The theology of Reinhold Niebuhr

the long version

In fairness the reader must be advised in advance of the limitations of this book. Reinhold Niebuhr is profoundly a many-sided thinker. He cannot fully be evaluated in the pages of one small volume. Mindful of this, I have restricted my labor to the delineation of one controlling concept -- the dialectical relation between time and eternity -- assuming that if the reader can clearly grasp this fundamental point, he will then be in a position to interpret the corpus of the literature for himself. The exact plan I have elected to follow in this excursion is detailed in the table of contents. There is nothing to be gained in repeating it here. No finite thinker is ever wholly in or out of the truth. Therefore, I have found it both natural and necessary to divide my estimate of Niebuhr's final worth. On the one hand, his fundamental psychological understanding of the inevitability of pride and egotistic self-assertiveness in all individual and collective expression (save for his interpretation of the first and second Adam), plus his excellent expression of agape love as the final definition of the law of life, are, as a whole, both profound and convincing. No serious individual can rest at ease in Zion after studying Niebuhr. I myself have been made uncomfortable no few times in the preparation of this manuscript. On the other hand, the epistemological and metaphyscal piles which support these insights are hardly adequate. Niebuhr tends to draw implications from his initial observations which are far from compelling. -- Preface.