This article first appeared at Splice Today.
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Why Niebuhr Now? asks John Patrick Diggins as the title of his brief, borderline hagiographic discussion of theologian Rienhold Niebuhr’s ethical and political thought. Why does everyone from Barack Obama to John McCain to Andrew Sullivan cite Niebuhr as an influence and an inspiration? Diggins’ answers are more or less what you’d expect—Niebuhr is profound, Niebuhr is thoughtful, Niebuhr’s analysis of power and evil and morality remains relevant.
All of which is no doubt true, but I wonder if Niebuhr’s ongoing popularity doesn’t rest on other sources. I think this passage from Why Niebuhr Now? is more to the point than Diggins quite intended:
Is the ethic of Jesus sufficient for mankind? It is noteworthy that Niebuhr’s own ethical teaching does not rely on it. Indeed, the theologian appeared at times compelled to remind the Savior not to forget that there is sin in the world… Niebuhr further diminishes the love ideal by suggesting in the politest terms that Jesus who died on the cross cannot be expected to offer useful instruction to humankind on how to live.
Niebuhr is a Christian theologian who believes that Christ is insufficiently realistic, and that those who follow Christ need to be taught “lessons about life.” In other words, he’s a Christian theologian who sounds like an atheist. In particular, he sounds like the atheist Nietzsche, who, Diggins says, Niebuhr read and appreciated.
The answer to “Why Niebuhr now?” therefore, could well be that Niebuhr is not all that Christian. In a secular society, a theologian of secularism is likely to be beloved. Certainly, as an atheist myself, Niebuhr’s skepticism of Christianity and tolerance of other viewpoints was one of the things I found most appealing in his writings. For example, in his essay “Can the Church Give a Moral Lead?” Niebuhr argued that Christians have no more access to the truth than anyone else—unless that access is the knowledge that they have no more access. “…the Christian faith gives us no warrant to lift ourselves above the world’s perplexities and to seek or to claim absolute validity for the stand we take,” Niebuhr maintains. Instead, Christianity “encourage[s] us to the charity, which is born of humility and contrition.” He concludes, “If we claim to possess overtly what remains hidden, we turn the mercy of Christ into inhuman fanaticism.” He drives this point home in “The Catholic Heresy,” in which he argues, “Nothing but embarrassment can result from the policy of commending Christ by pointing to the righteousness of the believers and the sins of the ungodly.” Christians are as much in need of repentance as non-Christians. All are steeped in sin.
Diggins argues that a consciousness of sin, and of human imperfectability, is at the heart of Niebuhr’s theology. This is so much the case that, as noted above, Niebuhr suggests that Christ himself did not take sufficient account of sin. Christ commanded human beings in this world to build their lives on love— a noble goal, but, Niebuhr says, not an actual possibility for sinful creatures.
For Niebuhr, sin is not primarily identified with desire, but with pride. Pride leads humans to believe that they know the mind of God and that they can perfect the world and themselves. It is pride that makes liberal reformers, Christian and otherwise, think that science and reason will solve the problems of inequality and prevent the misuse of power. It is pride that leads Christians to believe that they have the key to human happiness and salvation. And, conversely, it is pride that leads atheists to believe that, without religion, the world would be perfected. In what is perhaps Niebuhr’s most famous formulation, it is pride that leads to pacifism.
Pacifists, Niebuhr argues in “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist,” have:
absorbed the Renaissance faith in the goodness of man, have rejected the Christian doctrine of original sin as an outmoded bit of pessimism, have reinterpreted the cross so that it is made to stand for the absurd idea that perfect love is guaranteed a simple victory over the world… This form of pacifism is not only heretical when judged by the standards of the total gospel. It is equally heretical when judged by the facts of human existence.
The last two sentences are quintessential Niebuhr. Christianity for him is not a challenge to “the facts of human existence,” but a profound description of them. It is not a utopian vision, but a chastening of utopian visions. Humans are flawed, but their own false pride tells them they can control destiny and achieve happiness. Christianity is the path to humility, because it knows that power, pride, and sin are humankind’s lot on earth.
Niebuhr’s philosophy is convincing; he’s a thoughtful, profound thinker, and his warnings about utopias, fanaticism, and modernity’s delusions of perfectibility remain relevant and telling. But when I see the eagerness with which he’s embraced by Neocons or Barack Obama, I wonder if his theology is really quite as opposed to pride as Diggins insists. Not to impugn Obama, but anyone who gets his butt behind the desk in the Oval Office is unlikely to be overly afflicted with humility.
In fact, I think that, despite pointing out the mote of pride in his neighbor’s eye, Niebuhr has a beam or two in his own. After all, you’ve got to have a fairly high opinion of yourself to tell God he doesn’t understand sin. Niebuhr saw clearly the pride inherent in optimism and utopian perfectionism. But he was less aware of the pride of pessimism and, indeed, of realism. Understanding the dirty, dark secrets of how the world works, understanding the ubiquity of power and the corruption of your fellow human beings—there’s a rush there, as there always is in being the one-who-knows. Obama can have a tragic sense of the limitations of humanity and of the inevitable imperfect consequences of his actions—and with that sorrowing Shakespearean insight, he can drop bombs on Libya and shake his head sadly at those who critique him for failing to understand the necessary compromises of power. Is that really less egotistical than George Bush exclaiming “Hyuk! Axis of Evil!” and sending the planes into Afghanistan? And, if we’re going to talk about pragmatic realism, what practical difference does it make exactly to the folks on the ground that they’re being bombed by a chastened realist rather than by a vaunting idiot?
Everybody complains about the religious right, but the real religion in America today, the faith of our rulers, is not in Christianity or utopia. It’s a faith in reality and pragmatism. If we only look at the world clearly, these rulers tell us, without rose-colored glasses or unnecessary ideological baggage, we can manipulate results in a bipartisan fashion approved by experts and arrive at solutions that, while not ideal, are the best that can be hoped for. Faith, hope and love allow us to better appreciate and tolerate the painful necessities of our pragmatic decisions. They certainly don’t challenge us to question those necessities. There are no miracles, which is another way of saying that we know how the world works.
Jesus died on the cross to tell us to carefully weigh power relationships and choose the least bad option. That’s a moderate, non-utopian message that technocrats can get behind. Which perhaps explains “Why Niebuhr now,” and why Niebuhr later, and why Niebuhr as long as serious people want to tell themselves they are behaving seriously when they exercise power, tragically or otherwise.
It seems to me (from an admittedly very passing knowledge of Niebuhr) that his thinking is a way of justifying ‘the way things are’, as political realism tends to do. He first removes the sacrificial element from Christianity, either in the form of oneself for ones beliefs, or having to have the strength to forgive, as ‘unrealistic’. This then limits the degree to which we are supposed to try change our lives or the political system that we live in, by stating that it is just ‘the way things are’. This conveniently justifies keeping things the way they are whilst its proponents seem to be those benefiting most from that state of affairs. I wouldn’t consider myself either a utopian or a Christian, but I would argue (as you do) that Niebuhr’s views area as dogmatic as either, whilst attempting to place themselves as above dogma, by being ‘realist’.
“After all, you’ve got to have a fairly high opinion of yourself to tell God he doesn’t understand sin. ”
Where exactly does Niebuhr say this, and what does he say exactly?
Hey Suat. As I say earlier in the piece, he suggests strongly that Jesus’ vision of the moral life is unrealistic, essentially because he (Jesus) fails to account for the weakness (sinfulness) of human nature. Or, according to Diggins, “It is noteworthy that Niebuhr’s own ethical teaching does not rely on it. Indeed, the theologian appeared at times compelled to remind the Savior not to forget that there is sin in the world… ”
AC, that’s more or less right, I think — though it’s worth remembering that Niebuhr was strongly committed to social action and activism, and his theology was an important source of inspiration for Martin Luther King.
Yes, I read that and a bit of Niebuhr, and I have to say that Diggins is reaching too far. Especially since a conservative theologian like Niebuhr is unlikely to dismiss the Jewish Bible/Old Testament which is rampant with the kind of real world intervention (and sinfulness) you’re talking about. Nor does he suggest in “Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist” that Jesus’ version of moral life is unrealistic. If anything, he seems to suggest that asceticism (which is not exactly what Jesus’ life was like but almost an extreme version of it) is perfectly acceptable.
In any case, the Bible is filled with men (of God) who find it quite acceptable to bargain with and complain to God. So maybe he was taking a leaf from their book.
I don’t know; I find Diggins’ take persuasive. Niebuhr does argue, it seems to me, that Jesus’ life is not and cannot be a model; you’re not supposed to actually do what he says, because it’s impractical. Instead, you’re supposed to abstract and instrumentalize; apply the lessons of original sin in a practical way. This is in contrast to Niebuhr’s pacifist critics like Yoder, who argue specifically that you’re supposed to take the life of Jesus as a model.
One of the things that’s in dispute is precisely how conservative a theologian Niebuhr is. The atheist Diggins doesn’t see him as particularly conservative; neither (from pretty much the opposite direction) does Hauerwas. I think they’re both onto something.
Diggins isn’t saying that Niebuhr is bargaining with or complaining to God, like Job. Job criticizes God for being unjust…and the response is basically that accusing God of injustice is incoherent, because humans don’t have a standard to judge God like that. Niebuhr, on the other hand, is accusing God of being unrealistic,
argh, sorry — posted by accident.
As I was saying — Niebuhr is saying God is unrealistic or that he doesn’t understand human beings. It’s an intellectual rather than a moral criticism. I think that’s a pretty important difference, and one which says a lot about why Niebuhr is congenial to late modernity. The issue for him is not moral, but one of instrumental competence. Which fits well with Alasdair MacIntyre’s argument in “After Virtue” that modernity has substituted instrumental competence for morality.
Given all that…I hope it’s at least somewhat clear that I really like Niebuhr. He is the preeminent theologian of tolerance, and I think definitely gets at many of the things that are best in modernity as well as pointing to some of the problems.
By today’s standards, Niebuhr is very conservative with respect to many issues. I’m willing to bet that his views would be pretty acceptable in many conservative churches and he would deplore many of the things Hauerwas does (at least in that article you linked me to some time back).
Re: Unjust/Unrealistic God
I wasn’t thinking of Job. I was thinking of Moses and Elijah both of whom complained and vacillated about having to act in the real world.
Noah: “Niebuhr is saying God is unrealistic or that he doesn’t understand human beings. It’s an intellectual rather than a moral criticism.”
I understand it as being an intellectual argument but I think it’s more complicated than a single sentence can contain. For example, the idea that God doesn’t understand human beings is contradicted by much of the Gospels, not least Jesus’ reaction to the behavior of his disciples in Gethsemane. So saying “God is unrealistic” is more of a catchphrase since all it does is lead us into a discussion of perfection, human frailty, and the lack of clear divine guidance. An atheist would look at the Bible and see a hopeless mass of contradictions when it comes down to the sanction or disapproval of violence, but a Christian like Niebuhr only wants to look for answers.
Hauerwas is generally seen as being much more conservative than Niebuhr, or at least that’s my understanding.
Of course Niebuhr is more conservative than various liberal academic theologians.
But the point is that Niebuhr’s theology seems to suggest that Jesus is unrealistic. That’s what Diggins likes about him, because Diggins is an atheist and he sees Niebuhr’s position as congenial. And I think he’s right; Niebuhr’s theology is congenial to atheism in many ways. For better and (arguably in some ways) for worse.
I’ve been reading about the early history of Christianity, and it’s interesting how different writers address the demands of Jesus. Niebuhr’s position (Jesus is too unrealistic) is a fairly common lament going back to at least St. Augustine. Also worth noting that Augustine was not a pacifist, but one of the first proponents of just war.
To be a bit cynical, much of Christian history could be described as an attempt to “rewrite” Christ so that he’s less demanding.
I want to read Niebuhr much more than I did before reading this great article and commentary, but I haven’t read him yet. Based on the secondhand testimony here, I have to agree with Suat (and Richard). Frustration with God indicates belief in Him. Could his congeniality to atheism really be sympathy with atheists’ doubts, or with valid criticisms directed at Christians?
Yeah…the thing is, he isn’t like Job. He doesn’t sound frustrated with God (which yes, would indicate belief.) His attitude is much more distant; more like a teacher correcting the logical error of a promising student.
There’s just really not a whole lot in Niebuhr that suggests that he really has a strong faith in the divinity of Jesus…or anyway, he doesn’t seem super-interested in the divinity of Jesus as something to talk about in his theology. I think Zizek, for example, is a lot more interested in/obsessed by the life of Jesus and the text of the New Testament. At least that’s my impression.
That’s not to say Niebuhr wasn’t a believer; I’m sure he was.
But yeah, reading Niebuhr is definitely something more people should do. He’s a great writer.
Okay; thanks for the quick response, Noah. I’ll reserve further comment ’til I’ve done the homework.
“Everybody complains about the religious right, but the real religion in America today, the faith of our rulers, is not in Christianity or utopia. It’s a faith in reality and pragmatism. If we only look at the world clearly, these rulers tell us, without rose-colored glasses or unnecessary ideological baggage, we can manipulate results in a bipartisan fashion approved by experts and arrive at solutions that, while not ideal, are the best that can be hoped for. Faith, hope and love allow us to better appreciate and tolerate the painful necessities of our pragmatic decisions. They certainly don’t challenge us to question those necessities. There are no miracles, which is another way of saying that we know how the world works.”
Wait is this alterna universe america you’re talking about? Like, America2? Because the America I’m seeing is pretty much the opposite of that. It’s hugely partisan, wearing rose coloured glasses for some unspecified golden era of politician’s childhoods and dogmatically ideological, and it’s falling apart because of it.
It’s partisan, but it’s a paritsanship of technocratic solutions and bureaucratic managers.
Clinton put through welfare reform. Bush put through medicare drug benefits. Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan that Bush started. The idea that we’ve got some sort of unbridgeable partisan gap among our elites just is not very convincing to me in terms of policy choices.