An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (Library of Theological Ethics)
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This addition to Westminster John Knox Press's Library ...)
This addition to Westminster John Knox Press's Library of Theological Ethics series brings one of Reinhold Niebuhr's classic works back into print. This 1935 book answered some of the theological questions raised by Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and articulated for the first time Niebuhr's theological position on many issues. The introduction by ethicist Edmund N. Santurri sets the work into historical and theological context and also assesses the viability of some of Niebuhr's positions for theology and ethics today.
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (2 Volume Set)
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The Nature and Destiny of Man issues a vigorous challen...)
The Nature and Destiny of Man issues a vigorous challenge to Western civilization to understand its roots in the faith of the Bible, particularly the Hebraic tradition. The growth, corruption, and purification of the important Western emphases on individuality are insightfully chronicled here. This book is arguably Reinhold Niebuhr's most important work. It offers a sustained articulation of Niebuhr's theological ethics and is considered a landmark in twentieth-century thought.
The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.
The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses
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Theologian, ethicist, and political analyst, Reinhold N...)
Theologian, ethicist, and political analyst, Reinhold Niebuhr was a towering figure of twentieth-century religious thought. Now newly repackaged, this important book gathers the best of Niebuhr’s essays together in a single volume. Selected, edited, and introduced by Robert McAfee Brown―a student and friend of Niebuhr’s and himself a distinguished theologian―the works included here testify to the brilliant polemics, incisive analysis, and deep faith that characterized the whole of Niebuhr’s life.
“This fine anthology makes available to a new generation the thought of one of the most penetrating and rewarding of twentieth-century minds. Reinhold Niebuhr remains the great illuminator of the dark conundrums of human nature, history and public policy.”―Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
“Sparkling gems. . . brought from the shadows of history into contemporary light. Beautifully selected and edited, they show that Niebuhr’s fiery polemics and gracious assurances still speak with power to us today.”―Roger L. Shinn
“An extremely useful volume.”―David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books
“This collection, which brings together Niebuhr’s most penetrating and enduring essays on theology and politics, should demonstrate for a new generation that his best thought transcends the immediate historical setting in which he wrote. . . . Brown’s introduction succinctly presents the central features of Niebuhr’s life and thought.”―Library Journal
Does Civilization Need Religion?: A Study in the Social Resources and Limitations of Religion in Modern Life
(Does Civilization Need Religion? sets out from the fact t...)
Does Civilization Need Religion? sets out from the fact that religion's inability to make its ethical and social resources available for the solution of the moral problems of modern civilization is one, and the neglected one, of the two chief causes responsible for its debilitated condition. It is convinced that if Christian idealists are to make religion socially effective they will be forced to detach themselves from the dominant secular desires of the nations as well as from the greed of economic groups. It aims to show that though neither the orthodox nor the modern wing of the Christian Church seems capable of initiating a genuine revival which will evolve a morality capable of challenging and maintaining itself against the dominant desires of modern civilization's needs, there are resources in the Christian religion which make it the inevitable basis of any spiritual regeneration of Western civilization. Does Civilization Need Religion? maintains that the task of redeeming Western society rests in a peculiar sense upon Christianity, which has reduced the eternal conflict between self-assertion and self-denial to the paradox of self-assertion through self-denial and made the Cross the symbol of life's highest achievement. It is persuaded that the idea of a potent but yet suffering divine ideal which is defeated by the world but gains its victory in the defeat must continue to remain basic in any morally creative worldview.
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“Niebuhr is one of my favorite philosophers. I take awa...)
“Niebuhr is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away from his works the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama
Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace.
“The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times
“Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society
“Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and philosopher. He is best known for his study of the task of relating the Christian faith to the reality of modern politics and diplomacy.
Background
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was born on June 21, 1892 in Wright City, Missouri, United States to Gustav Niebuhr, a minister in the Evangelical Synod, a Lutheran offshoot of the Prussian Church Union, and Lydia Hosto. Gustav Niebuhr was a highly respected member of the clergy who combined a high level of intelligence with a vital personal piety. His children were raised in a deeply religious home characterized by faith, optimism, and idealism. Reinhold's brother Hulda became a professor at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, and his brother Richard became a professor at Yale Divinity School. Only his brother Walter, who became a businessman and newspaper publisher, failed to follow Gustav's example by taking up a career in the ministry or theological education.
Education
Reinhold Niebuhr graduated from Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois, in 1910 and Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Grove, Missouri in 1913, both of which were schools for members of the Evangelical Synod. He postponed taking a parish by gaining permission to enter Yale Divinity School. His father died before he entered Yale, causing family hardship. Despite this setback, Niebuhr managed to complete his master's degree in theology in 1915.
Career
In 1915 he was ordained a minister in the Evangelical Synod. Niebuhr served as pastor at Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit from 1915 to 1928. What might have been a two-year stay to fulfill his obligation to the Evangelical Synod instead became a thirteen-year high-level drama that brought Niebuhr national attention as a significant leader in both the religious and the political arenas. Detroit's automobile industry was then expanding, led by the Ford Motor Company, and Henry Ford was being praised for paying his employees $5 per day, creating jobs, and stimulating growth in Detroit. While Detroit quickly tripled in size, Niebuhr's church grew from a handful of members to more than eight hundred. Niebuhr said of that period, "I cut my eyeteeth fighting Ford. "
While the world was focusing on the opportunities Ford was bringing to Detroit, Niebuhr was focusing on the injustices that followed in the wake of industrialization. He saw poor housing; no job security, insurance, or retirement benefits; and worker exhaustion from life on the assembly lines. He wrote, "No one asks whether an industry which can maintain a reserve of a quarter billion ought not make some provisions for its unemployed. " During this time he became very active in the labor movement and was an influential friend to Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union.
His experience in Detroit forced Niebuhr to reconsider the liberal and highly moralistic creed that he had accepted as his Christian faith.
In Detroit he began to work out many of his ideas about sin and grace, love and justice, faith and reason, realism and idealism, and the irony and tragedy of history, which would characterize his controversial and influential thinking, preaching, and writing for the rest of his life. His thinking returned to the biblical myth and the vision of our fallen nature.
He became head of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation in the late 1920's even though he was not a pacifist true believer. He was a part of the "social gospel" school of Christianity, which professed an optimistic faith in human progress and the belief that evil is socially caused and therefore socially alleviable; he also flirted with Marxism as part of his critique of individualism and naive political optimism.
He became a member of the faculty at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1928, where he assumed the chair of Christian ethics.
His An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), however, in which he interpreted Christian love (agape) as the "possible impossibility, " demonstrated once and for all his intellectual and theological depth.
One Sunday in 1934 he preached in a small church near his summer home in Heath, Massachussets, where he wrote his now-famous "Serenity Prayer. " A neighbor asked for a copy, which Niebuhr gave him after saying he had no further use for it. It was published as part of a pamphlet the following year and has since been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and numerous other organizations. He wrote: "O God, give us/serenity to accept what cannot be changed, /courage to change what should be changed, /and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. "
In 1939 he was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He lectured on the nature and destiny of humanity, comparing biblical with classical and modern ideas of our nature and destiny. In these lectures and the Beecher Lectures he gave at Yale in the late 1940's, he argued that modern views were similar to classical idealism, but that the biblical view of human nature was superior to both classical and modern views. In 1941 the first issue of Christianity and Crisis, edited by Niebuhr, was published. This small, unpretentious journal was a biweekly devoted to religious and social concerns. Influential far beyond its circulation numbers, its contributors included the best social, political, and religious thinkers of the time, and it was read by many of the leaders in these fields. Niebuhr wrote that his journal was devoted "to an exposition of our Christian faith in its relation to world events. " For more than twenty-five years this journal brought a religious viewpoint to bear on such issues as civil rights, the labor movement, women's equality, government, and war and peace.
Following World War II Niebuhr's writings and lectures focused more on religious realism and what it meant in the international sphere.
He became influential in Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), which he helped found, and through which he helped to influence men such as George Kennan and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The idea of political containment of Communism was born in this circle of people.
In 1952 Niebuhr had a stroke that slowed him down, but he continued to teach, write, and speak out. He retired in 1960 and moved to Stockbridge, Massachussets, where he carried on his efforts to teach and reform until his death.
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“Niebuhr is one of my favorite philosophers. I take awa...)
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Politics
Niebuhr developed his socialist ideas, becoming a member of the Socialist party in the late 1920's. He later criticized some of his own socialist ideas but also remained a lifelong critic of capitalism.
Views
Niebuhr viewed sin as pride, and selfish self-centeredness as the root of evil. He saw this sin of pride not only in those who commit obvious crimes, but more dangerously in people who consider themselves good. The human tendency to corrupt the good was the great insight he saw manifested in governments, business, democracies, utopian societies, and even in religious institutions. He was a debunker of hypocrisy and pretense and made the avoidance of self-righteous illusions the center of his thoughts. Niebuhr did battle with the liberals over what he called their naive views of sin and the optimism of the social gospel. He did battle with the conservatives over what he viewed as their naive view of Scripture and their narrow definition of "true religion. " He was a liberal thinker who supported many liberal religious and social causes, but his ideas were often too orthodox for most liberals, while his view that the Bible could not be taken literally was too liberal for the conservatives. Likewise, he found himself to be too secular for many of the religious and too religious for the secular. Niebuhr's thinking was dynamic and dialectical, marked by the process of constant reassessment, and filled with paradox. So too was his life.
Niebuhr wrote about the "possible impossibility" of love, and his life's work was an attempt to discover the proper relationship between the forces of love, power, and justice. In the pursuit of the good society, he believed the commitment to democratic principals and the avoidance of self-righteous illusions was society's best hope in achieving progress and justice.
Quotations:
"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. "
"The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men. "
"The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have a moral code which makes the actions of collective man an outrage to their conscience. They therefore invent romantic and moral interpretations of the real facts, preferring to obscure rather than reveal the true character of their collective behavior. Sometimes they are as anxious to offer moral justifications for the brutalities from which they suffer as for those which they commit. The fact that the hypocrisy of man's group behavior. .. expresses itself not only in terms of self-justification but in terms of moral justification of human behavior in general, symbolizes one of the tragedies of the human spirit: its inability to conform its collective life to its individual ideals. As individuals, men believe they ought to love and serve each other and establish justice between each other. As racial, economic and national groups they take for themselves, whatever their power can command. "
"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. "
Personality
Niebuhr was as imaginative and energetic in the classroom as he had been in the pulpit. He was extremely popular with his students and always seemed to have a group of students gathered around him. His office door was always open. He was in demand on the lecture circuit, kept up a lively interest in applying religious values to everyday issues, and devoted most weekends to college preaching.
Only in appearance can Niebuhr be described as ordinary; in every other way he was extraordinary. His intellect in the classroom and the pulpit was unmatched, yet his gentle spirit and wit balanced his analytical powers. His words came out in rapid fire, but he could listen with astute rapture. In conversation he might have tugged at an ear, pulled on his ample nose, smoothed his bald spot, or clamped a pipe between his teeth; his genial humor was unfailingly inviting.
Connections
On December 22, 1931 he married the intelligent and attractive Ursula Keppel-Compton, a learned and religious woman who eventually became chairman of the Religious Department at Barnard College; they had two children.