Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (LTE)

by Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr is renowned for his unflinching honesty concerning issues of social ethics, specifically, love and justice. Humans, Niebuhr says, are incapable of perfect love. Therefore, their struggle against evil and injustice is doomed to only relative victory, although they strive to live in the ideal world. Niebuhr's concern with this paradox gave rise to numerous writings over the years in which he explored the many angles, subtleties, heights, and depths of the problems of humanity and society. Now sixty-four of these important pieces are compiled in a single volume, providing evidence of Niebuhr's belief that positive decisions and actions are possible for Christians. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic works in the field.

Genres: Theology

320 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1980

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

[Andrew Figueiredo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niebuhr definitely makes you think, and I appreciate his keen sense of human imperfection even if I sometimes disagree with his theology (hence the 4 stars--I think his treatment of natural law and criticisms of Catholic theology fall flat). Niebuhr is always confronting the limits of the human person and those imposed by our own fallen nature. No group is perfect. Therefore, he recognizes (correctly) the failure of utopianism, and his articles and segments criticize the unrealistic idealism of Marxists, anarchists, and pacifists, who ignore the realities of power.

According to the Bible, love is the "only absolute law" (as laid out in scripture), but one we cannot achieve here on earth. It therefore remains the purest Christian ideal and a criterion by which all of our human institutions are imperfect. (257) The best we can do, according to this theologian, is to pursue justice, which Niebuhr doesn't explicitly define in these essays but which elsewhere he describes as an "approximation of brotherhood under conditions of sin." (Introduction, citing "The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 254).

However, due to the persistence of unequal power relations and the existence of evil, coercion will always be necessary to some degree or another. People must be pushed to "be just beyond their natural inclinations," and the use of power tragically entails giving up some claim to moral purity. (205) Power makes politics necessary, and justice is fundamentally about balancing power within a society, always keeping love in mind as the highest ideal.

In this schema, religion furnishes the ideal and plays a role of moral suasion, diminishing the violence that can emerge from coercion and sustaining our efforts towards justice. Minds and hearts must shift to precipitate greater justice and to actually render laws effective, so moral suasion comes to matter alongside societal coercion. Because of this, Niebuhr does not spare the Christian church, which too often fell (and falls today) short on civil rights and economic justice and ends up sanctifying privilege. His notions of original sin also have resonance here. On issues like race, Niebuhr highlights how the problem is not just under-education, but the deeper issue of original sin. But despite our fallenness dooming us always to prejudices, Niebuhr doesn't fall into apathy. Instead, he counsels "repentance" as a means of breaking racial bigotry and critical self-examination of our institutions. (128, 131) One can see here how MLK Jr. was influenced by Niebuhr.

In turn, freedom must be related to justice, community, and equality. Democracy helps accomplish this by providing a means to restructure and balance power, which often "tends to make itself god." (77) Of course, the solutions are compromises that do not and cannot leave everyone happy. But it is precisely this give-and-take that makes for a successful democracy in his eyes, bringing about arrangements in the interests of justice. (119, 267) And democracy internally helps to promote global peace by checking the imperialistic desires. (212) I would contest how effectively it has done so, especially considering the literature on "rally around the flag" effects. For example, democracy might actually feed the worst imperialistic impulses, especially when leaders and media deceive the people. Anyway, I digress.

Niebuhr's ideas have major implications for foreign policy, translating into a sober realism that urges international involvement as an American moral duty but discourages utopianism or pridefulness. Of course, this made a ton of sense in the context of World War II, where there was a clearer moral and strategic case for American involvement. There are other conflicts where I think this argument gets abused (see resurrected interest in his realism around the Iraq War), but contra Niebuhr's neoconservative fanboys, he did not advocate leaping into every global conflict--after this book was published, he ended up opposing the Vietnam War.

This cautious approach is evident in the limits he lays out for international involvement--it must be tempered by a recognition that revenge or excess often drives resentment, and by a recognition of our own sins to prevent us from becoming prideful in global affairs. We must both understand that force is the "ultima ratio of political life" while "keep[ing] it in its proper place." (300)

In my view, to a lesser extent than the world federalists, or even other theologians like Jacques Maritain who tread close to that idea, Niebuhr harbored at least at first an overly idealistic view of the world order, mentioning that small countries should be "persuaded and forced" to give up their political and economic autonomy. (199) But I don't want to overstate my criticism of his points here, because he calls out those who plan for a world community based on abstractions rather than lived realities and seems to have evolved towards a more calculated viewpoint cognizant of the over-idealism of world federalists.

In this review, I summarized the main threads tying these essays together, threads I found impressive and enjoyed reading through. But his writings in this collection contain innumerable still-timely observations on the relationship between church and state, the danger posed by partisan rancor for national unity, the British religious left, and more. There's ample material for an analysis of Niebuhr and liberalism, but I won't go into that here. Sure, time has proven him wrong in a couple of places, but I want to underline that this is a great read and remarkably pertinent today (and probably always due to his insightfulness on human nature).

[Kevin Gasser]

This is an accessible compilation of some of Niebuhr's work drawing from his publications in a number of periodicals over much of his writing career. It is interesting to watch Niebuhr's political theology morph over time from what he would one day call "sectarian utopianism" to what he termed "realism." Not a bad intro to Niebuhrian thought.

[Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Niebuhr is a darn good read.