The Relevance of Reinhold
In a post today on the First Things website, Wilfred McClay takes issue with an article by Paul Elie in the November Atlantic Monthly. He especially faults Elie for misrepresenting McClay’s own position.
I have not read the Elie piece, but McClay’s own view of the work of Reinhold Niebuhr (the subject of the Atlantic article), I found interesting.
Even Niebuhr’s strongest advocates concede his inadequacies as a
theologian. His Christology is weak, his ecclesiology is nonexistent,
and in a dozen other areas, he is mediocre or derivative, much the
inferior of his brother Richard. His theology can be rendered
surprisingly undemanding. There is a reason the informal organization
“Atheists for Niebuhr” has never lacked for members ….
Even in his areas of seeming strength, Niebuhr can be little help in
the making of practical moral decisions. How, for example, do his
doctrines help us to think more deeply and carefully about the relative
justice of different circumstances of warfare or other specific
exercises of governments’ coercive power, such as appropriate
interrogation techniques to be used against terrorists?
In the end, the value of Niebuhr’s thinking in these matters is, for
all his legendary complexity, very simple. He asserted three things:
First, we are not innocent, either as individuals or as nations, and
are incapable of disinterested action. Second, we must act in the world
and do our best to promote what we believe to be right, for we cannot
preserve our innocence by refusing to act. And third, we must know that
the exercise of power always exposes us to the corruptions of power—for
we will almost certainly sin in whatever actions we take, a realization
that should chasten us in whatever we do.
For what it is worth, I think that a fourth factor also has to be
present for the Niebuhrian perspective to be fully understood: The
moral tensions on which Niebuhr insists are unbearable in the absence
of faith in the redemptive power of Christ. A lot of what passes for
“Niebuhrian” completely elides that fact and thereby underplays the
rigor of Niebuhr’s gloominess and the necessity of his Christianity.
Any Niebuhrians in the congregation?
John Courtney Murray has some severe criticisms of Niebuhr’s “ambiguism” in “We Hold These Truths.” Murray had little patience with ambiguity. Niebuhr did not appreciate the criticism and that’s why Murray advised his editor at Sheed and Ward not to look for a blurb from Niebuhr.
I have always found H. Richard more congenial as a theologian.
Of course, as someone who studied with Stanley Hauerwas, I am predisposed to think Reinhold Niebuhr to be the Great Satan, but I am struck by how counter to Catholicism Niebuhr’s three contributions are. Taken together, they amount to the claim that sanctity is impossible. Now my Catholicism is sufficiently Jansenist-tinged to think that sanctity is pretty thin on the ground, but *impossible*? While there may be many Atheist for Niebuhr, I’m not sure someone could really be a “Catholic for Niebuhr.”
Fritz,
a very interesting comment.
You may have noticed that in the above post, I (…..)ed the reference to Hauerwas.
Do you think that McClay added the “fourth factor” to speak to your issue?
Bob,
Perhaps. But it seems to me that Niebuhr thought of the redemptive power of Christ entirely in terms of forensic righteousness, by which our consciences are salved but our lives remain essentially untransformed. So I don’t think, in the end, it goes very far to make Niebuhr very palatalbe to a Catholic theological perspective.
I want to read Paul Elie’s piece, because it seems he is getting at a problem that has been clear for some time now–and something that may have set McClay off–namely, that Niebuhr’s thought and theology has been used by partisans on all sides of the spectrum, but in particular those who sought to bring a Christian justification to U.S. military action in Iraq and elsewhere.
Whether Elie is the final word on the “real” Niebuhr or not, I think McClay doth protest too much. The question to me is whether the apparent malleability of Niebuhr’s ideas is a problem with his theology, or with those who try to appropriate his theology, for whatever ends.
I suspect, in my usual boring default to the via media, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Or muddle, as McClay would have it.
I wrote about Niebuhr’s work in my first book, Christian Critics, so let me summarize: RN was the exemplary theologian for the professional-managerial elite. You can see that in his centrist-liberal politics, his view of Christianity as a “mythology,” his fundamentally liberal view of theology in general. (I’ve never considered the term “neo-orthodox” to be very helpful. In fact, it’s downright misleading.) So I second Fritz Bauerschmidt’s comments. Like Joe Komonchak, I also find H. R. Niebuhr’s to be a far more subtle and engaging mind.
“The Essays of A. J. Muste” (edited by Nat Hentoff) includes two critiques of Niebuhr which are well worth reading.