Note: this is a part of a series on the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. You can find an outline of the series with links to the articles here.
Human beings are limited and even sinful. Niebuhr spoke eloquently to these limits. However, Niebuhr also constantly reminds us of the goodness of human beings and their amazing created potential as created by God.
The Transcendent Freedom of the Human Being
Niebuhr did not believe that human beings were “timeless” creatures. Humans are ethnic and family beings. The determinists have recognized these factors and explained them well, but they overplayed their hand. Humans are also capable of transcending their own time and place.
The self is a creature, but it is also creator. It has freedom to act differently than it has before. Compare this to the animals. They always form the same culture. There is no ability to transcend their nature and look beyond it.
Whenever human beings interact with each other, they create unique “dramas” that are a mixture of their situation and their free reaction to it. This means it’s very hard to predict history. Of the 19th century historians, only Jacob Burckhardt predicted the rise of totalitarian governments in the 20th century. Because history is so complex, this means that it is hard to definitively refute even the most outlandish interpretation of history (The Self and the Dramas of History, 43–44). Humans can transcend their situation in dizzying array of creative endeavors.
The Conscience & Human Goodness
Human beings also have a conscience. The conscience, according to Niebuhr, is the self transcending itself and judging itself. Sin is not an inevitable part of human being’s created nature. Though he is fallen, “it is not inevitable that man offend God in his creativity. [God] places limits on finite man, but this does not mean that he is a slave to nature” (The Self and the Dramas of History, 79). There is nothing inherently wrong with human beings based on their finitude. Being finite is not bad. What is bad in human beings is the result of a wrong response to our finite nature.
Even though human beings are “fallen” into sin, this does not mean that they are completely evil. A basic goodness remains in human nature. As Niebuhr says in various places based on Romans 7, there is a law in our mind that wars against the law in our members, the flesh or sinful nature. The political realists, according to Niebuhr, “are inclined to obscure the residual moral and social sense even in the most self-regarding men and nations” (Man’s Nature and His Communities, 31). An example of this is Augustine. Augustine criticized the Roman government, but he did not appreciate the genuine accomplishment of justice that was underneath it (Ibid., 44-45). In every society, some elements of created goodness remain.
Humans as Community Creatures
Humans are also made for community. The Western middle class often misses how important community is. “The individual requires community more than bourgeois thought comprehended” (The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, 3). This is seen in that even when they oppose a community, they often do it in the name of another community, as when people opposed the communist society in which they lived in the name of the free world.
Human beings are communal beings belong to specific families and ethnic communities. They are born to particular people and belong to particular tribes or groups. This community can have a very positive effect on human beings. “By the responsibilities which men have to their family and community and to many common enterprises, they are drawn out of themselves to become their true selves” (ibid., 56). Community gets us out of ourselves and into a larger world. The larger the group, the larger the enterprise that is possible.
Racism is an evil that is rooted in anxiety over one’s group’s survival, honor, or prosperity combined with an exaltation of one’s group at the expense of another. We must recognize, though, that it is rooted in an initially good impulse that is then perverted, namely, the love of those most closely connected to us. This illustrates how every evil impulse has a created good behind it of which it is a perversion:
Racial prejudice, the contempt of the other group, is an inevitable concomitant of racial pride; and racial pride is an inevitable concomitant of the ethnic will to live. . . . There are spiritual elements in every human survival impulse; and the corruption of these elements is pride and the will-to-power.
This love, often carried to excess, of our own group is a significant part of the story of the human race. It informs much of Niebuhr’s view of society, which he fleshes out especially in Moral Man and Immoral Society.
Transcending Yet Limited
Niebuhr looks at human beings as ironic, one of his favorite words. He sees them as able to see the whole universe but occupying a very small place in it. Humans are able to transcend the world but limited in it.
In The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 1, Niebuhr explains that there are three elements to the doctrine of human beings. First, “the height of self-transcendence in man’s spiritual stature in its doctrine of ‘image of God’” (150). This is the amazing potential of human beings and describes their nobility, conscience, and ability to accomplish many great things.
Second, “[i]t insists on man’s weakeness, dependence, and finiteness” (ibid.). Even while human beings are great, they are still limited. While traveling to the moon (transcendence), a programming error or meteorite can end her life. A human can produce the plays of Shakespeare and yet be mistaken about the way disease occurs. Humans are an amazing creature but also a very limited and finite one.
Limitation is not sin. Sin arises from what we do with our greatness and limitations. Will we accept our limitations humbly and trust in God? Or will we seek to deny our limitations, even at the expense of the well-being of others? That is the third element of Niebuhr’s teaching on human beings:
[This view] affirms that evil in man is a consequence of his inevitable though not necessary unwillingness to acknowledge his dependence, to accept his finiteness and to admit his insecurity, an unwillingness which involves him in the vicious circle of accentuating the insecurity from which he seeks escape (ibid.).
This is human pride, and it is the root sin of human sinfulness. This is what will occupy us in the next few posts. Before we look at human pride, we must consider the bridge between creatureliness and sinful pride: anxiety.
________
Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash