Reinhold Niebuhr - An Interpretation of Christian Ethics

PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA IS, UNFORTUnately, unduly dependent upon the very culture of modernity, the disintegration of which would offer a more independent religion a unique opportunity. Confused and tormented by cataclysmic events in contemporary history, the modern mind faces the disintegration of its civilization in alternate moods of fear and hope, of faith and despair. The culture of modernity was the artifact of modern civilization, product of its unique and characteristic conditions, and it is therefore not surprising that its minarets of the spirit should fall when the material foundations of its civilization begin to crumble. Its optimism had no more solid foundation than the expansive mood of the era of triumphant capitalism and naturally gives way to confusion and despair when the material conditions of life are seriously altered. Therefore the lights in its towers are extinguished at the very moment when light is needed to survey the havoc wrought in the city and the plan of rebuilding.

At such a time a faith which claims to have a light, the same yesterday, today, and forever, might conceivably become a source of illumination to its age, so sadly in need of clues to the meaning of life and the logic of contemporary history. The Christian churches are, unfortunately, not able to offer the needed guidance and insight. The orthodox churches have long since compounded the truth of the Christian religion with dogmatisms of another day, and have thereby petrified what would otherwise have long since fallen prey to the beneficent dissolutions of the processes of nature and history. The liberal churches, on the other hand, have hid their light under the bushel of the culture of modernity with all its short-lived prejudices and presumptuous certainties.

To be more specific: Orthodox Christianity, with insights and perspectives, in many ways superior to those of liberalism, cannot come to the aid of modern man, partly because its religious truths are still imbedded in an outmoded science and partly because its morality is expressed in dogmatic and authoritarian moral codes. It tries vainly to meet the social perplexities of a complex civilization with irrelevant precepts, deriving their authority from theirsometimes quite fortuitousinclusion in a sacred canon. It concerns itself with the violation of Sabbatarian prohibitions or puritanical precepts, and insists, figuratively, on tithing mint, anise, and cummin, preserving the minuti of social and moral standards which may once have had legitimate or accidental sanctity, but which have, whether legitimate or accidental, now lost both religious and moral meaning.

The religion and ethics of the liberal church is dominated by the desire to prove to its generation that it does not share the anachronistic ethics or believe the incredible myths of orthodox religion. Its energy for some decades has been devoted to the task of proving religion and science compatible, a purpose which it has sought to fulfill by disavowing the more incredible portion of its religious heritage and clothing the remainder in terms acceptable to the modern mind. It has discovered rather belatedly that this same modern mind, which only yesterday seemed to be the final arbiter of truth, beauty, and goodness, is in a sad state of confusion today, amidst the debris of the shattered temple of its dreams and hopes. In adjusting itself to the characteristic credos and prejudices of modernity, the liberal church has been in constant danger of obscuring what is distinctive in the Christian message and creative in Christian morality. Sometimes it fell to the level of merely clothing the naturalistic philosophy and the utilitarian ethics of modernity with pious phrases.

The distinctive contribution of religion to morality lies in its comprehension of the dimension of depth in life. A secular moral act resolves the conflicts of interest and passion, revealed in any immediate situation, by whatever counsels a decent prudence may suggest, the most usual counsel being that of moderationin nothing too much. A religious morality is constrained by its sense of a dimension of depth to trace every force with which it deals to some ultimate origin and to relate every purpose to some ultimate end. It is concerned not only with immediate values and disvalues, but with the problem of good and evil, not only with immediate objectives, but with ultimate hopes. It is troubled by the question of the primal whence and the final wherefore. It is troubled by these questions because religion is concerned with life and existence as a unity and coherence of meaning. In so far as it is impossible to live at all without presupposing a meaningful existence, the life of every person is religious, with the possible exception of the rare skeptic who is more devoted to the observation of life than to living it, and whose interest in detailed facts is more engrossing than his concern for ultimate meaning and coherence. Even such persons have usually constructed a little cosmos in a world which they regard as chaos and derive vitality and direction from their faith in the organizing purpose of this cosmos.

High religion is distinguished from the religion of both primitives and ultra-moderns by its effort to bring the whole of reality and existence into some system of coherence. The primitives, on the other hand, are satisfied by some limited cosmos, and the moderns by a superficial one. For primitive man the unity of the tribe or the majesty and mystery of some natural forcethe sun, the moon, the mountain, or the generative processmay be the sacred center of a meaningful existence. For modern man the observable sequences of natural law or the supposedly increasing values of human cooperation are sufficient to establish a sense of spiritual security and to banish the fear of chaos and meaninglessness which has beset the human spirit throughout the ages.

This straining after an ultimate coherence inevitably drives high religion into depth as well as breadth; for the forms of life are too various and multifarious to be ascribed easily to a single source or related to a single realm of meaning if the source does not transcend all the observable facts and forces, and the realm does not include more than the history of the concrete world. The problem of evil and incoherence cannot be solved on the plane on which the incompatible forces and incommensurate realities (thought and extension, man and nature, spirit and matter) remain in stubborn conflict or rational incompatibility. Since all life is dynamic, religious faith seeks for the solution of the problem of evil by centering its gaze upon the beginning and the end of this dynamic process, upon God the creator and God the fulfillment of existence. Invariably it identifies the origin and source with the goal and end as belonging to the same realm of reality, a proposition which involves religion in many rational difficulties but remains, nevertheless, a perennial and necessary affirmation.

High religions are thus distingushed by the extent of the unity and coherence of life which they seek to encompass and the sense of a transcendent source of meaning by which alone confidence in the meaningfulness of life and existence can be maintained. The dimension of depth in religion is not created simply by the effort to solve the problem of unity in the total breadth of life. The dimension of depth is really prior to any experience of breadth; for the assumption that life is meaningful and that its meaning transcends the observable facts of existence is involved in all achievements of knowledge by which life in its richness and contradictoriness is apprehended. Yet the effort to establish coherence and meaning in terms of breadth increases the sense of depth. Thus the God of a primitive tribe is conceived as the transcendent source of its life; and faith in such a God expresses the sense of the unity and value of tribal solidarity. But when experience forces an awakening culture to fit the life of other peoples into its world, it conceives of a God who transcends the life of one people so completely as no longer to be bound to it. Thus a prophet Amos arises to declare, Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me sayeth the Lord. What is divided, incompatible, and conflicting, on the plane of concrete history is felt to be united, harmonious, and akin in its common source (God hath made of one blood all the nations of men) and its common destiny (In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free).