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The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses
Theologians, ethicist, and political analyst, Reinhold Neiburh, was a towering figure of twentieth-century religious thought. In this important book, the best of Neiburh's essays have been brought together for the first time. Selected, edited, and introduced by Robert McAffee Brown - a student and friend of Nieburh's and himself a distinguished thoelogian - the works included here testify to the brilliant polemics, incisive analysis, and deep faith that characterized the whole of Neibuhr's life.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
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December 15, 2015
Overall a very good read. Niebuhr will challenge a reader of any background to check his/her assumptions and invite him/her to consider Niebuhr's carefully constructed arguments. In his youth, Niebuhr was influenced by Marxism and he remained obsessed with "dialectic" in his later years, much like his near-contemporary Jacques Ellul. As dialectic is an overused word with very little inherent meaning, it would seem Niebuhr specifically understood it to mean that things and ideas had apparently contradictory elements comprising them. Like most obsessed with "dialectic," Niebuhr tended to dismiss without further reflection or consideration anything that did not leave room for dialectic. At its worse, this tendency leaves Niebuhr seeming like he tried to split every difference, taking a compromise position between existing arguments. Worse, he often ascribed straw man arguments to rivals to make it easier for him to navigate between these other positions. At its best, Niebuhr's fascination with dialectic helped him create very nuanced ideas, frequently being able to see and accept the good in a person, idea, thing, etc., while noting the problems and weaknesses too.
In his prayers, Niebuhr betrays a very real pastoral experience, he was no mere ivory tower academic. Parts I-III of the book were very good and well worth reading. His chapter on the relations between Christians and Jews in Part IV was outstanding and ought to be read by anyone with an interest in either Christianity or Judaism. Equally good was his humble writing in his epilogue, where he admits to reconsidering some things over the years, as well as the trouble he ended up having practicing what he preached. However, other chapters in Parts IV-V tended to bring out his straw man arguments and reveal his limitations.
Niebuhr's discriminating vision sees that "Men may be quite unable to define the meaning of life, and yet live by a simple trust that it has meaning." (p 3) Further, "faith in a transcendent God made it possible to affirm confidence in a meaningful existence even though the world was full of sorrow and evil...it reduces man's pride and presumption in judging the justice of the universe by making him conscious of his own sin and imperfection and suggesting that at least some of the evil from which he suffers is a price of the freedom which makes it possible for him to sin." (p 5)
Niebuhr challenges the presumptions of secular modern culture, particularly the optimism of humanism:
History does not move forward without catastrophe, happiness is not guaranteed by the multiplication of physical comforts, social harmony is not easily created by more intelligence, and human nature is not as good or as harmless as had been supposed. (p 9)
Niebuhr takes on the Marxism of his youth:
But after many five-year plans have come and gone and it is discovered that strong men still tend to exploit the weak, and that shrewd men still take advantage of the simple, and that no society can guarantee the satisfaction of all legitimate desires, and that no social arrangement is proof against the misery which we bring upon each other by our sin--what will become of this optimism?...An optimism which depends upon the hope of the complete realization of our highest ideals in history is bound to suffer ultimate disillusionment. (p 12)
So the answer to these problems? "Only in a religion in which there is a true sense of transcendence can we find the resource to convict every historical achievement of incompleteness, and to prevent the sanctification of the relative values of any age or any era." (p 16)
Having witnessed the horrors of the world wars, Niebuhr was unconvinced by nonviolent resistance. While he admitted that ultimate truth pointed to this ideal, in the world as it is, justice demanded the use of power, even while he acknowledged that any such application would carry evil with it as well. "There is no purely spiritual method of preserving minimal justice and order in world, for the world is not purely spiritual." (p 25) He also saw no simple solution to the nuclear dilemma.
Niebuhr criticizes worldly pacifists for de facto supporting tyranny because, "Tyranny is not war. It is peace, but it is a peace which has nothing to do with the peace of the Kingdom of God." (p 11) Likewise, he critiques the quietists who regard all politics as equally flawed, "Whatever may be the moral ambiguities of the so-called democratic nations, and however serious may be their failure to conform perfectly to their democratic ideals, it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistency of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practice. If we cannot make a distinction here, there are no historical distinctions which have any value." (pp 110-111) He reminds us, "The Christian faith ought to persuade us that political controversies are always conflicts between sinners and not between righteous men and sinners." (p 114)
Niebuhr does not regard levity with suspicion or take it as a sin; instead, he regards it as the preliminary step towards faith. "A humorous acceptance of fate is really the expression of a high form of self-detachment." (p 57) However, while laughter can assist in our adjustment to reality, it does not provide ultimate answers, "there is laughter in the vestibule of the temple, the echo of laughter in the temple itself, but only faith and prayer, and no laughter, in the holy of holies." (p 60)
Niebuhr's nuanced way of observing and analyzing lead to his penetrating critique of "secularism":
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as secularim...Every explanation of the meaning of human existence must avail itself of some principle of explanation which cannot be explained. Every estimate of values involved some criterion of value which cannot be arrived at empirically. Consequently the avowedly secular culture of today turns out upon close examination to be either a pantheistic religion which identifies existence in its totality with holiness, or a rationalistic humanism for which human reason is essentially god. (pp 79-80)
He goes on to show that rationalists do not "realize that the freedom by which man is endowed in his rational nature is the occasion for his sin as well as the ground of morality." (p 81)
Like Ellul, Niebuhr shows that man must hold his ideals aloof from the world, yet participate in the world and do his best to work for good, "The law of love is not kept simply by being preached. Yet it is the law of life and must be both preached and practiced." (pp 85-86) However, in his discussion of love and law, Niebuhr makes both needlessly complex and distorts competing arguments in so doing. He makes the interesting assertion that "justice is at once the servant of love and an approximation to love under institutional conditions." (p 187) C.S. Lewis gives a far clearer, more penetrating treatment of love in The Four Loves.
Niebuhr criticizes the Catholic tradition of loving neighbor, creating the straw man that love of man is a mere step ladder to the love of God, ignoring Catholic teaching on the dignity of man and so on. Further, he pretends to quote Scripture in defense of his own argument, but omits those sections that would in fact support the very straw man he creates, i.e., "If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple,"(Luke 14:26) and, "At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven." (Matthew 22:30)
Niebuhr retains a humility throughout and consistently exhorts his reader to remember his/her own sinfulness, as well as extending that to the wider Church, "it is quite obvious that no Christian church has a right to preach to a so-called secular age without a contrite recognition of the shortcomings of historic Christianity which tempted the modern age to disavow its Christian faith...Some men are atheists because of a higher implicit theism than that professed by believers." (p 87) In this manner he criticizes the bad science of those who exceed the bounds of the physical into the metaphysical, and criticizes the bad theology of those who exceed the bounds of the metaphysical into the physical. He also criticizes religious practice that claims to rise above politics as favoring the established status quo, while warning of the dangers of wading right into politics as well.
Niebuhr warns that people have a "disposition to hide self-interest behind the facade of pretended devotion to values" and, in general, "Man is a curious creature with so strong a sense of obligation to his fellows that he cannot pursue his own interests without pretending to serve his fellowmen." (p 123) Niebuhr warns the morally-minded, "Political choices are always more limited than our moral and religious ideas find convenient." (p 200)
Niebuhr's faith in consensus is troubling, however, given his otherwise discerning ability to separate subjective values from the more eternal. Take, for instance, his own definition of good and evil: "evil is always the assertion of some self-interest without regard to the whole, whether the whole be conceived as the immediate community, or the total community of mankind, or the total order of the world. The good is, on the other hand, always the harmony of the whole on various levels." (p 165) Whose order? Whose harmony? Who gets to decide what is inimical to the "whole" and what is harmonious? Niebuhr does not even attempt to venture there, and thereby strengthens the arguments of modern individualists. However, he does use these definitions to assault modern secularism, stating that the doctrine of original sin explains "no matter how wide the perspectives which the human mind may reach, how broad the loyalties which the human imagination may conceive, how universal the community which human statecraft may organize, or how pure the aspirations of the saintliest idealists may be, there is no level of human moral or social achievement in which there is not some corruption of inordinate self-love." (p 169) Therefore, the absence of original sin or some equivalent idea is the fatal undoing of such secular arguments.
Niebuhr's treatment of Liberalism is cursory; he focuses on idealist Liberals like Immanuel Kant, while neglecting those who emphasize the selfishness and even badness of man. In terms of Adam Smith and John Locke, he imputes more straw man arguments to them, and furthermore neglects more recent thinkers such as even Frederic Bastiat, not to mention his own contemporaries, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, for instance. His best argument concerning self-interest echoes C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, "men cannot simply claim some desired object as their own without seeking to prove that it is desirable in terms of some general scheme of value." (p 206)
So for all his good advice, his insightful analysis, he habit of forcing the reader to check assumptions, at the end of the day, Niebuhr does not seem to be a Christian at all. He defines himself as a Bible realist and therefore denies any true miracles, any that cannot be ascribed to actually non-miraculous causes, to include the virgin birth and the resurrection. Without these, it is impossible for Niebuhr to claim to be a Christian, at least in the conventional sense (he is inventing his own sort of religion at that point, which he is content to name Christianity). As C.S. Lewis points out in Miracles, it is absurd to believe God created the cosmos (which Niebuhr does, he refers to it as creation and he refers to creatures) but is somehow incapable of altering the very substance or the rules governing it that He Himself created. This seems to reflect a personal hang-up of Niebuhr and puts him into a sort of clock-maker deist category.
As Niebuhr continues his criticism of Protestant and Catholic alike, he again constructs more straw men. He claims the Catholic tradition pretends to "give a rational and sharply defined account of the character of God and of the eternal ground of existence." (p 238) While Niebuhr's warnings against attempting this are well-founded, to actually accuse the Catholic Church of it wholesale is to miss the number of times "mystery" appears in its tradition and literature.
His criticisms of Catholicism are downright gentlemanly compared to his review of fellow Protestants. He is especially harsh on liberal Protestants, seeming to have them in mind as the most likely for him to influence.
As he criticizes the secular worldviews, he notes that these have "interpreted man as an essentially virtuous creature who is betrayed into evil by ignorance, or by evil economic, political, or religious institutions. These simple theories of historical evil do not explain how virtuous men of another generation created the evil in these inherited institutions, or how mere ignorance could give the evil in man the positive thrust and demonic energy in which it frequently expresses itself." (p 244) A telling critique indeed, though, as noted, it would be more powerful if it included more modern Liberal thought that allows for wickedness among men.
For those who would assert humans are merely slightly more intelligent animals than others, Niebuhr notes there is "no Weltschmerz in the soul of any monkey, no anxiety about what he is and ought to be, and no visitation from a divine accuser...There is among animals no uneasy conscience and no ambition." (p 243) Therefore humans are qualitatively different from other animals, and not just because of a few additional IQ points or opposable thumbs.
Again, worth reading as a challenge. Worth reading Niebuhr's views on relations between Jews and Christians. And for the very personal perspective his epilogue is also on an equal plane. However, a committed Christian should use caution in using Niebuhr as a guiding light, as Niebuhr is not a Christian insofar as he does not believe Jesus to be God incarnate, nor does he believe him to be resurrected. As St. Paul said, "Through it you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures...Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me." (1 Cor 15:2-8) So read it to cleanse your own intellectual defects, but balance it with some C.S. Lewis, particularly on the topics of love and miracles. See also Ellul for a Christian with a strikingly similar background and outlook, but who does not deny basic revealed Christian truths.
In his prayers, Niebuhr betrays a very real pastoral experience, he was no mere ivory tower academic. Parts I-III of the book were very good and well worth reading. His chapter on the relations between Christians and Jews in Part IV was outstanding and ought to be read by anyone with an interest in either Christianity or Judaism. Equally good was his humble writing in his epilogue, where he admits to reconsidering some things over the years, as well as the trouble he ended up having practicing what he preached. However, other chapters in Parts IV-V tended to bring out his straw man arguments and reveal his limitations.
Niebuhr's discriminating vision sees that "Men may be quite unable to define the meaning of life, and yet live by a simple trust that it has meaning." (p 3) Further, "faith in a transcendent God made it possible to affirm confidence in a meaningful existence even though the world was full of sorrow and evil...it reduces man's pride and presumption in judging the justice of the universe by making him conscious of his own sin and imperfection and suggesting that at least some of the evil from which he suffers is a price of the freedom which makes it possible for him to sin." (p 5)
Niebuhr challenges the presumptions of secular modern culture, particularly the optimism of humanism:
History does not move forward without catastrophe, happiness is not guaranteed by the multiplication of physical comforts, social harmony is not easily created by more intelligence, and human nature is not as good or as harmless as had been supposed. (p 9)
Niebuhr takes on the Marxism of his youth:
But after many five-year plans have come and gone and it is discovered that strong men still tend to exploit the weak, and that shrewd men still take advantage of the simple, and that no society can guarantee the satisfaction of all legitimate desires, and that no social arrangement is proof against the misery which we bring upon each other by our sin--what will become of this optimism?...An optimism which depends upon the hope of the complete realization of our highest ideals in history is bound to suffer ultimate disillusionment. (p 12)
So the answer to these problems? "Only in a religion in which there is a true sense of transcendence can we find the resource to convict every historical achievement of incompleteness, and to prevent the sanctification of the relative values of any age or any era." (p 16)
Having witnessed the horrors of the world wars, Niebuhr was unconvinced by nonviolent resistance. While he admitted that ultimate truth pointed to this ideal, in the world as it is, justice demanded the use of power, even while he acknowledged that any such application would carry evil with it as well. "There is no purely spiritual method of preserving minimal justice and order in world, for the world is not purely spiritual." (p 25) He also saw no simple solution to the nuclear dilemma.
Niebuhr criticizes worldly pacifists for de facto supporting tyranny because, "Tyranny is not war. It is peace, but it is a peace which has nothing to do with the peace of the Kingdom of God." (p 11) Likewise, he critiques the quietists who regard all politics as equally flawed, "Whatever may be the moral ambiguities of the so-called democratic nations, and however serious may be their failure to conform perfectly to their democratic ideals, it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistency of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practice. If we cannot make a distinction here, there are no historical distinctions which have any value." (pp 110-111) He reminds us, "The Christian faith ought to persuade us that political controversies are always conflicts between sinners and not between righteous men and sinners." (p 114)
Niebuhr does not regard levity with suspicion or take it as a sin; instead, he regards it as the preliminary step towards faith. "A humorous acceptance of fate is really the expression of a high form of self-detachment." (p 57) However, while laughter can assist in our adjustment to reality, it does not provide ultimate answers, "there is laughter in the vestibule of the temple, the echo of laughter in the temple itself, but only faith and prayer, and no laughter, in the holy of holies." (p 60)
Niebuhr's nuanced way of observing and analyzing lead to his penetrating critique of "secularism":
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as secularim...Every explanation of the meaning of human existence must avail itself of some principle of explanation which cannot be explained. Every estimate of values involved some criterion of value which cannot be arrived at empirically. Consequently the avowedly secular culture of today turns out upon close examination to be either a pantheistic religion which identifies existence in its totality with holiness, or a rationalistic humanism for which human reason is essentially god. (pp 79-80)
He goes on to show that rationalists do not "realize that the freedom by which man is endowed in his rational nature is the occasion for his sin as well as the ground of morality." (p 81)
Like Ellul, Niebuhr shows that man must hold his ideals aloof from the world, yet participate in the world and do his best to work for good, "The law of love is not kept simply by being preached. Yet it is the law of life and must be both preached and practiced." (pp 85-86) However, in his discussion of love and law, Niebuhr makes both needlessly complex and distorts competing arguments in so doing. He makes the interesting assertion that "justice is at once the servant of love and an approximation to love under institutional conditions." (p 187) C.S. Lewis gives a far clearer, more penetrating treatment of love in The Four Loves.
Niebuhr criticizes the Catholic tradition of loving neighbor, creating the straw man that love of man is a mere step ladder to the love of God, ignoring Catholic teaching on the dignity of man and so on. Further, he pretends to quote Scripture in defense of his own argument, but omits those sections that would in fact support the very straw man he creates, i.e., "If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple,"(Luke 14:26) and, "At the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven." (Matthew 22:30)
Niebuhr retains a humility throughout and consistently exhorts his reader to remember his/her own sinfulness, as well as extending that to the wider Church, "it is quite obvious that no Christian church has a right to preach to a so-called secular age without a contrite recognition of the shortcomings of historic Christianity which tempted the modern age to disavow its Christian faith...Some men are atheists because of a higher implicit theism than that professed by believers." (p 87) In this manner he criticizes the bad science of those who exceed the bounds of the physical into the metaphysical, and criticizes the bad theology of those who exceed the bounds of the metaphysical into the physical. He also criticizes religious practice that claims to rise above politics as favoring the established status quo, while warning of the dangers of wading right into politics as well.
Niebuhr warns that people have a "disposition to hide self-interest behind the facade of pretended devotion to values" and, in general, "Man is a curious creature with so strong a sense of obligation to his fellows that he cannot pursue his own interests without pretending to serve his fellowmen." (p 123) Niebuhr warns the morally-minded, "Political choices are always more limited than our moral and religious ideas find convenient." (p 200)
Niebuhr's faith in consensus is troubling, however, given his otherwise discerning ability to separate subjective values from the more eternal. Take, for instance, his own definition of good and evil: "evil is always the assertion of some self-interest without regard to the whole, whether the whole be conceived as the immediate community, or the total community of mankind, or the total order of the world. The good is, on the other hand, always the harmony of the whole on various levels." (p 165) Whose order? Whose harmony? Who gets to decide what is inimical to the "whole" and what is harmonious? Niebuhr does not even attempt to venture there, and thereby strengthens the arguments of modern individualists. However, he does use these definitions to assault modern secularism, stating that the doctrine of original sin explains "no matter how wide the perspectives which the human mind may reach, how broad the loyalties which the human imagination may conceive, how universal the community which human statecraft may organize, or how pure the aspirations of the saintliest idealists may be, there is no level of human moral or social achievement in which there is not some corruption of inordinate self-love." (p 169) Therefore, the absence of original sin or some equivalent idea is the fatal undoing of such secular arguments.
Niebuhr's treatment of Liberalism is cursory; he focuses on idealist Liberals like Immanuel Kant, while neglecting those who emphasize the selfishness and even badness of man. In terms of Adam Smith and John Locke, he imputes more straw man arguments to them, and furthermore neglects more recent thinkers such as even Frederic Bastiat, not to mention his own contemporaries, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, for instance. His best argument concerning self-interest echoes C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, "men cannot simply claim some desired object as their own without seeking to prove that it is desirable in terms of some general scheme of value." (p 206)
So for all his good advice, his insightful analysis, he habit of forcing the reader to check assumptions, at the end of the day, Niebuhr does not seem to be a Christian at all. He defines himself as a Bible realist and therefore denies any true miracles, any that cannot be ascribed to actually non-miraculous causes, to include the virgin birth and the resurrection. Without these, it is impossible for Niebuhr to claim to be a Christian, at least in the conventional sense (he is inventing his own sort of religion at that point, which he is content to name Christianity). As C.S. Lewis points out in Miracles, it is absurd to believe God created the cosmos (which Niebuhr does, he refers to it as creation and he refers to creatures) but is somehow incapable of altering the very substance or the rules governing it that He Himself created. This seems to reflect a personal hang-up of Niebuhr and puts him into a sort of clock-maker deist category.
As Niebuhr continues his criticism of Protestant and Catholic alike, he again constructs more straw men. He claims the Catholic tradition pretends to "give a rational and sharply defined account of the character of God and of the eternal ground of existence." (p 238) While Niebuhr's warnings against attempting this are well-founded, to actually accuse the Catholic Church of it wholesale is to miss the number of times "mystery" appears in its tradition and literature.
His criticisms of Catholicism are downright gentlemanly compared to his review of fellow Protestants. He is especially harsh on liberal Protestants, seeming to have them in mind as the most likely for him to influence.
As he criticizes the secular worldviews, he notes that these have "interpreted man as an essentially virtuous creature who is betrayed into evil by ignorance, or by evil economic, political, or religious institutions. These simple theories of historical evil do not explain how virtuous men of another generation created the evil in these inherited institutions, or how mere ignorance could give the evil in man the positive thrust and demonic energy in which it frequently expresses itself." (p 244) A telling critique indeed, though, as noted, it would be more powerful if it included more modern Liberal thought that allows for wickedness among men.
For those who would assert humans are merely slightly more intelligent animals than others, Niebuhr notes there is "no Weltschmerz in the soul of any monkey, no anxiety about what he is and ought to be, and no visitation from a divine accuser...There is among animals no uneasy conscience and no ambition." (p 243) Therefore humans are qualitatively different from other animals, and not just because of a few additional IQ points or opposable thumbs.
Again, worth reading as a challenge. Worth reading Niebuhr's views on relations between Jews and Christians. And for the very personal perspective his epilogue is also on an equal plane. However, a committed Christian should use caution in using Niebuhr as a guiding light, as Niebuhr is not a Christian insofar as he does not believe Jesus to be God incarnate, nor does he believe him to be resurrected. As St. Paul said, "Through it you are also being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures...Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me." (1 Cor 15:2-8) So read it to cleanse your own intellectual defects, but balance it with some C.S. Lewis, particularly on the topics of love and miracles. See also Ellul for a Christian with a strikingly similar background and outlook, but who does not deny basic revealed Christian truths.
November 13, 2007
A liberal Protestant theologian examines the catastrophes of the 2oth century with a massive intelligence harnessed by "optimistic pessimism." Even secular readers like me can appreciate Niebuhr's ability to make grace and mercy relevant again.
June 16, 2023
I find the measure of an intelligent thinker is their ability to transpose the axis of analysis to re-frame the issues in a way that thus highlights their inherent errancies. Niebuhr makes a very compelling case for inclusion with this volume, joining the ranks of C.S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who are immediately called to mind.
Upon reading, it is no surprise the latter were contemporaries, with Bonhoeffer studying under Niebuhr while visiting Union Theological Seminary for post-doctorate study. The two have an uncanny resemblance in their ability to elaborate upon and dissect principles from complex (but terse) scriptural passages; merging sound exegesis with philosophical insight, they extrapolate the message of the scripture(s) to sharpen the deep mystery they expound — for as much as our endowments would allow. I've found this most acutely in the opening passage of Bonhoeffer's Creation and Fall, which bears close resemblance (in style and, loosely, subject) to Niebuhr's Humor and Faith essay in this edition.
Given this book is a series of selected essays and addresses, I've broken up my review for each. (A character limit set by Goodreads means this is abridged.)
Want to Read
January 11, 2008Over the years, I've been guided by these words of Neibuhr: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference."
I recently discovered that Neibuhr had a strong influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama.
Obama told the New York Times that he takes "away [from Neibuhr's writings] 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, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism."
I recently discovered that Neibuhr had a strong influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama.
Obama told the New York Times that he takes "away [from Neibuhr's writings] 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, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism."
November 20, 2025
The compilation of essays gets 5 stars, but I'm just not into Niebuhr. If he's your cup of tea, then you'll love this volume.
April 15, 2021
Niebuhr contrasts the characteristics of entire worldviews skillfully. For example, he writes about the visions of redemption of several different ideologies: the myth of human progress teaches that “men suffered not from sin but from impotence” and that redemption could come “through growth and development” (94). Marxism “proclaimed confidence in a new harmony of society through a revolutionary destruction of property, thus making a social institution the root of evil in man and promising redemption through its destruction” (94). The Biblical view of redemption, by contrast, does not depend “upon . . . the complete realization of our highest ideals in history” (12).
My religious tradition tends to emphasize the certainty of our beliefs. Niebuhr’s writing, by contrast, has an epistemological humility that I could learn from. For example:
[The religious recognize] that the whole of the created world is not self-explanatory. They see that it points beyond itself to a mysterious ground of existence, to an enigmatic power beyond all discernible vitalities, and to a “first cause” beyond all known causes. But they usually claim to know too much about this eternal mystery.
However, it can also feel like he hides a bit behind words like “mystery.” His vague language might belie a not-very-thorough theology. He can also be polemic; it isn’t hard to see him in the mold of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. And his critiques extend to the church:
If we preach repentance, it must be repentance for those who accept the Lord as well as for those who . . . deny Him. If we preach the judgment of God upon a sinful world, it must be judgment upon us as well as upon those who do not acknowledge His judgments. If we preach the mercy of God, it must be with a humble recognition that we are in need of it as much as those who do not know God’s mercy in Christ (91).
His occasional vague language combined with willingness to critique a variety of worldviews and/or institutions does remind me that it is easier to throw mud at a building than to construct one.
On the whole, I find many of these essays very thought-provoking, if occasionally dense. I skipped a few essays that did not interest me, but I enjoyed the ones I read.
My religious tradition tends to emphasize the certainty of our beliefs. Niebuhr’s writing, by contrast, has an epistemological humility that I could learn from. For example:
[The religious recognize] that the whole of the created world is not self-explanatory. They see that it points beyond itself to a mysterious ground of existence, to an enigmatic power beyond all discernible vitalities, and to a “first cause” beyond all known causes. But they usually claim to know too much about this eternal mystery.
However, it can also feel like he hides a bit behind words like “mystery.” His vague language might belie a not-very-thorough theology. He can also be polemic; it isn’t hard to see him in the mold of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. And his critiques extend to the church:
If we preach repentance, it must be repentance for those who accept the Lord as well as for those who . . . deny Him. If we preach the judgment of God upon a sinful world, it must be judgment upon us as well as upon those who do not acknowledge His judgments. If we preach the mercy of God, it must be with a humble recognition that we are in need of it as much as those who do not know God’s mercy in Christ (91).
His occasional vague language combined with willingness to critique a variety of worldviews and/or institutions does remind me that it is easier to throw mud at a building than to construct one.
On the whole, I find many of these essays very thought-provoking, if occasionally dense. I skipped a few essays that did not interest me, but I enjoyed the ones I read.
March 31, 2023
I found this to be an excellent collection that shows Niebuhr's genius and moral stature on many levels of politics, theology, and scholarship. The book seemed like a well-rounded introduction, while making me curious to read his work further. Some themes did reappear over and over to the point of tedium but each essay had new things to say.
January 28, 2021
This book took me over a year to read - off and on, essay at a time. Worth. Every. Second. His view of humanity and the world is realistic but not disheartening (a pessimistic optimist, indeed).
Will definitely be reading more of him.
Will definitely be reading more of him.
February 21, 2023
Great thinker.
Read
May 3, 2026Quoted in Parker J Palmer’s healing the heart of democracy
March 15, 2010
One of the most profound American thinkers of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr has a knack for grabbing hold of the wildest contradictions contained within the human breast, presenting them to the reader in shimmering new light. Good and evil are inextricably bound up in the nature of humans and in their institutions. Niebuhr's apparent goal was to infuse liberal Christianity with a sense of paradox & mystery, and in this he succeeded.
However, in many of his later essays, he reveals that he clings too strongly to the mystery, pleading agnosticism & shaking his head when presented with the supernatural, especially that most central of all Christian doctrine: the resurrection of Christ. With this I take issue. For all his prophetic boldness in proclaiming a complex, Christian understanding of human nature to the (political) powers of this earth, Niebuhr shies away from anything besides the most wishy-washy symbolic understanding of the central tenets of Christian belief. And this is Niebuhr's failure: that he did not realize that the paradoxes of a Christian understanding of grace & original sin must be grounded in the literal, historical, saving work of Jesus Christ.
However, in many of his later essays, he reveals that he clings too strongly to the mystery, pleading agnosticism & shaking his head when presented with the supernatural, especially that most central of all Christian doctrine: the resurrection of Christ. With this I take issue. For all his prophetic boldness in proclaiming a complex, Christian understanding of human nature to the (political) powers of this earth, Niebuhr shies away from anything besides the most wishy-washy symbolic understanding of the central tenets of Christian belief. And this is Niebuhr's failure: that he did not realize that the paradoxes of a Christian understanding of grace & original sin must be grounded in the literal, historical, saving work of Jesus Christ.
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March 22, 2012Niebuhr is a good palate-cleanser when one has been reading a lot of Tillich. More theologically traditional than his colleague, Niebuhr nonetheless left behind an impressive array of works on the intersection of politics and theology, a nexus of renewed interest for thinkers like Zizek and Eagleton, among others. These essays are a good cross-section of Niebuhr's thought, although the cadence of his sentences is a bit difficult for me to align my reading rhythms with. I prefer his last three essays in the book, especially Coherence, Incoherence and Christian Faith, Mystery and Meaning, and View from the Sidelines, written after his stroke.
March 23, 2011
The Essential Reinhold Neibuhr is a collection by the original ethical realist. He is a rare religious thinker who actually thinks about how religious and ethical thinking can be applied to actual life. Moreover, his political writing is brilliant. However, this book focuses on his religious writing, which is semi-awkward for someone who does not consider himself a member of Neibuhr's "We the Christians." That said, the serenity prayer, which he wrote, is something I agree with (except for that first line, the prayer is perfect.)
February 3, 2011
A great source of inspiration. This passage is tacked to my cork board of thoughts, "It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges" - Reinhold Niebuhr
November 13, 2012
Spent my time leisurely reading through this, little bits at a time. It lent itself well to that, as it is a selection of essays with no over-arching connection, besides authorship. This also meant that some essays were more interesting than others.
Recommended if you enjoy smart thinking on big issues.
Recommended if you enjoy smart thinking on big issues.
April 4, 2014
This was a good introduction to the thinking of one of the great theologians of the twentieth century. Niebuhr writes, "An adequate religion is always an ultimate optimism which has entertained all the facts which lead to pessimism." (page 6) This is a collection so some of the essays are better than others but overall I found this to be a good sampling of Niebuhr's work.
Want to Read
May 15, 2008He has a very good approach to looking at complicated questions of religion and faith.
July 15, 2013
Had to put it back on the bookshelf. Over my head.
April 2, 2014
An excellent introduction to the works of one of the great 20th century Protestant theologians.
January 5, 2008
Rich and rewarding, dense with thoughtful, thought-provoking, timeless ideas and arguments.
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