The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr was a twentieth-century American theologian who was known for his commentary on public affairs. One of his most influential ideas was the relating of his Christian faith to realism rather than idealism in foreign affairs. His perspective influenced many liberals and is enjoying a resurgence today; most recently Barack Obama has acknowledged Niebuhr’s importance to his own thinking.

In this book, Kenneth Hamilton makes a claim that no other work on Niebuhr has made—that Niebuhr’s chief and abiding preoccupation throughout his long career was the nature of humankind. Hamilton engages in a close reading of Niebuhr’s entire oeuvre through this lens. He argues that this preoccupation remained consistent throughout Niebuhr’s writings, and that through his doctrine of humankind one gets a full sense of Niebuhr the theologian. Hamilton exposes not only the internal consistency of Niebuhr’s project but also its aporia. Although Niebuhr’s influence perhaps peaked in the mid-twentieth century, enthusiasm for his approach to religion and politics has never waned from the North American public theology, and this work remains relevant today.

Although Hamilton wrote this thesis in the mid-1960s it is published here for the first time. Jane Barter Moulaison, in her editorial gloss and introduction, demonstrates the abiding significance of Hamilton’s work to the study of Niebuhr by bringing it into conversation with subsequent writings on Niebuhr, particularly as he is re-appropriated by twenty-first-century American theology.

1

Niebuhr as  a Theologian and His Relation to Theological Tradition

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Hamilton assesses the contributions of Niebuhr as a Protestant theologian, but, more specifically as an American Protestant theologian writing during historical moments as large and significant to American religious identity as the Second World War, the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement.

2

Niebuhr's General Theological Method

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Hamilton asks how Niebuhr’s own demurral in describing himself as a theologian implicates his theological method.  How are the apologetic and the pragmatic concerns of Niebuhr related to his theology?  Furthermore, is there not a sense in which any notion of the apologetic in some sense depends on an account of the Real?

3

Human Nature - i.: Self-Transcendence

Kenneth Hamilton

From a preliminary study of Reinhold Niebuhr’s methodological starting places, Hamilton proceeds to explore some of the substantive features of the doctrine of human nature in Niebuhr’s theology. The first character of human life that Niebuhr explores is the capacity for self-transcendence. Niebuhr seeks to recover lost resources for understanding human nature from the biblical tradition for the sake of better understanding human nature and its destiny for our time.

4

Human Nature: ii: Sin

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Kenneth Hamilton moves from a description of the human condition in general terms—examining both Niebuhr’s kerygmatic and ontological emphases—to one focused primarily on the conception of human beings as sinner.  In this, Hamilton examines in a most sustained manner Niebuhr’s work arising from the prestigious Gifford Lectures given in 1938 - 1940,  The Nature and Destiny of Man.

5

Human Nature - iii: The Norm of Love

Kenneth Hamilton

In chapter five, Hamilton inquires into the capacity of love to uproot or mitigate human sinfulness. Although not a capacity that can be actualized, Niebuhr proposes that the love endowed to the first humans is an indelible feature of humankind--this is a feature which separates humans from other animals, and it is a feature that is possessed universally.

6

Humanity and Its Environment: The Problem of History

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Hamilton considers Niebuhr through the framework of his theology or philosophy of time and history. His reading of Niebuhr unmasks a surprising diffidence toward history, which is unbiblical in its very essence. Hamilton shows how history, for Niebuhr,  is at odds with religions meaning, and must in some sense be overcome in order to plumb the “deeper” and more general truths which Niebuhr calls myth.

7

Humanity and Its Faith: The Apprehension of Total Reality

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Hamilton identifies the manner in which religious faith for Niebuhr answers a specific question that arises out of Niebuhr’s overall concern with the nature of humanity.  Humans, to Niebuhr, are essentially spiritual beings and this is evident in the dogged existence of a reality which is, according to Niebuhr, truly apprehensible to the spiritual dimension of humankind.  This reality then becomes the foundational principle to which all other principles, including the biblical kerygma, must conform.

8

Away from Nineteenth-Century Religion

Kenneth Hamilton

Here, Hamilton assesses Reinhold Niebuhr’s contributions in the context of theology and political debates of the twentieth century and evaluates his contributions therein. Of particular significance is the impact that both Niebuhr brothers made in articulating an indigenous and uniquely North American theology.

9

Christian Realism

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Hamilton is most helpful in tracing a genealogy of the term, realism, as it is appropriated by the theologians.  According the Hamilton, in spite of the efforts made by some of Niebuhr’s interpreters, realism connoted for him no philosophical foundationalism and no political blueprint for change. It was instead a “moral temper to be cultivated,” a temper that would guard against naïve utopianism and over-determined political programs.

10

Neo-Supernaturalism

Kenneth Hamilton

In this chapter, Hamilton assesses the manner in which orthodox theology functioned in Niebuhr’s mind in order to underwrite the political positions named in the previous chapter. Thus Nieburhr turns to pre-liberal theological sources to develop a fuller picture not only of the limits of political engagement, but also the possibilities that may inhere for Christians in the public sphere. A key source for such possibility was the Protestant doctrine of grace.

11

The "Christian Interpretation" of The Human Situation

Kenneth Hamilton

In this concluding chapter, Hamilton argues that the questions that Niebuhr opens up, according to Hamilton, are abidingly important. For they present in relief form the challenges that face the biblical faith in its encounter with modern history and modern secularism. While Niebuhr’s apologetics may not have resolved these problems, he certainly has brought attention to them.