestibule of the temple of confession but the no-man’s-land between cynicism and contrition.”

Intense, eager Theologian Niebuhr seems as paradoxical as his analysis of Christian doctrine. Noted as he is among churchmen for his neo-orthodox theology, he is almost as well known among intellectual liberals for his unorthodox politics. His writing is knotty, intellectual and forbidding; in speaking he has such a hard time keeping up with his racing mind that his words are accompanied by furious arm-flailings and face-twistings that sometimes make him look—though never sound —like an oldtime, fire-and-brimstone revivalist.

Niebuhr’s preoccupation with sin moved the late William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, to give him a gentle theological ribbing after a student conference at Swanwick where Niebuhr spoke:

‘At Swanwick, when Niebuhr had quit it. Said a young man: “At last I have hit it. Since I cannot do right, I must find out tonight The best sin to commit—and commit it.”

The son of a German-born Evangelical minister in Wright City, Mo., Reinie Niebuhr wanted to be a theologian from the time he was a small boy. Eventually he took his Bachelor of Divinity degree and his Master’s at Vale and started his career with a $50-a-month pastorate in Detroit, his one & only parish. Since 1928 he has been in Manhattan, at Union, where he teaches ethics and philosophy and religion. A high point of Niebuhr’s theological recognition came in 1939, when he was invited to deliver the esteemed Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh.* The lectures, published later as the two-volume Nature & Destiny of Man (TIME, March 24,1941), form the substance of Niebuhr’s neo-orthodox theology.

*An honor that has fallen to only four other Americans: Philosophers William James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey and William Ernest Hocking.