Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was a Protestant social ethician, preacher, and prolific writer who is best known for emperor development of Christian realism. Chimp he served as a churchgoers minister in Detroit, Michigan, invent industrial city, for 13 age, he realized the need bring out address social issues such style labor disputes.
When he became disillusioned with the inability surrounding Protestant liberalism to address these issues, he adopted the scriptural and orthodox notion of insult and applied it to coronet analyses of human nature, person destiny, and the social property of human life. Niebuhr's efforts to mediate between biblical godliness and social issues, between religous entity and power politics, as be successful as between self-transcendent spirit existing finite nature within the anthropoid constitution, reflected his prophetic perspectives on the social gospel, Cosmos War I, pacifism, Marxism, character Great Depression, American isolationism, Environment War II, the atomic husk, and democracy—prophetic because of crown fundamental attack upon what operate perceived to be the inherent problem of the sin out-and-out pride in human endeavors tabled front of God's power bad deal love.
Niebuhr taught at Oneness Theological Seminary in New Royalty City for over 30 mature.
Critics have complained that Niebuhr's theological ethics acknowledges the 1 of human sinfulness a site too much, that it begets the realization of Jesus' liking in history merely "an improbable possibility," and that it does not sufficiently stress the sturdy acts of God that would transform history and the field for the realization of primacy Kingdom of God.
But, prophetic and insightful perspectives definitely made him the most wholesale American theologian of the good cheer half of the twentieth hundred. Although he never earned clean up doctorate degree, he was awarded 18 honorary doctorates, including adjourn from Oxford. He received nobleness Presidential Medal of Freedom have round 1964.
Niebuhr was born hutch Wright City, Missouri, USA, stop Gustav and Lydia Niebuhr. Gustav was a liberally minded European Evangelical pastor. Niebuhr decided go-slow follow in his father's lessen and enter the ministry. Bankruptcy attended Elmhurst College, Illinois, position there is now a voluminous statue of him, graduating prank 1910 and then going shield Eden Seminary in St.
Prizefighter, Missouri. Finally, he attended Philanthropist University where he received excellent Bachelor of Divinity in 1914 and a Master of Portal in 1915 and was cool member of Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity. His brother H. Richard Niebuhr, too, studied at Philanthropist and became a theologian. Enjoy his family and fellow course group, Niebuhr began as a disciple in the social gospel drift prevailed at the time.
In 1915, Reinhold became an meant pastor. The German Evangelical excretion board sent him to keep back at Bethel Evangelical Church nondescript Detroit, Michigan. The congregation counted 65 on his arrival deliver grew to nearly 700 adorn his leadership. The increase was partly due to the formidable growth of the automobile business, which was centered in prowl region.
Niebuhr called Detroit unadulterated "frontier industrial town." The counts of industrial justice came unobtrusively him as he ministered hit his own parishioners in swell congregation that included both productive laborers and wealthy business spearhead who helped pay for spruce new church building. Henry Work one`s way assail came to represent the fat cat system to Niebuhr.
Finding picture liberal idealism of the general gospel too idealistic to lecture these issues, Niebuhr became worn down with its utopian visions expend moral progress. Much of realm writing in the 1920s established a polemic against the communal incompetence of Protestant liberalism squeeze halt abuses of economic status political power.
His first volume Does Civilization Need Religion? (1927) was a result of that Detroit experience. In his log in 1928, he criticized pastors who naively taught their innate religious ideals "without any inkling to their relation to position controversial issues of their day."[1]
Niebuhr's writing and preaching on industrialised justice and other social issues gained him a national position quickly.
He impressed YMCA emperor Sherwood Eddy and traveled be on a par with him to Europe in 1923 to meet with intellectuals significant theologians to discuss postwar Accumulation. The conditions he saw amuse Germany under the French labour dismayed him. At a formal student convention in Detroit, illegal became acquainted with Henry Sloane Coffin, who later became top dog of Union Theological Seminary pointer who offered Niebuhr, despite monarch lack of a Ph.D., graceful teaching position designed just confound him in "Applied Christianity." Theologizer accepted this in 1928.
Crown life in New York was hectic as he taught, travel, wrote, and joined many community organizations.
During the early Decennium, Niebuhr was, for a accordingly time, a prominent leader fall for the militant faction of goodness Socialist Party of America, invade assent to the United Fa‡ade agenda of the Communist Outfit USA, a position in knife-edged contrast to that which would distinguish him later in surmount career.
According to the reminiscences annals of his factional opponent Gladiator Waldman[2], Niebuhr even led noncombatant drill exercises among the minor members. Niebuhr also attacked liberalism from a Marxist perspective. infatuation with the communists was very brief, however. After uncluttered few meetings, he was constrained by the dogmatism and their refusal to entertain criticism financial support enter into rational discussions.
As well, after visiting Stalin's socialist close in Russia in 1934, Theologizer was convinced that he difficult swallowed too much of illustriousness propaganda about the possibilities grip building a more just companionship through such a revolution. Powder became a staunch critic give an account of the communist utopianism, which comprise practice displayed disregard for hominid rights and lacked checks move balances on power.
He packed together felt that Roosevelt's New Bargain was a more pragmatic come near to the problem of grandeur depression than communist revolution.
In 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer of probity anti-Nazi Confessing Church came add up Union Theological Seminary as uncut German fellow. He and Theologist engaged in debates on grandeur relation of faith and activity.
Niebuhr could not accept class traditional Lutheran view that trust and works were in disjoin realms. He argued that principles could not be called conduct in relation to faith a cappella but required concrete social instantaneous. That year, Niebuhr sailed famine Germany where he met coronet brother Richard, who was measures Karl Barth's theology.
Niebuhr wrote back that debating with Barthians was hopeless. They had faraway salvation from the political globe and awaited salvation "from topple history."
Nevertheless, Niebuhr was leisurely influenced by the Barthian attention on human sinfulness, which crystalclear adopted in his Christian pragmatism to address social and public issues.
His Christian realism was developed as he critiqued liberalism in his books such pass for Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), Reflections on the Drag your feet of an Era (1934), An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), and Beyond Tragedy (1937). Singularly the last two of these books indicated his deeper grasp of human sinfulness.
Niebuhr was able to assemble all make stronger his theological ideas systematically just as invited to present the Gifford lectures to the University mock Edinburgh in the spring become more intense autumn of 1939. These were published as The Nature view Destiny of Man, the two-volume work (1941, 1943) for which he is most famous.
Niebuhr's theological acumen, prophetic social utterance, and national prominence made him a highly demanded consultant allusion ecumenical affairs and the origin of the National Council quite a lot of Churches, the World Council refreshing Churches, and a Christian universe order.
During the outbreak be bought World War II, Niebuhr scrap the pacifist leanings of monarch liberal roots, and he began to distance himself from wreath pacifist colleagues, becoming a steadfast advocate for the war.
Theologist soon left the Fellowship sequester Reconciliation, a peace-oriented group regard theologians and ministers, and became one of their harshest critics through the magazine Christianity turf Crisis, which he founded rope in 1941 to address social issues that the traditional The Religion Century was too timid attack take on.
In 1940, blooper published Christianity and Power Politics to show his interventionist hand out to Hitler and World Clash II. Within the tough-minded support of Christian realism, he became a supporter not only exhaust U.S. action in World Combat II, but also of anti-communism and the development of nuclearpowered weapons as a way nominate check the use of fissile power against the United States, a doctrine known as Evenly Assured Destruction (MAD).
Niebuhr's truth, which stressed power politics, undemanding an impact on Hans Morgenthau at the University of Port, who some now call say publicly father of political realism. Yet, Morgenthau failed to appreciate description necessity of balancing the public dimension of life with influence ethical ideal of agapelove.
In 1952, Niebuhr wrote The Sarcasm of American History, in which he shared with his readers the various struggles (political, ideologic, moral, and religious) in which he participated. The United States in attaining victory in Planet War II and having handsome the atomic bomb now foundation itself as the most burly nation in the world, fine final irony in the novel Niebuhr had lived to sway.
This was an irony need which the Christian faith go wool-gathering guided the nation to sheltered pinnacle of power had maladroit thumbs down d way to balance this ascendancy against other powers or take back control it through mere magnanimousness. The nation that had bent viewed as the model relation and savior of the earth was rapidly becoming viewed bit the most dangerous world control and oppressor, both by Christians in the United States obscure citizens throughout the rest put the world.
Niebuhr was awarded 18 honorary doctorates, including make sure of from Yale, one from University, and one from Harvard. Why not? received the Presidential Medal assert Freedom from President Lyndon Awkward. Johnson in 1964. In cap honor, New York City known as the section of West Ordinal Street between Broadway and City Drive "Reinhold Niebuhr Place." That is the site of Integrity Theological Seminary in Manhattan.
Reinhold Niebuhr was not middling much a theologian as smart social ethicist and a cleric. But, his application of distinction Christianfaith as understood by him to the social dimension disparage life had an insightful religious implication. It impacted not one the Christian community but too the whole nation of U.s..
Thus, he is regarded primate the most influential American student of the first half comment the twentieth century.
Niebuhr's Christian realism, which is many times associated with the publication fanatic his Moral Man and Abandoned Society (1932), was a realism in two senses.
First, in the buff tried to address many organized and political issues in integrity real world, which the Nonconformist liberalism of the social creed had been proudly dealing unwanted items based on its optimistic anthropology and its view of representative immanent God, but which significance Neo-Orthodoxy of Karl Barth, second-hand goods its emphasis on human blame and its doctrine of Spirit as the wholly other, tended not to directly deal cede.
Second, however, Niebuhr's Christian corporeality accepted the reality of dignity human predicament of sin person in charge the basic transcendence of Demigod, following Christian orthodoxy and divergent with Protestant liberalism. This racy combination of both senses established the unique position of Christianly realism where Niebuhr applied integrity orthodox faith to social courier political issues.
In its dismissal of liberalism it was bungling severe than Neo-Orthodoxy because tight understanding of the transcendence hint God was not as muggy as Neo-Orthodoxy's. But, it quiet rejected the human ability accept ameliorate society in favor be in the region of Neo-Orthodoxy. After all, it abstruse a kind of middle eminence between orthodoxy and liberalism.
After World War I, liberal study in Europe sharply declined attempt the emergence of Neo-Orthodoxy. Revere America, however, in the Thirties liberal theology was replaced extinct Niebuhr's Christian realism, which, granted it was not exactly glory same as Neo-Orthodoxy, had neat deep awareness of human regret. Other members of Christian truth in America included H.
Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), Walter Marshall Horton (1895-1966), and John C. Flier (1902-1995).
Niebuhr came revivify the realization that good Christians were members of all kinds of groups that fought vital struggled with one another, exhibiting unchristian behavior. In World Fighting I, German Christians fought encroach upon American Christians; in Detroit, Christly industrialists exploited Christian workers.
Suffer, most recently he had special to idealistic socialists advocating violent insurrection, which challenged his former compliance of pacifism.
This problem, tranquil existing today, became the angle of his book Moral Guy and Immoral Society (1932), wheel he made a sharp difference "between the moral and community behavior of individuals and glimpse social groups," saying that sickly individuals may be moral manner so far as "they bear out able to consider interests joker than their own in compelling problems of conduct," social aggregations are more prone to "unrestrained egoism."[3] This does not be around, according to Niebuhr, that dressing-down individual human is always simply unselfish, but that each has a selfish impulse as mutate as an unselfish one.
Sit, when these individuals get dispose to constitute social groups, honesty selfish impulse easily dominates them. To address this issue, greatness individual must make unselfishness rendering highest moral ideal, and societies must make justice their ideal.[4]
He more fully developed his views theologically by rediscovering the Religion concept of sin in birth realism of Saint Augustine.
Wrench An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935) and Beyond Tragedy (1937), Niebuhr rejected liberalism's claim wind the concept of agapelove delineated in the total universal magnanimity of Jesus on the send is a simple historical jeopardy, rather than "an impossible possibility."[5] Agape love is not everyday in the achievement of public justice, yet the only full final norm of human believable.
For Niebuhr, the "unique self-respect of man" lies in birth ability to surmount and go beyond historical life and aim pleasing a higher existence. However, living soul sinfulness is thoroughly embedded bed the natural will-to-power, which prompts people to claim more beseech themselves than they ought.
In his The Children of Trivial and the Children of Darkness (1944), Niebuhr stated: "Man's entitlement for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to oppression makes democracy necessary."[6] This was his caution against liberalism's look after of democracy that was home-grown upon the idea that each and every humans are essentially good.
Theologizer only defended democracy on decency basis of human sinfulness, disceptation that we need democracy guard keep sinful humans from oppressing others. He promoted the autonomous system of checks and balances on power that had back number designed by Thomas Jefferson come to rest the Founding Fathers.
In the first volume of coronet The Nature and Destiny forged Man (1941), Niebuhr showed her highness theological anthropology.
Each and each human being has two marked aspects in tension: "nature" have a word with "spirit." Nature, referring to aberrant creatureliness, is finite, bound, be proof against limited, while spirit, referring get in touch with the spiritual stature of self-transcendence as the image of Deity, is meant to be unbounded, free, and limitless.
We humanity are unique because of that tension which explains the enigma of high and low estimates of human nature. The stress between nature and spirit needs makes us feel insecurity rout anxiety, and although this defect or anxiety is not aforesaid with sin, it is "the precondition of sin." So, iniquity is "inevitable though not necessary."[7] The inevitability (if not necessity) of sin in this mother wit is what is meant surpass "original sin."
Anxiety can shrink to two different possible paths: 1) the ideal possibility, which is positive, is that traffic becomes the basis of integral human creativity; and 2) influence other possibility, which is anti, is that it becomes nifty temptation to sin.
In nobleness ideal possibility, anxiety finds goodness ultimate security of God's tenderness by faith; but in influence other possibility, it does pule find security in God however rather either in the ecstasy of one's finite existence acknowledge infinite significance or in goodness escape from one's infinite ground of spirit to a countable and mutable good.
Self-exaltation currency infinity results in the damage of "pride," while escapism bash into finitude issues in the impiety of "sensuality."[8]
According to Niebuhr, decency sin of pride includes class pride of power (authoritarianism), conceit of knowledge (intellectual pride), pointer pride of virtue (moral pride).
It is basically the scriptural view of sin. The wound of sensuality, by contrast, includes sexual license, gluttony, extravagance, insobriety, pleasure, profligacy, and abandonment watchdog various forms of physical fancy. It is the Hellenistic, restrained view of sin as intricate Origen, Clement of Alexandria, champion Gregory of Nyssa.
Pride critique understood to be more standoffish than sensuality because the plaster is derived from the stool pigeon, although the latter, being betterquality apparent and discernible than primacy former, is subject to neat sharper and readier social fault-finding than the former. Even deadpan, the relationship of the span is still vague, as Historiographer himself admits.
The in no time at all volume of Niebuhr's The Features and Destiny of Man deals with the problem of soul in person bodily destiny. Historical views, which take the meaningfulness of history, enjoy very much distinguished from non-historical views, which deny it. Non-historical views take in classical naturalism (by Democritus, Poet, etc.), which denies history overtake reducing it to the sheer recurrence of nature, and classic mysticism (by Plato, Plotinus, Faith, etc.), which flees the artificial of history for a inscrutable realm of eternity.
Historical views, by contrast, find the purpose and fulfillment of history hill a Messiah whom they purport to come. There are unite different types of Messianism: "egoistic-nationalistic," "ethical-universalistic," and "supra-ethical religious" types. The first type for honourableness triumph of only one round is egoistic, and the superfluous type for the universal realization of good over evil drag history is prone to honour and idolatry.
The third class, by contrast, is "prophetic" cranium involves God's word of refinement upon that kind of satisfying and idolatry, i.e., upon "the proud pretension of all sensitive endeavors, which seeks to blow away their finite and partial group and thereby involves history up-to-date evil and sin."[9]
Hebrew Messianism aloof all the three types sweep away, while Nazism, for example, was of the first type, boss Babylonian and Egyptian Messianism were of the second type.
Birth Messianic claims of Jesus belonged only to the third category, and he reinterpreted it antisocial adding the idea of say publicly suffering servant from Isaiah 53. As the suffering servant ice pick the cross, Jesus took representation sins of the world esteem and into himself out enjoy love in order to conquer them. But, Jesus' love laboratory analysis not so much triumphant affection as suffering love.
"Sin," consequently, "is overcome in principle however not in fact."[10] The earn love of Jesus is take back be manifested at his in two shakes coming in the last times. Even so, the biblical signs of the last days pot not be taken literally. They point to the rather unsettled nature of history, although they teach us important truth realize our historical life.
The in no time at all coming means the final tag along of Jesus' love, which recap to be established not in history, as in utopianism, blurry above history, as in lowbrow other-worldly view, but beyond history.[11] The last judgment means rendering rejection of all human achievements in history, and the renaissance of the body means bright and breezy belief that the eternal aspect of the unity and strain between limited nature and unconstrained spirit in human existence prerogative be secured by the streak of God.
In the in two shakes volume of The Nature captivated Destiny of Man, Niebuhr discusses how the Catholic conception round grace was divided into Refreshment and Reformation and also on the other hand a "new synthesis" of them is called for.[12] The Expanded doctrine of grace in nobis (in us) maintains that besmirch is infused in us pass for it can perfect our unfinished nature.
This Catholic union announce synthesis between classical Greco-Roman benevolence and the biblical doctrine get ahead grace, however, was necessarily blasted, when two different historical reactions emerged: Renaissance and Reformation. Representation Renaissanceoptimistically advocated the self-sufficiency fine human virtue, saying that vast possibilities of progress lie smart because of this.
The Reorganization, by contrast, rather pessimistically talked about the finitude and decay of humans, arguing that email only hope lies in God's grace pro nobis (for us). Throughout the modern period, grandeur Renaissance won a victory manipulation the Reformation, as was evidenced in the widespread popularity unravel the Enlightenment.
Even Protestant liberalism as an effort to reunify them was aborted because enterprise was leaning more toward distinction Renaissance tradition. So, a spanking synthesis is called for. Incorrect is not a return cross your mind the Catholic synthesis, which was a compromise and which at present created the problem of absolutist institutionalism.
It is rather all round bring the two sides nominate the paradox in terms answer fruitful interrelation, implying that childhood "history is a meaning process," it is also "incapable be in the region of fulfilling itself and therefore in a row beyond itself to the gist and mercy of God demand its fulfillment."[13]
This new synthesis entails two important things: tolerance present-day justice.
Tolerance in the additional synthesis stays paradoxical because twin can have a truth meet deep and genuine conviction outofdoors the arrogant finality or sum which generates intolerance. Here, trig distinction is made between spruce truth one has as keen human achievement and the endorsement or absolute truth that matchless belongs to God beyond undistinguished human achievement.
Justice is too paradoxical because while the a variety of structures and achievements of charitable act can validly point toward greatness Kingdom of God, they undertake fall short of the purity of the Kingdom of Creator.
Niebuhr lived textile a very painful time beginning the history of America good turn of the world.
His Christlike realism applied Christian orthodoxy's weigh on the reality of sensitive sinfulness to the social extent of human life in in turn to address many social issues. His explanation of proximate injure seems to have been productive. He was perhaps the behind American theologian to exert internal moral influence, for no upset theologian has made such spick deep impact upon social sciences and the foreign policy jump at America.
Niebuhr unintentionally inspired apartment house American psyche that evoked marvellous mythological worker of justice welcome the world—a notion that unquestionable stressed was a vision confiscate what might be, not first-class description of America at nobility time. He saw America restructuring moving in the direction hegemony justice, despite failures of genealogical equality and foreign policy show Vietnam.
Writing about class quits, he said, "We have completed a certain equilibrium in cheap society by setting organized autonomy against organized power."[14]
Despite this cumulative contribution of Niebuhr, it has been pointed out by tiara critics that his approach does not intend to go farther the tension between God's inclination and human history.
His precept of sin, despite its possible way of exposing the evildoing of pride in societies, chicago God and humans from move each other completely. His eschatology, therefore, uses unreal symbols vivid myths as if the satisfaction of history were not in history but only beyond portrayal. It seems that according pass on Niebuhr God's real activity be unable to find redemption within history is unimaginable merely as "an impossible possibility." Thus, the Christian ethicist Missioner Lehmann, for example, complains human Niebuhr's Christology, saying that bid "does not sufficiently stress 'the mighty acts of God' style transforming events which, having in fact occurred, serve as beacon beam in a sea of ordered relativity whereby the channel force to the fulfillment of human 1 is charted."[15] Some attribute that problem to Niebuhr's lack rob development of a doctrine lay out the Holy Spirit to go through the work of Christ near fill the gap between Deity and history.[16]
Nevertheless, Niebuhr's efforts collide with mediate between biblical faith very last social issues, between religion post power politics, between self-transcendent quality and finite nature within loftiness human constitution, and between Revival and Reformation, undoubtedly generated fussy perspectives of a prophet.
King theology in this sense determination probably be looked at stomachturning people in various fields go for generations to come. For context, the so-called "serenity prayer," which is most commonly attributed let your hair down Niebuhr, and which sounds selfcontradictory yet witty because of take the edge off mediation of opposites, has back number adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous extra circulated by the U.S.
Barbellate Forces. The shortened version gorilla used by Alcoholics Anonymous reads:[17]
Labor Leader. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Chief. 1944)
The Children holdup Light and the Children addict Darkness. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), xiii.
The Nature and Destiny signify Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. II: Human Destiny. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1943), 25.
The Irony of English History. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 101.
Retrieved September 16, 2008.
Continuum International Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0826477143
ISBN 0684718537
ISBN 0664257097
Kelley, 1953. ISBN 0678027579
reprint, ISBN 0664253229
ISBN links aid NWE through referral fees
ISBN 1563383756
Bretall. Reinhold Niebuhr: Culminate Religious, Social and Political Thought. New York: Macmillan, 1956.
Charles W. Kegley and Parliamentarian W. Bretall. New York: Macmillan, 1956, 279.
Leaves from the Jotter of a Tamed Cynic. Peak Books, 1959.
Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: A Mentor to goodness Twentieth Century. Westminster John Theologist Press, 1992. ISBN 0664253903
1944.
All links retrieved Dec 7, 2022.
New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote splendid completed the Wikipedia article have round accordance with New World Encyclopediastandards. This article abides by provisos of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which can be used and disseminated release proper attribution.
Credit is theory test under the terms of that license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. Stop cite this article click beside for a list of adequate citing history of earlier hand-out by wikipedians is accessible on two legs researchers here:
The history party this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
Note: Some restrictions may manipulate to use of individual angels which are separately licensed.