The Nature and Destiny of Man

by Reinhold Niebuhr

The Nature and Destiny of Man issues a vigorous challenge to Western civilization to understand its roots in the faith of the Bible, particularly in the Hebraic tradition. Niebuhr here lays out his influential understanding of the two poles of human existence: finitude and freedom. Individual human thriving requires that we fully understand and honor both of these aspects of our nature, yet human history demonstrates our penchant for placing one over the other. This book is arguably Reinhold Niebuhr's most important work. It offers a sustained articulation of Niebuhr's theological ethics and is considered a landmark in twentieth-century thought.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion, Nonfiction, History, Politics, Christian

684 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

U.S. theologian. The son of an evangelical minister, he studied at Eden Theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School. He was ordained in the Evangelical Synod of North America in 1915 and served as pastor of Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit, Mich., until 1928. His years in that industrial city made him a critic of capitalism and an advocate of socialism. From 1928 to 1960 he taught at New York's Union Theological Seminary. His influential writings, which forcefully criticized liberal Protestant thought and emphasized the persistence of evil in human nature and social institutions, include Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vol. (1941 – 43), and The Self and the Dramas of History (1955).

from The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

A 1958 interview with Reinhold Niebuhr: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/niebuhr_reinhold.html

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Christian thought discovered more about the workings of the human mind in 1600 years than a trainload of experimental psychologists has done in 60. Of course, I hear you say, they had all that time. And their paradigm was different. But what should it matter whether you call it pride or ego or self-interest when the result is still a national culture FUBAR? We didn’t want to listen, because we thought we had better ideas and then it turns out that we are assigning new names to old ideas and rejoicing at our superior wisdom.

Relevant Notes from the text:

The Primary Sin is Pride
Calvin consistently holds to the Pauline definition of sin given in Romans I. Sin is pride and not ignorance: “They worship not Him but figments of their own brains instead. This pravity Paul expressly remarks: ‘Professing themselves wise they became fools.’ He had before said ‘they became vain in their imaginations.’” Institutes, Book I, Ch. 4.

There is a pride of power in which the human ego assumes its self-sufficiency and self-mastery and imagines itself secure against all vicissitudes. … This proud pretension is present in an inchoate form in all human life but it rises to greater heights among those individuals and classes who have a more than ordinary degree of social power. “Soul, thou has much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But God said to the rich fool, “This night thy soul shall be required of thee” (Luke 12:19-20)

Man is tempted by the basic insecurity of human existence to make himself doubly secure and by the insignificance of his place in the total scheme of life to prove his significance. …The greater his power and glory, the more the common mortality of humankind appears to him in the guise of an incongruous fate.

Moral pride is revealed in all “self-righteous” judgments in which the other is condemned because he fails to conform to the highly arbitrary standards of the self. Since the self judges itself by its own standards and finds itself good.

Luther rightly insisted that the unwillingness of the sinner to be regarded as a sinner was the final form of sin.

The sin of moral pride brings forth spiritual pride. … For this reason religion is not simply … an inherently virtuous human quest for God. It is merely a final battleground between God and man’s self-esteem. … The same man may in one moment regard Christ as his judge and in the next moment seek to prove that the figure, the standards and the righteousness of Christ bear a greater similarity to his own righteousness than to that of his enemy. … What goes by the name of religion in the modern world is to a great extent unbridled human self-assertion in religious guise.

As soon as the [religious person] assumes that his more prophetic statement and interpretation of the Christian gospel guarantees him a superior virtue, he is also lost in the sin of self-righteousness.

The Relation of Dishonesty to Pride
Man loves himself inordinately. Since his determinate existence does not deserve the devotion lavished upon it, it is obviously necessary to practice some deception in order to justify such excessive devotion. … The self must at any rate deceive itself first. Its deception of others is partly an effort to convince itself against itself. The fact that this necessity exits is an important indication of the vestige of truth which abides with the self in all its confusion and which it must placate before it can act. The dishonesty of man is thus an interesting refutation of the doctrine of man’s total depravity.

The Biblical analysis of sin is filled with references to the function of deception in the economy of sin. St. Paul declares that the self-glorification of man is a process of changing “the truth of God into a lie” (Romans 1:25).

Isaiah 47: Sinful man has two claims: “I am and none else beside me” and “None seeth me,” the illusions of the self as the center of the world and of the self transcending the world, in the one case leading to the denial of the existence of other life and in the other case to a denial of a higher court of judgment. These illusions are attributed, on the one hand, to the very greatness of the human mind: “Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee,” and on the other to dishonest: “Thou hast trusted thy wickedness.”

The sinful self needs these deceptions because it cannot pursue its own determinate ends without paying tribute to the truth. This truth, which the self, even in its sin, never wholly obscures, is that the self, as finite and determinate, does not deserve unconditioned devotion.

Inequality of Guilt
Prophetic judgment is leveled at those “which oppress the poor, which crush the needy (Amos 4:1), those who “lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall (Amos 6:4), who “swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail” (Amos 8:4).

“For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up … and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day” (Is. 2:12, also Is. 26.5)
An inevitable concomitant of pride is injustice.

“For ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? Saith the Lord God of hosts” (Is. 3:14, 15).
It is a fact that those who hold great economic and political power are more guilty of pride against God and of injustice against the weak than those who lack power and prestige.

“If any man stand, let him take heed lest he fall.” … It is the man who stands, who has achieved, who is honored and approve by his fellowmen who mistakes the relative achievements and approvals of history for a final and ultimate approval.

The attempt to maintain one’s own pride and self-respect by holding others in contempt adds an uneasy conscience to the general insecurity which the attitude of contempt is meant to alleviate. St. Paul: “Their foolish heart was darkened; it was because they professed themselves wise that they became fools.

In Summary:
Pastor Neibuhr relates Jesus’ encounter with a rich young man: The young man had kept all the commandments; but the commandments, the “law” in the more restricted sense, did not satisfy him and his continued uneasiness prompted the question, “What lack I yet?” This question, “What lack I yet?” suggests that what lies in the uneasy conscience of the sinner is not so much a knowledge that the ultimate law of life is the law of love as the more negative realization that obedience to the ordinary rules of justice and equity is not enough. Jesus responds: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor.” What is demanded is an action in which regard for the self is completely eliminated.

[Grant Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nature and Destiny of Man is not a book you want to read. This is a book you will want to re-read. Niebuhr, with huge attention to detail, does a census of various schools in the western tradition with regards to human nature and destiny; critiques them and shows how they realize an aspect but miss out on the whole. Niebuhr, once finished addressing and criticizing, then investigates how Christianity was aware of the paradox, and within it contained the many aspects, and shows what Christianity can provide as solutions to the problems and mystery of human nature and destiny.

[Andy]

I am reading this and enjoying it - dense theology.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good follow up after reading James' VRE. Niebuhr takes a philosophical path from (more or less) the beginning and follows through to Christianity. His main idea being that only through Christianity can any philosophical goals be realized, resolved, and interpreted correctly. I don't necessarily follow a particular religion, but I thoroughly enjoyed the journey and Niebuhr was and is a very apt guide.

[Rick Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I recall correctly, I have only read Volume 1, regarding human nature--theological anthropology. That's what seminary theology recommended, and there was not much said about the second volume. Niebuhr's thought, of course, continues to be influential. For those who want to know his work and his thought, this is a good place to go.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The closest thing to a systematic theology and anthropology that Reinhold ever published. Its extraordinary length is intimidating but this text rewards the reader with a compelling and coherent account of how Christianity is the correct system of belief for modern people.

[Jon Stout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ponderous but unique insights into freedom, a corrective to the easy conscience of modern man.

[Mary]

Liked Beyond Tragedy so much that I thought I'd give this set a whirl.

[Curtis · Rating 3 out of 5]

About 1/4 of this book is off the charts. Unfortunately, a lot of it, while probably brilliant, is simply uninteresting to me or dated. I much prefered Moral Man Immoral Society and Love and Justice.

[Mohit]

there is no god

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a classic...the work that opened the door on his "realism".

[Daryl Grigsby]

neibuhr had great theological and ethical insights

[Leon Sun · Rating 4 out of 5]

终于读完了这本大书。毕竟有时代背景，宗教知识甚至语言(书中和大量的注解里包含古英语，拉丁文，希腊文，德语和特殊宗教术语)的障碍，但收获也是大的，加深了我对人的境遇的理解，对历史的理解，对宗教尤其是基督教的理解，历史的向前不意味着向着更好的方向. faith, hope, love, sin,grace,eschatology... 下面是部分摘录：

Aristotle confessed that "not to be born is the best thing and death is better than life," and gave it as his opinion that melancholy was a concomitant of genius. P9

Either the rational man or the natural man is conceived as essentially good, and it is only necessary for man either to rise from the chaos of nature to the harmony of mind or to descend from the chaos of spirit to the harmony of nature in order to be saved. The very fact that the strategies of redemption are in such complete contradiction to each other proves how far morden man is from solving the problem of evil in his life. P24

All things are yours but ye are Christ's. P61

Luther said: "Just as no one can go to Hell or Heaven for me, so no one can believe for me and so no one can open or close Heaven or Hell for me and no one can drive me either to believe or disbelieve. " P85

It may be observed, by way of anticipating later expositions of the cause of evil in human life, that Jesus's injunction,"Therefore I say unto you be not anxious" contains the whole genius of the Biblical view of the relation of finiteness to sin in man. It is not his finiteness, dependence and weakness but his anxiety about it which tempts him to sin. P168

In this view mortality, insecurity and dependence are not themselves evil but become the occasion of evil when man seeks in his pride to hide his mortality, to overcome his insecurity by his own power and to establish his independence. The ideal possibility would be that a man of perfect faith would not fear death because of his confidence "neither life nor death... shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." But since unbelief is the very basis of sin, it is impossible for sinful man to anticipate his end with equanimity. Thus sin is "the sting of death";and the obvious mark of that sting is fear. P174

Therefore all human life is involved in the sin of seeking security at the expense of other life. The perils of nature are thereby transmuted into the more grievous perils of human history. P182

Sensuality is man "turning inordinately to mutable good"(Aquinas) P184

When anxiety has conceived it brings forth both pride and sensuality. Man falls into pride, when he seeks to raise his contingent existence to unconditioned significance; he falls into sensuality, when he seeks to escape from his unlimited possibilities of freedom from the perils and responsibilities of self-determination, by immersing himself into a "mutable good, "by losing himself in some natural vitality. P186

"Professing themselves wise they became fools". P187

"Modern man, " said a cynical doctor, " has forgotten that nature intends to kill man and will succeed in the end. " P191

The virtues which correspond to the second element in his nature, that is, to the freedom of his spirit, are analogous to the "theological virtues " of Catholic thought, namely faith, hope and love. P270

The final enigma of history is therefore not how the righteous will gain victory over the unrighteous, but how the evil in every good and the unrighteousness of the righteous is to be overcome. P43 of Part 2

Without faith the ethical life of man is always haunted by the skeptical reflection that "a living dog is better than a dead lion, " which is to say that all moral imperatives and limited by the survival impulse which lies at the foundation of historical existence. P76 of Part 2

The truth contained in the gospel is not found in human wisdom. Yet it may be found at the point where human wisdom and human goodness acknowledge their limits; and creative despair induces faith. Once faith is induced it becomes truly the wisdom which makes "sense" out of a life and history which would otherwise remain senseless. This is possible for individuals in any age, no matter what its historical circumstances. P207 of Part 2

福音中包含的真理在人类的智慧中是找不到的。然而，它可以在人类智慧和人类善良承认其局限性的地方被发现；创造性的绝望诱发了信仰。一旦信仰被诱发，它就会成为真正的智慧，使生活和历史变得有意义，否则就毫无意义。这对任何时代的个人来说都是可能的，无论其历史环境如何。

Loyalty to the truth requires confidence in the possibility of its attainment; toleration of others requires broken confidence in the finality of our own truth. But if there is no answer for a problem to which we do not have the answer, our shattered confidence generate either defeat (which in the field of culture would be scepticism ); or an even greater measure of pretension, meant to hide our perplexities behind our certainties (which in the field of culture is fanaticism ). P243 of Part 2

The new world must be built by resolute men who" When hope is dead will hope by faith." P285 of Part 2

Thus wisdom about our destiny is dependent upon a humble recognition of the limits of our knowledge and our power. Our most reliable understanding is the fruit of "grace" in which faith complete our ignorance without pretending its certainties as knowledge; and in which contrition mitigates our pride without destroying our hope. P321 of Part 2

[Dave Holt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found it difficult to read, not being trained in philosophy, many terms I had to look up in the dictionary. But it was a learning experience. The passage on French Revolution-era writer, Rousseau, inspired a post about my father who I thought of as Rousseauian, wanting to "retire to the woods."
I thought the author correctly deduced that Adam and Eve didn't introduce sin, "the corruption of the plan of creation and providence (page 222)." It had already been introduced by Satan and Lucifer during the rebellion, known as the war in heaven (Milton's Paradise Lost), which happened before Adam and Eve even came to planet Earth. Many are not aware of the chronology of these events. Such history is another detail that shows there were "children" on Earth before Adam. Our anthropological expeditions confirm it. Niebuhr's book (1941) was written before fascism was defeated and he writes quite a lot about the nations' "lust for power," during World War II. He provides an interesting quote from Calvin, "The Lord deposited with Adam the endowments he chose to confer on human nature... he lost them not only for himself but for us all."

[Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niebuhr's book, is beautiful; to be honest, I am not exactly a christian- I find some of the values, espoused, useful, but on some level, do not go far enough. The discussion, that caught me, as a layman in this area, was the differences in Paul's position, to Luther's and Calvin's- w.r.t. grace, and salvation. There are also interesting, discussion on truth, justice, among other things. I haven't quite finished this- but it is definitely worth the read; it is loaded with insight, into what constitutes the "standard" protestant doctrine.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the worst books I've ever read. Long essays meander without a thesis or argument. The book pretends to be a sweeping account of ancient, medieval, and modern perspectives on humanity and history, but there's no real synthesis. It's one thing after another. I challenge anyone to say what the argument is here that is supposed to be make this work so much worth reading. Niebuhr was called "America's conscience." But he was really a tepid liberal whose tepid theology was adopted by elites because in the end it was harmless and said nothing.

[Wyatt Houtz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brilliant author, astounding command of philosophy and historical isms. Unfortunately on the wrong side of issues. Best of the worst. Important to read but not to follow. Also, a difficult to read due to convoluted writing style.

Read Wolfhart Pannenberg instead for a meaning of history and Karl Barth for metaphysics. Richard Hays has a good critical chapter of R Niebuhr in his moral vision that should be read before engaging with Niebuhr

[Matthew B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without exaggeration one of the most insightful works of theology (and cultural criticism) ever written. There may be any number of things to object to in Niebuhr's outlook, but at the very least he almost always manages to make his case both rigorously and lucidly, while his diagnoses of virtually everything wrong with modern culture (though in a decidedly non-moralistic sense) ring more true than any other I have encountered, even eighty years later.

[Tyler Tidwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, a finite creature bound to nature, nevertheless has transcendent, infinite yearnings he cannot satisfy of his own accord, no matter how he might try to distort the true nature of reality to do so.

[Cutenerd scraped an O OWL in Charms · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ponderous but unique insights into freedom, a corrective to the easy conscience of modern man.

[Roger Araujo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christianity as mere philosophy. Nice reductions, but very boring to read. Just dropped this one.