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Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith
This important book makes available the last major unpublished writings of H. Richard Niebuhr, one of the leading American theologians of this century. Edited by the author’s son, this powerful and moving book represents Niebuhr’s most accessible, systematic, and detailed statement on faith.
138 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 1989
About the author
H. Richard Niebuhr
54 books47 followersHelmut Richard Niebuhr was one of the most important Christian theological-ethicists in 20th century America, most known for his 1951 book Christ and Culture and his posthumously published book The Responsible Self. The younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr taught for several decades at Yale Divinity School. His theology (together with that of his colleague at Yale, Hans Wilhelm Frei) has been one of the main sources of post-liberal theology, sometimes called the "Yale school". He influenced such figures as James Gustafson and Stanley Hauerwas.
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June 27, 2024
A POSTHUMOUS PUBLICATION OF SEVERAL OF NIEBUHR’S UNPUBLISHED WORKS ON FAITH
Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) was an ordained minister (in what later became the United Church of Christ), as well as the younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Helmut (“H.”) Richard taught for almost thirty years at the Yale Divinity School. He wrote a number of books, such as Christ and Culture; Radical Monotheism and Western Culture; The Social Sources of Denominationalism; The Kingdom of God in America; The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry, The Meaning of Revelation; The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy, etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 123-page paperback edition.]
In the Preface to this 1989 posthumous book, Niebuhr’s son Richard wrote, “While his other books give evidence of the breadth and of the many perspectives of his inquiry into faith, ‘Faith on Earth’ is the most personal of all these---it conducts us farther and deeper into the author’s understanding of the fiducial constitution of our existence as loyal-disloyal beings who keep faith and break faith. Some who have read these pages in manuscript for have characterized [the book] as a phenomenology of faith… The text of ‘Faith on Earth’ principally depends three internally related sources… The first and largest of these is a manuscript bearing the title ‘On Faith’… It is difficult to determine at precisely what time the author began the work represented here… ‘Faith on Earth’ bears witness to a concern utterly central to the author during the 1940s and 1950s… Why HRN did not bring this long-standing project to publication must remain a matter of conjecture. There is, of course, the fact that he carried many other heavy obligations in the years he worked this book.”
He says of A.J. Ayer’s book [Language, Truth, and Logic]], “Though according to his argument all talk about values is meaningless, and purely expressive of emotion, there is an indication here that Mr. Ayer’s justification of faith in science is understood by him as based on something more than an emotional ‘pro-attitude’ toward the objects of his personal desires including his desire to survive. A kind of structure of faith emerges in his confession. He relies on science because he is loyal to human life, not his own merely; and because science is based on sense-experience which he trusts. There are three objects of faith here: sense-experience, science and human values. And faith moves in kind of a circle justifying reliance on each one of these objects by reference to the others.” (Pg. 17)
He acknowledges, “It may, indeed, be that faith is illogical and that this seeming circularity in the confessions of faith is indicative of its emotional or otherwise unrational character. But it may also be that faith is always in dynamic movement and that the apparent pluralism and circularity in it give evidence of a complex pattern or structure. It may be at least as complex as other operations of the mind are, for instance, knowledge with its movements from rational principles to sense experience and back again, from society to individual and back again, from subject to object.” (Pg. 19-20)
He observes, “The contemporary age is an age of faith, that is, of trust in science, that is, in the scientists. Only a small fraction of the people have much direct knowledge of the objective order with which the natural scientists are concerned. But they believe the scientists… But the situation is not fundamentally different when we deal with our human encounters with nonnatural realities, be they called ideal, supernatural or by some other name. The knowledge of those realities, with which reason deals in abstraction from perception… the difficult knowledge of such qualities as we encounter in painting and music, the even more difficult knowledge of good and evil, above all the most difficult knowledge of the Transcendent, all take place in this social context of believing companions whom we trust. Indeed, to those who are not aware of the directness of their relations to that objective order in which beliefs in these areas refer it will appear that there is ONLY belief here and no knowledge at all, only indirect relation through trustworthy or untrustworthy companions.” (Pg. 39-40)
He points out, “we have come to see that [faith] is no merely subjective experience. When it appears in the subject it appears as the response to and acknowledgement of another person who like the self exists in trust and loyalty. Faith, selfhood and other-self are inseparable. Moreover the presence of faith in life, whether in its positive or negative form, always represents the acknowledgement of something personal in the Transcendent. The reality of selfhood or… of the soul, comes to appearance in the activity of trusting and distrusting, being loyal and deceiving… The reality of God, of the Transcendent One, is obscurely acknowledged in life’s distrust and anxiety and openly so in trust in Him… The certainty of faith may be stated in a somewhat Cartesian fashion: I believe… therefore I know that I am, but also I trust you and therefore I am certain that you are, and I trust and distrust the Ultimate Environment, the Absolute Source of my being, therefore I acknowledge that He is. There are three realities of which I am certain, self, companions and the Transcendent.” (Pg. 61)
He quotes from Bertrand Russell’s The Scientific Outlook and comments, “We may summarize Russell’s attitude … by the statement that if the nature of things is the creation of a transcendent God, then that God is our enemy… and must be resisted though the fight may be carried on without personal hatred… Hence the proper attitude of man toward the Transcendent is defiance in the name of humane feeling or of spiritual values. Such defiant utterances of natural religion always call forth strong rejoinders from another tendency in the natural religion of distrust. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the answers … were of course made in the name of Christianity. But it is highly questionable whether the answers for the most part reflect the reconciliation of man with God in Christ so much as they reflect the natural religion of fear which is only the counterpart of hostility.” (Pg. 72)
He suggests, “This is our anxiety, a result not of our finiteness but of our dependence on an infinite and on finites which have the freedom to deceive us. There is no escape from this dilemma. We try to escape by means of universal skepticism, saying that we will believe no one except ourselves and nothing but what is evident to our own reason and senses…. But there is no escape; for we cannot live to ourselves even in our individual reason and sense experience, which often deceive us … Experience is unformed and inchoate as purely private experience…. I cannot escape because I live as a self with a future… There is no escape from an existence in which all trust and faithfulness is malformed by distrust and treason. Though there is no escape from life in faith, so disordered, into life without faith, there is a prospect of salvation from diseased faith… This is the prospect and this is the promise of which Christians speak.” (Pg. 84-85)
He says of the classical formulation of the Holy Spirit, “those of us who speak in this fashion are not in a position to deny that the classical formulation is true. We can believe it; it is not an expression of our trust in God, however, and not an oath of loyalty to him but only an expression of our lower trust, our secondary but real loyalty to the community of faith which has so expressed its trust in God and so made its vow of fidelity. I believe that there is a Holy Spirit.” (Pg. 108)
This posthumous publication will be of great interest to those studying Niebuhr’s works, or 20th century theology in general.
Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962) was an ordained minister (in what later became the United Church of Christ), as well as the younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Helmut (“H.”) Richard taught for almost thirty years at the Yale Divinity School. He wrote a number of books, such as Christ and Culture; Radical Monotheism and Western Culture; The Social Sources of Denominationalism; The Kingdom of God in America; The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry, The Meaning of Revelation; The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy, etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to a 123-page paperback edition.]
In the Preface to this 1989 posthumous book, Niebuhr’s son Richard wrote, “While his other books give evidence of the breadth and of the many perspectives of his inquiry into faith, ‘Faith on Earth’ is the most personal of all these---it conducts us farther and deeper into the author’s understanding of the fiducial constitution of our existence as loyal-disloyal beings who keep faith and break faith. Some who have read these pages in manuscript for have characterized [the book] as a phenomenology of faith… The text of ‘Faith on Earth’ principally depends three internally related sources… The first and largest of these is a manuscript bearing the title ‘On Faith’… It is difficult to determine at precisely what time the author began the work represented here… ‘Faith on Earth’ bears witness to a concern utterly central to the author during the 1940s and 1950s… Why HRN did not bring this long-standing project to publication must remain a matter of conjecture. There is, of course, the fact that he carried many other heavy obligations in the years he worked this book.”
He says of A.J. Ayer’s book [Language, Truth, and Logic]], “Though according to his argument all talk about values is meaningless, and purely expressive of emotion, there is an indication here that Mr. Ayer’s justification of faith in science is understood by him as based on something more than an emotional ‘pro-attitude’ toward the objects of his personal desires including his desire to survive. A kind of structure of faith emerges in his confession. He relies on science because he is loyal to human life, not his own merely; and because science is based on sense-experience which he trusts. There are three objects of faith here: sense-experience, science and human values. And faith moves in kind of a circle justifying reliance on each one of these objects by reference to the others.” (Pg. 17)
He acknowledges, “It may, indeed, be that faith is illogical and that this seeming circularity in the confessions of faith is indicative of its emotional or otherwise unrational character. But it may also be that faith is always in dynamic movement and that the apparent pluralism and circularity in it give evidence of a complex pattern or structure. It may be at least as complex as other operations of the mind are, for instance, knowledge with its movements from rational principles to sense experience and back again, from society to individual and back again, from subject to object.” (Pg. 19-20)
He observes, “The contemporary age is an age of faith, that is, of trust in science, that is, in the scientists. Only a small fraction of the people have much direct knowledge of the objective order with which the natural scientists are concerned. But they believe the scientists… But the situation is not fundamentally different when we deal with our human encounters with nonnatural realities, be they called ideal, supernatural or by some other name. The knowledge of those realities, with which reason deals in abstraction from perception… the difficult knowledge of such qualities as we encounter in painting and music, the even more difficult knowledge of good and evil, above all the most difficult knowledge of the Transcendent, all take place in this social context of believing companions whom we trust. Indeed, to those who are not aware of the directness of their relations to that objective order in which beliefs in these areas refer it will appear that there is ONLY belief here and no knowledge at all, only indirect relation through trustworthy or untrustworthy companions.” (Pg. 39-40)
He points out, “we have come to see that [faith] is no merely subjective experience. When it appears in the subject it appears as the response to and acknowledgement of another person who like the self exists in trust and loyalty. Faith, selfhood and other-self are inseparable. Moreover the presence of faith in life, whether in its positive or negative form, always represents the acknowledgement of something personal in the Transcendent. The reality of selfhood or… of the soul, comes to appearance in the activity of trusting and distrusting, being loyal and deceiving… The reality of God, of the Transcendent One, is obscurely acknowledged in life’s distrust and anxiety and openly so in trust in Him… The certainty of faith may be stated in a somewhat Cartesian fashion: I believe… therefore I know that I am, but also I trust you and therefore I am certain that you are, and I trust and distrust the Ultimate Environment, the Absolute Source of my being, therefore I acknowledge that He is. There are three realities of which I am certain, self, companions and the Transcendent.” (Pg. 61)
He quotes from Bertrand Russell’s The Scientific Outlook and comments, “We may summarize Russell’s attitude … by the statement that if the nature of things is the creation of a transcendent God, then that God is our enemy… and must be resisted though the fight may be carried on without personal hatred… Hence the proper attitude of man toward the Transcendent is defiance in the name of humane feeling or of spiritual values. Such defiant utterances of natural religion always call forth strong rejoinders from another tendency in the natural religion of distrust. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the answers … were of course made in the name of Christianity. But it is highly questionable whether the answers for the most part reflect the reconciliation of man with God in Christ so much as they reflect the natural religion of fear which is only the counterpart of hostility.” (Pg. 72)
He suggests, “This is our anxiety, a result not of our finiteness but of our dependence on an infinite and on finites which have the freedom to deceive us. There is no escape from this dilemma. We try to escape by means of universal skepticism, saying that we will believe no one except ourselves and nothing but what is evident to our own reason and senses…. But there is no escape; for we cannot live to ourselves even in our individual reason and sense experience, which often deceive us … Experience is unformed and inchoate as purely private experience…. I cannot escape because I live as a self with a future… There is no escape from an existence in which all trust and faithfulness is malformed by distrust and treason. Though there is no escape from life in faith, so disordered, into life without faith, there is a prospect of salvation from diseased faith… This is the prospect and this is the promise of which Christians speak.” (Pg. 84-85)
He says of the classical formulation of the Holy Spirit, “those of us who speak in this fashion are not in a position to deny that the classical formulation is true. We can believe it; it is not an expression of our trust in God, however, and not an oath of loyalty to him but only an expression of our lower trust, our secondary but real loyalty to the community of faith which has so expressed its trust in God and so made its vow of fidelity. I believe that there is a Holy Spirit.” (Pg. 108)
This posthumous publication will be of great interest to those studying Niebuhr’s works, or 20th century theology in general.
March 22, 2017
He gave the most stunning thought of why some marriages make it and some don't...
Some enter into marriage for a common goal, mutual love and satisfaction , mutual activities and interests but without any real expectation of changing their own behavior.
Some enter into marriage with the expectation of dissolving into one person, with one mind and purpose.
Both of those are admirable but carry a grave danger...what happens when one changes, interests diverge. To be honest, change in any way becomes a threat.
But then there are those that enter a covenent far more inclusive than activities, interests...there is mutual respect for each others independent of each other yet bound in love, trust and responsibility. Responsibility to each other and for each other as selves, concern for each others good even when it is not obviously a common good, in short faithfulness and fidelity.
Some enter into marriage for a common goal, mutual love and satisfaction , mutual activities and interests but without any real expectation of changing their own behavior.
Some enter into marriage with the expectation of dissolving into one person, with one mind and purpose.
Both of those are admirable but carry a grave danger...what happens when one changes, interests diverge. To be honest, change in any way becomes a threat.
But then there are those that enter a covenent far more inclusive than activities, interests...there is mutual respect for each others independent of each other yet bound in love, trust and responsibility. Responsibility to each other and for each other as selves, concern for each others good even when it is not obviously a common good, in short faithfulness and fidelity.
January 20, 2023
Reading H. Richard Niebuhr has been an incredibly helpful exercise the past several months. He is insightful and thought-provoking theologian. Faith on Earth, published posthumously from an unfinished manuscript, is another great entry in his bibliography. He seems to have a knack for articulating the significance of theology for the modern world.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews