(Robin W. Lovin) Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Re (BookFi)

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892—1971) was a major American
theologian and political thinker of the mid-twentieth

century. He has received much attention from biogra-
phers and historians in recent years, but, since his thought
remains very relevant for contemporary ethics, a reassess-
ment is due of what he might contribute to current
thinking about politics and society. This book is intended
to present Niebuhr's ideas about 'Christian Realism' in a
way that will be useful to people who are thinking about
today's social issues.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR AND
CHRISTIAN REALISM
REINHOLD NIEBUHR
AND
CHRISTIAN REALISM
ROBIN W. LOVIN
Dean, and Professor of Ethics,
Perkins School of Theology,
Southern Methodist University
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211 USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1995
First published 1995

Reprinted 1997
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress cataloging in publication data

Lovin, Robin W.
Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism / Robin W. Lovin.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o 521 44363 6 (hardback) ISBN O 521 47932 o (paperback)
1. Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1892-1971.
2. Sociology, Christian — History — 20th century.
3. Christianity and politics — History — 20th century
4. Christian ethics - History - 20th century.
I. Title.
BX4827.N5L68 1995
26i.8'o92~dc2o 94-6809 GIP
ISBN o 521 44363 6 hardback

ISBN o 521 47932 o paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2004

Contents
Acknowledgments page ix
An introduction to Christian Realism i

i • God 33
2. Ethics 72
3. Freedom 119
4. Politics 158
5. Justice 191
Conclusion 235
Select bibliography 249

Index 254
Vll
Acknowledgments
This book has been a long time in the making, and many
people have contributed to it. Preston Williams launched my
serious study of Christian Realism at Harvard, nearly two
decades ago. After that, a succession of students at Emory,
Chicago, and Drew encouraged my work with their own
enthusiasm, and sometimes sharpened my points on their own
resistance. Good collegiality, which always survives time and
changing institutional loyalties, has helped, too. I am
especially grateful to James Gustafson, Michael Perry, William
Schweiker, and Douglas Ottati, and more recently to Neal
Riemer and Peter Ochs. David Heim provided regular encour-
agement and occasional footnotes. Phil Blackwell provided
quiet space and strong Bedouin coffee during a crucial phase of
the writing.
Indispensable contributions were made by a series of
research assistants. William C. French, Christine Firer Hinze,
Todd Whitmore, and Dan Malotky all helped at Chicago, as
did Gary Matthews at Drew. These persons are now, or are
about to become, recognized scholars in their own right, but at
an earlier stage in their careers I got to claim their talents for
my own purposes. My debt to each of them is immense.
Institutions have helped, too. The University of Chicago
Divinity School and Yale Divinity School provided forums for
lectures that found their way into these pages, and a version of
Chapter Four appeared in the Journal of Religion. The John
Simon Guggenheim Foundation supported a year of research
at the beginning of the project, and Cambridge University
Press has coaxed and goaded it to completion.
IX
x Acknowledgments
A final word of thanks is due to the students, clergy, and laity

across the country who have listened to the speeches, sermons,
workshops, study groups, and impromptu lectures that I have
spun out of this material over the last decade. Their discovery
of Christian Realism has kept it new for me, too; and their
interest, more than anything else, sustains my confidence that
Reinhold Niebuhr was saying something that we still need to
hear.
An introduction to Christian Realism
During the first half of the twentieth century, Protestant theo-

logians in the United States gave new attention to the social
forces that shape and limit human possibilities. Like the leaders
of the Social Gospel movement before them, these writers were
concerned with the gap between the biblical vision of God's
rule and the realities of modern industrial society. For the new
generation, however, a Christian conscience informed by
scientific study would not suffice to close the gap. The biblical
ideal stands in judgment not only on the social reality, but also
on every attempt to formulate the ideal itself.
Therefore, social achievements provide no final goal. The
dynamics of history are driven by the human capacity always
to imagine life beyond existing limitations. Biblical faith gives
vision and direction to that capacity for self-transcendence, but
we are best able to challenge and channel our powers when we
also understand what is really going on.
'Christian Realism' is the name that has been given to that
way of thinking. It is a term closely associated with Reinhold
Niebuhr, when it is not exclusively identified with his thought.
It is, however, important to remember that the theological
movement originated before Niebuhr took it up as his own.
From the early 1930s, D.C. Macintosh and Walter Marshall
Horton wrote about "religious realism" or "realistic theology"
in ways that influenced Niebuhr's call for a church that would
produce "religious or Christian realists."1 The term 'Christian
1
Reinhold Niebuhr, "When Will Christians Stop Fooling Themselves?" Christian
Century 51 (May 16, 1934), 659. See also Douglas Clyde Macintosh, ed., Religious
Realism (New York: Macmillan, 1931); Walter Marshall Horton, Realistic Theology
2 Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
Realism' belongs perhaps as much to John C. Bennett as to

Niebuhr, and certainly others both in Christian ethics and in
political philosophy have adopted the idea and developed it in
their own ways.2
Reinhold Niebuhr was the most important voice of this
movement. His ideas eventually dominated and directed it,
and his thought will be the key to our understanding of it.
Nevertheless, Christian Realism is not simply the set of ideas
and opinions that Niebuhr held on the questions of his day.
Niebuhr always understood himself to be speaking for a larger
movement, if not for Christianity as a whole.3 If others found
his analyses of contemporary events and his prescriptions for
policy and action uniquely illuminating and persuasive,
Niebuhr was clear that the analytical power came from a
"Christian view of human nature" which is "involved in the
paradox of claiming a higher stature for man and taking a
more serious view of his evil than other anthropology." 4 Nie-
buhr's major works were devoted to a validation of this Chris-
tian understanding of human nature, and his assessments of
political choices and issues rested on it, even when they did not
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1934). For this period generally, see Martin E.
Marty, Modern American Religion, 2: The Noises of Conflict, igig-41 (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 303-40. The best accounts of Reinhold Niebuhr's
life and times are Richard W. Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York:
Pantheon, 1985), and Charles C. Brown, Niebuhr and His Age: Reinhold Niebuhr's
Prophetic Role in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International,
1992).
2
John C. Bennett, Christian Realism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941). See
also Glenn Bucher, "Christian Political Realism After Niebuhr: The Case ofJohn C.
Bennett," Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 41 (1986), 43-58.
3
One of the subtle manifestations of this sense that he is speaking for a broad tendency
in Christian thought is Niebuhr's reluctance to treat 'Christian Realism' as a proper
name. In his printed works, it nearly always appears as a generic noun qualified by a
proper adjective, viz. 'Christian realism.' We will shortly see, however, that Nie-
buhr's thought depends on a distinctive combination of several quite different kinds
of realism. For this study, I have chosen to use the term 'Christian Realism' to
denominate that complex of ideas as a whole, reserving the lower-case 'realism' for
reference to a variety of realisms - moral, political, metaphysical, etc. - which may
or may not figure in Niebuhrian Christian Realism. Where it is possible or necessary
to refer to a distinctively Christian version of one or another of these realisms, I will
speak of'Christian moral realism,' or 'Christian political realism,' etc., without any
necessary implication that the idea under discussion is part of Christian Realism.
4
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1964), I, 18.
An introduction to Christian Realism 3
explicitly discuss it. The subject of this book is that broader set
of ideas which provides the conceptual center from which
many of Niebuhr's more specific ideas can be understood. We
want to know what the key elements of that Christian Realism
were for Niebuhr and his generation, and, just as important,
we want to know what use those elements might be in our
thinking about Christian ethics today.
POLITICAL REALISM
Niebuhr gives little time to definitions in his work. His aims are
synthetic, linking related ideas into a complex whole, rather
than strictly delimiting the individual elements. His method is
dialectical, in the sense that concepts are clarified by stating
what they exclude, and positions are explained by specifying
what they reject.
This is especially apparent in the terminology of Christian
Realism itself. Niebuhr's position emerges as a complex of
theological conviction, moral theory, and meditation on
human nature in which the elements are mutually reinforcing,
rather than systematically related. The "logic" of the biblical
doctrine emerges as we carefully distinguish it from other views
and come to appreciate "the adequacy of its answer for human
problems which other views have obscured and confused."5
We understand what Christian Realism is largely by identi-
fying the many less adequate views that it is not.
One of the rare points at which this dialectical method yields
almost definitional specificity occurs when Niebuhr distin-
guishes political from metaphysical realism at the beginning of
an essay on "Augustine's Political Realism."
The terms "idealism" and "realism" are not analogous in political
and in metaphysical theory; and they are certainly not as precise in
political as in metaphysical theory. In political and moral theory
"realism" denotes the disposition to take all factors in a social and
political situation, which offer resistance to established norms, into
account, particularly the factors of self-interest and power ...
"Idealism" is in the esteem of its proponents, characterized by loyalty
5
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 151.
to moral norms and ideals, rather than to self-interest, whether

individual or collective. It is, in the opinion of its critics, char-
acterized by disposition to ignore or be indifferent to the forces in
human life which offer resistance to universally valid ideals and
The frustration and illumination of reading Reinhold Niebuhr

are neatly packaged in that quotation. The meaning of
"realism" emerges primarily in a negative assessment of
"idealism," while the political meaning here considered is to
be distinguished from another "metaphysical" meaning,
which, however, is not specified at all. Yet we do emerge from
the paragraph with a sense of the forces with which political
realism will be concerned, while the identification of those
forces by contrast to "universally valid ideals and norms"
warns us, significantly, that idealism does not rest entirely
upon illusions.
We may begin to understand Christian Realism, then, by
taking it seriously as a version of political realism. The reality
in question is the multiplicity of forces that drive the decisions
that people actually make in situations of political choice. The
desire to reward one's friends and punish one's enemies, con-
victions about the justice of a cause, the hope to advance one's
own interests through the success of one's group or party, the
need to demonstrate one's power over events, and the wish to
acquire more of it, fear of the loss of power, fear of the
consequences of failure - all of these, and more, shape the
responses of individuals and groups to choices about use of
public resources and about institutions that serve public pur-
poses. To be "realistic" in this context is, Niebuhr suggests, to
take all of these realities into account. None should be over-
looked, and each should be assigned a weight that reflects its
real effect on the course of events, rather than its place in our
own scale of values.
This formulation of political realism suggests that we should
not rely on moral argument alone to decide on political action,
nor should we overestimate the power of moral suasion to
6
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Augustine's Political Realism," in Christian Realism and Political
Problems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), pp. 119-20.
determine the course of events. During World War II and the
tense decades which followed, this Niebuhrian counsel had a
powerful influence on political leaders and diplomats, who
were caught between the moral idealism of democracy and the
brutal realities of international politics. Niebuhr's warnings
were, however, initially directed to religious idealists, who still
held to the hope of American Protestantism's Social Gospel.
At the beginning of the twentieth century Social Gospel
preachers and theologians were confident that a new age of
social Christianity was about to begin, transforming the raw
realities of life in industrial cities and ushering in an era of
international peace by the application of Christian love. Bib-
lical scholars were rediscovering the social dimensions of the
original Christian ethic, which had been lost to sight under
centuries of superstitious accretions. Advances in scientific
knowledge promised that this rediscovered ethic could be put
into practice in a way that it could not have been in an earlier
day. "For the first time in religious history," Walter Rauschen-
busch exulted, "we have the possibility of so directing religious
energy by scientific knowledge that a comprehensive and con-
tinuous reconstruction of social life in the name of God is
within the bounds of human possibility."7
Rauschenbusch's call for social reconstruction that would be
both Christian and scientific was far more attentive to the
complexities of life in an industrial society than some of his
nineteenth-century predecessors. For Reinhold Niebuhr,
however, Rauschenbusch's writings shared with these senti-
mental pieties one fundamental confusion: the moral vision of
the New Testament is treated as a "simple possibility."8 It
becomes a key point of Christian Realism that the ethics of
Jesus cannot provide a social ethics. For Niebuhr, the most
difficult problems lie not between the Gospel profession and
present practice, but between what the ethics ofJesus demands
and any possible social organization.
7
Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox, 1992), p. 209.
8
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Walter Rauschenbusch in Historical Perspective," in Faith and
Politics, ed. Ronald H. Stone (New York: George Braziller, 1968), pp. 33-46.
The ethic of Jesus does not deal at all with the immediate moral
problem of every human life - the problem of arranging some kind of
armistice between various contending factions and forces. It has
nothing to say about the relativities of politics and economics, nor of
the necessary balances of power which exist and must exist in even
the most intimate social relationships.9
The point is made at first against a particular kind of Christian
idealism, but in the end, the warning applies to idealisms of
every kind: Given the complexities of the human situation, a
moral ideal alone cannot dictate what we ought to do and will
not settle the outcomes of history. To devote oneself exclusively
to determining and proclaiming the right thing to do is most
probably to render oneself powerless in the actual course of
events, and it may - in the unlikely event that the procla-
mation is heeded - prove horribly destructive, abolishing the
necessary balances of power and unleashing potent fanati-
cisms. Attentiveness to the "factions and forces" at work in
each specific situation is the key to effective resolution of
conflicts, although the shifting equilibrium of power insures
that each solution is only temporary and the creative work will
shortly have to begin again.
REALISM AND SUSPICION
Realism implies recognition of the limits of purely moral solu-

tions to political problems and calls for attention to the realities
that shape social, political, and economic conflicts. Niebuhr's
realism also includes attention to the ways in which these
realities may be hidden. It is not simply that we must not
overestimate the political force of moral ideals. We must also
be alert to the fact that professions of ideals frequently conceal
more limited, selfish interests, and the pursuit of justice may
mask a ruthless exercise of power. The mechanisms of conceal-
ment here are so effective that those who use them often
deceive themselves. Paradoxically, it is the victims of moral
idealism and the demand for justice who are most likely to
9
Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Seabury Press,
1979 [first published 1935]), p. 23.
detect the fraud. Those who find their aspirations consistently
frustrated by the power of another group are less likely to
believe that this frustration is what justice requires than those
who find the situation congruent with their own desires.
Niebuhr's political realism thus introduces into the discourse
of American religious social ethics what a later generation
would call the "hermeneutics of suspicion." We must not
accept what people say about a social situation at face value,
even when they apparently believe it themselves. We will be
more likely to find the truth among those who have experi-
enced injustice and repression than by listening to the expla-
nations of the powerful.
Especially in his early work, Niebuhr relied on Marxist
thought as the starting point for this analysis. Laws, customs,
and traditions that justify the privileges of a ruling elite are the
product of underlying economic forces that derive their power
from control of productive resources. The virtues of thrift and
industry to which the powerful attribute their special position
will not tell us what is going on in a society. An analysis of the
realities of economic power will. In 1933, Niebuhr wrote that
Marxism provides "the key to the real facts of capitalistic
civilization." 10 In later years, he was more pragmatic in his
assessment of socialism, and he became a harsh critic of Soviet
communism, but exposure of the group and class interests that
retard (or in some cases accelerate) demands for change
remained a staple of his writing. Dennis McCann's assessment
that Niebuhr later in his career becomes a "post-Marxist"
rather than an "anti-Marxist" is surely correct. 11
Niebuhr's assessment of social realities was also guided by
attention to the psychological forces at work. Here, he was less
influenced by theory than by his own insights.12 Anxiety about
10
Reinhold Niebuhr, "A Reorientation of Radicalism," The World Tomorrow, 16
(July, 1933), 444-
11
Dennis McCann, "Reinhold Niebuhr and Jacques Maritain on Marxism: A Com-
parison of Two Traditional Models of Practical Theology," Journal of Religion, 58
(April, 1978), 140-68.
12
Niebuhr believed that Freudian psychology made too sharp a distinction between
the rational center of personality in the ego and the driving forces of the id, and
promised too easy a release from those drives and desires. Later in life, he became
acquainted with Erik Erikson and developed an interest in that psychologist's
the insecurity of our position in the world and guilt about the
things we have done to achieve and hold it lead us to fashion
images of our own invulnerability and purity and provide
powerful incentives to believe in what we have made. The
ideals and values to which social classes and political interest
groups appeal to justify their claims are thus more than ideo-
logical smokescreens to conceal their real economic interests.
They also defend against the threats posed by our own anxiety,
and they protect our illusions from the reality of ourselves and
our past.
Christian Realism combines these critical tools of social and
psychological analysis and applies them consistently to all
groups and classes. Marxism identifies the rationalizations of
privilege that conceal the interests of the elite, but it overlooks
the element of envy that also distorts the egalitarian ideals of
the poor.13 Psychological theories explain the distorted per-
ceptions and self-defeating illusions that mental suffering
generates, but psychology expects too much from the healthy
mind, which may have a more objective view of its circum-
stances, but which will never be entirely free of the interests
and anxieties that generate more acceptable illusions and yield
benign self-satisfactions.
Niebuhr's "hermeneutics of suspicion" thus draws on both
Marxian and Freudian interpretations, but it corresponds to
neither of them. Niebuhr applies his criticism more consistently
to all parties in social controversy because his analysis rests in
the end on a theological insight.14 The root cause of our
illusions lies deeper than economic interest or psychic vulner-
ability to particular fears and losses. The root cause is anxiety
over the finitude which is necessarily part of every human
situation. We trust distorted visions of ourselves because we
revisions of Freud. See Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, viii; also The Self
and the Dramas of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1955), pp. 20-23.
13
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, i960), pp. 160-61.
14
For an extended discussion of this point, see Louis H. Tietje, "Was Reinhold
Niebuhr Ever a Marxist? An Investigation Into the Assumptions of His Early
Interpretation and Critique of Marxism," Ph.D. Dissertation, Union Theological
Seminary, 1984.
fear to trust the only real source of security, which lies outside
ourselves, in God.15
While we may expect that poor and marginalized persons
will be less susceptible to the specific illusions by which the
prosperous center of society explains its comfortable circum-
stances, they are subject to other characteristic exaggerations
of their own virtue. Because the source of these illusions is
neither social location nor psychic accident, but the human
condition itself, a realist will expect to find these forces at work
among all parties. The political realist's commitment to "take
all factors in a social and political situation . . . into account"
requires that we identify the interests and fears behind all the
values that are professed, even - or especially - when those
professions seem to be entirely sincere.
THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL REALISM
Self-interest is pervasive in politics. Niebuhr's realism requires

that we face that fact candidly, but he did not believe that
self-interest is the only reality. Realism is a matter of taking
self-interest into account, as a reality that resists norms that are
also real. This sets Niebuhr apart from a more rigid sort of
political realist, who insists that to be realistic about politics,
one must deny the reality of "values," "goods," or "norms."
This realism insists that concrete objects of desire and the
material relationships that create and control them are the
only realities that impinge on politics. Moral concepts, in
particular, may have a reality in individual consciousness, but
since they are themselves reflections of the realities of power
and interest, nothing will be gained by studying these abstrac-
tions, which provide no practical guidance for the affairs of
government.
There are interpreters who read Reinhold Niebuhr as a
political realist in this more narrow sense. Niebuhr, the theo-
logian and preacher, convinced a nation that was all too
15
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 178-79. I will provide a more detailed
examination of Niebuhr's understanding of the relationships between finitude,
anxiety, and sin in Chapter Three of this volume.
io Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
confident of its Christian ideals to lay them aside and face the
stark realities of politics within and between nations. His criti-
cism of the sentimentalities of the Social Gospel became gen-
erally relevant when he directed them at more broadly shared
illusions of American virtue. Summing up Niebuhr's influence
on public life, the political scientist Hans Morgenthau said,
"Reinhold Niebuhr has shown that . . . this relationship
between a concealed political reality and a corrupted ethic is
the very essence of politics; that, in other words, political
ideologies are an inevitable weapon in the struggle for power
which all participants must use to a greater or lesser extent."
That insight marks Niebuhr as the greatest American political
philosopher of his time, and "perhaps the only creative poli-
tical philosopher since Calhoun." 16
Niebuhr was puzzled by this accolade, and he found Mor-
genthau's analysis one-sided. Ideology is inevitably an element
in political controversy, but it is not the only element. The
moral ambiguities of politics cannot be neglected, but the
terms of moral evaluation are not simply reducible to indi-
vidual and group interests.17 The political reality to which
Niebuhr wants to be attentive thus includes both the "estab-
lished norms" and the "factors of self-interest and power"
which offer resistance to them. Moral standards and ideals
direct our attention to human aspirations that are present in
political life along with the more particular conflicts of interest.
It is a mistake in purely descriptive terms to adopt a version of
16
Hans J. Morgenthau, "The Influence of Reinhold Niebuhr in American Political
Life and Thought," in Harold R. Landon, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr: A Prophetic Voice in
Our Time (Greenwich, Conn.: Seabury Press, 1962), p. 109.
17
Niebuhr put this mildly in a response to Morgenthau's summary which we have just
cited. "I do not think we will sacrifice any value in the 'realist' approach to the
political order," Niebuhr said " . . . if we define the moral ambiguity of the political
realm in terms which do not rob it of moral content." See "The Response of
Reinhold Niebuhr," in Landon, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr, p. 122. His response in a
letter to June Bingham, quoted by Daniel F. Rice, is more pointed, rejecting the
comparison between Calhoun's "rather amoral conception of politics" and his own
"conviction of the moral ambiguity of the political order." See Daniel F. Rice,
Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey: An American Odyssey (Albany: S U N Y Press, 1993),
p. 333 n. 5. Niebuhr offers a more extended criticism of Morgenthau in Man's
Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man's Personal and
Social Existence (The Scribner Lyceum Editions Library; New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons, 1965), pp. 71-75.
political realism that treats values and ideals as irrelevant to
political choices, even as it is a mistake to suppose that we
could create a situation in which these norms were the only
determinants of action. 18 A generation that believed it could
create a situation in which the Christian norms alone would be
relevant needed to be attentive to the stubborn realities and
hidden distortions of self-interest, but a generation that saw
only the stubborn realities and hidden distortions was as
"unrealistic" as its sentimental predecessors. 19 Each ignored
something that is irreducibly real in the political situation,
something that has its own distinctive power to shape political
conflict.
MORAL REALISM
Moral ideas have political consequences simply because many
people believe in them. The cultural significance and psycho-
logical power of "established norms" gives them a political
reality that must be considered even by those who think they
are false. The sentimental devotion of Christians to what they
regard as the "pure ethics of Jesus" is also real in its social
impact. It is unrealistic in that it cannot be lived by persons
who must struggle with multiple demands and against the
finite limits of human life and individual history. The devotion
of revolutionaries to their cause is real enough, but it is unrea-
listic because the goals they espouse will not finally end social
conflict and usher in the age of peace they promise. Moral
ideas may be fervently held and actively practiced, and to that
18
A more balanced version of political realism is found in some recent writers on
international politics who view moral standards as relevant, but not determinative,
for foreign policy. See the essays by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Joseph Nye, and
Robert Jervis in Robert J. Myers, ed., International Ethics and the Nuclear Age (Ethics
and Foreign Policy Series, IV; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987),
and also my Introduction to that volume, pp. 8-11.
19
In his recent account of Reinhold Niebuhr's career as a teacher, Ronald H. Stone
notes that in lectures on Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary after 1943,
Niebuhr emphasized the contemporary relevance of the unrealizable demands of
Jesus' moral teaching more than he had in his early work, An Interpretation of
Christian Ethics. See Ronald H. Stone, Professor Reinhold Niebuhr: A Mentor to the
Twentieth Century (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 63.
extent they will have real effects. To be realistic in Niebuhr's

sense, however, they must also be true.
In the parlance of contemporary philosophy, this is to say
that Christian Realism is a version of moral realism. Moral
ideas can be true or false. Moral statements are not only
expressions of emotion or reports of the speaker's attitudes and
preferences, as non-cognitivist theories would have it. Moral
statements make claims about what is the case, independently
of our ideas about what is the case and of the evidence we
marshal to support those ideas.20
A political realist who is not a moral realist need not deny
that moral statements appear to be claims about what is the
case, but he or she could deny that this is the meaningful sense
in which the claims are true or false. What matters, he or she
might say, is whether the moral statement conforms to the way
that moral language is ordinarily used in this community,
whether it accurately reports the moral beliefs of the persons
for and to whom the speaker claims to speak. For this political
realist, the statement, "Justice requires that innocent people
not be punished for crimes committed by others," uttered in a
court of law, is true. The statement, "Justice requires that
everyone be paid the same rate for each hour of labor given to
the company," uttered in the board room at General Motors, is
false. This political realist is a cognitivist. He or she clearly
believes that moral statements can be true or false, but also
believes that the relevant criteria of truth or falsity are
embedded in the moral beliefs and practices of the community
in question. In recent ethics, certain sophisticated forms of
cultural relativism provide a theoretical formulation of this sort
of political realism.21 From this point of view, it makes no sense
to say that a moral claim might be true, even if nobody believes
it. Whether a particular moral claim conforms to what people
20
Cf. David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), pp. 14-23. For a useful collection of articles on the varieties
of moral realism, see Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1988).
21
See, for example, Gilbert Harman, "Moral Relativism Defended," Philosophical
Review, 84 (1975), 3-32.
generally believe about morality is precisely what determines
whether or not it is true.
The moral realist, by contrast, holds that whether a moral
statement is true or false depends on a state of affairs that exists
independently of the ideas that the speaker or the speaker's
community holds about the appropriate use of moral terms. A
moral claim might thus be true, even if nobody believes it. If,
for example, the truth or falsity of a moral claim depends on
what God has commanded, and God has commanded that no
person be held in slavery, then slavery is wrong, even if every-
one in a slave-holding society, including the slaves, believes
that it is morally right. Or, to formulate an example closer to
the point of most moral realist arguments, if the truth or falsity
of a moral claim depends on the conditions that enable persons
to live well, and conditions of poverty create such danger and
disorder that everyone suffers a significant loss of freedom, then
it is true that poverty should be eliminated, whether or not
prevailing moral beliefs about justice, initiative, and personal
responsibility support the action.
The important distinction, then, is between a political
realism that is mostly concerned with how claims relate to what
people believe, and a moral realism that is concerned with
moral truths independent of these beliefs. It is important,
however, to recognize that different versions of moral realism
may differ significantly about what makes a moral belief true
or false. The two examples above, which turn respectively on
divine commands and on human well-being, illustrate this
point well.
The moral realist holds that the truth of moral claims
depends on a state of affairs that exists independently of our
moral beliefs. This does not necessarily imply that the moral
realist holds that true statements somehow "correspond" to a
state of affairs in the world. The moral realist must hold that
moral statements are true of the world, and not just true of our
beliefs about morality. But the moral realist may hold any one
of a number of theories of truth to explain that relationship.
Many contemporary versions of moral realism employ prag-
matic or coherentist theories of truth and argue that theories of
truth which depend on a simple correspondence between true

statements and reality are incoherent.22 I will argue that
Christian Realism is linked to some of these contemporary
moral realisms by its use of a pragmatic method, although the
early Christian Realists often qualified their commitments to
pragmatism, and almost never worked their own pragmatic
method out in detail.
Just as moral realists are not required to hold a correspon-
dence theory of truth, so they are not committed to the meta-
physical claim that "good" and "evil," or "right" and
"wrong" are metaphysical properties that exist apart from the
natural, empirical properties of things. A moral realist may hold
that moral predicates refer to non-natural properties,23 but he
or she may also hold that moral properties are supervenient on
the natural properties of things.24
Moral realisms of this latter sort are versions of ethical natural-
ism. In the example above, the moral realist who is an ethical
naturalist could say that poverty is evil just because it has the
corrosive effects on human well-being that characterize its
natural features. It is right to act against situations of poverty,
and wrong to create or to perpetuate them, not because we
intuit some non-natural property of rightness or wrongness in
those acts, but because the conditions of poverty have the
natural properties which they have.
Ethical naturalism explains the appropriate use of moral
terms by reference to the natural properties of "good" or
"bad" persons, situations, and actions, though the ethical
naturalist tries to avoid reductive naturalism, which holds that the
moral terms mean nothing but the natural properties.25
Human intentions and responses are intrinsic to moral
22
Cf. Brink, Moral Realism, p p . 100-43.
23
T h e most famous e x a m p l e of this position is the view in G. E. M o o r e , Principia Ethica
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903).
24
For further development of this point, see Brink, Moral Realism, p . 160; Sayre-
M c C o r d , ed., Essays on Moral Realism, p p . 12-14; 270-77.
25
O n this distinction see M o r t o n O . W h i t e , What Is and What Ought to Be Done (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1981). When Reinhold Niebuhr, especially in his
early writings, criticizes "naturalism," he means some version of reductive natural-
ism, not the ethical naturalism we are discussing here. Compare, for example,
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p p . 42—43.
meanings. Moral realism, in holding that moral truths are
independent of particular moral beliefs, does not imply that
moral truths could be meaningfully defined for a universe of
natural properties in which there were no human beings to
know and respond to them.26
Christian Realism, as we shall see more fully in Chapter
Two, is an ethical naturalism of this sort. Theoretical agree-
ment on ethical naturalism may, however, cover wide differ-
ences over just which natural properties and human experi-
ences are significant for moral assessment. Utilitarian theories
focus on human happiness and the natural properties that elicit
this response in ways that allow it to be shared among the
largest number of persons. Eudaimonistic theories call atten-
tion to natural circumstances that maximize the development
of valued human characteristics, or virtues. More socially
oriented theories of virtue stress the development of human
characteristics that allow constructive responses to a range of
recurrent social problems. Natural law theories stress human
functioning in accordance with an order that can be discerned
in nature and progress toward states of affairs that mark the
full development of that nature.
A comprehensive survey of these types of ethical naturalism
is beyond the scope of this introduction, though we will have
occasion to examine many of them as the argument of this book
unfolds. Niebuhr, following his usual method, formulates his
own naturalism by explaining his disagreements with other
versions, and in Chapters Two and Three we will continue that
approach in a critical comparison of the naturalism of Chris-
tian Realism to other naturalisms found in the literature today.
Niebuhr's own attention focuses on natural law ethics as
formulated in the Catholic tradition. He brings to this examin-
ation a Protestant prejudice against natural law which he
never entirely loses.27 As a result, he sometimes fails to see how
much his own Christian Realism depends on natural law
26
See David Wiggins, "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life," in Sayre-
McCord, ed., Essays on Moral Realism, pp. 127—65.
27
N i e b u h r , Man's Nature and His Communities, p . 19. J o h n C. Bennett h a s a more
balanced Christian Realist's assessment of the natural law tradition. See his Chris-
tian Realism.
premises, and he would no doubt be surprised to see how

closely the revisions of natural law that have developed in
Catholic ethics since Vatican II have paralleled his own criti-
cisms of the lack of contextual flexibility and the overemphasis
on biological function in previous moral theology.
What Christian Realism chiefly shares with the natural law
tradition is the conviction that right action is action that
conforms to human nature. The good person acts in ways that
develop the capacities human beings have, rather than defeat-
ing them. The good person does not settle for less than human
possibilities allow, but he or she also avoids demands and
expectations that exceed a realistic estimate of those possi-
bilities or strain our human powers to the point that they are
apt to break. Conformity to nature characterizes individual
morality, but Niebuhr is especially concerned to point out that
it provides guidance for appropriate forms of social life. In a
foreword to The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness,
written in 1959, Niebuhr said:
[A] free society prospers best in a cultural, religious and moral
atmosphere which encourages neither a too pessimistic nor too opti-
mistic view of human nature. Both moral sentimentality in politics
and moral pessimism encourage totalitarian regimes, the one because
it encourages the opinion that it is not necessary to check the power of
government, and the second because it believes that only absolute
political authority can restrain the anarchy, created by conflicting
and competitive interests.28
There is, of course, room for substantial disagreement about
just which views of human nature are "too optimistic" or "too
pessimistic," but the key point is that moral and political
systems are to be formulated in relation to that realistic assess-
ment of human nature, not imposed on it from some other
source.
Moral systems fail when their norms become unrelated to
human nature or, more usually, when they are formulated in
relation to only a part of it. The moral inadequacies of
American Protestantism relate to its tendency to err in one of
28
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), p. viii.
two ways on this point: "An ethic of sacrificial love, relevant
only to the summit experiences of life, which tends to persuade
Christians that they are saints, contrasts with an indi-
vidualistic-economic ethic of self-reliance which teaches us
how to be prosperous." 29
Christian Realism agrees with the broad and basic premise
of natural law that the moral life is life lived in accordance with
nature. Persons and societies fail morally when they attempt to
ignore these requirements, and they stand in gravest danger
when their moral systems and political institutions do not
truthfully represent the possibilities and limitations of human
life.
Just at that point, however, attentiveness to the realities of
human nature introduces a significant complication into the
usual formulations of ethical naturalism, for there is in human
nature an element that cannot be reduced to a determinate set
of requirements and resists conformity to any set of expec-
tations.
To the essential nature of man belong, on the one hand, all his
natural endowments, and determinations, his physical and social
impulses, his sexual and racial differentiations, in short his character
as a creature imbedded in the natural order. On the other hand, his
essential nature also includes the freedom of his spirit, his tran-
scendence over natural process and finally his self-transcendence.30
No account of human nature that omits this freedom can be
adequate, but none which includes it can formulate the
requirements of human nature as a determinate set of rules,
goals, or virtues.
To live according to human nature is to have an imaginative
grasp of possibilities for one's life as well as an accurate picture
of its realities. We envision ways in which our world and
ourselves could be better than they are. Some of the possi-
bilities we envision will be immediate, personal, and rather
easily realized. Others will require social cooperation, more
time, and larger transformations — if, indeed, they can be
realized at all. We may argue about the possibilities, just as we
29
Niebuhr, Man's Nature and His Communities, p p . 16-17.
30
Niebuhr, The Mature and Destiny of Man, I, 270.
argue about the requirements of nature, but we cannot ignore

their importance in the shaping of the moral lives of individuals
and cultures.
What should be apparent, then, is that there is an element of
idealism in the moral life of each individual and an element of
utopianism in every attempt to think normatively about the life
of society. Reinhold Niebuhr's criticism of the sentimentalities
of the Social Gospel and his sensitivity to the self-deceptions
involved in moral crusades makes him wary of these moral
ideals, but his attentiveness to the facts of human experience
will not allow him to eliminate them from consideration. In an
early work, which nonetheless provides his only systematic
treatment of Christian ethics, Niebuhr argues for "the rele-
vance of an impossible ethical ideal." 31 Christian Realism is
about defining an appropriate role for these ideals, especially
in the moral deliberations of groups and nations.
One question, however, requires further attention: what is
the relationship between these "impossible ethical ideals" and
the commitment to moral realism? The freedom in which we
hold these ideas in judgment over the facts of present experi-
ence is part of human nature, but if the ideals guide our
choices, in what sense are those choices realistic? To answer that
question, we must determine whether reality is known in the
imaginative apprehension of the possibilities of love, as well as
in the sober judgments of experience on human nature.
THEOLOGICAL REALISM
In freedom, persons apprehend alternatives to their present

ways of life. In freedom, they also lay claim to these possibilities
in various ways. Sometimes these claims are made by commit-
ments of one's own effort, or by commitment to another person.
By committing myself to the effort of study, and the isolation of
research, and the cost of education, I will realize my dream of
becoming a scholar. By committing myself to another person,
despite the irreducible differences in our characters and the
31
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 62-63.
changes time may bring, I will realize the stability and security
of family life, and experience the fulfillments that it offers.
Sometimes, too, the claims persons make on different possi-
bilities for living are moral claims. These claims do not pledge
one's own effort or offer commitment to a common project.
They make demands on others for opportunities and resources.
Justice, we say, requires that I not be denied the education I
need because of my race. I have a right, we say, to shelter, to
food, to basic medical care, even though I lack the resources to
pay for them.
These moral claims seem to presuppose a relationship
between persons which, while not as personal as the relation-
ships of marriage or mentoring, is irreducibly different from
the relationships between persons and things, persons and
other animals, or persons and the environment. What I claim
from you as a moral right, I do not wrest from you by labor as I
coax a crop from the soil. What I ask injustice, I do not obtain
by hitching you to my cart as a beast of burden. We may, of
course, resort to coercion or to violence if our moral claims are
denied, but the fact that we make the moral claims at all
bespeaks a relationship in which we have more to do with each
other than to defend our interests against incursions.
The fact of that relationship implies, of course, that others
may also make claims on me. Not everything that I claim in
justice or as a matter of right will survive these counterclaims.
At some point, I may have to concede that what I have claimed
as a matter of justice is simply something that I want.
Indeed, not all claims that I make will survive my own
scrutiny, for there will always be possibilities I must myself
reject because they conflict with more compelling visions. "Life
must not be lived at cross-purposes," Niebuhr wrote. "The self
must establish an inner unity of impulses and desires and it
must relate itself harmoniously to other selves and other
unities." 32
In the life of a whole society this process of claim and
counterclaim yields agreement on a minimal set of recognized
32
Ibid., p . 23.
rights and standards of justice, and it is to those arrangements

that most persons have recourse in their claims against others.
They adjust their conflicts of interest through recognized judi-
cial and legislative procedures, and for the most part they
regard law and ethics as nothing more than established means
for adjudicating disputes.
In experience, it is impossible to say whether the resolution
of a particular conflict points the way to the harmony of all
interests, or merely opens the way for new and different con-
flicts, possibly involving larger groups and interests and higher
levels of destructiveness. Theories of justice point the way to
adjudication of future conflicts on the basis of moral claims, but
there is no way of knowing in advance that they will be
successful. The obligation to pursue justice must rest on some
commitment other than predictable success.
One form that commitment takes is the belief that God is
love and that love requires justice. To say that is not to claim
that one's idea of God provides, even implicitly, a formula of
justice that would enable us to say in detail how all moral
conflicts should be resolved. It is, rather, to claim that justice
and love have a reality beyond the ideas that we happen to
hold about them.
Every truly moral act seeks to establish what ought to be, because the
agent feels obligated to the ideal, though historically unrealized, as
being the order of life in its more essential reality. Thus the Christian
believes that the ideal of love is real in the will and nature of God,
even though he knows of no place in history where the ideal has been
realized in its pure form. And it is because it has this reality that he
feels the pull of obligation.33
At this point, Niebuhr links theological realism and moral
realism. Statements about God are not simply expressions of
emotion or acts of personal commitment. Theological claims
have cognitive content. They may be true or false. True state-
ments about God are true because they accurately represent a
reality independent of the concepts, theories, and evidence we
have pertaining to that reality.
33
Ibid., p. 5.
A moral realist who is not also a theological realist could
affirm the adjudication of divergent interests that moral judg-
ments make possible. It is precisely the point of moral realism
that moral claims are not just a more emphatic way of asserting
one's own desires. Moral claims are based on knowledge of
needs and constraints which are essential to human life, indi-
vidual and social. Moral principles resolve conflicts between
different wants and values by identifying the aims and pur-
poses we are obliged to support, regardless of our preferences.
What the moral realist might well doubt is the theological
claim that this harmonization of aims and purposes can be
carried on indefinitely, and that each person's ultimate interest
lies in that final harmony of life with life, and not in any of the
relationships, plans, or commitments he or she values more
immediately. The moral realist can affirm moral truths
without joining in the theological realist's affirmation that the
law of life is love.34
Many contemporary philosophers, in fact, hesitate to affirm
any realism that claims such comprehensive knowledge. The
problem with the older metaphysical realism, these critics
suggest, is precisely that it promises this "God's-eye point of
view" of reality.35 Realism fell into disrepute because it seemed
to require that there be one and only one true account of
reality, which presents things exactly as they are, and not as
they are related to any particular observer's point of view.
Moral realism is doubly suspect, because it not only claims that
there is one and only one correct view of moral reality, but
also - because it is moral reality that is under consideration -
claims moral authority to impose the imperatives that the one
correct view dictates on those who hold to other interests and
opinions. For those who reject the authoritarianism of such
moral commitments as immoral in themselves, any credible
form of moral realism must adopt a more pragmatic theory of
moral truth, offering its account of moral reality as the best
34
Cf. Niebuhr, " T h e law of [ h u m a n ] nature is love, a harmonious relation of life to
life in obedience to the divine centre a n d source o f . . . life," The Nature and Destiny of
Man, I, 16.
35
Cf. Hilary P u t n a m ' s critique in Reason, Truth, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), p p . 49-74.
guide to human living among the alternative accounts in a
particular historical situation, rather than as a universal law of
life. For some, that means that credible moral realism must
avoid theological realism.
To speak theologically of "the will and nature of God" as a
reality in which the conflicting impulses and purposes that
rend individual lives and human communities are unified, or as
a law according to which all persons could live in harmony is
not, however, to claim that we can give a complete account of
that reality or that we know everything that law requires. To
claim that God is real is not to claim for oneself a "God's-eye
point of view" of either the natural or the moral world. Indeed,
the religious conviction that such a perspective belongs to God
alone may be the best way to insure that no person or group
can lay a claim to it.
From an early point in his work, Niebuhr adopts this sort of
theological realism. Indeed, it is for him the key to understand-
ing the theological and moral language of scripture and a
guide to Christian proclamation today. Niebuhr contrasts the
prophetic faith of Christianity and Judaism both to rational
religion, which treats knowledge of God like any other
knowing, and to mysticism, which locates God in an incom-
prehensible mystery beyond history. Christianity speaks in
myths and symbols which relate God to the realities of our own
experience. The mythic representation is always incomplete
and partial. By the criterion of rational coherence, it always
fails as knowledge. Yet the myth apprehends a coherence in
God which the reason of the myth-maker cannot completely
formulate.
In this sense the myth alone is capable of picturing the world as a
realm of coherence and meaning without defying the facts of inco-
herence. Its world is coherent because all facts in it are related to
some central source of meaning; but [it] is not rationally coherent
because the myth is not under the abortive necessity of relating all
things to each other in terms of immediate rational unity.36
36
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p. 16. Niebuhr gives considerable
attention to the role of myth in Christian thought in the mid-1930s, and the theme
reappears periodically throughout his later works. An important early statement is
found in "The Truth in Myths," in The Nature of Religious Experience: Essays in Honor
Clearly, the important feature of myth for Niebuhr is neither
its narrative structure nor its literal meaning, but its paradox-
ical relationship to the patterns of rational coherence by which
we usually identify a statement as true. The myth is not
coherent as a literal representation of the known facts, but it
deals with aspects of the world in which ignorance,
uncertainty, and conflict render the facts themselves inco-
herent. By pointing to the possibility of a resolution beyond the
present conflicts, the myth represents a world that is more
coherent than the world of the facts, though of course the myth
cannot hold up as a statement of what those facts are.
Someone who understands theological language in this way
is more concerned with the cognitivist claim of theological
realism that theological propositions can be true than with the
truth value of specific traditional theological formulations.
Moral realists assert that moral statements can be true or false
as a necessary condition for their more important claim that
some specific moral statement is true. Theological realists may
have to acknowledge that, by these tests of truth, many of their
statements about "the will and nature of God" are false.
Niebuhr acknowledges this paradox in a famous sermon on
Paul's claim that the ministers of God will always be known
"by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as
deceivers, yet true . . . " (2 Corinthians 6:8). "For what is true
in the Christian religion can be expressed only in symbols
which contain a degree of provisional and superficial decep-
tion. Every apologist of the Christian faith might well, there-
fore, make the Pauline phrase his own. We do teach the truth
by deception. We are deceivers, yet true." 37
The point clearly extends to the moral claims that Christians
make about God. To speak of the requirements of God's justice
of D. C. Macintosh (New York: Harper and Bros., 1937), pp. 117-35. See a l s o
"Coherence, Incoherence, and Christian Faith," in Christian Realism and Political
Problems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), pp. 175-203. For a recent
interpretation of Niebuhr's work which considers the role of myth in ethics, see
Kenneth Durkin, Reinhold Niebuhr (Harrisburg, Pa.: Morehouse Publishing, 1991),
PP- 75-94-
37
Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy: Essays on the Christian Interpretation of History
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), p. 3.
is to demand justice with a specificity and certainty that we

cannot, in fact, provide in particular cases. To say that love is
the law of life asserts a unity of human purposes that we cannot
demonstrate. Yet these propositions are more true than an
account of the moral life that reduces it to the partial perspec-
tives and intractable conflicts of which we can give an accurate
account.
MYTH AND MORAL TRUTH
Closer attention to the symbolic or mythic use of moral lan-

guage should clear up the misconception that theological
realism necessarily involves a "God's-eye point of view" of
moral truth. It still requires an account of how this moral
language relates to the truth claims of moral realism.
The simplest answer is that Niebuhr's theological realism
provides an explanation of how moral language is meaningful,
rather than a set of specific moral claims that it holds to be true.
Niebuhr articulates the point of relating an ultimate moral law
of love to the reality of God by saying that morality requires a
meaningful universe. We will have to explore this at much
greater length in Chapter One, but the point can be put briefly
by recalling that, in a theological realism which culminates in
the divine nature as love, a moral resolution unifies all human
aims and interests in a harmony of life with life which conforms
to the unity and love of the divine nature itself. This is an
impossible ideal, not only in the sense that we can never fully
achieve it, but also in the sense that we cannot fully grasp it by
reason. Although we affirm that any specific conflict between
persons is susceptible to a resolution in accordance with the law
of love, we cannot argue directly from the law of love to the
requirements of love for that situation. What we can determine
is a resolution to conflicts, perhaps in accordance with the
moral realities of human nature, that reconciles some interests,
but not others; a resolution that creates some human unity, but
perhaps at the ironic cost of setting that new unity at odds with
other groups and interests.
Those who reject a "God's-eye point of view" of moral
reality may suggest that this is, in fact, all that our moral
solutions ever come to. Moral answers are distinguishable
from — and preferable to — continued conflict or the imposition
of a solution by brute force, but there is no guarantee that the
moral answers will all be compatible with one another, or that
there will not be tragic conflicts in which equally valid moral
claims require contradictory courses of action.
The theological realist suggests that this minimal moral
realism is simply inadequate to the meaning we give to moral
obligation. When we require the suppression of intense desires
and the sacrifice of long-sought personal goals to moral
requirements, it is not simply because the moral requirements
represent a wider interest group. We cannot account for the
difference in our language and in our lives between a sober
prudence and moral courage without the assumption that the
meanings of our moral terms are linked to claims of ultimate
significance, rather than to a better calculation of proximate
interests. "All life stands under responsibility to this loving will.
In one sense the ethic which results from this command of love
is related to any possible ethical system; for all moral demands
are demands of unity." 38
The minimal moral realist will no doubt want to offer
another way to understand the meaning of moral terms.
Indeed, he or she will argue that if there is no ultimate unity in
reality, then there will have to be another way to understand
the meaning of moral terms, lest moral language be literally
meaningless. Niebuhr's account of moral meaning is not evi-
dence for the truth of theological realism, although he some-
times writes as though he thinks it is. Rather, the Niebuhrian
account offers a distinctive way to relate moral meaning to
theological realism.
Unlike divine command metaethics, for example, Christian
Realism does not argue that moral imperatives are meaningful
only insofar as they can be understood as commands of God. 39
38
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p . 23.
39
Cf. R o b e r t M . Adams, " A Modified Divine C o m m a n d T h e o r y of Ethical
Wrongness," in Gene O u t k a a n d J o h n P. Reeder, eds., Religion and Morality
(Garden City: Anchor, 1973), p p . 318-47; "Divine C o m m a n d Metaethics Modi-
fied A g a i n , " Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (Spring, 1979), 66-79.
Moral language, rather, resolves conflicts between persons and

groups by overruling interests and preferences in favor of
considerations that are basic to the human life that all share.
Those moral reference points in the realities of human nature
have the same moral meaning whether they are articulated by
a minimal moral realist or by a theological realist. The theo-
logical realist argues in addition that the overriding character
of moral obligations, and especially their power to require the
sacrifice of even the most essential personal interests, cannot be
understood unless we suppose that the resolutions to conflict
that moral considerations impose are not themselves in con-
flict, but bespeak an ultimate unity. The minimal moral realist
and the theological realist share an understanding of what it
means to say that something is morally required. Unlike, say, a
divine command theorist and a reductive naturalist, they do
not differ from the outset over what it means to say that an act
is moral. But the theological realist asserts that an ultimate
unity is essential to these proximate moral meanings, even
though it cannot be grasped except in mythic and symbolic
terms.
Niebuhr's interest in this ultimate meaning of morality
centers on the way it affects proximate moral choices. The
Christian ideal of love cannot directly guide ordinary moral
choices, because it has no place for the prudent balancing of
competing interests that most of these decisions are about.
Trying to apply it directly yields only confusion, or illusions
about our own virtue. Still, there are differences between the
decisions of those who attend to the ideal and those who ignore
it. The differences may become apparent only over time, in the
persistence and courage that shapes the search for moral solu-
tions, or in an unwillingness to settle for obvious answers.
In his later writings, Niebuhr speaks of these ethical ideals as
"regulative principles" of moral and political choice.40 Ideals
which cannot possibly be met in ordinary experience nonethe-
less shape daily moral choices by setting limits within which the
choices must fall, or more to the point, pulling the choices in a
40
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Liberty and Equality," in Pious and Secular America (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), pp. 185-98.
certain direction. If each moral choice falls well below the ideal
of love, there is still the possibility that the ideal will make any
particular choice more attentive to the needs of the neighbor
than it otherwise would be; and there is the realistic hope that
though every choice must fall below the demands of the ideal,
it need not fall below the level of our previous choices.
Niebuhr's discussion of moral ideals focuses on the idea of
love, and specifically on the self-sacrificial love or agape that he
regards as the highest expression of divine goodness.41 It
appears, however, that the concept of a "regulative principle"
also explains the normative role of many general moral ideas,
such as justice and equality. 42
Regulative principles are needed because moral and theo-
logical realism do not provide a single, determinate account of
what our moral obligations are. Even with a highly developed
understanding of the possibilities and constraints of human
nature, it is likely that more than one set of plausible claims
will emerge in concrete situations of moral choice, particularly
where these choices regard complex social and political situ-
ations. One need not be a moral cynic, using moral language
only as a cloak for the pursuit of self-interest, to find a moral
framework that fits one's own purposes rather comfortably.
Homeowners can act to protect property values and commu-
nity standards with the satisfaction that they are protecting
real social goods. The claims of those who want a halfway
house or sheltered workshop in the neighborhood may have to
be passed over for the sake of the greater good. A business
proprietor can reject taxation to aid the homeless or to improve
the local schools in favor of maintaining a climate more favor-
able to enterprise. That, too, is a choice for which moral reasons
can be given.
41
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I I , 68-76.
42
N i e b u h r in fact suggests at points that these norms can be arranged in a hierarchy in
which m u t u a l love is regulated by the ideal of sacrificial love (The Mature and Destiny
of Man, I I , 69), or in which love is the regulative principle of liberty a n d equality,
which in turn serve as regulative principles ofjustice. While the reader needs to pay
attention to the use N i e b u h r makes of these hierarchies in each presentation of
them, I d o not think that a systematic development of them is a good vehicle for the
exposition of Niebuhr's ethics. Formally, the hierarchical structure is too rigid, a n d
What, then, might require a little further searching of the
limits of one's own interests? Not the moral considerations
themselves. They rule out the grosser forms of self-service at the
expense of others, and in the real conflicts of life it is not a
negligible achievement to move from a mere opposition of
wants and interests to an argument based on moral principles.
But moral considerations alone do not require the generosity
and spirit of self-sacrifice that might allow persons who have to
balance a variety of considerations to move from moral argu-
ment to moral agreement. What prevents realistic moral dis-
agreements from "degenerating into mere calculation of
advantage" 43 is the theological realist's conviction that any
understanding of these disagreements that presents them as
ultimate conflicts must at some point be false. So the possibility
for agreement, at whatever cost to my own aims and interests,
must always be acknowledged; and where it seems essential to
maintain the opposition, this must be done with both a serious-
ness appropriate to the issues at stake and a humility born of
the recognition that since one of us, at least, must be wrong, it
may be me. Thus does theological realism, which insists on an
ideal of love that is real in the will and nature of God, have its
effects on a situation of choice in which the reality of love may
be anything but evident.
CONFIDENCE AND CRITICISM
In this introduction, we have separately considered several

aspects of Christian Realism which must work closely together
in the actual assessment of social and political situations. Chris-
tian Realism is a combination of different "realisms" — poli-
tical, moral, and theological. The distinctive insights come as
these perspectives are drawn into a relationship in which no
one of their conclusions is definitive, but from which, likewise,
none can be omitted. The moral truths that Christian Realism
details of the relationships vary significantly in different essays. For further discuss-
ion, see Chapter Five.
43
Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History: A Comparison of Christian and Modern Views of
History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), p. 193.
claims depend on an attentiveness to all of the forces at work in
a situation, and on the limits imposed by human nature, and on
the possibilities opened by love. "Man's capacity for justice
makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice
makes democracy necessary," Niebuhr once wrote, in what has
become perhaps the most famous of his many aphorisms.44 His
deft summaries of the human situation reflect his own wisdom
and a gift for well-turned phrases, but it should by now be
apparent that the insights packed into this aphorism - its
attentiveness to prevailing circumstances, human nature, and
human aspirations — result from more than an intuitive com-
bination of the right elements.
Niebuhr was known as a pessimist, critical of the illusions of
faith and the pride of nations. Time magazine captured the
popular impression of his message with a 1948 cover story
captioned "Man's story is not a success story." 45 While that
aptly summarizes his criticism of the optimism of liberal Chris-
tianity, Niebuhr was aware that the currents of Christian
thought had in fact often flowed in the opposite direction.
Appreciation of the human tendency to oppose God led some
Christian theologians, notably Luther, to a "too consistent
pessimism" about human possibilities.46 The Christian Realist
must temper this pessimism with hope in God's power to
reconcile forces now opposed. Just as there can be no simple
resolution that ignores self-interest and power, there can be no
simple limit on the possibilities for new arrangements that
achieve the real aims of both sides of old enmities. 47
Christian Realists see the possibilities that lie in both direct-
ions from present conflicts. In their combination of political
and theological realism, there are no rules that tell them how to
weigh the different possibilities. Facts that demand attention
must be carefully considered, and courses of action based on
these considerations have to be compared to alternative pro-
44
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p . xiii.
45
Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, p . 233.
46
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p . 44. T h e criticism is
extended to Augustine in some of Niebuhr's later works. See Christian Realism and
Political Problems, p . 127.
47
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, pp. 48-50.
posals which may have more systematic consistency, but which
incorporate less of the political, moral, and theological reality
against which every choice must be made. Taken together, this
combination of self-criticism and critical thinking, of political
realism's skepticism and theological realism's hope, provides a
more adequate understanding of contemporary events than
those accounts which rest on less comprehensive visions.
These resources give us some treasures to contribute to the commu-
nity in its struggle for justice. Among them are an understanding of
the fragmentary character of all human virtue; the tentative char-
acter of all schemes of justice, since they are subject to the flow of
history; the irrevocable character of the "moral law" transcending all
historical relativities; and the hazardous judgments which must be
made to establish justice between the competing forces and inter-
ests.48
For Christian Realists, understandings of justice and history
follow from an understanding of God's relationship to the
values that spark human conflict and guide human aspirations.
The reason for paying attention to the theological interpreta-
tion of events is that the theologian's beliefs about the ultimate
resolution of human conflicts yield a better grasp of present
possibilities. In the risks and uncertainties of modern political
life, everyone seeks a realistic assessment of persons and events.
Theological realism insists that when this assessment does not
include the ultimate context of human choice and action, it
will shortly go wrong in its dealings with people and its antici-
pations of current events.
These insights certainly do not "prove" the truth of Chris-
tian faith, but they provide a grasp of issues and events that is a
relevant standard of comparison to other ways of understand-
ing justice and history.49 Niebuhr's Christian Realism was
both confident and critical. It was critical because he made no
absolute claims for his own perspective. Faith can be distorted
by self-interest, lulled into sentimental piety, or lured into
fanatical excesses. Niebuhr could analyze those errors with a
clarity and urgency born of the conviction that they are never
48 49
Ibid., p. 66. Cf. Niebuhr, Faith and History, pp. 151-53.
far removed from even our most sincere efforts to find moral
and political truth. Yet after all the critical insights, Niebuhr
remained confident that Christian Realism made more sense of
problematic historical situations than other interpretations.
Niebuhr's criticism required no retreat into a language of faith
that was impervious to challenge. He was confident that when
subjected to those same criticisms, "the truth of faith is corre-
lated with all truths which may be known by scientific and
philosophical disciplines and proves itself a resource for coord-
inating them into a deeper and wider system of coherence."50
Today, a reinterpretation of Niebuhr's Christian Realism
must capture both the criticism and the confidence. Both the
Christian neo-conservatives who find in Niebuhr a prophet of
triumphant liberal democracy and the Christian radicals who
dismiss him as an "apologist for power" need to recover the
penetrating insight that discovers the taint of self-interest in
every moral position, including one's own.51 What all sides—
and perhaps most especially the Protestant liberals who are
Niebuhr's direct descendants—need, however, is a recovery of
the Niebuhrian confidence that acknowledges the limitations
of its own perspective without reducing the moral commitment
to its principal insights. Christian Realism teaches us how to do
Christian theology in a modern intellectual world where criti-
cal consciousness makes us most suspicious of precisely those
things we most strongly believe.
Niebuhr realized that Christianity survives in human history
not as a set of clear and distinct ideas, but as a locus of
possibilities that always transcend more immediate forms of
thought and action. That which is clear, distinct, and defini-
tive in human life has its day and disappears. What endures
must have a measure of flexibility and ambiguity that is adapt-
able to the incoherences of real experience. Great truths
require mythic expression, and those who articulate them in
the modern world will always appear "as deceivers yet true."
50
Ibid., p . 152.
51
See, for example, Michael Novak, "Reinhold Niebuhr: Model for Neoconserva-
tives," Christian Century 103 ( J a n u a r y 22, 1986), 69-71; a n d Bill Kellerman, "Apolo-
gist of Power: T h e Long Shadow of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian Realism,"
Sojourners 16 (March, 1987), 15-20.
The myth, however, is not just an empty vessel. It draws our
thinking in definite ways, serving as a "regulative principle"
for more specific moral choices. Love defies reduction to a
universally valid rule of action, but it enables us to make
judgments about the choices that are actually before us. It
allows us to distinguish those who move toward the impossible
ideal from those who move away from it.
There are no doubt psychological and cultural pre-
conditions that explain why Niebuhr's confidence was so easily
sustained and so well received in the middle decades of the
twentieth century, just as there are no doubt elements of genius
in his own insights that are lost in any attempt to generalize his
message. Nevertheless, this book is written with my own con-
fidence that a systematic treatment of the main elements of
Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian Realism will help us to formu-
late a version of it that will be adequate to the tasks of Christian
ethics in our own day.
Those main elements have already been identified in this
introduction. In what follows, we will treat them in reverse
order of their appearance here. Chapter One will further
explore Niebuhr's theological realism and its relationship to
distinctive currents in American Protestant thought. Chapters
Two and Three will discuss Christian Realism's moral realism,
relating it more clearly to other versions of ethical naturalism
and to natural law thought, and contrasting it to the dominant
versions of moral rationalism and moral relativism in religious
ethics today. Chapter Four will return us to the testing of
theological and moral insights against the multiple demands of
politics and lead us toward a more synthetic statement about
justice and love with which, in Chapter Five, we will bring the
study to a close.
CHAPTER I
God
STARTING WITH THEOLOGY
Reinhold Niebuhr challenged both liberalism and orthodoxy

with "theological realism." The American theologians who
formulated "theological realism" did not expect to provide a
conclusive argument for their beliefs, but they did offer what
Niebuhr would call "a limited rational validation of the truth
of the Gospel." Niebuhr's contribution was both to show how
closely this pragmatic theological realism could be related to
other moral discourses, and to illuminate the specific difference
that it makes to affirm that God is the center of meaning in a
morally coherent universe.
Christian Realism concentrates on the assessment of specific
political situations and social choices. It does not always speak
explicitly of God. Larry Rasmussen observes that Reinhold
Niebuhr "was at his very best in his ability to render a theo-
logical interpretation of events for a wide audience, as a basis
for common action. But precisely because of the audience's
diverse beliefs, Niebuhr often cast his case in ways which left
his Christian presuppositions and convictions unspoken."1
Both friends and critics have sometimes assumed that this
means that the theology of Christian Realism is superfluous, a
pious footnote to an analysis that can be accepted or rejected
on its own terms. Political thinkers admired Reinhold Nie-
buhr's insights into the fundamental importance of power in
democratic politics or his warnings to America not to take its
1
Larry Rasmussen, "Reinhold Niebuhr: Public Theologian," Cross Currents, 38
(Summer, 1988), 201.
33
own virtues too seriously, but many thought that these insights
could stand on their own, without the theological dynamics to
which they were linked in Niebuhr's mind. They have been
called the "atheists for Niebuhr." 2
Theologians have also detected a gap between realistic poli-
tics and the convictions of faith, but they have supposed this
means that the Christian Realist has given up theology in order
to arrive at politics. A theologian critical of Moral Man and
Immoral Society charged that Niebuhr had abandoned "the idea
that Christianity has a unique function to fulfill in the process
of social transformation."3 Perhaps these critics should be
called "theists against Niebuhr." If their judgment seems too
harsh, many more moderate critics would agree with James
Gustafson's assessment that Niebuhr's Christian Realism is
"theology in the service of ethics." 4
Whether from friends or critics, these evaluations pose in
acute form a dilemma that faces all theological reflections in an
age of many faiths or no apparent faith: If one aims to speak
about problems and choices that affect everyone in a society,
the analysis must be made in terms that are widely accepted
and understood, and it may be difficult to say anything at all
about God. But if one tries to exercise the theologian's vocation
to speak a distinctive word about God, those of other faiths or
no faith may dismiss it as a private meditation, an esoteric
religious idea that has no relevance for their lives and choices.
A realistic appeal for racial justice, or arms control, or care
for the poor must convince us that its author knows the facts of
the case, comprehends the motivations of those who must
decide and act, and understands what is at stake for society in
the choices at hand. A religious statement that does this well,
whether it be a papal encyclical on economic development, a
theologian's essay on church and state, or a pastor's letter to
the editor about the plight of the homeless, may make an
2
See Daniel F. Rice, Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey: An American Odyssey, p. 217.
3
Francis Pickens Miller directed this criticism to Niebuhr in 1933. Quoted in Fox,
Reinhold Niebuhr, p. 142.
4
James Gustafson, "Theology in the Service of Ethics: An Interpretation of Reinhold
Niebuhr's Theological Ethics," in Richard Harries, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues
of Our Time (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 24-45.
God 35
important difference in the public discussion. It is just when

these statements are most effective, however, that they elicit
the question that Jeffrey Stout puts to contemporary theo-
logians who begin their work with an interpretation of
common human experience: What does the idea of God add to
this account? 5 What new claims about the human situation do
we make by saying that God is present in the needs or goals
that we all understand? What motives emerge that were not
already available to us? What actions are we permitted or
required to take that a non-religious analysis would not also
permit or require? Does belief in God make it reasonable for us
to do or to risk things that a reasonable person who did not
believe in God would not do or risk?
While God must be known in images and metaphors drawn
from all aspects of human experience, the idea of God must
refer to more than just those experiences if the theologian has
anything to say that cannot also be said by the psychologist,
the political scientist, or the literary critic. 6 It may ask too
much to require that each and every aspect of our human
circumstances be altered by an immediate relationship to
divine reality. (It strains the point to think that a theistic
choice of painting contractors should be much different from a
responsible secular one.) If the reality of God has any practical
meaning, however, it should make some difference to the ways
we understand our choices on the whole in the major activities
of human life - in economics, politics, and family life, as well as
in religion.
On this point, Reinhold Niebuhr's realistic politics was
matched by theological realism. The complex interactions of
interest groups, historical forces, and persistent human needs
for power and security each demand their own elaborate
theoretical explanations, and Niebuhr can be eloquent in his
analysis of the social strains imposed by class conflicts or the
ideological justifications that palliate inequalities of wealth
and privilege. In the end, however, human conflict and human
5
Jeffrey Stout, Ethics After Babel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), p. 183.
6
For a more developed statement of this point, see Janet M. Soskice, Metaphor and
Religious Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 104-8.
aspirations must be understood in relation to God, who sets

limits on the conflict and affirms human unity, while at the
same time judging every particular attempt to formulate that
unity and every claim to have achieved it.
CONFIDENCE
The idea that God is love is a symbol for an ultimate unity of

lives and interests in which all proximate conflicts are resolved.
"The ultimate confidence in the meaningfulness of life, there-
fore, rests upon a faith in the final unity, which transcends the
world's chaos as certainly as it is basic to the world's order." 7
For the Christian Realist, God is what H. Richard Niebuhr
would later call "the center of value," the One in whom every
real value must cohere and from whose perspective every
human community must be evaluated.8 So understood, 'God'
cannot be just a name for the complex of values that I hold or
that my culture teaches. God is not a program that I, or my
party, or my faith has designed to settle conflicts on our own
terms. Any resolution of conflict that is more than the simple
capitulation of one side to another involves transcending the
conflict toward a new harmony. The resolution of all conflicts,
however, exceeds not only the practical limits of our circum-
stances, but also the creative possibilities of human conscious-
ness. A unity that gives meaning to all particular purposes
"transcends the world beyond [our] own capacity to transcend
it." 9
The Christian Realist argues that belief in this transcendent
center of value makes a difference in the way persons respond
to aspirations and conflicts. The possibility of unity is known
by faith and not by sight. Experience is, in fact, uncertain
about this "final unity which transcends the world's chaos." 10
7
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 22-23.
8
H. Richard Niebuhr, "The Center of Value," in Radical Monotheism and Western
Culture (New York: Harper and Row, i960), pp. 100-13.
9
10
Niebuhr occasionally writes as though human beings have an instinctive conviction
that "there is only one world and that it is a cosmos" [Christian Realism and Political
Problems, p. 176). That is, he presents a Christian interpretation of experience as if it
God 37
There is no conclusive evidence that it is so, and any believable
assertion of unity will have to deal with the abundant evidence
of chaos. Our own aims and desires and those we recognize in
persons around us cannot all be satisfied. Perhaps, as one line
of political realism has insisted since the beginning of the
modern age, when the necessary choices are made, the final
unity is not God, but bare survival. People will agree only on
those constraints they must accept if they are not to be des-
troyed in their pursuit of goods they cannot share. 11
If there is a final unity that goes beyond this mutual
restraint, we will have to say that some of the things that people
want are wrong — bad for themselves as well as for others. But if
there is a final unity, we must also insist that people will
recognize their own good in it, that they will choose it, or that
they could choose it, over the partial and incomplete goods
that satisfy their own interests at the expense of the final unity.
The Christian Realist does not stubbornly assert unity in the
face of conflict, or sentimentally dwell on the "harmony of life
with life" while everyone else is seething with rage. Where aims
and goals are radically opposed, as between a wealthy, urban
elite and the revolutionary movements of the poor in Central
America, or between the nuclear power industry and eco-
logical movements in the United States, political realism
requires us not to underestimate the depth of the conflict, and
not to overlook the possibility that either side will employ
distorted moral appeals and subvert established moral stan-
dards in order to achieve its goals. Ringing appeals to freedom
combined with terroristic repression of dissent, or appeals to
were simply a report of experience. Clearly these claims, and the similar claim that
"The self feels itself in dialogue with God," are more than uninterpreted statements
of what everyone, in fact, experiences (see Niebuhr, The Self and the Dramas of
History, p. 96). We will do well to be more clear from the outset than Niebuhr was
on this point. What we must also insist, however, is that to acknowledge that a
formulation is a Christian interpretation of experience does not a priori render it
unintelligible to those who do not share Christian convictions. The issue of how
interpretations of experience in one community or tradition are related to the
interpretations of others remains a question for discussion.
The classic statement of this minimal condition for political unity is found in
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1968 [first published in 1651]).
scientific objectivity combined with suppressed data and the

intimidation of researchers are exactly what we should expect.
But we also expect something else. We expect that the forces
which prevail in the end will be those that aim to make the
resources for a good life available to everyone, and that use the
earth's resources in ways that enhance the lives of future
generations. We do not suppose that any one group has the
whole truth about this future. We are suspicious of those whose
vision of a just and sustainable society corresponds too closely
to their own present interests, and we look for anticipations of a
better future especially among the people whose lives are
diminished and whose hopes are thwarted by the way things
are done now.
Nevertheless, our confidence does not rest in particular plans
and goals, but in a morally coherent universe, in which we may
discover human aims and goals that do not set us in ultimate
conflict with one another, and in which our aspirations for
unity are not mocked. Our confidence rests in God.
CRITICISM
Answering Jeffrey Stout's question this way, however, appears

to bring us around to face the other half of the modern
theologian's dilemma.12 Have we interpreted events in a way
that can make sense only to those who share our faith? Are
those who do not share it justified in ignoring what we have to
say and going on about the business of acquiring power and
pursuing interests?
The answer to these questions is complex, and it requires
further investigation of the American theological movement
that identified itself as "theological realism" or "religious
realism" during the 1930s. Reinhold Niebuhr participated in
these discussions, and the understanding of religious truth that
the movement developed became the presupposition of his own
notion of a "limited rational validation" of the claims of
Christianity.13
12 13
See page 34 above. Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 152.
God 39
In the aftermath of World War I, the American realists

shared with Karl Barth and other European theologians a
strong sense of the need for a Christian response to the failures
of Western culture and politics. In place of progressive, liberal
convictions about the links between Christianity and social
progress, these theologians believed that Christian truth will
contradict the hopes and presumptions of modern society.
Christian claims about the ultimate unity of human life do not
simply anticipate the assurances of modern social science. The
empirical evidence regarding human destiny is decidedly
ambiguous. "The points of reference for the structure of the
meaning of history in the Christian faith are obviously not
found by an empirical analysis of the observable structures and
coherences of history. They are 'revelations,' apprehended by
faith, of the character and purposes of God." 14 However one
understands the meaning of revelation, the final unity of
human life that is central to the Christian's moral confidence is
not demonstrable by methods of argument and investigation
that proceed simply on the basis of generally acknowledged
facts about the world. To suggest otherwise would eliminate
the tension between Christian faith and human wisdom that is
central to the theological critique of the world's injustice,
violence, and lack of harmony. On this key point, the Prot-
estant theologies that emerged in the decades after World
War I were generally in agreement.
The American theological realists, however, had available a
philosophical system that provided more persuasive links
between experience and action than the dominant European
philosophies. Beginning with the works of Charles Sanders
Peirce (i 839-1916) and William James (1842-1910) in the
nineteenth century, and continuing in the twentieth with John
Dewey (1859-1952) and George Herbert Mead (1863-1931),
the philosophy that Peirce named 'pragmatism' developed a
method for assessing ideas in terms of their coherence with the
other ideas by which we guide actions and make choices. For
the theological realists a modified pragmatism opened the way
14
Ibid., p. 136.
to a distinctive form of the apologetic theology which Barth
rejected root and branch. 15 While there is no proof of Christian
truth "which would compel conviction on purely rational
grounds," Niebuhr wrote, "there is nevertheless a positive
apologetic task. It consists in correlating the truth, appre-
hended by faith and repentance, to truths about life and
history gained generally in experience."16
Like other religious thinkers, the theological realists were
wary of pragmatic philosophy because it seemed to imply
cognitive relativism, a plurality of mutually incompatible, yet
equally workable, accounts of reality. Instead of completely
rejecting pragmatism, however, these theologians employed its
criteria of coherence and fruitfulness for action as a method of
testing rival interpretations of human nature and history.
Pragmatism cannot demonstrate that ideological systems,
social theories, or religions are true, but it can show that one or
another of them provides a better way of anticipating future
events and making choices in light of the likely outcomes. Since
that is a large part of the interest people have in any com-
prehensive account of human life, they can hardly be indiffer-
ent to an argument that Christianity provides such an account
more adequately than other systems, even if that pragmatic
demonstration fails to "prove" that all human claims and
interests are limited in the way that the Christian idea of God
implies.17
So the Christian Realist denies that those who do not share
15
The Barthian rejection of apologetics is echoed by theologians who argue that there
is no generally shared discourse in which the claims of a religious tradition can be
objectively evaluated. See William Placher, Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice
in a Pluralistic Conversation (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989). It
would take us too far afield to provide a complete response to these current
developments in American theology here, though our discussion of the work of
Stanley Hauerwas in Chapter Two will suggest a Christian Realist response.
16
Ibid., p. 165.
17
Thus the theological realists understood their claims about God not as rational
demonstrations, but as what Charles Taylor has recently called "an articulation of
what is crucial to the world in one's best account." See Charles Taylor, Sources of the
Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1989), p. 76. Cf. the concept of a "relatively adequate" interpretation in
David Tracy, Plurality and Ambiguity (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987),
pp. 22-23.
God 41
faith in the final unity of human life are intellectually free to go

about the business of acquiring power and pursuing interests.
And the Christian Realist denies with equal vigor that the
Christian is free to abandon the effort to make sense of faith in
practical terms and to leave the world to its own devices. It is
not possible to prove that there is a "final unity, which tran-
scends the world's chaos as certainly as it is basic to the world's
order," but it is possible to disturb those who find the pursuit
and protection of their own interests amidst a chaos of irrecon-
cilable conflict a fully adequate account of the circumstances of
human life. That modest goal was sufficient to engage Rein-
hold Niebuhr's tremendous energies.
The method of this "Christian pragmatism" 18 is implicit in
the argument of The Nature and Destiny of Man, which makes a
case for the adequacy of a Christian or biblical understanding
of human nature and history against a variety of modern
interpretations. 19 It is argued explicitly in Faith and History ?Q
The origins, however, can be seen in Niebuhr's earliest work,
in the influences of his mentors and colleagues, and in a group
who for a couple of decades called themselves "The Younger
Theologians."
THE SEARCH FOR REALISM
The theologians' search for more adequate ways of speaking

about God and about human society was part of a broader
reassessment of Western civilization that began during World
War I. After several decades of rapid industrial development,
colonial expansion, and missionary extension of Christianity,
the states of Europe and North America were plunged into a
bloody conflict that halted processes of development and
expansion, and shook confidence in the progress of civilization
itself.
The brutality of trench warfare and the loss of a generation
18
See page 48 below.
19
See Niebuhr's preface to The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, vii.
20
See especially chapter 10, " T h e Validation of the Christian View of Life a n d
History," Faith and History, p p . 151-70.
of youth raised questions about Western society that cut deeper

than the poverty and corruption that accompanied change and
growth. One had to ask not only whether these social evils
could be avoided, but whether the very things regarded as
social values had not become corrupt and destructive. The
human capacity for goodness seemed less reliable than it had
before, and the propensity to evil seemed more insidious.
Liberal Protestant theology, which since the early nine-
teenth century had based many of its theological claims on
human consciousness of value and awe as experiences of the
presence of God, had now to contend not only with a skepti-
cism which suggested that these experiences were merely pro-
jections of human wants and needs, but also with a nihilism
that argued that the values attributed to God are not values at
all. Ludwig Feuerbach had suggested nearly a century earlier
that Christians mistakenly disvalue themselves by supposing
that the best qualities they can conceive belong only to God,
whereas these virtues really originate in themselves.21 In the
twentieth century, the question came to be whether the virtues
themselves are the source of our problems. Fidelity elicits blind
loyalty to race and nation, and justice provokes a rigid, self-
righteous moralism that too quickly takes up arms to extirpate
the unrighteous enemy.
Faced with these challenges, theologians proposed that
divine reality challenges and shatters our claims to virtue,
instead of confirming and fulfilling them. The claim to find
God in human experience had been mistaken. The reality of
God transcends that experience. The theologians' attempt to
be politically realistic about the faded hopes of Western civili-
zation required a realistic theology, affirmed boldly or cauti-
ously against their liberal predecessors' emphasis on human
experience.
In North America, Douglas Clyde Macintosh provided one
of the more cautious formulations. In his introduction to a
collection of essays titled Religious Realism, Macintosh wrote:
21
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York:
Harper and Row, 1956).
God 43
Religious Realism, as the term is used in this volume, means centrally
the view that a religious Object, such as may appropriately be called
God, exists independently of our consciousness therefor, and is yet
related to us in such a way that through reflection on experience in
general and religious experience in particular, and without any
dependence upon the familiar arguments for epistemological
idealism, it is possible for us to gain either (as some would maintain)
adequately verified knowledge or (as others would be content to
affirm) a practically valuable and theoretically permissible faith not
only that that religious Object exists but also, within whatever limits,
as to what its nature is.22
Macintosh shared many of the hopes and commitments of
the Social Gospel movement.23 He had no wish to link Chris-
tianity to the isolationism and conservative political beliefs that
enjoyed a new popularity in the United States after World War
I. As a professor at Yale Divinity School, he became the center
of a group of students and younger colleagues who did give
new attention to the obstacles to the religious transformation of
society, especially to the obstacles that reflect the Christians'
own ambivalence toward the values they profess.
This loosely constituted group of "Younger Theologians"
included both Reinhold Niebuhr, who had joined the faculty
of Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1928, and his
younger brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, who was himself
already well established on the faculty at Yale. In one sense,
their generational identification was correct, for though the
Younger Theologians inevitably aged along with everyone
else, they were distinguished from their predecessors in
American theology by skepticism about prospects for "Chris-
tianizing the social order," 24 and linked by that same skepti-
cism to their European contemporaries, led by Karl Barth.
22
Macintosh, ed., Religious Realism, p . v.
23
Macintosh, a C a n a d i a n w h o h a d been a chaplain in World W a r I, became a
pacifist. W h e n his application to become a citizen of the United States was refused
because he would not take an oath to defend the country, he initiated a legal
challenge that was eventually decided (against Macintosh) in the United States
Supreme Court. See J o h n T . Noonan, The Believer and the Powers That Are (New
York: Macmillan, 1987), p . 229.
24
T h a t slogan provided the title for Walter Rauschenbusch's most important state-
ment of the Social Gospel program. See Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social
Order (New York: Macmillan, 1912).
Barth epitomized the criticism of earlier efforts at Christian
social reform in his Epistle to the Romans:
Asceticism and movements of reform have their place as parables and
as representations, but in themselves they are of no value. In no sense
can they ever be even a first step towards the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is but one good and one evil, one pure and one impure. Before
God everything is impure; and therefore nothing is especially
impure. 25
The Americans shared Barth's critical view of previous
efforts at social reform, but they did not regard this critical
attitude as a distinctively Christian message. Walter Marshall
Horton, in an assessment of contemporary theology published
in 1934, noted that realistic theology was part of a larger
cultural force that included developments in politics, litera-
ture, and philosophy that also claimed to be "realistic." 26
What these realisms had in common, Horton thought, was a
skepticism about the claims of important people and institu-
tions. They were more inclined to uncover the greed of capital-
ists, the ambition of politicians, and the venality of the clergy
than to romanticize their contributions to human progress.
The social criticism of the American religious realists had
more in common with that of their secular counterparts than
did Barth's work, and a constructive theological realism would
require a similarly broad base. Barth's insistence on a realism
grounded solely in the Word of God and rejecting all other
points of reference had little appeal to the Americans. Horton
suggested that the heirs of Calvinism were too recently emanci-
pated to accept a theology that returned to scripture as the
starting point for life in the modern world.27 Perhaps more to
the point, American theologians saw that scripture itself had
been an important source of the illusions they wanted to
combat. America's Utopias were seldom secular, and their
visions of material abundance and civic harmony drew imagin-
ative details and persuasive power from the millennial hopes of
25
K a r l Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E d w i n C. Hoskyns (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968), p . 517. This edition of Barth's Rb'merbriejwas first published
in Switzerland in 1921.
26 27
H o r t o n , Realistic Theology, p p . 10-15. Ibid., p p . 36-37.
God 45
American Christianity. The notion that an earthly paradise
could be built with America's people and material resources
gained credence from an interpretation of scripture that said
that this was, after all, God's own plan from the beginning. 28
For too many Americans, the Bible was a key text in support
of that view of history. Theological realism would have to
convince Americans to rethink an optimistic faith in the light of
political scandals, economic failures, and the tragedy of human
conflict. The delicate task would be to separate genuine faith
from cultural self-confidence without provoking the cynical
response that had turned many people against both faith and
culture. Reinhold Niebuhr explained this in a 1931 paper for
the World's Student Christian Federation:
In Anglo-Saxon countries the conflict between faith and reason is not
insisted upon so sharply, and religious thought still expresses itself in
terms less tragic than those upon which the Continent insists when it
estimates the cultural and moral history of mankind . . . We may need
the tragic conception of history and of the futility of moral effort, lest
our religion sink into the sands of complacent moral optimism. But on
the other hand we will continue to believe that we have a right to
express ourselves religiously without completely sacrificing a phil-
osophy of nature and of history which links our faith in God to the
facts of common experience. 29
For theological realism, the criterion of truth would be
neither dogmatic orthodoxy nor fidelity to scripture, but
coherence with all available sources of insight. In the effort to
formulate an understanding of human experience adequate for
twentieth-century life, theology cannot be ignored. That
would be to accept uncritically the reductive naturalism that
28
The idea that America is the focal point of a providential plan appears early in the
nation's religious history. For an account of the emergence of this idea, see Ernest
Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1968). T h e early Christian Realists were perhaps more
conscious of the influence of the biblical idea of the Kingdom of God on their Social
Gospel predecessors at the end of the nineteenth century. H . Richard Niebuhr
wrote of the significance of this idea of "the coming K i n g d o m " in his The Kingdom of
God in America (New York: H a r p e r a n d R o w , 1959 [first published 1937]),
pp. 127-63.
29
Reinhold Niebuhr, " A n American Approach to the Christian Message," in W. A.
Visser 'tHooft, ed., A Traffic in Knowledge: An International Symposium on the Christian
Message (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1931), pp. 55-56.
46 Reinhold JViebuhr and Christian Realism
sees all events in terms of material causes and the political cyni-
cism that interprets all human aspirations as conflicting inter-
ests. Neither, however, can we assume that traditional religious
ideas will remain unchanged in the encounter with modern
knowledge. The point is to bring them together in a coherent
understanding that discards none of the methods of inquiry by
which people have located themselves in the world. Above all,
the coherence must be achieved by squarely facing all the facts,
including those that cast an unattractive light on our own
society or on human accomplishments generally. Coherence is
not a matter of wishful thinking about how things might work
together, but of steady inquiry into the interactions that are
really there. Walter Marshall Horton offered what is perhaps
the best summary of the mood and method of theological
realism when he wrote in 1934:
[The] word "realism" suggests to me, above all, a resolute determi-
nation to face all the facts of life candidly, beginning preferably with
the most stubborn, perplexing, and disheartening ones, so that any
lingering romantic illusions may be dispelled at the start; and then,
through these stubborn facts and not in spite of them, to pierce as deep as
one may into the solid structure of reality, until one finds whatever
ground of courage, hope, and faith is actually there, independent of
human preferences and desires, and so casts anchor in that ground.30
For many of its critics, Christian Realism is a pessimistic phil-
osophy that holds little hope for peace or justice, and quickly
yields to the requirements of power. Horton, by contrast,
speaks of a methodological pessimism in service of Christian
hope. Only when that hope directly confronts all the evidence
of experience can it be distinguished from wishful thinking or
misplaced confidence. The reality of God, unlike the illusions of
self and nation, is consistent with all the evidence.
PRAGMATISM
Apart from the cultural and historical factors that made
American theological realists attentive to the full range of
human experience, the philosophy of pragmatism offered an
30
Horton, Realistic Theology, p. 38.
God 47
alternative to the "correspondence" theory of truth, which

treats true ideas simply as accurate depictions of reality. Prag-
matism stresses the relationships among ideas, rather than the
link between ideas and reality. As James put it, "True ideas are
those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify.
False ideas are those we can not." 31
Pragmatism in its origins is closely linked with American
religious thought, although its leading exponents often had
little use for conventional Christian doctrines and institutions.
Peirce, the originator of pragmatism, gave considerable atten-
tion to the reconciliation of mathematical, scientific, and relig-
ious worldviews in a unified account of a single reality. 32
James, who became the best-known exponent of pragmatism,
and the one whose views most influenced religious thought in
the early twentieth century, produced a classic treatment of the
psychology and philosophy of religious experience, but his
radical pluralism tended to undermine the importance, if not
the very possibility, of a monotheistic faith. 33
In turn, American theologians in the twentieth century have
given mixed responses to pragmatism. Protestants seeking to
maintain a rational defense of orthodox religious truth have
rejected it, and many Catholic thinkers have dismissed prag-
matism as an overly simple assertion that "whatever works is
right." 34 Liberal Protestants have, by contrast, endorsed
elements of the pragmatic approach. If what is known of God
must satisfy the rationalist critic that our idea of God corres-
ponds to the reality of God, knowledge fails, and fideism or
skepticism become the only alternatives. Douglas Clyde
31
William J a m e s , "Pragmatism's Conception of T r u t h , " in The Writings of William
James, ed. J o h n J . M c D e r m o t t (New York: R a n d o m House, 1967), p . 430.
32
For an account of Peirce's theology, see R o b e r t S. Corrington, An Introduction to C.S.
Peirce ( L a n h a m , Md.: R o w m a n and Littlefield, 1993), p p . 68-72.
33
See William J a m e s , Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: M o d e r n Library,
n.d.), p p . 514-16. O n the place of pragmatism in the larger history of American
philosophy a n d religious thought, see especially Bruce Kuklick, Churchmen and
Philosophers (New H a v e n : Yale University Press, 1985), p p . 195-98.
34
J o h n Courtney M u r r a y , for example, asserts: " F o r the pragmatist there are,
properly speaking n o truths; there a r e only results" (We Hold These Truths [New
York: Sheed a n d W a r d , i960], p . ix). T h e Catholic philosopher R o b e r t J o h a n n
offers a more positive appropriation of pragmatism in Catholic thought. See R o b e r t
O. J o h a n n , Building the Human (New York: H e r d e r and Herder, 1968).
Macintosh supported pragmatism against those stark alter-

natives, though he resisted the suggestion that religious ideas
could be reduced to their implications for action. 35
The distinctions that Macintosh sought to make between
realistic theology and pragmatic philosophy are important,
and we will attend to them in more detail later in this chap-
ter.36 Against a larger range of philosophical options, however,
the differences between American Protestant theology and
pragmatic philosophy must be seen in the context of agree-
ments about how truth is known and how ideas are tested.
Thus, Cornel West today places Niebuhr directly in the line of
development of American pragmatism, and locates his work
along with Sidney Hook and C. Wright Mills, secular philoso-
phers who sought to apply the pragmatic perspective to the
complexities of the world at mid-century. 37 By 1957, Niebuhr
himself acknowledged that his work could be called a "Chris-
tian pragmatism." 38
In contrast to those who argue that Christian political
thought must begin with the certainties of Christian doctrine,
Niebuhr defines Christian pragmatism as "the application of
Christian freedom and a sense of responsibility to the complex
issues of economics and politics, with the firm resolve that
inherited dogmas and generalizations will not be accepted, no
matter how revered or venerable, if they do not contribute to
the establishment of justice in a given situation." 39 Niebuhr's
35
Macintosh, Religious Realism, p p . 330—31. O n e evidence of Macintosh's support for
theological study of p r a g m a t i s m is the extensive use of William J a m e s ' ideas about
religion in the B.D. thesis that Reinhold N i e b u h r prepared under Macintosh's
supervision in 1914. See Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, p p . 30, 35-36.
36
See page 51 below.
37
Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1989), p p . 150-64.
38
Niebuhr, "Theology a n d Political T h o u g h t in the Western W o r l d , " in Faith and
Politics, p . 55.
39
Ibid. N i e b u h r was not altogether consistent in his statement of what the " p r a g m a -
tism" in "Christian p r a g m a t i s m " means. I n a n essay published in 1963, he describes
ecumenical social ethics as pragmatic " i n the sense that it becomes increasingly
aware of the contingent circumstances of history which determine how m u c h or
how little it is necessary to emphasize the various regulative principles of justice,
equality a n d liberty, security of the community or freedom of the individual . . . "
See Reinhold Niebuhr, " T h e Development of a Social Ethic in the Ecumenical
M o v e m e n t , " in Faith and Politics, p . 177.
God 49
formulation suggests that religious beliefs and traditional

dogmas lose their claim to validity and become literally
meaningless if they are not coherent with our other ideas about
the context in which we seek important human goods.
To require that doctrinal truths be coherent with the other
beliefs by which we guide our choices and actions does not
mean that theology cannot question scientific theories, poli-
tical principles, or social scientific accounts of human action.40
To suggest that would be to give these other systems of belief
the same unquestioned status that some theologians have mis-
takenly given to religious dogma. Nor does it mean that we can
believe anything that serves our immediate practical purposes.
The point is rather that the beliefs which guide action are those
by which we can coordinate all of our knowledge and experi-
ence — religious awe, scientific observation, practical wisdom,
and technical skill — in pursuit of those larger aims that give
direction to our life as a whole and link us in shared purposes
with others.
In that practical testing and ordering of our beliefs, short-
term wants are often given up because they conflict with more
important goals. Particular beliefs that may be internally con-
sistent and immediately appealing are set aside because they
are inconsistent with the more comprehensive network of ideas
that guides action. To assert "inherited dogmas and generali-
zations" without regard for their coherence with other beliefs
does not honor the faith that created the dogmas. It renders the
faith irrelevant to action and leaves the way open for alter-
native systems of belief to provide what guidance may be
needed. 41
The test of coherence cannot be applied to a theological
concept in abstraction from the other beliefs that we bring to
bear on our human problems. Whether a belief is coherent
depends precisely on the particular beliefs that we already
40
See Keith W a r d , " R e i n h o l d N i e b u h r a n d the Christian H o p e , " in Harries, ed.,
Reinhold Niebuhr, pp. 65-67.
41
Niebuhr insisted on "the relevance of the ideal of love to the moral experience of
mankind on every conceivable level. It is not an ideal magically superimposed on
human life by a revelation which has no relation to total human experience."
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p. 63.
hold, and there is always the possibility that new evidence or a

different perspective on our experiences will lead us to chal-
lenge the coherence of beliefs that we have provisionally
accepted. Coherence depends in important ways on social
context, the community of discussion in which ideas are tested
and held. James recognized that we do not simply pick ideas
out of the air to inquire whether they are coherent with the rest
of our beliefs. The range of possibilities, the "living options," to
use James' own term, are set for us by the civilization in which
we live.
If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric
connections with your nature, — it refuses to scintillate with any
credibility at all. As an hypothesis it is completely dead. To an Arab,
however (even if he be not one of the Mahdi's followers), the hypo-
thesis is among the mind's possibilities: it is alive. This shows that
deadness and aliveness in an hypothesis are not intrinsic properties,
but relations to the individual thinker.42
Carried through consistently, this idea of a "living option"
implies a thoroughgoing relativism. We can say whether an
idea is true in the context of the beliefs of a particular commu-
nity or for people during a certain period of history, but asking
whether an idea is true across those lines of time and culture
seems to some pragmatists to demand an answer that cannot be
given. Richard Rorty articulates the implications of this view
when he stresses that we cannot impose our coherences on
other ways of life or evaluate their beliefs from the perspective
of our system. Our obligation is only to continue the discussion
in which we are participants. 43
42
J a m e s , " T h e Will to Believe," in The Writings of William James, p . 718. J a m e s '
formulation here is clearly too individualistic, even to suit his own purposes. H e
notes a few pages later that these relations are largely set u p , not by conscious
choice, b u t by habitual factors, including " t h e circumpressure of our caste a n d set"
(ibid., p . 721). C o m p a r e the idea of a "real o p t i o n " in Bernard Williams, " T h e
T r u t h in Relativism," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), p p . 138-40.
43
R i c h a r d Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1982), p . 172.
God 51
PRAGMATIC RELATIVISM AND "BIBLICAL REALISM"
This pragmatic relativism, which has been developed more

consistently by the recent work of Rorty and others, was at
least implicit in James' work and helps to explain why the
American theologians hesitated to call their own way of think-
ing "pragmatism." Macintosh centered his objections to prag-
matism precisely on this point.
We need not jump to the conclusion, so characteristic of recent
pragmatism, that truth means no more than the practical value of
ideas, their "working in the way in which they set out to work." If
that were the case, truth might contradict truth and there could be
no guarantee in the nature of truth that any judgment was true
universally and permanently.44
Clearly, however, Macintosh's formulation of the problem is
not satisfactory, for it is difficult to see how any account of
theological truth compatible with the realists' insistence on the
importance of human experience could provide a "guarantee"
that a proposition is "true universally and permanently." The
solution to the problem of relativism cannot be simply to
reaffirm a religious absolutism.
What the theological realists were groping for in their
limited affirmations of pragmatism was a way to state their
conviction that coherences tested by pragmatic methods may
not exhaust the meaning of'truth.' Contemporary pragmatists
who reject the relativism in Rorty's pragmatism supply this
statement in a distinction between 'truth' and 'justified belief.'
Given the beliefs and purposes I now share with others in my
society, I may be entirely justified in believing that a certain
pattern of behavior indicates a morally culpable moral weak-
ness of character. People once believed this about certain forms
of mental illness. Today, we are justified in believing that these
episodes are the result of chemical events in the brain that are
not subject to voluntary control by the individual who suffers
from them. We do not, however, deal with this change in
44
Macintosh, "Experimental Realism in Religion," in Religious Realism, p. 331.
beliefs by saying that people are free to choose whichever

explanation works best for them. Neither do we say that it used
to be true that mental illness was a moral problem, but it isn't
true anymore. Nor do we, except in a dither of philosophically
induced uncertainty, mutter about "truth contradicting
truth." What we say is that the older beliefs about mental
illness, though they may have been justified at the time, were
false. We also say that the beliefs we are presently justified in
holding about mental illness are true, though experience and
history warn us that we may be wrong about this. This sounds
complex, but it does not require any changes in the way we
ordinarily understand the meaning of 'true' and 'false.' As
Jeffrey Stout puts it:
Some of the sentences, including moral ones, that we are now war-
ranted in asserting and justified in believing are not true. We know
this from observing human history and learning the facts of finitude.
If we knew which ones were false, we would immediately cease
believing them. But knowing that some are false isn't the same as
knowing which are false. So we go on accepting each one as true until
we have reason for doubting something in particular. And all the
while, we also believe that something, we know not what, will need
correction.45
Justification, in short, is relative to our place in history and
society and the particular sets of beliefs that place offers us. A
pragmatist justifies beliefs by testing their coherence with other
beliefs, but a pragmatist who is also a realist understands that
coherence alone does not make a justified belief true. True
beliefs tell us how things in the world really are. 46
The distinction between 'truth' and 'justified belief that
figures prominently in contemporary philosophy has no exact
parallel in the earlier theological realism. The theological
45
Stout, Ethics After Babel, p . 25.
46
C o m p a r e J a m e s ' account of " t r u e beliefs" on page 47 above. Another w a y to
express this point would be to say that understanding what a statement means
depends on understanding the conditions under which it would be true, not on
understanding the conditions u n d e r which we could verify that it is true. T h e
philosophical implications of this subtle, b u t very important, distinction a r e intro-
duced in Robert L. Arrington, Rationalism, Realism, and Relativism: Perspectives in
Contemporary Moral Epistemology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989),
pp. 119-31.
God 53
realists did, however, make a similar effort to put a pragmatic
method at the service of a realist, rather than a relativist,
account of knowledge in theology and ethics. Reinhold
Niebuhr, especially, used that framework to interpret the nar-
ratives and symbols that present distinctive Christian claims
about God. The pragmatism of the theologians thus includes
what Niebuhr called a "biblical realism" 47 that employs prag-
matic criteria for the assessment of particular doctrinal and
moral ideas without accepting the relativism that would follow
from making pragmatism the test of truth.
As Niebuhr developed this point in his later work, his appre-
ciation of the pragmatic criteria of coherence and effectiveness
was balanced by an awareness that these considerations are
often least effective in responding to new evidence and new
interpretations that challenge accepted patterns of thought
and action. "The effort to establish simple coherence may
misinterpret specific realities in order to fit them into a sys-
tem." 48 Making coherence the basic test of truth limits truth to
what the prevailing system of concepts can accommodate. New
discoveries that undermine old categories and mysteries that
stretch the limits of our comprehension become indistinguish-
able from mere nonsense.
By contrast, the realist acknowledges from the outset that
there are realities independent of our knowledge that may be
only partly grasped, or perhaps completely missed, by prevail-
ing systems of thought. Realism thus guards against premature
narrowing of our thought by the rigid application of methods
that identify truth with the results of methodologically correct
investigations.
Niebuhr's reasons for insisting on the limits of coherence,
however, have as much to do with morals as with method. If he
criticizes the coherent scientism that misinterprets the experi-
ences of religion, he is even more concerned with the coheren-
47
R e i n h o l d N i e b u h r , " C o h e r e n c e , Incoherence, a n d Christian F a i t h , " in Christian
Realism and Political Problems, p . 165. Obviously, w h a t N i e b u h r intends here is a kind
of epistemological realism which h e finds implicit in the way the biblical writers
a p p r o a c h the world. H e does not m e a n that the biblical text itself provides some
privileged access to reality.
48
Ibid., p. 155.
ces of religious dogmatism that yield a rigid certainty of belief

and a certain eagerness to impose the system on others. Nie-
buhr's own understanding of the mythic element in every
Christian affirmation is a way of insisting on the difference
between the truth about the reality of God and the beliefs
about God which a careful testing in experience allows us to
hold.
Realistic theology thus rejects the interpretations that leap
from the diversity of beliefs to a theory of relativism, but it must
be equally critical of the moral certainty to which religious
communities are susceptible. When a religious institution
claims "unconditioned truth for its doctrines and uncon-
ditioned moral authority for its standards," it becomes "just
another tool of human pride." 49 The consequences of this pride
include not only an intensification of conflicts between relig-
ious points of view, but an erosion of the religious community's
capacity to think critically about its own life.
REALISTIC RETICENCE
Up to this point, the practical conclusions of the "biblical

realist" seem to come close to the judgments of Stout and other,
more skeptical critics, who doubt that religious claims have
any positive contribution to make to public discourse, and who
fear that they may prove intractably divisive. A kind of self-
constraint that draws back from absolute claims is the episte-
mological stance appropriate to a democratic society. Real
problems are solved in terms of the interests at stake in par-
ticular cases, and local coherences may be all we need to
resolve those conflicts. We want, of course, to avoid the cynical
manipulation that cobbles together a "moral" argument that
is nothing more than a disguise for self-interest, but when
sincere and thoughtful people identify points of agreement that
resolve the conflict between them and allow them to get on
with their other pursuits, is that not sufficient? What makes
agreement possible in a free, pluralistic society is what John
49
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 201-2.
God 55
Rawls has recently labeled the "overlapping consensus"

between the different moral beliefs which more limited sub-
communities hold, perhaps for quite different reasons.50
Happily, most of these groups identify as basic a set of moral
beliefs and practices that are widely shared, and most of them
have adopted a tolerant attitude toward diversity of beliefs and
practices on less important questions.
This emphasis on diversity and consensus in moral discourse
provides, on its own terms, a minimal answer to Stout's ques-
tion of what theistic references add to discussion in a secular,
pluralistic society in which agreements about religion are gen-
erally absent. The minimal answer is that a moral and theo-
logical realism of the sort that Reinhold Niebuhr elaborates
demonstrates that religious thinking need not be dogmatic or
divisive, and that when it is not, it can be admitted to the
public discussion along with all the other participants. To
Stout, the philosopher of religion who asks what theism contri-
butes to the public discussion, we may respond with Stout, the
political philosopher, that the point is not contribution, but
participation.
If the aim of public discussion is to identify elements of a
consensus to which persons will agree for different reasons,
rather than to offer reasons for choices one way or another,
there is no reason to exclude those whose reasons may be
religious, unless these religious persons, by an intolerant
demand for consensus on their own terms, exclude them-
selves.51 On the other hand, there are good practical reasons to
invite them into the discussion, since their participation in the
"overlapping consensus" may be important to its effectiveness
50
J o h n Rawls, "Justice as Fairness: Political N o t Metaphysical," Philosophy and Public
Affairs 14 (1985), 225. See also Stout, Ethics After Babel, p p . 227-28.
51
T h e case is clearly very much different if the public discussion is understood as one
in which reasons for choice are articulated rather than one in which points of
consensus are identified. I n that case, the question whether religious reasons can, in
principle, be acceptable to those who do not share the religious premises remains an
important question, even where the religious believers are clearly committed to
tolerance a n d diversity. See the important recent discussions in Kent Greenawalt,
Religious Convictions and Political Choice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988);
and Robert Audi, "The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of
Citizenship," Philosophy and Public Affairs 18 (Summer, 1989), 259-96.
as an instrument of social harmony. If that entails listening
politely while they speak of God and occasionally sing a hymn
or two, no harm is done and much good may accrue.
Niebuhr's understanding of public discourse sometimes
claims no more than this, and his political realism leads him to
suggest that asking for more definitive public choices might, in
fact, be a dangerous move. It tempts us to moral absolutisms
that render communities intolerant and coercive.
It is probably true that the health of a democratic society depends
more upon the spirit of forbearance with which each side tolerates the
irreducible ideological preferences of the other than upon some
supposed scientific resolution of them, because the scientific resolu-
tion always involves the peril that one side or the other will state its
preferences as if they were scientifically validated value judgments.52
A MEANINGFUL UNIVERSE
Reticence in pressing one's own claims and a tolerance for

those of others cannot, however, provide for theological realism
the only response to the problem of the diversity of beliefs. Part
of our insistence on our own beliefs, no doubt, is an urge to
dominate others by whatever means we have at our disposal.
That must be controlled for the sake of social cooperation. Part
of it, however, derives from an urge to truth. "We instinctively
assume that there is only one world and that it is a cosmos,
however veiled and unknown its ultimate coherences, incon-
gruities, and contradictions in life, in history, and even in
nature." 53 We stick to what seems true to us because we do not
think that all beliefs are equal and that it makes no difference
what people believe, as long as they do not impose their ideas
on others. If we bother to communicate with others at all, it
must be in part because we seek to come to an understanding
with them about the world we all inhabit. 54
52
R e i n h o l d N i e b u h r , " I d e o l o g y a n d t h e Scientific M e t h o d , " i n Christian Realism and
Political Problems, p p . 9 0 - 9 1 .
53
Niebuhr, "Coherence, Incoherence, and Christian Faith," p. 155.
54
J i i r g e n H a b e r m a s , i n his theory of " c o m m u n i c a t i v e c o m p e t e n c e , " has developed a n
extensive reply t o social theories t h a t r e d u c e h u m a n interests to t h e technical
control of physical o r h u m a n resources. T h e s e views, H a b e r m a s suggests, ignore
God 57
The effort to establish coherence among diverse cognitive

claims is matched by a human concern for a morally coherent
universe. Here, too, tolerance may be a social necessity, but
stopping at that point leaves out of account a basic concern to
arrive at moral agreement. As Niebuhr put it in An Interpretation
of Christian Ethics, "Moral life is possible at all only in a
meaningful existence. Obligation can be felt only to some
system of coherence and some ordering will. Thus moral obli-
gation is always an obligation to promote harmony and to
overcome chaos." 55
The argument of those sentences is highly compressed, but it
is crucial to the way that theological realism shapes Niebuhr's
understanding of ethics. Let us try to develop the point in more
detail.
Moral resolutions of conflict are possible because moral
obligations override particular interests. What distinguishes a
moral resolution56 from an economic, political, or military
resolution is the appeal to a principle of obligation that the
parties acknowledge they are obliged to follow despite damage
to their more immediate interests and desires. We must do
justice, even when it is costly. We must attend to our responsi-
bilities, even when there are other things that we would prefer
to do. Moral resolutions do not represent the triumph of one
interest over another. Rather, the conflict between interests
has been subordinated to a higher law which both
acknowledge.
Such resolutions are no doubt rare in human affairs,
especially in the affairs of such large and powerful entities as
nations, corporations, and political parties. Indeed, a certain
sort of critical perspective, which Niebuhr would label
equally important and logically more fundamental interests in knowledge and
communication. See Jiirgen Habermas, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans.
Thomas McCarthy (Theory of Communicative Action, I; Boston: Beacon Press,
1984), pp. 273-86.
55
N i e b u h r , An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p . 6 3 .
56
H e r e I use the phrase " m o r a l resolution" in a specific sense to refer to solutions that
are based o n a direct appeal to moral obligations. T h e r e is also a more general sense
in which the outcome of an economic, political, or military conflict is moral if the
conflict has been fairly fought, according to just rules, and in ways that did n o h a r m
to innocent third parties, etc.
"cynical," will insist that moral solutions are nothing more

than frauds, perpetrated on the unwary by those who are
skillful in using moral language to their own ends, or powerful
enough to enforce acquiescence to their moral pieties. A differ-
ent sort of challenge is posed, however, by critics who point to
the limits of serious attempts at moral solutions, and it is this
challenge which is more important for the present argument.
What these critics remind us is that even when interests appar-
ently yield to obligations, some of these solutions turn out in the
end simply to pit a larger self-interest against the interests of
some other party, perhaps even one not apparently involved in
the initial conflict. Thus, when factory owners and workers
come to agreement on a just wage that resolves the conflict
between them, they may perpetuate the exploitation of poor
laborers in another country who provide the raw materials for
their industry.
Unlike the cynics, the critics who introduce this historical or
contextual note into our understanding of moral resolutions do
not aim to undermine our confidence in morality altogether,
and there is much in their caution about the limits of the moral
resolutions that a realist must affirm. The irony of attempts to
do justice that end up working injustice in distant places would
not be lost on Reinhold Niebuhr. Nevertheless, we must under-
stand from the outset that if these ironies were all that our
efforts to do justice come to, there would, in Niebuhr's terms,
be no moral obligations.
To assert a moral obligation, as Niebuhr understands it, is
not merely to claim that there is an "overlapping consensus"
that encompasses the conflicting interests of the parties. Moral
obligations rest on an imagination that transcends existing
circumstances to envision conditions under which persons
could live together in mutual fulfillment, instead of antago-
nistic rivalry. Every specific formulation of those conditions
will, of course, be incomplete, but the moral obligation rests on
those interests that are not contingent and opposed, nor even
coincident and consensual, but universally human and in
harmony with one another.
Niebuhr suggested that the teaching of Jesus is morally
God 59
compelling because it presents this demand in an uncompro-

mising way. Drawing on the eschatological expectations of
prophetic faith, Jesus' ethics presents the law of God as a
demand for love which sets aside the constraints of history and
the requirements of prudent planning for the future. "It does
not establish a connection with the horizontal points of a
political or social ethic or with the diagonals which a pruden-
tial individual ethics draws between the moral ideal and the
facts of a given situation. It has only a vertical dimension
between the loving will of God and the will of man." 57 The
New Testament completely sets aside the requirements of self-
interest and the coincidental convergences of group interests,
to envision an ultimate harmony of life with life.
Niebuhr's Christian Realism is well known for insisting that
Jesus' ethics of love is not a "simple possibility."58 The distance
between the absolute requirements of love and any program of
action we can put into effect must not be diminished. What we
must stress at present is not the Realists' familiar gap between
love and practice, but the less familiar point that the distance
that elevates the law of love to an impossible ideal char-
acterizes all moral obligation. That is why people respond to
the moral teaching of Jesus, despite the obvious difficulties of
living up to his demands. Ordinary people understand Jesus
better than theorists who are concerned to reconcile the moral
obligation with the requirements of self-interest or prudence,
because they know that this reconciliation is impossible. Jesus'
uncompromised demands come closer to their intuitions about
morality, even though they may have no idea how they could
actually live by this law of love. "The real fact is that the
absolute character of the ethic of Jesus conforms to the actual
constitution of man and history, that is, to the transcendent
freedom of man over the contingencies of nature and the
necessities of time, so that only a final harmony of life with life
in love can be the ultimate norm of his existence." 59
The imaginative grasp of human unity which transcends the
57
N i e b u h r , An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p . 24.
58
N i e b u h r , The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 296.
59
Ibid., 1 1 , 5 0 - 5 1 .
differences imposed by nature and history suggests many prob-

lems for ethics: How shall we use it as a starting point for
specific actions? How shall we reconcile it with the require-
ments of social life and responsible leadership? How shall we
distinguish between genuine self-transcendence and the vanity
that blows our own wishes up to the proportions of eternity?
Many of these questions will occupy our attention in sub-
sequent chapters. For the moment, the task is to reconnect this
human unity that provides the basis for moral obligation with
the instinctive assumption that "there is only one world and
that it is a cosmos,"60 and to relate both ideas to the theological
realism we have been explicating in this chapter.
THE LAW OF LOVE

Reinhold Niebuhr's "Christian pragmatism" sets an exacting
standard for the justification of moral claims. Niebuhr's "law
of love" cannot be compared to Kant's categorical imperative,
a single rule formulated in ways that allow all claims to be
measured against it, but the idea that moral obligation
depends on a "meaningful universe" requires that any par-
ticular moral claim find its place in a more and more extensive
system of coherent beliefs. Prevailing moral convictions, beliefs
about the facts, and the interests of the parties involved are all
included in this coherence, but the law of love requires that in
addition to being tested against one another, these beliefs should
be tested against the moral convictions of other communities,
and against claims that might be made by other groups and
interests. Because there is no single formula by which this
coherence can be established, our assertions must always be
tentative and subject to revision, but only those claims that
show substantial promise of coherence with this larger, more
inclusive set of considerations can count as establishing moral
obligations.
In the search for usable moral ideas, we cannot arbitrarily
stop at the boundaries of our own moral community. Once we
60
See page 56 above.
God 61
have settled what morality in our local situation is, we must
still ask how those moral beliefs cohere with moral beliefs in
other settings. That question may arise in urgent practical
forms, when business or personal relationships cross national
and cultural boundaries, or when groups with different origins
and expectations find themselves living together in one city or
one neighborhood; but even where the question is not a "living
option," 61 the intellectual issue persists.
The Christian Realist's "law" of love is less a rule for
adjudicating these conflicts than a refusal to accept a judgment
of incoherence as the obvious answer in cases of moral conflict.
The relativist assumes that where we cannot establish coher-
ence, we must accept incoherence as a fact. The realist uses the
distinction between truth and justified belief to give an account
of moral conflicts which takes those conflicts seriously, but
which does not destroy the "meaningful universe" which Rein-
hold Niebuhr's account of moral obligation presupposes.
Justified beliefs may conflict with one another. What we
learn about human behavior from a carefully constructed
psychological experiment or sociological study may not corres-
pond to what our own experience has taught us, or to what
"common sense" leads us to expect.62 A justifiable response to
physical attack in an ethic of non-violent resistance - turn the
other cheek - differs from the response required by a prudent
ethic of mutuality - give as good as you get - and from that
justified by a norm of honor based on vengeance - impose on
the aggressor more harm than has been wreaked on you. A
realist must suppose that while all of these positions can be
justified, they cannot all be true. The aim of inquiry is there-
fore to get beyond the multiplicity of justified beliefs, but we
must also acknowledge the limits on our capacity to do so. The
more extensive and developed our systems of coherence
61
See page 50 above.
62
Social science research usually describes such results as "counterintuitive," suggest-
ing that the research p r o g r a m yields reasoned judgments, while personal experience
or common sense rests on unsupported "intuitions." I n point of fact, of course, our
reports of personal experience a n d of common sense are also systems of justified
beliefs, although the procedures and criteria of justification may be quite different
from those of experimental social science.
become, the less likely it is that we can resolve the differences

between them simply by collapsing one into the other.
There are configurations and structures which stand athwart every
rationally conceived system of meaning and cannot be appreciated in
terms of the alternative efforts to bring the structure completely into
one system or the other. The primary example is man himself, who is
both in nature and above nature and who has been alternately
misunderstood by naturalistic and idealistic philosophies.63
At this point, we must appreciate the importance to a way of
thinking that is both pragmatic and realistic of those construc-
tions which are at first glance quite unrealistic, namely those
myths, symbols, and other forms of expression in which we
apprehend a unity of meaning that we cannot completely
formulate as a system of coherence.
Myth and symbol become especially relevant when we turn
to those systems of metaphysics and theology which attempt to
provide comprehensive accounts of reality, to establish a
system of coherence in which all justified beliefs hold together.
Like all human investigations, these metaphysical systems init-
ially measure their successes by the coherence they achieve.
Unless the limits of coherence are appreciated, however, our
systematic thinking may lead to premature rationalizations
that achieve intellectual coherence by eliminating important
features of the world of experience. Historic Christianity, with
its emphasis on "the unique, the contradictory, the paradox-
ical, and the unresolved mystery," seems at first primitive
compared to idealistic philosophical systems and monistic
religions that make an effort "to present the world and life as a
unified whole and to regard all discords and incongruities as
provisional or illusory."64 These systems, however, invariably
fail to grasp their object, and the coherences they define leave
out important elements of the experience they seek to explain.
The closest we can come to a comprehensive statement will be
one that incorporates and affirms the truth of several of the
ways in which the ultimate order may be understood and the
63
N i e b u h r , " C o h e r e n c e , Incoherence, a n d Christian F a i t h , " in Christian Realism and
64
Ibid., p . 179.
God 63
tensions and conflicts of human experience resolved. The most

coherent theological statement, that is to say, will be one that
includes an element of incoherence.
To say that an appropriate effort to symbolize a ground of
coherence that unites reality as a whole invariably exceeds the
possibilities of complete rational systematization, and so
includes discordant elements of human experience, is not to say
that any symbols will do. Myths and symbols must be evalu-
ated as other efforts to apprehend reality are, by their ability to
make sense of a range of particular experiences, and especially
by their ability to guide action in terms of larger goals that
unify more specific human aims. "In short, the situation is that
the ultrarational pinnacles of Christian truth, embodying
paradox and contradiction and straining at the limits of ration-
ality, are made plausible when understood as the keys which
make the drama of human life and history comprehensible and
without which it is either given a too-simple meaning or falls
into meaninglessness."65
RADICAL MONOTHEISM
Throughout this chapter, we have been delineating a version of

theological realism which makes sense of the cautious affir-
mation of philosophical pragmatism by the American theo-
logical realists and of the modified pragmatic method by which
Reinhold Niebuhr sought to assess the relevance of "inherited
dogmas and generalizations" to the "complex issues of
economics and politics."66 With this more systematic statement
of the method in place, we are in a position to return to the
theological affirmations themselves.
Theological realism, as Macintosh presented it, begins with
the reality of God. A comprehensive account of our experience
(including our religious experiences) permits us to affirm "the
reality of a religious Object, such as may appropriately be
called God." 67 Where Macintosh moved cautiously from
experience to the reality of God, Niebuhr moved boldly from
66
65 Ibid., p. 185. See page 48 above.
67
Macintosh,
Ma< ed., Religious Realism, p. v.
the reality of God to experience. 68 "Biblical realism" passes the
pragmatic test because the idea of one God who is the ground
of all order and coherence explains the order in our experience,
allows us to affirm that the order is more basic than the chaos
which we also experience, and warns us that the final ordering
of reality is both a fulfillment and a contradiction of the order
which we know. The law of love expresses the ethical position
that is coherent with this reality.
The ethic ofJesus is the perfect fruit of prophetic religion. Its ideal of
love has the same relation to the facts and necessities of human
experience as the God of prophetic faith has to the world. It is drawn
from, and relevant to, every moral experience. It is immanent in life
as God is immanent in the world. It transcends the possibilities of
human life in its final pinnacle as God transcends the world.69
Not every expression of prophetic faith, of course, achieves
this ideal of comprehensiveness. Much of the record of historic
Christianity, and of the biblical record itself, is a documen-
tation of what H. Richard Niebuhr would later call "heno-
theism," belief in a single deity closely tied to the values and
the fate of a particular people. "Radical monotheism," by
contrast, is faith in a God who cannot be identified with any
local reality. In this concept, H. Richard Niebuhr sums up
much of the religious realism that had entered American
theology with the Younger Theologians. That is not to say that
he thought that radical monotheism had triumphed, either in
American religion or in the prophetic tradition generally. Even
in the most profound religious reflections, he suggested, we are
acquainted with that faith "more as hope than as datum, more
perhaps as a possibility than as an actuality." 70
Nevertheless, radical monotheism provides the interpreta-
tive key that allows us to construe the coherences of experience
and the connection between human lives in more than local
and relative terms. Reinhold Niebuhr begins with the impulse
68
For a more detailed, and somewhat different, account of the differences between the
theological realism of the N i e b u h r brothers a n d that of their mentor, see S. M a r k
Heim, "Prodigal Sons: D . C. Macintosh a n d the Brothers N i e b u h r , " Journal of
Religion, 65 (July, 1985), 336-58.
69
70
H . R i c h a r d Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism, p . 3 1 .
God 65
to form coherences and find order that is always part of human
experience, but he interprets it in the light of a theological idea
which demands that unity and order reach through the whole
of reality, not just through those parts that happen to be
present to our experience. Bringing order to discrepant per-
ceptions, connecting mental experience to external reality,
reinterpreting first impressions to eliminate incongruent data -
all these are ways in which the mind transcends immediate
experience to form an idea of a real world that also transcends
the experiencing mind. The reality of God suggests further that
this ordering and unifying might be extended indefinitely,
insofar as all things could be ordered in relation to the One
God who is the source of their reality.
We need to be clear, again, about the direction of the
argument that yields this possibility. It is the idea of One God
which allows us to interpret human conflict in the light of an
ultimate harmony of life with life, not the proximate experi-
ences of harmony which require or permit us to posit an
ultimate unity. Not every pragmatic account of experience, not
even every pragmatic account of religious experience, ends in
monotheistic faith. William James, for example, regarded
pluralism as the natural conclusion to be drawn from atten-
tiveness to shifting human realities, and he treated monotheism
as an exaggeration of the more limited idea of God that is
supported in experience.
Their words may have sounded monistic when they said "there is no
God but God"; but the original polytheism of mankind has only
imperfectly and vaguely sublimated itself into monotheism, and
monotheism itself, so far as it was religious and not a scheme of
classroom instruction for the metaphysicians, has always viewed God
as but one helper, primus inter pares, in the midst of all the shapers of
the great world's fate.71
The Niebuhrs might agree that some sort of polytheism, or
perhaps more accurately henotheism, summarizes what most
people have made of their religion. In contrast to this widely
shared theism, which circumscribes the idea of God by what
71
William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1907), p. 298.
can be seen in events, monotheism is a theological realism
which holds that the idea of God tells us something about the
character of reality as a whole, something congruent with that
part of it which we directly experience, but extending beyond
that to encompass a unity that we have not experienced and
cannot reduce to a completely rational formulation. Such an
idea of God must be tested and refined against the world of
ordinary experience, but the idea also shapes expectations and
directs action in the light of hopes which are not predictable
outcomes of any set of existing circumstances.
If James' pragmatism makes it rational to believe, and to
act on the belief, that our values are supported by facts and
that our efforts to realize them are not ultimately futile,
radical monotheism requires that we construe our values and
aims in such a way that their realization could be consistent
with the values and aims of all other persons. In cases of con-
flict, James' pluralism allows a duality of good and evil in
which the evil is simply to be resisted and, in the end, extir-
pated. We proceed toward the goal "by dropping it out alto-
gether, throwing it overboard and getting beyond it, helping
to make a universe that shall forget its very place and
name." 72
For radical monotheism, the case is more complex, as H.
Richard Niebuhr indicates in his essay, "The Center of
Value." Here, all values must be coherent in some way, or
they could not be values at all. What makes an aim or an
object "good" is its relationship not to a system of aspirations
defined by reference to an individual perspective, but "by ref-
erence to a being for which other beings are good." 73 Indi-
viduals may pursue aims that set them in irreconcilable con-
flicts with their neighbors, but theological realism insists that
these aims must be evaluated in light of a harmony of life with
72
Ibid., p. 297. This dualism of good and evil was not shared by all of the early
American pragmatists. Peirce, for example, explicitly denies it, arguing that love
must ultimately overcome and incorporate even that which appears to negate it.
See John E. Smith, Purpose and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978),
P- l 6 9 -
73
H . R i c h a r d N i e b u h r , " T h e C e n t e r of V a l u e , " in Radical Monotheism, p . 100.
God 67
life which must be possible if all of these valuing subjects are

related as objects of value to God.
REALISM AND THE LAW OF LOVE

Christian Realism, from its earliest formulations in the works of
Macintosh, the Niebuhrs, and others of the Younger Theo-
logians, has traced a complex relationship between the reality
of God and moral obligation. The complexity precludes any
simple answer to Jeffrey Stout's question about what theism
adds to our understanding of human experience, but on the
basis of what we have seen we can begin to provide a Christian
Realist's response that moves beyond the minimal participa-
tion we have already claimed on the basis of pragmatic poli-
tics.74
Moral obligation is not meaningless apart from God. Speci-
fic moral obligations that transcend immediate interests can be
defined without reference to divine commands or an ultimate
center of value. Rather, God provides a reality in which a
comprehensive unity of moral meanings is conceivable. It
makes sense to seek genuine harmony between persons and
groups, rather than to manage their conflicts prudently or to
surrender to superior force, because human aspirations and
values can be unified by the value they have in relationship to
God. This unity both completes and transcends the partial
resolutions of differences we anticipate in nature and history,
and it impels those who apprehend it in faith to seek forms of
justice that go beyond present expectations, even when that
search involves considerable risk to themselves. The reality of
God means that love, and not prudence, is the law of life.75
The claims of radical monotheism may at first seem extrava-
gant in the light of Christian Realism's pragmatic method of
assessing ideas in social and historical contexts and in relation
to human purposes. The moral truth on which our obligations
ultimately rest is the value that all things have in relationship
74
See page 55 above.
75
N i e b u h r , An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p . 6 5 . See also N i e b u h r , The Nature and
Destiny of Man, I, 293-96; II, 68-69, 244-46.
to God and the unity of lives and aims that is possible for all
persons in relation to this center of value. Is this not a
"God's-eye point of view" of moral truth? Is this not the
perspective precluded by the pragmatist's understanding of the
relativity of all our claims and insights?
The point of Christian Realism, however, is precisely to
insist that the "God's-eye point of view" can never be one's
own. God, as the center of value, is necessary to make sense of
the Christian Realist's distinctive understanding of moral
truth, which is more complete than any of the harmonies of
nature or history. What makes the Christian Realist also a
moral realist is precisely the claim that this moral truth exists
independently of our ideas and theories about it. What we
have are only justified moral beliefs, ideas about the require-
ments of love that are also products of our own culture and
history, and that turn out to be sometimes closer, sometimes
farther away from the moral truth.
Radical monotheism need make no absolute claims for its
own moral insights. Christian Realists can engage in dialogue
that may change particular moral beliefs without fear that they
are thereby surrendering moral truth. Nevertheless, the
concept of a reality made morally meaningful by a coherence
of lives and purposes that has no ultimate limit will have little
value for the thinking of persons who do not share its theo-
logical premises. Whatever concept of moral obligation they
may follow will necessarily be constructed on other grounds.
What interest would they have in moral ideas framed in
relation to a harmony of purposes that they suspect does not
exist?
The answer to that question must be sought in the pragmatic
method that links Niebuhr's "biblical realism" to other forms
of moral realism, and to a reflective method of forming and
refining moral beliefs in relation to widely shared experience.
Because God relates to the moral life not with a commandment
that shatters other plans of action and evaluation, but with a
claim about the unity of moral obligation that clarifies and
interprets ordinary moral experience, the first task of theo-
logical ethics, like many other systems of ethics, is to make sense
God 69
of what is going on. 76 That is a task that can be widely shared,

and the results of Christian reflection should be of interest to
many others, even if they want to evaluate the plausibility of
the Christian perspective on other grounds. 77
Much of this reflection is a common human task, which
proceeds on the basis of assumptions, knowledge, and material
constraints which will be widely shared in a given cultural and
historical context. Knowledge about the natural environment,
about the working of economic systems, or about the history
and development of social institutions may change our assess-
ments of moral obligations. Especially important, too, is an
understanding of human nature, of what persons are likely to
want and to do, and of the circumstances that enable them to
live well and happily. On all these points, as moral theologies
that include an idea of natural law have long insisted, an
adequate Christian ethic must incorporate insights available to
all reasonable and thoughtful observers.78
There will, of course, be points at which Christian Realism's
confidence in a morally "meaningful universe" leads to an
understanding of events at variance with the interpretations of
those who rely on more limited coherences in nature or history.
Nevertheless, because the ultimate moral truth is also a key to
understanding particular events, the Christian insight should
not be incomprehensible, even to those who consider it wrong.
They may shake their heads over these Christians who insist on
talking of love when concepts of power and interest alone
would do, but from a pragmatic perspective, the Christian
understanding of events is also available to be tested relative to
76
Cf. H . R i c h a r d N i e b u h r , The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy
(New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 63.
77
To say that this reflective method is widely shared does not, of course, imply that it
is universal, and those who flatly reject it will have little interest in the interpreta-
tions of experience that Christian Realism yields. The uninterested parties will
include reductive materialists, who doubt not only the reality of God, but the
possibility of any human interests that transcend individual or species survival. Also
uninterested will be those whose understandings of religious ethics rest on obedience
to divine commands independent of an interpretation of circumstances or on a
community of faith whose understanding of the world has nothing to gain from
engagement with other ways of looking at it.
78
This point will be central to our discussion in Chapter Three.
the alternatives by its power to guide choice and action in the

present.
Reinhold Niebuhr understood the importance of this prag-
matic assessment of faith, both for the Christian and for society.
It cannot be the final word, for the moral truth of radical
monotheism transcends every particular context in which it
may be partly apprehended.
Nevertheless, a limited rational validation of the truth of the Gospel is
possible. It consists of a negative and a positive approach to the
relation of the truth of the Gospel to other forms of truth, and of the
goodness of perfect love to historic forms of virtue. Negatively, the
Gospel must and can be validated by exploring the limits of historic
forms of wisdom and virtue. Positively, it is validated when the truth
of faith is correlated with all truths which may be known by scientific
and philosophical disciplines and proves itself a resource for coord-
inating them into a deeper and wider system of coherence.79
It is faith as a resource for deeper and wider systems of coher-
ence that made possible the insights that marked Reinhold
Niebuhr as one of the leading political thinkers of his day.
While we must allow more credit than he would claim for his
individual genius and ceaseless effort, understanding social
issues and human problems remains an important task for all
people of faith, and their successes in that interpretative task
remain the most persistent evidence for that morally meaning-
ful universe in which they believe they labor.
Still, the positive validation that religious leadership in
society provides does not exhaust the things that religious
people do, nor does it ever secure a realization of the law of love
that finally orders their doings. Love is, from the perspective of
society and history, often defeated. It is perhaps even more
often, from that same perspective, superfluous. Conflicts are
resolved, and some justice is even done, by a rough balance of
power and interest, locally established and frequently revised.
It is only in relation to the more comprehensive ideal of love
that these solutions begin to appear limited and inadequate,
providing the negative validation of which Niebuhr wrote.
79
Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 152.
God 71
The law of love is not a norm of history in the sense that historical
experience justifies it. Historical experience justifies more complex
social strategies in which the self, individual and collective, seeks both
to preserve its life and to relate it harmoniously to other lives. But
such strategies of mutual love and systems of justice cannot maintain
themselves without inspiration from a deeper dimension of history. A
strategy of brotherhood which has no other resource but historical
experience degenerates from mutuality to a prudent regard for the
interests of the self; and from the impulse towards community to an
acceptance of the survival impulse as ethically normative.80
Much of the rest of this book will be devoted to identifying the
coherences which Christian Realism suggests as a basis for
positive implementation of the law of love in our present
circumstances. We must first, however, turn in Chapter Two to
a closer consideration of the way in which this realistic under-
standing of moral obligation differs from other possibilities that
have emerged in Christian ethics since Niebuhr's time.
80
Niebuhr, The Mature and Destiny of Man, II, 96.
CHAPTER 2
Ethics
THEORY AND PRACTICE

In an important essay published in 1964, the philosopher
William K. Frankena sought to clarify the normative role of
"love" in Christian thought. "Love" appears in the literature
both as a duty and as a goal, Frankena wrote, and if we are to
understand the differences between Christian writers, we must
make an effort to identify their theories as deontological or
teleological, and to specify what sort of deontology or tele-
ology, exactly, the author has in mind.1 To make his point,
Frankena analyzed and classified the ideas of most of the
important Christian ethicists during the previous couple of
decades, associating each with a consistent theoretical position.
There was one important exception: "As for Reinhold
Niebuhr, he appears to me to suggest, in one place or another,
almost every one of the positions I have described; whether this
spells richness or confusion of mind, I shall leave for others to
judge." 2
Whether or not Niebuhr was confused, he was certainly
indifferent to the categories that Frankena made dominant in
the American study of ethics.3 A generation of students trained
1
William K. Frankena, "Love and Principle in Christian Ethics," in Alvin Plantinga,
ed., Faith and Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), pp. 203-25.
2
Ibid., p. 220.
3
The influence of the terminology in Frankena's Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1963) on the teaching of ethics both in philosophy and in religious
studies has been large. Much of that influence in religious studies was due to Paul
Ramsey's appreciation for Frankena's 1964 essay and to Ramsey's subsequent
insistence that Christian ethics take the philosophical categories seriously. See Paul
72
Ethics 73
to recognize act- and rule-deontology and act- and rule-
teleology has had no better luck than Frankena himself in
locating Reinhold Niebuhr in one of those pigeonholes.4
Niebuhr's own inclination was not to elaborate a theory or a
system, but to sketch the perspective that marks the thinking of
a Christian Realist. For him, realism was a habit of asking
certain questions and of questioning the answers one was likely
to get in turn. One important expression of that perspective
appears in his 1957 formulation of "Christian pragmatism:" 5
We have now come to the fairly general conclusion that there is no
"Christian" economic or political system. But there is a Christian
attitude toward all systems and schemes of justice. It consists on the
one hand of a critical attitude toward the claims of all systems and
schemes, expressed in the question whether they will contribute to
justice in a concrete situation; and on the other hand a responsible
attitude, which will not pretend to be God nor refuse to make a
decision between political answers to a problem because each answer
is discovered to contain a moral ambiguity in God's sight. We are
men, not God; we are responsible for making choices between greater
and lesser evils, even when our Christian faith, illuminating the
human scene, makes it quite apparent that there is no pure good in
history; and probably no pure evil, either. The fate of civilizations
may depend on these choices.6
With that much at stake, theoretical clarity took a back seat
to normative decisiveness; but Niebuhr was not without a
framework for his thought. Throughout his writings, he states
definite opinions about the place of reason in ethics, the source
and authority of moral obligation, and the relationship
between judgments of moral truth and judgments of prudence.
These are carried through consistently in his practical choices,
and they point us to an ethical theory of a quite specific sort,
though not one that fits neatly into Frankena's categories.
Ramsey, Deeds and Rules in Christian Ethics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1967), pp. 104-22.
4
Contrast this to the work of H. Richard Niebuhr. H. Richard criticized and revised
the philosophical categories, but he could and did clearly formulate their relation-
ship to his own position. See H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, pp. 47-68.
5
See page 48 above.
6
Niebuhr, "Theology and Political Thought in the Western World," in Faith and
Politics, p. 56.
It will be worth the trouble to step out of Reinhold Nie-

buhr's orientation toward practice long enough to reconstruct
this ethical theory, and that effort will occupy our attention
throughout this chapter. Two developments in particlar
prompt this investigation. First, the analytical vocabulary
which distinguishes normative ethics from metaethics and
neatly divides normative ethics into deontological and teleo-
logical theories has itself come under criticism in recent years
from both moral theologians and philosophers, who find the
interactions in moral life more dynamic and the distinctions
less precise than the prevailing categories have allowed.7 Upon
further consideration, Niebuhr's failure to fit those categories
neatly does indeed spell richness, and not confusion. Second,
the work of scholars in religious ethics today, while no longer
bound to the terminology of the 1960s, does appear rather
sharply divided between positions that might be labeled
"rationalism" and "narrativism." Niebuhr not only avoids the
neat categories of an earlier decade; he escapes this present
theoretical polarization as well.
The discussion in this chapter, then, has two principal parts.
First, we will consider the alternatives of ethical rationalism and
narrative ethics as these appear in religious ethics today, and we
will see why a Christian Realist might have reservations about
both positions. Then we will develop in more detail the ethical
theory that seems implicit in Niebuhr's realism, finding there a
form of ethical naturalism that is suited to the critical and
responsible attitude that Niebuhr sought to apply to the practi-
cal questions of politics and society.
RATIONALISM
The use of reason to resolve disputes and settle differences

between opposing points of view is characteristic of the
modern, scientific point of view. Some have relied on reason to
dissolve conflicts based on inherited dogmas and prejudices.
7
See, for example, Stuart Hampshire, Morality and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 10-17; Jeffrey Stout, The Flight from Authority
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 13-15.
Ethics 75
Reason allows us to come to agreement on the facts and to act
on a common understanding of the reality with which we have
to deal. A scientific method, rigorously and objectively applied,
should yield facts on which a sound decision can be based.
Others, by contrast, insist that what reason allows us to see is
that facts alone do not dictate actions, so that our moral
agreements are not about the facts, but agreements with one
another about acceptable courses of action. What we need are
mutual commitments in which the interests of all parties are
protected. In one version or another, reason thus contributes to
the solution of controversies that custom and authority cannot
untangle.
The appeal to reason in ethics is, of course, older than
modern empiricism. Aristotle and Aquinas believed that reason
is the distinctive human capacity that allows us to know the
good at which all human activity aims, and to choose the
effective means for realizing it. Because the good and the reason
which knows the good are identical in all human beings, we
have a common measure by which to assess different laws and
customs, and by which we can create a rule for action when
new situations arise that the old laws do not cover. Stoic and
Christian ideas of natural law proclaimed the universality of
reason and made it the basis for a universal moral community.
Contemporary ethical rationalism draws on these themes of the
universality of reason and its superiority to tradition and
authority, but it employs them in ethics in a quite specific way
that marks these theories off from other ways of thinking about
the place of reason in ethics. (Those who reject ethical ration-
alism are not, therefore, saying that reason has no place in
ethics, but only that the rationalists' particular way of formula-
ting that place is mistaken.) What contemporary ethical ration-
alists hold is that there is a logic that marks all legitimate claims
about moral obligation, so that the truth of those claims can be
settled by a formal examination of the claims themselves. To be
sure, we may still need to apply some method of scientific
reasoning to get the facts straight, but the moral question can
be settled on its own terms, independently of other questions
and other kinds of knowledge.
Philosophers disagree on exactly how to formulate this moral

logic. Generally, however, their theories involve appeal to a
rule that is implicit in the conscious choice of an action,
together with a principle of consistency that requires the agent
to apply that same rule to every choice, whether made by the
agent or by another. The obligation to follow the basic moral
rule thus rests neither on a specific choice, nor on the agent's
goals, but on a logical principle such that one can act against
the rule only on pain of self-contradiction.8 Modern confidence
in reason's power to clarify our thinking and make its processes
explicit here combines with the ancient emphasis on the uni-
versality of reason to create a basic rule of morality which
everyone is obliged to follow, and which provides a critical
principle against which all specific claims and counterclaims
about moral obligation can be measured.
Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals provides a
paradigm case of ethical rationalism. For Kant, truly free
choice must be unconstrained by fear of loss or hope of gain.
Once we understand that, we will see that a moral choice
cannot be dictated by any object or goal external to the action,
but depends on the logic of the "maxim" or rule of choice itself.
The maxim must be framed so as to require an action of us
without exception, in view of our rational understanding of the
rule itself, and not because we desire any of the results the
action promises. The only rules that will meet this test, of
course, are those that every rational being must acknowledge.
Hence the "categorical imperative" is (in one of Kant's several
formulations of it): "Act only on that maxim through which
you can at the same time will that it should become a universal
law." 9 Only if you can will that everyone should do as you are
about to do can the action be called "moral."
Kant believed that only the most basic moral requirements
would withstand this critical scrutiny. A strict, but limited set
8
This point is most clearly formulated in Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978). See also Derek Beyleveld, The Dialectical Necessity
of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), including Gewirth's
foreword to the Beyleveld volume.
9
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New
York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p. 89.
Ethics 77
of obligations would demand honesty and benevolence and
forbid self-destruction and the squandering of natural talents.10
Other customary requirements respecting social roles or
religious obligations presumably would not survive, and even
the requirements of prudence would be shown up as con-
straints observed by reasonable people who are concerned
about their own self-preservation, rather than genuine moral
requirements. For Kant, reason thus provides the critical prin-
ciple by which we can distinguish the real requirements of
morality from the demands of custom, self-interest, and
authority.
Although Kant argued that reason must presuppose an idea
of God to make sense of moral action in the face of the sacrifices
to our own immediate interests that morality often requires,11
ethical rationalism has often been understood as inimical to
traditional religious belief and practice. In rationalism, the
formulation of moral requirements proceeds by reason alone,
without direct reference to God's will or divine command-
ments, and actions undertaken simply because they are
required by God or by one's church have no moral value. The
ideal which emerges is that of independent, rational indi-
viduals, legislating their own morality without benefit of tradi-
tion or ceremony.
In the two centuries since Kant, however, religious thinkers
have discerned another possibility. In retrospect, it appears
that Kant's purely rational religion was strongly tinged with
the traditions of Lutheran piety in which he had been raised.
The very idea of what is rational, universal, and human in
Kant's works betrays its origins in an eighteenth-century
German university town and Baltic seaport.12
10
Ibid., pp. 89-91.
11
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (The Library
of Liberal Arts; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill), p. 130; also Religion Within the Limits
of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York:
Harper and Row, i960).
12
Because Kant deliberately avoids the use of illustrations and examples in his
best-known philosophical treatises, the specific, local elements in his notions of
rationality are not always seen by students whose readings are confined to the major
works. A few hours spent on the Lectures on Ethics or the Anthropology may dramati-
cally alter one's perception of Kant. See Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans.
If reason itself has a tradition, it may be that traditions —

and, specifically, religious traditions - can adopt, sustain, and
transmit to new generations the basic structure of moral
reason. This is the case which contemporary advocates of
ethical rationalism in religious ethics have argued. Ronald
Green, for example, discerns a "deep structure" in all of the
world's religious traditions which provides each of them with
the requirements of moral reason, ways of justifying these
demands, and ways of coping with humanity's persistent
failure to meet them:
Religion's deep structure has three essential elements:first,a method
of moral reasoning involving "the moral point of view"; second, a set
of beliefs affirming the reality of moral retribution; and third, a series
of "transmoral" beliefs that suspend moral judgment and retribution
when this is needed to overcome moral paralysis and despair. What-
ever their surface differences, religions contain these elements.13
Green's explorations of this "deep structure" range across
cultures from traditional Africa, to classical Hinduism, to
Western Christianity. John P. Reeder, Jr., confines his investi-
gations to Judaism and Christianity, and he sees a variety of
possibilities within those traditions, but he, too, points to a use
of reason in religion which discerns the requirements of the
moral law and justifies the possibilities of punishment and
forgiveness for those who fail to keep it.14 Instead of being
unenlightened alternatives to ethical rationalism, religious
traditions become pre-Enlightenment anticipations of it. The
reasoned formulation of moral requirements and the rational
justification of their demands are embedded in the beliefs and
practices of religion as surely as they are in Kantian moral
philosophy.
Louis Infield (New York: The Century Company, n.d.); Anthropology from a Prag-
matic Point of View, trans. Victor L. Dowdell (Carbondale, 111.: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1978).
13
Ronald M. Green, Religion and Moral Reason: A New Method for Comparative Study
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 3. See also his earlier Religious
Reason: The Rational and Moral Basis of Religious Belief (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1978).
14
John P. Reeder, Jr., Source, Sanction, and Salvation: Religion and Morality in Judaic and
Christian Traditions (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1988).
Ethics 79
In contemporary religious ethics, rationalism has been
developed principally as a method for comparative studies. In
the strong, Kantian form espoused by Green, however, it also
has local, practical implications. One thing that renders relig-
ion morally suspect in modern, pluralistic societies is the fear
that religions will impose unique and non-negotiable moral
demands on their adherents, demands that will prove irrecon-
cilable with the smooth and peaceful operation of the political
and economic institutions that make modern life possible.
The preoccupation with religious fundamentalism in recent
years reflects, in part, this concern that a closed moral system
may make demands on its adherents that wider social forces
will be unable to moderate. If it could be shown, however, that
religious ethics in all its various forms turns on the same set of
rationally justified moral requirements, the threat of unique
and unreasonable demands begins to recede. There may still
be practical problems in relating different experiences and
traditions, but there is no reason to expect ultimate conflict. If
religious leaders can be held accountable to generally shared
moral requirements, then we can ask them to respond to
rational criticism instead of demanding blind obedience from
their followers.
REALISM AND RATIONALISM
Perhaps, then, a Christian version of ethical rationalism pro-

vides the key to the critical and responsible attitude that
Reinhold Niebuhr sought. There are important points of con-
nection between Niebuhr's Christian Realism and contempo-
rary religious versions of ethical rationalism. Both are con-
cerned to identify ways of thinking that transcend individual
and cultural differences, and despite the obvious difficulties
that attend our efforts to formulate those human universals,
neither Christian Realists nor moral rationalists think that
those efforts are futile or that the results are without value. In
both cases, too, the theoretical interest in universal, rational
truth arises in part from a practical concern to get beyond the
deep and sometimes bloody disagreements that make it hard
for different religious groups to live together in social harmony.

From his earliest works, Niebuhr gave the critical use of
reason an important place among the "rational resources" for
life in a political community. The capacity to recognize and
defer to the legitimate claims of others depends heavily on a
sense of justice that is rooted in reason.
This sense ofjustice is a product of the mind and not of the heart. It is
the result of reason's insistence on consistency. One of Immanuel
Kant's two moral axioms: "Act in conformity with that maxim and
that maxim only which you can at the same time will to be universal
law" is simply the application to problems of conduct of reason's
desire for consistency.15
While Niebuhr is more often remembered for his warnings that
ideology and self-interest can distort reason than for his affir-
mations of Kantian consistency, one can affirm the importance
of reason in ethics without claiming that it is easy to be rational
in the ways that morality requires. Ronald Green, in fact,
makes this point in almost Niebuhrian terms:
Of course, no one can deny that it is extremely difficult to be
impartial ... Nevertheless, this serious practical problem does not
lessen the value of the moral point of view as a standard for measuring
conduct or as an ideal reference point for adjudicating disputes. When
we try to justify an action morally, we assume it to be one that anyone
looking at things impartially and objectively would approve. We may
delude ourselves about this, but the need to justify even selfish
conduct in this way is an inescapable accompaniment of human
reasoning, the homage, as La Rochefoucauld said, that vice offers to
virtue.16
On balance, of course, Reinhold Niebuhr could hardly be
called a Kantian. The critical standard of consistency, which
was for Kant the most important resource for personal and
social ethics, occupies for Niebuhr a much smaller place in the
moral life. It is, however, important to understand that the
differences between Christian Realism and ethical rationalism
are not the result of a frontal assault by Reinhold Niebuhr
against the claims of reason. On the general value of reason as
15
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, pp. 23-50.
16
Green, Religion and Moral Reason, p. 8.
Ethics 81
an objective standard and reference point for practical choices,
Niebuhr and the rationalists are agreed. The differences turn
on questions about the relationship between reason, morality,
and religion.
To begin with, there is little evidence in Reinhold Niebuhr's
works for a religious reason that lies beneath the surface of
religious differences. Niebuhr made no serious study of the
world's religions, and his approach to the differences between
them seems determined by an apologetic method that sees
them principally as examples of mistaken approaches to prob-
lems that Christianity has correctly solved. Particularly in his
early work, Niebuhr's treatment of non-Christian religions
echoes the work of liberal theologians who had accepted the
historical—critical approach to Christian origins, but still
believed it possible to mount a successful historical argument for
the superiority of Christianity, in place of the theological argu-
ment that had failed.17 In Niebuhr's later work, the explicit
references to Schweitzer and Toynbee fade, but the approach
remains the same. If Christianity is sometimes less rational
than other religious alternatives, then it is less rational just at
the points that give it a better grasp of the incongruities and
complexities of real life.18 Buddhism, in particular, remains a
shadowy image throughout Niebuhr's work, acquiring no his-
torical details of its own, serving only as a negative example of
the "mysticism" that disavows the reasoned search for
meaning within history.19 At points, Niebuhr seems almost to
argue for a negative image of Green's deep structure of relig-
ious reason. That is, Niebuhr has a concept of historical ration-
ality that he finds missing from all faiths except Christianity and
prophetic Judaism, whatever the surface similarities that may
unite them.
The Christian Realists are not good guides to the facts about
17
Reinhold Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion? (New York: Macmillan, 1928),
pp. 190-200.
18
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 14-15; "Coherence, Incoherence,
and Christian Faith," in Faith and Politics, p. 179.
19
Niebuhr, Does Civilization Need Religion? pp. 190—200; An Interpretation of Christian
Ethics, pp. 14-15; "Coherence, Incoherence, and Christian Faith," in Christian
Realism and Political Problems, p. 179; The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 13-14.
non-Christian religions, and their apologetic interests seem
heavy-handed and distorting in contrast to today's com-
parative methods, which aim at understanding the world of
experience of another faith. Niebuhr's focus on religious differ-
ences does, however, point to an important feature of his
pragmatic method. Having rejected a single, foundational
standard of measurement, the pragmatist must also avoid abso-
lute judgments that extend to all possible cases. Even when
comparative inquiry takes a normative turn, then, the issue is
the relative adequacy of available alternatives, not the abso-
lute superiority of one or another of them. Moreover, the
standard of adequacy is a practical assessment of human needs
and interests that is itself subject to revision and development.
Differences must be attended to, because it is only in those
differences that the specific features of any tradition or system
of belief clearly emerge, but the differences are not interpreted
as deviations from a single form which alone is rational. This
pragmatic method which attends to both similarities and
differences guides Niebuhr's work as a whole, and provides
many of his most penetrating insights. Unlike either ethical
rationalists, who see all moral, religious, and political systems
as variations on a single theme, or relativists, who see these
different ways of thought and action as largely incommensur-
able, the pragmatist finds them comparable.20 Different tradi-
tions share enough in human purposes that their adequacy to
those purposes can be compared.
Critics may argue that Niebuhr has, in effect, made his own
tradition the standard of that adequacy for all cases. That is a
perennial temptation for comparative studies, and one that we
slip into most easily when we are not well informed about the
other possibilities. Formally, however, Niebuhr's judgments
about other religions nearly always retain the pragmatic
method: there is a particular human practical purpose which
can be formulated independently of the traditions under con-
20
Todd D. Whitmore, "Christian Ethics and Pragmatic Realism: Philosophical
Elements of a Response Ethic" (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Chicago, 1990), pp. 64-67.
Ethics 83
sideration, and which upon examination Christianity proves to
serve better than the particular alternatives in view.
Both Niebuhr's understanding of non-Christian religions,
which was often incomplete, and his pragmatic method, which
was often implicit, concur in a more cautious approach to
claims about a common structure of religious reason than that
taken by contemporary religious rationalism. Niebuhr would
no doubt have been skeptical of the claim that all religions
share a common structure of reason.
What is more central to the ethics of Christian Realism,
however, is a different understanding of the three-way
relationship between religion, reason, and ethics. For the
ethical rationalist, reason can function as a critical standard for
assessing moral obligations because the requirements of
rational consistency are precisely what marks an obligation as
moral. The requirements of prudent self-interest, the disci-
plines of a religious self-denial, or the ritualized practices of a
community all may take on overtones of obligation, but they
are not authentic moral obligations. Moral obligations are
identified precisely by the logic that requires me to extend to
all other prospective agents the same rights I claim for myself,
or to impose on myself the same duties I would impose on
them.21 The ethical rationalist insists that to identify anything
else as the source of a genuine moral obligation confuses the
issue in ways that are apt to result in the imposition of super-
stition, tradition, or personal preferences in the name of moral
order.
While recognizing the importance of rational consistency as
a test of moral truth, Niebuhr denies that it is, in itself, the
source or meaning of moral obligation. In Niebuhr's account,
the dependence of rational religion on reverence for the moral
law is reversed. In An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Niebuhr
summarizes his view of Kant's ethical rationalism:
Thus the Christian believes that the ideal of love is real in the will and
nature of God, even though he knows of no place in history where the
ideal has been realized in its pure form. And it is because it has this
reality that he feels the pull of obligation. The sense of obligation in
21
See, for example, Green, Religion and Moral Reason, pp. 13-17.
morals from which Kant tried to derive the whole structure of
religion is really derived from the religion itself. The "pull" or
"drive" of moral life is a part of the religious tension of life.22
The point is briefly stated, even cryptic, but it will be worth
our while to elaborate it.
For Niebuhr, and for much of Christian ethics, moral obli-
gation is an experience which cannot be fully represented by a
logical form. There is an affective element in the experience
which is itself the source of the obligation.23 We find ourselves
impelled to act on behalf of others in ways which lead us to
speak of love, not reciprocity, as the ultimate standard of
morality. "A rational ethic seeks to bring the needs of others
into equal consideration with those of the self. The religious
ethic, (the Christian ethic more particularly, though not
solely) insists that the needs of the neighbor shall be met,
without a careful computation of relative needs." 24
Reciprocity demands rigorous application of moral rules.
Reason identifies moral constraints that everyone can reason-
ably be required to obey, and reason insures that these stan-
dards are consistently applied in moral evaluations. The
expectation that I will keep my promises is a moral obligation,
which others may rightly claim of me, because I can reason-
ably impose a reciprocal obligation on them. The wish to play
my trumpet each morning at 3 o'clock confers no such claims,
because I cannot concede to my sleeping neighbors a right
similarly to discomfort me to satisfy their musical inclinations.
There are, of course, ambiguous cases. May I claim a right to
play a trumpet at 3 o'clock in the afternoon? How about on the
subway? How about a piccolo? The rule of reciprocity yields no
automatic answers, but for reasonable people in most circum-
stances,25 it is an adequate guide to recognizing the aims and
interests that mark legitimate claims on other people.
22
23
K a n t , by contrast, interprets this affection as a n experience of reverence for the
moral law. See K a n t , Groundwork, p p . 6 8 - 6 9 .
24
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p . 57.
25
I t is, as R . M . H a r e has pointed out in a famous example, no help against the
trumpet-playing fanatic, who so values the sound of the instrument that he wants
everyone to play it as often as possible. Nor, more importantly, does reciprocity
Ethics 85
Reciprocity demands strict adherence to the moral norms
that survive the critical test, but it does not imply high expecta-
tions about the standards themselves. One can argue for a strict
obligation to keep promises while assuming that people will
make no commitments to others that put their own aims
substantially at risk. One can determine whether a person has
met all the requirements of reciprocity in relationships with
others without asking what efforts of self-discipline or self-
sacrifice might have given that person capacities to do more. In
short, as the ethical rationalism is usually presented, it includes
little or nothing of the aspiration to develop personal char-
acteristics and relationships that are better than those we now
acknowledge as moral requirements, and not just a more
consistent application of those requirements.
One function of reason in ethics, as we have seen, is to keep
the aspirations of moral idealists from imposing self-sacrificial
requirements on those who do not share their enthusiasms.
This critical, limiting power of reason, however, quickly loses
its point if the complementary pull of the ideal is not present.
Where the standard of moral conduct is reciprocal acknow-
ledgment of existing aims and interests, moral reflection
becomes an extension of the negotiations by which individuals
seek to advance their own purposes. The question becomes:
Which interests should I choose - or how should I formulate
the interests that I have - in order to insure that my own aims
will be protected by the sanctions of moral obligation? Without
the concern for others that originates in love, the determi-
nation of moral obligations, as Niebuhr observed, quickly
deteriorates into "mere calculation of advantage." 26 Without
love, the reciprocity, which was supposed to lead us beyond
provide an argument against the Nazi fanatic, who would affirm that he himself
should be persecuted if it were to turn out that he were a Jew.
Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 193. It may also be the case, as Niebuhr observes, that
this calculation will "tend to weight the standard of justice on the side of the one
who defines the standard" {ibid., p. 190). However, we should not, as Niebuhr
sometimes does, treat this tendency to perpetuate the distortion of moral standards
by power as a defect of moral rationalism. The rational standard, consistently
applied, aims to defeat special pleading concealed by ideology, as well as more
obvious self-seeking exceptions.
individual interests, may prove in the end to be just another
instrument for advancing them.
REASON AND HOPE
The shortcomings of rationalist theories of morality do not

necessarily lead to moral failures on the part of their adherents.
People who think that all moral claims rest on a logical prin-
ciple of reciprocity may end up with rigorously defined rights
with which they protect their freedom to pursue their own
interests, but they may also be selfless advocates of a universal
community of rights. The difference between those who see the
claims of justice as a vindication of their own privileges and
those who find an imperative to work on behalf of others lies
less in their theories than in aspirations which the theories
cannot completely justify. Where the theory requires a consist-
ent rationalism, its adherents may not even acknowledge the
hopes and dreams that motivate them.
In his early writings, Reinhold Niebuhr saw this most clearly
in the Marxists, who believed they had the key to scientific
knowledge of society, but whose revolutionary fervor linked
them in fact to the religious visions of an earlier age: "The
Marxian imagines that he has a philosophy or even a science of
history. What he has is really an apocalyptic vision."27 The
logic of the system does not yield the commitment necessary to
challenge the existing powers.
The naive faith of the proletarian is the faith of the man of action.
Rationality belongs to the cool observers. There is of course an
element of illusion in the faith of the proletarian, as there is in all
faith. But it is a necessary illusion, without which some truth is
obscured. The inertia of society is so stubborn that no one will move
against it, if he cannot believe that it can be more easily overcome
than is actually the case. And no one will suffer the perils and pains
involved in the process of radical social change, if he cannot believe in
the possibility of a purer and fairer society than will ever be estab-
lished.28
28
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p. 155. Ibid., p. 221.
Ethics 87
We must take care how we understand these necessary
"illusions." Beliefs which do not grasp the realities of power
and the risks of change may lead to reckless acts of courage, but
these are usually self-destructive, with little real effect on the
situation. Such beliefs are simply false. They do not enable the
people who hold them to understand the constraints and possi-
bilities of reality, and it is no part of the task of Christian
Realism to glorify the suffering that results when such beliefs
are taken as guides to action.
The "illusions" to which Niebuhr refers are rather those
mythic, suprarational ideas which present to the imagination
possibilities for which reason cannot completely account.29
Because reality is always more complex and varied than the
systems by which we render it coherent, reasonable thinking
includes anticipations of more comprehensive harmonies and
further developments of our understanding that a flat-footed
rationalism will always reject, because they are not part of the
system of coherences on which, at present, we ordinarily rely.
To call these ideas "illusions" is partly ironic, but also partly
accurate; for they do not depict a reality which we can under-
stand and control, and there is no straightforward way to plot a
course from today's predictable social relationships to the
greater justice that we seek. Any actual changes we make will
be less than the transformation for which we have hoped.
But the hopes are not false. Indeed, a system of thought from
which such hopes are missing is false, because it misrepresents
our present way of thinking about reality as the reality itself.
When the reality under consideration is the human world of
social, political, and economic relationships, the result is to
restrict our thinking about social possibilities to adjustments
between competing interests, and the scope of those adjust-
ments will be limited, moreover, primarily by existing inequal-
ities of power. Those "realistic" constraints work well for
ordinary decision-making, but they hardly exhaust the possi-
bilities for human society. Those who confine themselves
within the limits this rationality suggests will always reject
29
See p. 62 above.
hopes for radical transformation of society as "utopian" and
"unrealistic," and they will be right, in part. But they will also
end up settling for less than is really possible.
It was this vivid apprehension of new social possibilities that,
for Niebuhr, marked the religious element in the Marxist
movement and linked it to earlier, apocalyptic forms of Chris-
tian radicalism.30 The necessary illusions are not, however,
sufficient to motivate action. For those who are comfortably
situated in the world as it is, a mythic grasp of new possibilities
may express itself only in sentimental pity for the sufferings of
the poor, or in romantic identification with the heroes of a
struggle in which one is in fact not going to participate.
Niebuhr suggested in the 1930s that prophetic Christianity had
largely given way to that sort of sentimentalism. Marxism
attracted him as a more vital alternative, but he understood
that its vitality was not the result of its theories. Reason is not
the cure for sentimentality, any more than sentiment is a
remedy for the abstractions of theory. What seemed necessary
at that point was an unyielding commitment that frightens
both the sentimentalist and the rationalist.
Sentimentality and romanticism is [sic] the disease of observers who
dream of an ideal goal without seeking its achievement. The true
proletarian who nerves himself for heroic action by believing both in
the purity of his goal and the possibility of its achievement is no doubt
touched with sentimentality and romanticism, but he is something
more than a sentimentalist. He is both more dangerous and more
vital than a sentimentalist. He is a fanatic.31
30
F o r Reinhold Niebuhr, it is the mythic element in Marxism - usually unacknow-
ledged by the Marxists themselves - that marks the point of contact between the
Marxist movement a n d Christianity. T h e rational accounts of economic relation-
ships a n d historical change that the Marxists offer interest N i e b u h r less a n d less as
his own work develops, precisely because Marxist theory ignores the prophetic,
critical ideal that makes Marxism a powerful historical movement. I n this, the use
of Marxism by Reinhold Niebuhr, a n d by his contemporary, Paul Tillich, is quite
different from that of today's liberation theologians, whose chief interest in Marxism
is as a theoretical tool for social analysis. See J u a n Luis Segundo, The Liberation of
Theology, trans. J o h n D r u r y (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1976), pp. 13-19; Paul
Tillich, The Socialist Decision, trans. Franklin Sherman (New York: H a r p e r a n d
Row, 1977), p p . 106-112.
31
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p. 222.
Ethics 89
The power of historic Christianity and contemporary Marxism
to unleash this fanaticism is an ambiguous feature of both
movements, opening the way to real social change, but also
requiring rational restraint. It is this ambiguity that has made
both Christianity and Marxism historically powerful, while the
purely rational accounts of social life leave their adherents
unable to do more than strike a new balance of interests within
the prevailing order. "The absolutist and fanatic is no doubt
dangerous, but he is also necessary. If he does not judge and
criticise immediate achievements, which always involve com-
promise, in the light of his absolute ideal, the radical force in
history, whether applied to personal or to social situations,
finally sinks into the sands of complete relativism."32 Niebuhr's
way of stating this point shifts with the changing times and
political climate, and with the development of his own ideas.
In the early works, the emphasis is on the untamed energy of
the revolutionary; in later years, the accent shifts to the
"degeneration" of a search for justice that is not inspired by
love. Always, however, the point is that realism in ethics and
politics requires both an assessment of the forces at work in the
situation and a feeling for the real possibilities that exceed the
limits that our analyses put on them. Perhaps, then, we should
seek to explicate Niebuhr's Christian Realism in terms of those
contemporary forms of Christian ethics that stress this more
particular, substantive hope.
FROM PRINCIPLE TO STORY
Today, more than half a century after Niebuhr's An Interpreta-

tion of Christian Ethics, criticisms of ethical rationalism abound
in both philosophical and theological ethics. While much of
this writing is directed against the dullness and rigidity of the
analytical treatments of moral language that dominated the
philosophical literature for many years, recent authors fre-
quently make the constructive point that ethics must deal with
substantive questions about the good. Ethics must help people
32
Ibid.
go Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
to know and to articulate the things they value, as well as to

keep their logic straight.33 In theology, Stanley Hauerwas and
James McClendon have taken up this theme, proposing an
approach to Christian ethics which concentrates on the devel-
opment of character, rather than the resolution of moral dilem-
mas, and which stresses the role of biblical narratives in
forming a personal orientation toward substantive moral
goods.34 While the intellectual questions that prompted the
formulation of these recent versions of "virtue ethics" or "nar-
rative ethics" were quite different from the issues that led to
Christian Realism, it is possible that Niebuhr's objections to
ethical rationalism can be understood by relating them to this
more recent emphasis on substantive moral issues and the role
that religious traditions play in shaping our ideas about the
human good.
Niebuhr's own attention to these issues was shaped primarily
by a concern to understand the sources of social, rather than
personal, transformation. By identifying the religious expecta-
tion of perfect justice as a primary motivation for action against
present injustice, Niebuhr joined with a number of European
social theorists who had rejected the claims of "scientific social-
ism" and turned their attention to social ideals and Utopian
visions as important factors in social change. Karl Mannheim
located the historical roots of revolutionary thinking in the
apocalyptic expectations of Christian radicals at the beginning
of the modern era. 35
33
O n e of the first i m p o r t a n t statements of this position was Iris M u r d o c h , The
Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken, 1971). A very good recent assessment of
these issues in moral philosophy is provided by Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self
34
For H a u e r w a s ' first statement of this position, see Stanley Hauerwas, Character and
the Christian Life (Trinity University Studies in Religion; S a n Antonio: Trinity
University Press, 1975). See also J a m e s W . McGlendon, Systematic Theology: Ethics
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986). Also to be noted in this context is the theology of
George Lindbeck, although Lindbeck says little specifically about Christian ethics,
and the ethics of J o h n H o w a r d Yoder, though Yoder's work began with a quite
different set of theological a n d philosophical issues. See George Lindbeck, The
Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984); J o h n H o w a r d Yoder, The
Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972); The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics
as Gospel (Notre D a m e , Ind.: University of Notre D a m e Press, 1984).
35
Karl M a n n h e i m , Ideology and Utopia, trans. Louis Wirth a n d E d w a r d Shils (New
York: H a r c o u r t , Brace, a n d World, n.d.), p p . 211-219. M a n n h e i m ' s work
appeared in G e r m a n y in 1929. N i e b u h r makes essentially the same point in his
Ethics 91
The immediate source of Niebuhr's insight, however, was
probably his reflection on the ethics of the Social Gospel
movement in North America. The leaders of this movement -
preachers, journalists, and professors of the emergent disci-
plines of sociology and social ethics - were appalled by the
conditions of life in the new industrial centers of the late
nineteenth century. They turned to direct investigations and to
methods of scientific study for an accurate description of the
problems, but the moral appeal of their radical alternative
rested, more often than not, on the discrepancy between these
blighted, wasted lives and the way of life envisioned in the New
Testament. 36 Gradually, the idea emerged that the teachings
of Jesus provide a social vision that differs dramatically from
the individualistic constraints of traditional Christian morals,
and that is incompatible with prevailing economic and social
relationships.
Niebuhr, of course, challenged this easy transition from
New Testament ideals to modern social applications. The
high demands of the Gospel do not provide a supreme moral
principle that applies directly to human affairs, but those
demands are central to the "critical attitude" that Niebuhr
expects Christians to bring to political life. The Christian
message, grounded in the story of Jesus' universal love and
radical disregard for human status and human distinctions, is
more than the historical source to which all the forms of
Christianity can be traced. It remains the criterion by which
all Christians are judged, even though it cannot be reduced to
a single principle or a rule of reason by which the Christians
might, in the manner of the ethical rationalists, judge every-
thing else.
criticism of Marxist rationalism in Moral Man and Immoral Society, though the earliest
evidence of Niebuhr's direct acquaintance with Mannheim's work that I have
noted are references to Ideology and Utopia in The Nature and Destiny of Man, I,
196-97, II, 237n.
36
Walter Rauschenbusch presented a systematic account of the problem in his
Christianity and the Social Crisis (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992). For a
more complete account of the secularization of the Social Gospel in twentieth-
century social science, see Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman, American
Sociology: Worldly Rejections of Religion and Their Directions (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1985), esp. chapters 9-12.
Attentiveness to the biblical narrative and an imaginative

grasp of all things in relationship to God keep our specific
determinations of justice from the rigid rationalism that
inevitably privileges the interests of the powerful. In contrast to
his Social Gospel predecessors, Niebuhr is aware of the inter-
pretation of Jesus' work already going on in the Gospels. The
truth that transcends all systems and orders of justice is not so
simply related to the story of Jesus for Niebuhr, and it is more
tied to the attitude of messianic expectation. 37 Nevertheless,
without the "impossible ideal" of Jesus' ethics, we have only
variations on the utilitarian and prudential schemes which
from the Christian critical perspective scarcely deserve to be
called "ethics" at all. If the limitations of every rational system
make some correction of rational justice necessary, only the
morally meaningful universe apprehended by Christian faith
provides a basis on which such corrections may actually be
attempted.
Niebuhr thus weaves a complex relationship between Chris-
tian narrative and moral life. The uncompromising moral
demands which Jesus makes in the Gospels are a necessary
corrective to the shortcomings of rational ethics, which too
easily becomes a justification of existing interests, rather than a
motive to create new ways to resolve conflicts. But Jesus' ethics
will not work for us in any simple way. If the tendency to
self-justification in rational ethics gradually erodes the
demands of the moral life, an uncompromised Christian ethics
threatens to demolish them outright, erasing the distinction
between moral concern for the neighbor's good and a blind
zeal to make the will of God prevail. To achieve the Social
Gospel's goal of a transformed society, it is necessary to
abandon the Social Gospel's stated purpose to apply Jesus'
ethics directly to the problems of inequality, poverty, and
social disorder.38
37
See The Nature and Destiny of Man, I I , 1-34.
38
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Ethic ofJesus and the Social Problem," Religion in Life, 1
(Spring, 1932), 198.
Ethics 93
THE CASE AGAINST RESPONSIBILITY
The impossibility of relating biblical faith directly to con-

temporary events and choices was a key point of agreement
among American theological realists in the 1930s. In
arguing that point against their Social Gospel predecessors,
however, they often overlooked the need to make a case for
the central point on which Christian Realists and the Social
Gospel agree: the need for Christian participation in the
work of social transformation. Niebuhr takes it as obvious
that the Christian "critical attitude" which measures all
plans against the demands of the Gospel must be balanced
by a "responsible attitude" that is still prepared to make the
real choices, even though all the options are less than what
love requires.39 Why is this "responsible" attitude a Chris-
tian duty? If all of the choices are evil, why not simply
refuse to choose?
During Niebuhr's lifetime, this question was raised by paci-
fists who rejected the military defense of democracy that Rein-
hold Niebuhr regarded as a key expression of Christian Real-
ism's "responsible attitude." For Guy Hershberger, a
Mennonite theologian who wrote a response to Niebuhr in
1944, Christian Realism is at once an affirmation and an
abandonment of the rigorous ethical demands of the Gospel.
Having stated so clearly the requirements of love, no one who
professes to believe them can give a good reason for setting
them aside.
No doubt the most challenging anti-pacifist Christian writer today is
Reinhold Niebuhr. He denies popular pacifism and the doctrine of
nonviolent resistance a place in the New Testament ethic, and here
he is on solid ground. He asserts that the New Testament ethic is one
of uncompromising nonresistance and warns the pacifist to "leave the
world of politics alone entirely ... and remind the rest of us, who fool
with politics, that we are playing a dangerous game." Mennonites
admire Niebuhr's sound evaluation of the Christian ethic, but they
are disappointed to see him cast aside this pearl of great price in order
39
See page 73 above.
that he might himself pursue "the dangerous game of fooling with
politics."40
John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas have continued
this line of criticism of Christian Realism in their more recent
writings. Niebuhr's insistence that responsible Christianity
requires a compromise of the demands of Jesus' ethics fails to
ask the prior question of whether Christians should be taking
responsibility for the life of society in the first place.
The differences between Niebuhr's Christian Realism and
these contemporary rejections of political compromise are
obvious. For the moment, however, we need to focus on the
similarities, because the disagreement over the role of Chris-
tians in society takes the shape it does only because of some
important ideas about Christian ethics which the parties all
share.
They agree, first, that Christianity imposes moral demands
which exceed, and even contradict, the requirements of ordi-
nary prudential ethics, which is concerned to establish some
sort of balance between the competing interests and powers
that shape everyday life. Hershberger and Yoder trace the
higher requirements in the life of a non-resistant community
that lives apart from the tensions and conflicts that require
prudent management. Niebuhr finds the requirements in a
"dimension of depth" that religious awareness provides, ena-
bling people to see beyond the limited interests and goals that
ordinarily drive them. In both cases, therefore, Christians seek
to avoid excessive identification with the surrounding culture,
since that tends both to lower their moral expectations and to
deprive them of the witness to alternative possibilities that is
their principal contribution to a civilization that is seriously
distorted by its own internal contradictions. However impor-
tant the insights of sociology, psychology, and the modern
physical sciences may be to an understanding of our contempo-
rary situation, the dimension of depth must be learned pri-
40
Guy F. Hershberger, War, Peace, and Nonresistance (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press,
1944), p. 298. Hershberger is quoting from an article in Christian Century, December
14, 1938. I have shortened Hershberger's quotation from Niebuhr.
Ethics 95
marily from the myths and symbols - the narratives, if you will
- of the biblical tradition. 41
The prophetic faith, articulated in the Hebrew scriptures
and fully realized in Jesus of Nazareth, has a specific, substan-
tive understanding of the good derived from its primary image
of God as creator.
To say that God is the creator is to use an image which transcends the
canons of rationality, but which expresses both his organic relation to
the world and his distinction from the world. To believe that God
created the world is to feel that the world is a realm of meaning and
coherence without insisting that the world is totally good or that the
totality of things must be identified with the Sacred.42
A different understanding of God's relationship to the world,
or a philosophy which dismisses the theological question alto-
gether, must necessarily have a different view of the good.
There can be no question, therefore, of a universal morality
that reduces Jesus to an example - even a very fine example -
of the human good.43 Nor can Christians provide a rational
moral principle that would allow anyone to determine what
this prophetic ethic requires without reference to its idea of
God. The application of Christian insight to public questions
must be mediated, not by a principle, but by what Niebuhr
calls an "attitude" that is both critical and responsible.
Perhaps we could make a link with Hauerwas and McClendon
by calling that attitude a virtue, a settled disposition to view
situations in a certain way, and to choose and to act in ways
appropriate to that view. If so, we might expect to find a range
of characteristically Christian responses to moral challenges,
even though there would be no principle by which we might
determine in advance exactly what Christian ethics requires.
It is thus possible to offer an account of Niebuhr's ethics,
drawn particularly from the early chapters of An Interpretation of
Christian Ethics, which fits remarkably well with the key themes
of contemporary formulations of Christian ethics that are ori-
ented toward ideas of virtue and narrative. To be sure, virtue
41
For these themes in Niebuhr, see An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 1—3, 6—7,
145-46.
42 43
Ibid., p . 16. Ibid., p . 9.
theorists in theological ethics are often sharply critical of Chris-

tian Realism, finding in its commitments to political freedom,
democracy, and justice an entanglement with cultural values
that limits from the outset the radical demands of biblical faith.
Also, both Hauerwas and Yoder seem more clearly aware than
Niebuhr of the importance of a community of faith for nurtur-
ing and sustaining the distinctive Christian vision. Upon closer
examination, however, the virtue theorists' criticism of Chris-
tian Realism often provides a curious echo of the Realists'
criticisms of their liberal predecessors.44 Perhaps, as with Nie-
buhr's arguments against the Social Gospel, the continuity is
greater than the critic would at first want to admit. Successive
generations of American Protestant ethicists have been able to
carry through the twentieth century a running debate about
the appropriate participation of Christians in politics and
social issues precisely because they shared the basic idea that
biblical faith makes moral demands that transcend the possi-
bilities of ordinary social life and call into question the terms
and conditions on which that life has been constituted.
In this broader historical perspective, one might construe
Christian Realism as an anticipation of Christian narrative
ethics. The narrative then would read that we have gradually
learned to mistrust the adjustments to modern Western liberal-
ism that the Social Gospel made unwittingly, and that the
Christian Realists took up deliberately, as necessary compro-
mises. As a result, so the narrative would continue, we are now
able to identify and act on a distinctive Christian ethic.
Because we no longer hold the false hope for a universal moral
reason, we are not so likely to be taken in by modern liberal-
ism's pretensions to have attained that universality. If that
imposes on us a more critical social stance and a more marginal
political role than our Christian Realist predecessors had, that
is simply because we understand and articulate more clearly
the radical demands of the independent Christian ethic for
44
Hauerwas notes this in his own criticism of Reinhold Niebuhr's christology: "In
spite of his criticism of the social gospel, much of Niebuhr's christology continued in
the vein of treating Jesus not as the redeemer but as the perfect example or teacher
of love." [A Community of Character, p. 234n.)
Ethics 97
which Reinhold Niebuhr could only wish. The failure of
ethical rationalism, which Christian Realism already antici-
pated, leaves communitarianism as the only viable alternative,
however much those who wish to continue fooling with politics
in a liberal democratic mode may resist the conclusion.
COMPROMISE OR COHERENCE:
The account we have just given of Protestant social ethics from
Rauschenbusch, through Niebuhr, to the contemporary narra-
tive ethics of Hauerwas and McClendon makes a number of
important points. It is a useful corrective to the general impres-
sion that contemporary narrative and virtue ethics are dia-
metrically opposed to the public ethics of the Christian Real-
ists, and it reminds us that many of the paradigmatic conflicts
in American Protestantism have taken shape against a back-
ground of more basic agreements, agreements which have
provided real continuity across three or four generations of
changing problems and shifting ecumenical strategies.
Nevertheless, my revisionist narrative, as it stands, is too
simple, for it reduces the differences between the Christian
Realists and the narrativists to a strategic question about
compromise. That difference is real, but by the time Niebuhr
and his colleagues had thought it through, it was more than a
question of strategy. What they first conceptualized as a neces-
sary compromise of Gospel ethics became a complex form of
ethical naturalism in which the human meaning of the moral
ideal only becomes available in relationship to the historical
developments, political powers, and human tendencies that
define specific possibilities for its application. What happens
when the Christian Realist applies the requirements of love to
the tasks of social transformation is not a compromise of what
love requires, but rather the first clear statement of those
requirements. As with other forms of human knowledge, we
understand the meaning of love only when we can relate its
demands to the rest of what we believe to be true about the
world.
Despite the pragmatic turn of mind that characterizes all of
his work, Niebuhr's earliest writings on ethics do not always

develop this point clearly. In Moral Man and Immoral Society', the
possibility of social transformation seems in the end to rest with
those who deny the necessity of compromise. Their under-
standing of social possibilities is not true, in the pragmatic
terms that Niebuhr even here understands truth. What they
believe about themselves and their movements are "illusions,"
but they are necessary illusions. Myths and symbols provide
the motivation that generates real change. The compromises
that would lend stability to a new order must come from
somewhere else.
In the task of that redemption, the most effective agents will be men
who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones. The
most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind
can achieve perfect justice. It is a very valuable illusion for the
moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its reali-
zation does not generate a sublime madness in the soul. Nothing but
such madness will do battle with malignant power and "spiritual
wickedness in high places." The illusion is dangerous because it
encourages terrible fanaticisms. It must therefore be brought under
the control of reason. One can only hope that reason will not destroy
it before its work is done.45
Moral Man and Immoral Society was by all measures a major
achievement of modern religious social thought, but the idea of
Christian Realism that emerges at the end of its pages lacks the
synthetic perspective that Niebuhr's writing as a whole offers
to the task of Christian ethics. We face a curious, lurching
account of historical change in which idealists fired by fanati-
cal energy lead us in directions that reason cannot prescribe,
only to be reined in by the rationalists when the hopes for
justice fail to work.
Given that statement of the problem, it is not clear where
Niebuhr himself wants to stand. Rationalists have control over
the real outcome of events, but their ways of thinking about the
problems can at best provide a variation on the present balan-
cing of powers and interests. Idealists have genuine alter-
natives and the critical insights of prophetic religion, but they
45
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, p. 277.
Ethics 99
are too unyielding in their commitments to these ''illusions" to
offer any guidance for the real choices. The "critical attitude"
and the "responsible attitude" are here completely separated.
The Christian Realist is one who understands that separation,
and cherishes no illusions that it can be overcome.
The final page of Moral Man and Immoral Society thus presents
in sharp contrasts a picture of the dynamics of change that
exponents of the progressive, humanizing social effects of
Christianity were understandably reluctant to accept.46 But if
we accept those contrasts, the book ends just in time, for on the
next page, as it were, the Christian thinker would have to
decide whether to stand with the biblical idealists or with the
responsible rationalists.
Niebuhr's sensitivity to the multiplicity of ideas, ideologies,
and interests that shape modern consciousness led him to
hesitate before that choice. He knew that few twentieth-
century Christians could rest easily with either their biblical
vision of a new creation or their reasoned assessment of alter-
natives for very long, and the more they understood of the
contrast between the positions, the more uneasy they would be
with both of them. By contrast, many of the contemporary
narrative theorists appear to find the choice between criticism
and responsibility an easy one. It is for them a "Constanti-
nian" distortion of Christianity's role to take responsibility for
working out solutions to society's problems.47 To take responsi-
bility for the course of events is to suppose that we have the
power to make things turn out as we think they should. Neither
the biblical insistence that history is in God's hands nor the
social reality of Christianity's weakness as a force in the
modern world warrants that supposition for Christians.
Responsibility is what they do not have - cannot have and
should not want - if they understand the social implications of
the Gospel.
Much of Reinhold Niebuhr's early work points us in exactly
46
See Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, p p . 136-41 for a survey of the initial critical reception of
Moral Man and Immoral Society.
47
See Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, pp. 135-47; Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations
(Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), especially pp. 122-30.
ioo Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
this direction. If we resist making this his final conclusion, as I
think we should, we must make sense of Niebuhr's later claim
that criticism and responsibility are not merely two indepen-
dent and opposed forces, but two attitudes that can be held by
one person. Since he was already clear that reasoned responsi-
bility could not provide substantive alternatives, the key to the
synthesis would have to be an account of the critical ideals that
sets them in relationship to particular choices.
A theological account of responsibility thus begins with a
reassessment of the ordinary social relationships that are set in
contrast to the prophetic idea of relationships ordered by the
law of love. These relationships are not simply an undifferen-
tiated mass that stands inert before or in opposition to the
transformative powers of love. Understanding society is largely
a matter of understanding the many different forces and
powers that work together or against one another to shape the
course of events. Economic motives weaken traditional loyal-
ties and permit the emergence of new social roles and new ways
to organize work. Traditional loyalties reassert themselves in
sentiments of nationalism, and under the conditions of modern
society nationalism comes to expression in the form of a centra-
lized state bureaucracy. A bureaucratic state functions most
efficiently when it can treat all of its citizens as equals, but the
power of the bureaucracy itself tends to create a new elite of
administrators and officials in competition with the older
aristocracies of wealth and rank. Competitive pressures from
foreign powers may lead to adjustments that open new oppor-
tunities in domestic systems, or they may provoke a protective
reaction that locks in existing social and economic relation-
ships. The forces are multiple, the interactions are complex,
and the variations are endless. Simply to understand them is a
major intellectual challenge, and one in which Christian Real-
ists are notoriously happy to be immersed. Reinhold Niebuhr's
essays and editorials could, as his critics frequently observed,
continue for paragraphs or pages with analysis of party plat-
forms, labor disputes, and international conflicts, with hardly a
mention of theological issues.
Nevertheless, the theology shapes the analysis in important
Ethics ioi
ways. If Niebuhr was able to give a coherent account of social
and historical forces that other observers either ignored or
overstated, the coherence and unity of his thought often
derives from the power of theological concepts to illuminate
elements of a situation that might otherwise be missed and to
hold alternative ways of accounting for events in a creative
tension. For Niebuhr, Christian narratives and symbols
become a part of the system of coherences by which we order
our beliefs, and they interact with other ideas in complex ways:
Niebuhr did not recommend the prophetic myth - the narrative of
creation, the fall, God's judgment and redemption of history - as an
object of aesthetic appreciation, a set of agreeablefictions.He main-
tained that it gave a true account of the human condition, superior to
other accounts. Judeo-Christian prophecy, like any other myth, was
prescientific, but it was also "supra-scientific."48
Prophetic denunciations of greed and Jesus' compassion for
the poor direct our attention to specific aspects of our common
life that become standards of justice and measures of the moral
worth of the whole society. Attentiveness to the effects that tax,
trade, or immigration policies have on the poor is not simply
the result of knowing how to calculate the likely results. It
depends on the conviction that these effects are morally impor-
tant, that policies which neglect the poor are incoherent with
significant ideas about how a society ought to function. Jewish
and Christian traditions articulate this conviction in ways that
coherences based on considerations of economic efficiency are
apt to miss. As the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
recently put it, "Central to the biblical presentation ofjustice is
that the justice of a community is measured by its treatment of
the powerless in society, most often described as the widow, the
orphan, the poor, and the stranger (non-Israelite) in the
land." 49 In many such ways, theological ideas identify the
issues and concerns that make policy questions morally impor-
48
Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York: W .
W. Norton, 1991), p . 371.
49
National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on
Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (Washington, D.C.: United States
Catholic Conference, 1986), p. 21.
tant. Where these ideas are assumed, as they often are in

Niebuhr's editorials and occasional pieces, analysis can con-
centrate on the policies themselves. Where they are missing, as
they often are in analyses shaped by narrowly defined concep-
tions of economic rationality, national interest, or strategic
necessity, the policy proposals lack coherence with a wider set
of ideas and convictions about society, however sound their
internal logic may be.
Religious traditions and symbols thus identify attitudes,
values, and virtues that are relevant to a more comprehensive
assessment of present choices, but those present choices also
give substance to the tradition. In modern society, we are
aware of needs for education, self-expression, and self-respect
that go far beyond the basic material needs for food, shelter,
and protection from exploitation that the Bible associates with
help for the poor. Even where those material needs remain the
central problem, as they are for the homeless in the cities of the
developed world and many workers in less developed coun-
tries, we have a better understanding of the underlying social
and economic forces that create the apparent problems, and
we recognize that caring for "the widow, the poor, and the
stranger in the land" may involve work far more complex than
relieving the immediate needs of individuals. Decisions about
what ought to be done require us to relate the biblical demand
for justice to investigations into social facts, theories about the
economy and society, and informed assessments of the prob-
able results of alternative courses of action. Moral choices are
made when these complex and diverse elements are brought
into some coherence. No single element determines the conclu-
sion, and our thinking about all of the elements is apt to be
subtly changed in the process of relating one to another.
In this moral reflection, religious concepts, myths, and
symbols provide specific moral ideals, such as care for the
stranger, stewardship of resources, or love for one's enemies,
but they also provide what Niebuhr called the "deeper dimen-
sion of history." 50 They encourage us to believe that these
50
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 96; see page 71.
Ethics 103
disparate, often conflicting elements can be unified, and even
more important, they suggest the possibility of larger, more
inclusive coherences that run beyond the solutions to immedi-
ate problems. They provide symbols and rituals through which
that unity of life can be anticipated and enacted, even when it
cannot be completely formulated as a system of ideas.
Ideas about God or about the end of history are always more
than summaries of experience. Indeed, they are powerful pre-
cisely because they carry the conviction that some experiences,
the real experiences of confusion, disorder, and conflict, are not
the last word. But they have that power only insofar as they
relate to the full range of our experiences, and do not arbitra-
rily exclude any of them from consideration. "An adequate
religion," Niebuhr wrote in a lecture first published in 1934,
"is always an ultimate optimism which has entertained all the
facts that lead to pessimism."51 Personal experiences of tragedy
and physical suffering, and historical experiences of injustice,
genocide, and tyranny become tests for theology. Their vio-
lence and destruction of meaning pose challenges to our
symbols of unity which faith may answer, but which it cannot
ignore, and our ideas about God will surely be changed in the
process of finding coherences between these experiences and
the others which point us in the direction of love and justice.
The "meaningful universe" which Niebuhr identifies as the
presupposition of moral obligation enters into our experience
only as we discern these coherences between our ideas of God
and the events of our lives and our history.
So it is not the case that we have a world of moral meaning
that unfortunately does not exist in the real world where we
live,52 or a moral life that can be lived out in some carefully
selected community setting, but not, alas, in the social and
political world inhabited by other people generally. Moral
ideas and systems are about choices that people have to make,
about things that they can be urged or required to do. The
51
R e i n h o l d N i e b u h r , Christianity and Power Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1940), p . 182.
52
Cf. Bonhoeffer's r e m a r k that " a n ethic c a n n o t be a book in which there is set out
how everything in the world ought to be b u t unfortunately is not . . . " (Dietrich
BonhoefTer, Ethics, trans. Neville H . Smith [New York: Macmillan, 1965], p . 269).
meaning of moral terms is fixed as we establish coherences

between what we take to be the facts about human life, the
aspirations we feel as individuals or share with others in com-
munity, and the traditions of moral thought that stand in
complex relationships of judgment and dependence on both
the facts and our aspirations. These moral meanings take a
variety of forms — virtues to be practiced, goals to be sought,
principles to be followed — but they do not exist apart from the
conditions of life as we presently understand them. Kant's
celebrated dictum that "ought implies can" sets a limit on the
use of moral terms that must be observed even by those who
do not share the Kantian confidence that we can specify the
transcendental conditions of that limit.
The coherentist account of moral meaning which we have
sketched here is consistent with the pragmatic realism that
characterizes Reinhold Niebuhr's treatment of religious ideas
and symbols. But if we accept it as a theoretical formulation of
Christian Realism's approach to ethics, we must then reject
the language of "compromise" by which both Christian Real-
ists and their critics have often characterized the relationship
between the ethics of Jesus and social ethics. Rather, the early
characterization of Christian Realism by Walter Marshall
Horton seems to capture the correct relationship between
Christian symbol and social fact. A realistic faith links human
aspirations, social facts, and religious belief in ways that relate
us to the real conditions of life, avoiding both exaggerated
expectations and debilitating hopelessness.
[The] word "realism" suggests to me, above all, a resolute determi-
nation to face all the facts of life candidly, beginning preferably with
the most stubborn, perplexing, and disheartening ones, so that any
lingering romantic illusions may be dispelled at the start; and then,
through these stubborn facts and not in spite of them, to pierce as deep
as one may into the solid structure of reality, until one finds what-
ever ground of courage, hope, and faith is actually there, independent
of human preferences and desires, and so casts anchor in that
ground.53

Ethics 105
In this identification of the real grounds for courage, hope,
and faith, the biblical resources for Christian thought - what
Niebuhr calls the biblical "myths" and what Hauerwas and
McClendon mean by "the Christian narrative" - play a
crucial role. That role, however, is not just to represent "a
political alternative to every nation," 54 but also to represent
the possibilities implicit in the immediate political realities. In
a realistic Christian ethics, biblical resources help us to pick
out, among a range of forces that have been clearly differen-
tiated and accurately understood, those that move in directions
that are compatible with the hope for justice, and to distin-
guish them from those which do not. The first task of ethical
reflection is to establish the connections between human
experience, social fact, and biblical symbol that make those
judgments possible.
FROM NARRATIVE TO NATURALISM

The coherentist account of Christian Realism which I have
presented here helps us to understand why so much Realist
writing deals with labor disputes, campaign strategies, racial
conflict, or international agreements, with little direct refer-
ence to theological concepts and traditions. While theological
understandings are obviously subject to controversy and to
revision, much of the task of ethical reflection is to connect
those understandings with particular social and historical situ-
ations. The difficult part, for persons in a community with
broadly shared theological ideas, is often to determine exactly
what that situation is, or to persuade others to follow one's own
assessment of it.
While this often leads to complaints about preachers and
theologians reaching into areas beyond their competence,55 we
should not suppose that these reflections on economics, soci-
ology, or defense strategy are amateur efforts which the ethi-
54
Hauerwas, A Community of Character, p . 12.
55
I n 1926, British prime minister Stanley Baldwin asked how a group of bishops who
were attempting to mediate a coal strike would like it if the Iron a n d Steel
Federation attempted a revision of the Athanasian Creed. See William Temple,
Christianity and the Social Order (New York: Penguin Books, 1942), p . 7.
cists could give up in favor of a more useful hobby. A Realist

seeking a basis for action must have some explicit understand-
ing of what the situation is in which action is to be taken, even
when the elements of the situation are complex, difficult to
grasp, and subject to very different interpretations. If the
coherentist approach to ethics is correct, the point is not to
persuade the theologians to give up fiddling with complex and
technical questions, but to find ways of making those questions
open to public discussion. For unless we can do that, there can
be no public ethics.
Practical choices are not made by ideals alone, whether they
be the biblical ideal of a justice that protects the poor and the
weak, or a socialist ideal of economic equality, or simply the
longings of individuals for a life that would be better, in quite
specific ways, than the life they have known. What we ought to
do becomes clear as we set those aspirations in relation to the
workings of social institutions, the constraints of technology
and natural resources, ecological requirements, and the facts of
human nature - both those that we take to be stable, per-
manent features of human life and those that are particular to
persons with our own culture and history. As we have under-
stood it here, moral goodness is not a reality that exists
independently of states of affairs, by which we might then
judge that persons and institutions do or do not conform to it.
Nor is moral goodness a judgment that God pronounces over
situations, so that we are unable to identify the good in the
situation unless we have also heard the Word. To say that a
person or a state of affairs is morally good, to conclude that an
action is the right thing to do, to identify a goal as better than
the existing conditions - all these moral statements express our
understanding that a particular constellation of facts links
aspirations and limitations in that peculiarly satisfying way
that we call "good." If we get the facts wrong, we will be
wrong about the ethics, too; for the reality to which moral
realism refers is not a separate realm of moral ideas, indepen-
dent of the facts. Moral realities are facts about the world,
properties that we judge persons, actions, and situations to
have precisely because they have identifiable factual char-
Ethics 107
acteristics that link up in appropriate ways with other sets of
facts and possibilities.
The Niebuhrian version of moral realism thus leads us in the
direction of ethical naturalism, an account of moral facts which
sees them as having a reality independent of our minds, but not
independent of other, non-moral facts about the world. A
description of a welfare policy or a court decision as "just," for
example, is obviously quite different from an account of the
same things in terms of the accounting procedures used to
estimate the costs of the one or the relationship to appropriate
legal precedents of the other. But the situation that is fiscally
sound or legally correct is not a different situation from the
situation that is just. It is the same situation, and the decision
about justice turns on the facts of the case, appropriately
related to other facts, as does the decision about fiscal sound-
ness or legal correctness.
At this point, the reader may want to protest that something
must have gone wrong in this effort to make a systematic
distinction between Christian Realism and recent versions of
Christian ethics that begin with the Christian narrative, if only
because Reinhold Niebuhr himself persistently rejects what he
calls "naturalism" in ethics. Nor are the objections Niebuhr's
alone. Recent efforts to locate foundations for ethics in evolu-
tionary biology or in transcendental conditions that structure
all human communication have, in the end, left some philoso-
phers more convinced that we can make no sense of ethics
apart from the particular evaluative frameworks by which
people structure their lived experience. The "naturalist illu-
sion," as Charles Taylor terms it, was that moral principles
could be grounded in facts in ways that would make differenti-
ation and choice between moral goods unnecessary.56 Nie-
buhr's objections to a naturalism that "vitiates the vertical
tension between concrete fact and transcendent source"57
seems, if anything, more cogent in the context of moral phil-
osophy today than it did when it was published in the heyday
of Deweyan naturalism in 1935.
56
Taylor, Sources of the Self p p . 2 2 - 2 3 .
57
Upon closer inspection, however, Niebuhr's objection
proves to be against a particular form of naturalism, and not
against the idea that moral judgments are about the natural
properties of persons and situations. Here, as at other points in
Niebuhr's thought, his penchant for sharp disagreement with
specific ideas obscures a much larger area of agreement
between him and his opponents.58
The principal alternatives to ethical naturalism are sug-
gested by intuitionist accounts of moral knowledge and by
voluntarist accounts of moral meaning.59 For the intuitionist,
the fact that so often we "just know" that an act is wrong
suggests that these moral aspects of experience are unique
properties of actions and situations, not discerned by examin-
ing and drawing conclusions about natural properties.
Nothing we can learn by examining things with ordinary
empirical tools of observation can settle whether an act is right.
A voluntarist, by contrast, holds that what makes an act right is
the will of an appropriate authority who pronounces it so. The
moral question is a question of fact about some will, not the
facts of the situation. For an act to be right may mean that the
sovereign or the legislature has willed it so, or, in a theological
voluntarism, that God has willed it.
58
N i e b u h r was critical of prevailing versions of ethical naturalism, not only the
reductive, secular form, b u t also the naturalism of R o m a n Catholic natural law
ethics. N a t u r a l law thinking, he believed, p u t too much trust in reason's power to
discern a normative h u m a n nature amidst the conflicting facts a n d forces of life.
Like the contemporary philosophical naturalism, treatments of natural law in
moral theology emphasized the general features of h u m a n nature. For complex
historical reasons, the attention of moral theologians has often been concentrated on
biological determinants that all h u m a n beings presumably share, rather than the
cultural diversity of their expression. This feature of traditional R o m a n Catholic
natural law ethics has d r a w n a good deal of criticism from Catholic moral theo-
logians themselves in recent years. N i e b u h r regarded it as typical of the genre, a n d
he repeatedly criticized natural law for a static, overdetermined view of h u m a n
nature. Here, too, Niebuhr's complaint must be set against the background of a
broad agreement that there are natural features of h u m a n life that are relevant to
our moral choices. Those w h o find it worthwhile to argue about the specifics of
h u m a n nature in the context of a discussion of moral choice probably already share
a broad commitment to ethical naturalism. O n the natural law thinking implicit in
Niebuhr's own work, see Paul Ramsey, "Love and L a w , " in Charles W. Kegley and
R o b e r t W. Bretall, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr: His Religious, Social, and Political Thought
(New York: Macmillan, 1956), p p . 79-123.
59
Non-cognitivism is also an alternative, but we will not consider that here.
Ethics 109
The appeal of these non-naturalist alternatives is that they
provide a simple, single criterion by which to determine
whether an act is right. If we apprehend immediately that this
busy traveler, stopping to help a stranger in trouble, has done
the right thing, then the matter is settled. If we acknowledge
that God has commanded us to act as this traveler is doing,
then we know that the action is right. No further investigation
is required.
The problems begin, of course, when we disagree. Unless we
have carefully constructed a system like Hobbes' Leviathan, in
which the whole point is to have one person whose will we have
agreed in advance to accept, it is difficult to know what we
should do if our initial moral judgments differ. What do we
investigate to decide whether this non-natural property that
my neighbor intuits and I do not is really present? How do we
decide what God has willed?
The appeal of coherentist ethical naturalism is not that it
eliminates moral disagreements, but that it suggests a way to
resolve them. Although there is no single, determinative
feature of acts that identifies them as right, their rightness is
constituted by natural features which we do know how to
investigate, and about which we have some ideas for resolving
disagreements. The rightness of an act, as some ethical natura-
lists put it, supervenes upon natural facts. An act is right because
of certain natural facts.60 Helping the stranger in distress is
right because it preserves or enhances the life of the stranger,
and because it involves no disproportionate risk to the well-
being of the one who gives aid. Giving this particular school a
portion of the money I have earned by writing is right, because
this school helped me to learn those skills, and because none of
the others to whom I am tied makes a weightier claim on these
resources. Faced with any disagreement about these moral
claims, the ethical naturalist does not appeal to intuitions or to
authoritative decrees. He or she looks for misstatements of the
constituent facts, or for relevant facts that have been over-
looked.
60
See Brink, Moral Realism, pp. 160-61. See also the discussion of ethical naturalism
on pp. 13-15 above.
11 o Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
So far, so good. The problems that Niebuhr identifies with

naturalism begin when the naturalist tries to emulate the sim-
plicity of the non-naturalist position by reducing the range of
relevant facts. The question of rightness then no longer involves
weighing a variety of qualitatively different consequences and
relationships, but only a single calculation of what makes for
the "greatest happiness," for example. 61 The determination
becomes even simpler when the reduction is made in a way that
eliminates subjective measures of pleasure, satisfaction, or pain,
so that the relevant natural facts are measurable in terms of
economic productivity or gene pool enhancement.
Morton White labels these versions of ethical naturalism
"reductive naturalism." Reductive naturalism attempts to
formulate moral judgments by a simple, definitive method in
which moral facts are not merely constituted by natural facts, but
are identical with a specific, limited range of them. 62 Moral truth
simply is whatever the facts of the case are regarding the
general happiness, or the gross national product, or the
gene pool.
It is this reductive naturalism that Niebuhr labels "natural-
ism" and then rejects, because it has no use for the law of love.63
He is right, of course, but reductive naturalism has no use for
many other things that also figure in a realistic judgment that a
particular course of action is right. Non-reductive naturalism,
what P. F. Strawson calls "liberal" or "catholic" naturalism, 64
by contrast treats a very broad range of facts as relevant to
moral assessments. Personal satisfactions, affective responses,
and the cumulative experience of individuals and communities
are among the elements around which a considered moral
judgment must be built, along with other considerations sus-
ceptible to more objective determination. As Morton White
puts it:
61
Cf. Bentham's "hedonic calculus."
62
White, What Is and What Ought to Be Done, p p . 14, 104-5.
63
K e i t h W a r d , " R e i n h o l d N i e b u h r a n d the Christian H o p e , " in Harries, ed., Reinhold
Niebuhr, p. 63.
64
P. F. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1985), pp. 1, 39-41. Obviously, there is no reference to the
religious or political meanings of these terms.
Ethics 111
The descriptive scientist, by using the linguistic structure he has

built, will be able to connect some of his sensory experiences with
others, and in this sense organize them; the moral judge, by using the
linguistic structure he has built, will be able to connect his sensory
experiences with his feeling of obligation. Using a mechanical meta-
phor rather than the biological metaphor of organization, one might
say that the descriptive scientist builds conceptual bridges that allow
him to move from sensory experiences to other sensory experiences
whereas the moral judge builds conceptual bridges that not only get
him from some sensory experiences to other sensory experiences but
also from sensory experiences to moral feelings.65
Christian Realism is an ethical naturalism in this non-
reductive, inclusive sense, although it must surely reject the
reductive versions of naturalism against which Niebuhr com-
plained in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. White, Strawson,
and other more recent writers provide a theoretical framework
in which to understand both the feelings of faith, hope, and
courage and the "stubborn and disheartening" facts that can
come into play in a realistic moral judgment.
Having said that, we should not expect that the substance of
the Christian Realist's moral reflection will exactly match that
of the contemporary non-reductive naturalist. While the philo-
sophers provide a clear theoretical statement about the mixed
body of beliefs that supports every normative judgment, their
analyses of particular normative judgments are usually limited
to schematic textbook examples of moral argument in which
the elements to be brought into coherence are far simpler than
those involved in actual, everyday thought and speech. White
speaks generally of "moral feelings" with little attention to the
qualitative differences that distinguish religious awe, moral
indignation, and physical disgust one from another, and some-
times set them in conflict. Strawson, in the manner of the later
Wittgenstein, affirms against skepticism those "original,
natural, inescapable commitments" to a world of objects in
space and time, inhabited by human observers who have both
an individual past and a collective history.66
65
White, What Is and What Ought to Be Done, p . 37.
66
Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, p . 28.
Ethical naturalism in contemporary philosophy focuses on
the more general features of human life, the dominant ten-
dencies that shape the purposes of each individual and the
universal, or nearly universal characteristics that people share
across cultural, racial, and historical boundaries. Contempo-
rary philosophical naturalism eschews the rationalist's idea of a
transcendental moral logic, but its focus on the human univer-
sal is hardly less single-minded than Kant's.
Niebuhr's work is a twentieth-century reminder that ethical
naturalism does not have to work that way. Attentiveness to
the full range of facts that impinge on a moral decision, when
put into practice and not simply formulated as a theoretical
alternative, hones the powers of observation and allows one to
attend to motives and forces that others, led by their theories to
concentrate on a narrower range of observations, ignore. A
naturalist, unlike a narrativist, does not reject generalizations
about what persons are apt to want or to do, but the naturalist
also notes that these broad tendencies can be modified by
culture, opportunity, and experience, so that apparently quite
opposite behaviors may spring from a common source. The
same anxiety that drives one person to a vaulting ambition to
secure fame and power may lead another, who has fewer
outlets for ambition, to a sensual lassitude that fears no loss
because it finds nothing worth grasping.67 Americans react to
world events differently from Germans, Russians, and even
from Britons, because of their different histories.
Niebuhr's fame as a political analyst and social critic rested
on such observations, and his popularity testifies that the
ethical naturalists have got something right about how people
actually make their moral choices. They attempt, as Niebuhr
put it in his own definition of political realism, "to take all
factors in a social and political situation, which offer resistance
to established norms, into account, especially factors of self-
interest and power." 68 People seek credible generalizations
about human nature and aspirations that frame a picture of the
67
N i e b u h r , The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 178-79. W e will consider this particular
problem in much more detail in Chapter Three.
68
N i e b u h r , Christian Realism and Political Problems, p . 119.
Ethics 113
good human life, but when they make particular moral
choices, they also want to know what obstacles stand in the
way of these aspirations and what course, under present cir-
cumstances, frustrated hopes are likely to take.
REALITY AND RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS
In formulating the coherences on which our moral choices rest,

Christian Realism's version of ethical naturalism attends to the
social and religious, as well as physical and biological elements
in those coherences. The person who attempts to order and
integrate moral experiences is not just a biological individual,
sharing characteristics common to all members of the human
species. He or she is a social person, shaped by history, customs,
and interests that mark each human being as a member of
particular groups, as well as part of humanity in general.
It is especially important to Reinhold Niebuhr's under-
standing of persons that each of them has a capacity for
"indefinite transcendence" of the given conditions of life. In
that self-transcendence, the social artifacts with which we live
provide the greatest opportunities for change. We are not
bound to prevailing hairstyles, the secret ballot, or the modern
state in quite the same way that we are bound to eat regularly
and eventually to die. Nevertheless, where we begin is crucial
for the changes we can conceive, and for whether we will greet
any particular change that is urged upon us as a liberation, or
mourn it as a loss.
The particularity of the social conditions in which we live
also means that most of us develop quite specific loyalties and
dependencies. We may speak of the human need for commu-
nity in general terms, but for any one of us the communities
which we need and love are quite specific. Rare individuals
may be able to move freely between several cultures, or to shift
the center of their lives successfully from one culture to
another, though even in these cases the transitions are usually
mediated by continuities in professional life, family, or ethnic
ties. Contrary to what some forms of modern individualism
suggest, we do not use these communities simply as instruments
for personal satisfaction. They are genuine centers of loyalty,

and persons can and do make sacrifices of their own good for
the good of the community. At the same time, our individual
need for community creates a search for approval that opens
up virtually unlimited possibilities both for exploitation of the
individual by the group and for megalomaniac remaking of the
community in one's own image.
These social factors need to be considered when assessing a
course of action, because they create possibilities and limita-
tions far more specific than the general features common to
human nature would suggest. Christian Realism, however,
cannot stop with social analysis alone. Inherent in the tran-
scendence of each particular starting point is the recognition
that every loyalty we can formulate is limited.
The consequence is that it [human reason] is always capable of
envisaging possibilities of order, unity, and harmony above and
beyond the contingent and arbitrary realities of its physical existence;
but it is not capable (because of its finiteness) of incarnating all the
higher values which it discerns; nor even of adequately defining the
unconditioned good which it dimly apprehends as the ground and
goal of all its contingent values.69
The loyalties, and the distortions of loyalty, which are dis-
cerned in attentiveness to society thus lead us to a consider-
ation of the religious elements in our self-understanding as
well.
Religion is, however, more than a reflection on "the fact that
man can transcend himself in infinite regression." 70 The most
basic way in which religion enters into the coherences by which
we assess persons and actions is through the religious affections
- a sense of awe before the beauty and power of the universe, a
sense of terror at the recognition of our own finitude and
contingency, and perhaps, too, a sense of guilt for the disparity
between the flawed and limited goods that capture our loves
and the grandeur of this one worthy object which we only
dimly apprehend, and to which we rarely attend. The expres-
sion, and even the experience, of these emotions is strongly
69
70
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 222.
Ethics 115
colored by the particular religious traditions through which we
have learned to identify them, and yet it is hard to see the
affections as only the artifacts of religious language.
A line of American Protestant thinkers that stretches back to
Jonathan Edwards has seen the religious affections as appre-
hensions of a religious reality, and the Christian Realists stand
squarely within that tradition. 71 If it is important to a coherent
moral evaluation to build the "conceptual bridges" that link
moral feelings to sense perceptions, those who see the import-
ance of religious affections in human experience will insist that
these must also be attended to and incorporated into our moral
discourse.72
Attentiveness to these social and religious aspects of human
experience results in a view of human nature that is more
flexible and less predictable than some other versions of ethical
naturalism. Characteristically, Reinhold Niebuhr stresses the
indeterminate possibilities for good and evil which result from
human communities and commitments. As a result, we cannot
suppose that people in society will be moved only by pre-
dictable, moderate desires that can easily be satisfied in an
orderly community. The community creates new wants of its
own, as "natural" as the rest, but perhaps not so easily satis-
fied. Nor can we readily establish a normative human nature,
from which what is to be done and what is to be avoided might
be deduced with certainty.
The Christian Realists' account of human nature and the
politics appropriate to it differs from that of their secular
counterparts, but we should not suppose, as Morton White
once suggested, that those differences result from the fact that
71
See, recently, James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981), I, 197-204.
72
See Morton O. White's statement on page 111 above. One might argue that we
attend to moral feelings in ethics precisely because they are moral, and exclude
religious feelings because they are not, but this distinction between moral and
non-moral feelings surely makes even less sense than the rigid distinction, which the
non-reductive naturalist rejects, between moral and non-moral facts. Affections
appear as "religious," "moral," or "aesthetic" primarily in terms of the kind of
discourse in which they are considered. If the feeling of awe is usually regarded as a
"religious" affection, while a sense of obligation is regarded as a "moral" feeling,
that is because of the contexts in which we usually consider each of them. The
experiences do not come so neatly labeled.
Christian Realists appeal in the end to religious knowledge

that is unavailable to those who stand outside the revelation.
White formulates his differences with Niebuhr this way:
If all that Niebuhr did was to oppose simple-minded optimism of the
view that men are gods, we should embrace him as a sane partisan of
the empiricism and pragmatism which he assigns to wise American
politicians. But surely Niebuhr wants us to learn more than that from
him, since that is much too naturalistic and modest. Niebuhr believes
in the doctrine of Original Sin, according to which man is necessarily
evil. Yet this doctrine is just as indefensible as the theory of inevitable
progress and, ironically enough, it rests on faith - a faith which has
engendered even more "fanatic certainty" than that which theorists
of inevitable progress assign to their view. The truly emancipated
mind must reject both of these dogmas.73
White correctly identifies the idea of "original sin" as a key
point of difference between himself and Niebuhr, but he
ignores Niebuhr's insistence that the theological concept rests
on a myth which is itself a way of representing human experi-
ence. White and Niebuhr do not disagree that our moral
expectations must be formed by a broad view of human experi-
ence; they differ over what that experience is. They disagree on
morals and politics precisely because they differ so sharply
about experience.
Similarly, as we shall see more clearly in the next chapter,
Niebuhr rejects the concept of moral principles that follow
deductively from fixed facts of human nature, but this is not, as
John Courtney Murray supposed, because Niebuhr held an
"ambiguist" view that renders nature intractable to reason.74
The ambiguity, too, is a product of experience, and not an a
priori refusal to make judgments.
The Christian Realist, then, does bring distinctive Christian
ideas to bear on public moral choices. Niebuhr's work would
hardly have provoked the interest and the controversy that it
did if he were merely offering more eloquent formulations of
received opinion. The Christian tradition has attended to
73
M o r t o n O . W h i t e , Pragmatism and the American Mind ( N e w York: Oxford University
Press, 1971), pp. 226-27. (This quotation comes from White's review of Niebuhr's
book The Irony of American History.)
74
See M u r r a y , We Hold These Truths, p p . 2 8 2 - 8 3 .
Ethics 117
features of human experience that other systems of thought,
particularly those inspired by the modern search for scientific
objectivity, are apt to ignore. It has found ways to symbolize
those truths that preserve the ambiguity and indefinite possi-
bilities of lived experience, and its general construal of human
life in a reality that finds unity and meaning in God enables
people to face the risks and confusions of more particular
experiences without demanding more unity than is actually
there and without placing themselves or their groups in the
center of value. "Thus wisdom about our destiny is dependent
upon a humble recognition of the limits of our knowledge and
our power. Our most reliable understanding is the fruit of
'grace' in which faith completes our ignorance without pre-
tending to possess its certainties as knowledge; and in which
contrition mitigates our pride without destroying our hope." 75
The reason which is able to "dimly apprehend" the "uncon-
ditioned good" which is the "ground and goal of all its con-
tingent values" will surely make different responses to situ-
ations from one which dismisses such apprehensions in favor of
more objective evidence. The concepts, symbols, and rituals
which articulate that meaning and make it available for shared
use along with others will play a significant role in the interpre-
tation of situations and the choice of courses of action. The
distinctive insights of Christianity must be tested against the
same pragmatic criteria by which we determine other sorts of
truth. If that testing leads to conclusions different from those
arrived at by those who do not share the Christian insights, the
question can only be settled by extending the discussion to new
areas or new evidence.
The task of Christian ethics therefore is not to demonstrate
universal rational principles of which the Christian traditions
merely provide examples. Nor is it to use the Christian narra-
tives to construct an alternative polity in which love prevails
and violence is absent. The task of Christian ethics is to
determine what the power of love and non-violence can mean
for the moral life of an existing society. That determination
75
takes place with varying degrees of specificity, from the Chris-

tian citizen who tries to say what justice means at a City
Council meeting, to a theologian who tries to articulate the
meaning of Christianity for the transformations of Western
history. It also involves different balances between action and
interpretation, from the organizer rallying a divided commu-
nity to resist economic exploitation, to the lecturer who helps
an audience locate themselves and their community within a
framework of historical events. In all cases, however, what is
wanted is neither the sentimental affirmation of an alternative
reality that, in the end, means nothing for present choices, nor
the fanatic realization of a vision that must, in the end, be
corrected by a wiser reason. What is wanted is a "critical"
attitude and a "responsible" attitude, an approach that joins
in one person the conviction of ultimate meaning and the test
of experience.
CHAPTER 3
Freedom
THE HUMAN GOOD
In Chapter Two, we interpreted Christian Realism as a version

of ethical naturalism and distinguished it from Christian ethics
understood as an exemplification of universal moral rationality
or as the unique expression of the values of a community
shaped by the Christian narrative. That theoretical clarifi-
cation suggests that the Christian Realist's moral choices begin
with an idea of the human good, but it may tell us less than we
want to know about what that good is.
That frustration is in part characteristic of ethical natural-
ism. Unless naturalism takes a reductive form that treats the
human good as some single thing to be observed, quantified,
and compared, it must accommodate substantial differences
over what the human good is and how it is to be described. A
large part of the discourse of ethical naturalism is about which
of the many things that persons value are actually part of the
human good, whether there is a single way of life that best
realizes that good, and so forth. Christian Realism, because of
the expanded attention it pays to the social and religious
dimensions of experience, suggests a particularly complex view
of the human good. Most of us assess versions of naturalism in
large part by the ideas of a good life they hold out to us. We
want to know what sort of persons we would be and what kind
of communities we would build if we lived as they say we
should. An ethical system that tries to tell us that we will be
better persons by living in ways that are unrecognizable or
repugnant to us will have a difficult case to make. In this
chapter, we must begin to make Christian Realism a persuasive
and plausible version of ethical naturalism, by showing that
the life of freedom guided by love is not only consistent with the
requirements of human nature, but also, recognizably, a
human good. That will require at least the rest of this book, but
in this chapter we will make a beginning, by understanding
both the centrality of freedom and the characteristic forms of
its denial.
NATURE
To speak of human nature as a norm for human choices

suggests that there may be discrepancies between the morally
correct choice and the course of action that individuals find
most desirable, or even the course they would describe as most
"natural" for themselves. What we call "human nature" is not
simply an account of what persons are biologically determined
to do or how they are statistically likely to behave. The idea of
human nature which shapes the norms of ethical naturalism is,
in Aristotelian terms, an idea of human excellence or perfec-
tion, or, to use the more contemporary terminology, an idea of
"human flourishing." It may require us to do things we find
difficult or unappealing, such as spending long hours in libra-
ries reading theological texts, in order to achieve the good of
knowledge. It may require us to postpone immediate gratifi-
cations in order to achieve greater goods at a later date, or to
subordinate goods that are attractive and immediately avail-
able to other goods that are harder to achieve and further into
an uncertain future. Nature thus provides moral standards by
picking out from among the things that persons are able to do
or may be inclined to do those which are commended because
they contribute to human flourishing and those which are
prohibited or discouraged because they work against it.
Ethical naturalists who have comprehensive and determi-
nate ideas of the human good may arrive at a deductive system
of morality, in which moral imperatives follow from known
facts about human goods and principles that specify the sorts of
acts we are to choose or reject with respect to those goods.
Freedom 121
Roman Catholic moral theology, based on Aristotle's logic as

well as Aristotle's ethics, long provided the best example of
such a deductive system in Western ethics. Recent philosophi-
cal formulations have sought to make it even more rigorous,
explicating and defending the "intermediate moral principles"
that were previously accepted as theological truths not in need
of philosophical justification.1 While proponents of these
deductive systems have long acknowledged that the risks of
error and the possibilities for legitimate disagreement become
larger as the moral conclusion becomes more "remote" from
the first premises, the goal nonetheless remains a definitive
moral system derived with the certainty of deductive logic from
a knowledge of human nature.
For some modern critics, the universality and rigor of these
claims leads to a rejection of ethical naturalism. The flaw in all
arguments that proceed with such certainty from human
nature to norms of action is that human beings do not have a
fixed, determinate nature like rocks, ants, oak trees, and inter-
nal combustion engines. Human beings are what they make of
themselves, the products of their own freedom. The critics
differ over whether this self-creative freedom belongs chiefly to
the species as a whole, to some organic community of race or
nation, or — in the manner of twentieth-century existentialism
— to the individual alone. For all who follow this line of
criticism, however, the point is to set the claims of freedom
against the claims of nature, and so to deny that what we ought
to do follows deductively from certain truths about who we are
by nature. 2
In this particular controversy, it is sometimes difficult to
decide where the Christian Realists stand. While we have
interpreted Christian Realism as a version of ethical natural-
ism, Reinhold Niebuhr repeatedly criticizes traditional natural
1
John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.G.: Georgetown University Press,
1983), pp. 69-70.
2
For the important role of this tension between freedom and nature in modern
thought, see Paul Ricoeur, "Nature and Freedom," in Political and Social Essays, ed.
David Stewart and Joseph Bien (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1974),
pp. 23-45. See also Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979), pp. 1—14.
law thinking because, as he sees it, it reduces human cultures to

determinate products of nature and ignores the large element
of freedom and creativity in every social arrangement. On the
other hand, the realistic assessment of the forces that work
against the realization of human ideals, and the sober reali-
zation that those ideals themselves may be fatally flawed and
limited, warn against unlimited confidence in freedom. Those
who like to cite texts will find sufficient resources in Reinhold
Niebuhr to make a case for either side.
Perhaps the clearest systematic statement comes in Nie-
buhr's Gifford Lectures, delivered in 1939 and subsequently
published as The Nature and Destiny of Man. While the Gifford
endowment's assignment of a series of lectures on "natural
theology" is loosely laid on the lecturers, it seems to have
pressed Niebuhr to develop the theological presuppositions
behind his observations on history and politics, and explicitly
to compare the understanding of human nature held by Chris-
tian Realism with alternative formulations in Christian
thought and Western philosophy. For present purposes, we will
take the discussion of "original righteousness" which closes the
chapters on "Human Nature" in The Nature and Destiny of Man
as the starting point for a resolution of the problem of freedom
and nature. 3
Niebuhr suggests that any adequate account of human
nature must treat freedom not in opposition to a fixed human
nature, but precisely as part of that nature. Human nature
includes the capacity to stand outside given conditions, to see
them as contingent facts, and to imagine how they might have
been or might yet be otherwise.
The essential nature of man contains two elements; and there are
correspondingly two elements in the original perfection of man. To
the essential nature of man belong, on the one hand, all his natural
endowments, and determinations, his physical and social impulses,
3
The chapters on "human nature" are derived from the first series of Niebuhr's
Gifford Lectures, delivered in April and May of 1939, just before the start of World
War II. Niebuhr returned to Edinburgh to complete the assignment after the war
had begun. For further biographical details concerning the development of Nie-
buhr's theology and the delivery of the Gifford Lectures, see Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr,
pp. 146-47, 178-92.
Freedom 123
his sexual and racial differentiations, in short his character as a
creature imbedded in the natural order. On the other hand, his
essential nature also includes the freedom of his spirit, his tran-
scendence over natural process and finally his self-transcendence.4
The characteristic problem with theories of natural law,
Niebuhr suggests, is that they deal with the human as creature,
but not the human as spirit.
FREEDOM
The relationship of freedom to the various determinations that
Niebuhr lumps together under the heading "the natural
order" appears at once in the fact that freedom is defined in
relation to those determinations. There is here no simple
dualism between "nature" and "spirit." 5 Freedom is precisely
the natural capacity that persons embedded in the given cir-
cumstances of nature and history have to imagine and to create
a new reality in relationship to the limitations from which they
started. Other animals may use tools, perhaps even rudimen-
tary signs, to achieve their aims in a given environment. Only
humans, so far as we know, can manipulate signs and symbols
to imagine a different world, and direct their efforts toward
making it real. That "transcendence over natural process" is
freedom, but it bears emphasizing that it is only in relation to
natural and historical starting points that we recognize it as
free.6
Freedom begins with the capacity to project oneself imagin-
atively into a situation in which the constraints of present
experience no longer hold. A hungry primate that sees a cluster
of fruit as its next meal still operates within the processes of
nature. A tribe of desert-dwelling nomads who begin to live in
expectation of a land flowing with milk and honey have
4 5
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 270. Ibid., I, 74-76.
6
We must, for the purposes of this chapter, set aside complex theological questions
about God's freedom of action, and about whether the freedom of God can be in any
way understood as analogous to human freedom. Some theologians will insist that
analogies between human freedom and divine freedom are apt and illuminating. I
do not mean to imply that the analogy is unworthy of pursuit, but I emphasize that
we will not be pursuing it here.
achieved a degree of freedom. So, too, has a homeless alcoholic

who begins to imagine a life beyond the streets and the shelters
or a young student in a one-party state who begins to question
the party's truth, though in these cases the constraints that
freedom transcends are more the making of human choice and
history than of nature.
Freedom that transcends given circumstances must soon
include transcendence of the self, for I cannot get very far
toward imagining a different world to live in without imagin-
ing myself as in some sense a different person. This is true for
the teenage drug addict trying to imagine herself finishing
school, getting a job, and being a good mother; but it is also
true for the successful academic, seated before a blank piece of
paper and trying to imagine something she has not already
written. In either case, freedom means knowing that I am not
just the record of what I have already done, or failed to do, as
the case may be.
Freedom as self-transcendence suggests, further, the possi-
bility of critical questions about the goals themselves. Had I not
been so frightened as a child by those unexpected changes in my
family, would I still see predictability and control as the most
important achievements in my life? If our people did not have
such bitter memories of poverty and unemployment, would we
still regard security as a higher economic priority than produc-
tivity? If we had ever known real hardship, would we be so
enthusiastic for the competitive melee of a free-market economy?
There are no clear limits to the questions freedom poses or
permits. Scientists and engineers must ask whether the most
basic material conditions of life can be altered or circumven-
ted. Legislators and political theorists may imagine a polity
ordered by a totally new constitution. Historians, humanists,
and theologians may speculate on how our lives would be
different if certain quite specific, contingent events had worked
out differently. Or we may, with great difficulty, contemplate
what our lives and commitments would be like if we had to live
in quite different circumstances — as members of a different
race, or social class, marked by different handicaps and abili-
ties, shaped by a different culture.
Freedom 125
What marks these primary experiences of freedom is that
they involve possible ways of life for ourselves. We may imagine
what it would be like to be a knight in armor or a Confucian
sage, or a highly developed extraterrestrial being with a
silicon-based metabolism, but those are exercises in fantasy,
not freedom. Freedom imagines circumstances different from
our own in the context of goods toward which our lives and
efforts might be directed. In that context, of course, there may
be freedom in fantasy. Good writers of fiction certainly know
how to use fantasy in that way. In that context, too, freedom
may seek human good through an awareness of great evil or
suffering. A vivid sense of the horror of genocide or famine may
be a way to begin reordering our own lives and values in ways
that help to prevent those evils in the future. Imaginative
identification with those who have suffered illness or personal
tragedy may help us to cultivate virtues of patience and hope
that will make us better persons in our own easier situations.
While freedom is, as Niebuhr puts it, "indefinite tran-
scendence" 7 of our circumstances and ourselves, it is freedom
precisely because it is situated. Freedom is not the "view from
nowhere" 8 that provides an objective picture of everything as
it is. Freedom starts from somewhere, and views that starting
point in relation to other possibilities. For a single mother
struggling against poverty to care for her children and protect
them from the consequences of bad housing and urban social
decay, the tedium of the suburban housewife who wields her
mop against the backdrop of a well-stocked refrigerator and
spends the afternoon driving her children to well-planned
recreational activities may be the picture of freedom. Freedom
for the suburbanite may require a little more dirt and disorder.
In the Christian Realist's ethical naturalism, then, freedom
occupies a place not unlike that of reason in Aristotle's ethics.
Freedom, like reason, is a basic human good. Life without
freedom is not something we would choose, no matter how
7
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 3-4.
8
Thomas Nagel employs this phrase to characterize the Enlightenment view of
reason, to which his own more pragmatic approach offers an alternative. See
Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
comfortable the material circumstances might be. Those

persons who choose comfort at the expense of freedom elicit
pity or contempt, but not envy. Those crushed by circum-
stances that destroy this freedom we regard as the most
wretched of our fellow human beings. "The reduction . . . to a
mere biological existence, in which an independent human
spirit has been extinguished" rings in our ears as a description
of a life not worth living.9
But freedom is more than a good. It is also the capacity by
which we know the good and identify the things that are good.
For Aristotle, reason knows an objective good that is the same
for everyone, but freedom is more akin to the insights in myth,
which capture coherences larger than we can explicitly formu-
late. Freedom grasps good from a distinctive angle of vision,
based on its own starting point. It is no accident that Reinhold
Niebuhr rejects the Aristotelian claim that reason is the defin-
ing feature of the human person, relying instead on an Augusti-
nian formulation that encompasses reason, memory, and
imagination.10 Any definition of humanity must include the
particularity of individual experience as well as a capacity to
grasp the universal.
HUMAN DIGNITY
In ethical naturalism, the essential role that freedom plays in a

good human life has normative implications. Because we can
hardly be human at all without being free, we must use our
own freedom. Because we can hardly be said to deal realis-
tically with others unless we treat them as persons with
freedom, we must not act in ways that violate the freedom of
others. Indeed, some traditions, notably Catholic moral
thought in recent decades, prefer to use the term 'human
dignity' for this fundamental freedom, precisely to distinguish
it from particular political freedoms which may be given or
9
The phrase comes from an account of centuries of oppression of the Romanian
peasantry in Robert D. Kaplan, "Bloody Romania," Mew Republic (July 30, 1990),
p. 12.
10
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 153-66. See also "Freedom," in Faith and
Politics, p . 79.
Freedom 127
withheld by a government. 11 The basis for freedom is not

political choice, or the requirements of a specific political
order, but the nature of human consciousness itself.
Some of the implications of freedom or human dignity are
chiefly personal. Freedom requires of us a delicate balance
between humility and self-assertion. We must refuse to be
completely identified with either our successes or our failures,
acknowledging that, in our freedom, we may yet fall below the
achievements that others have come to associate with us, or we
may live out potentials that even we have not yet recognized.
Freedom requires the inner-city youth who has failed every
conventional test of economic and social success to shout, "I
am somebody!" Freedom also requires successful men and
women to repeat softly, "I am not the Chief Executive Officer,
the Most Valuable Player, the prize-winning author, the life-
saving surgeon, the favorite teacher . . . " Against the determi-
nisms that threaten to reduce us to whatever we just happen to
be, and the fantasies that tempt us to think we already are
everything we can imagine, freedom is the capacity to see
ourselves in relation to both reality and possibility. Because
such freedom is essential to our well-being, there is in ethical
naturalism a moral obligation to maintain that capacity in
ourselves.
Freedom imposes other requirements that are more clearly
social and political. As Niebuhr put it:
The social and political freedoms which modern democratic commu-
nities accord the person express the belated convictions of modern
communities, gained after desperate struggles, that the community
must give the person a social freedom which corresponds to the
essential freedom of his nature, and which enables him to express
hopes and ambitions and to engage in interests and vitalities which
are not immediately relevant to the collective purposes of the com-
munity, but which in the long run enrich the culture and leaven the
lump of the community's collective will and purpose.12
11
See especially "Dignitatis humanae," the Second Vatican Council's declaration on
religious liberty, in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter M. Abbott (New York:
Guild Press, 1966), pp. 675-77. See also John Courtney Murray, The Problem of
Religious Freedom (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1965).
12
Niebuhr, "Freedom," in Faith and Politics, p. 81.
Against the tendency of institutions and governments to limit

dissent and to allocate all resources to projects that match
prevailing ideas of what is useful, freedom gives us a perspec-
tive on the limitations of the present order and sparks the play
of imagination and experiment from which new possibilities
emerge. In ethical naturalism, there are also moral obligations
to respect those capacities in others.13
DENIALS OF FREEDOM
The importance of freedom or human dignity to a realistic

account of human nature should now be clear. Unfortunately,
it is rather less clear how this freedom is to be maintained and
respected. What people seek is not freedom as an abstraction,
but the particular hopes, dreams, and goals that mark the
exercise of their own freedom. Other accounts of human nature
may yield determinate goods toward which all persons ought
to strive, but the aims of freedom clearly are not all the same.
Some could easily be realized, given a little more cooperation
by other persons. Others are beyond the reach of present-day
technology or the resources of today's economy. Some hopes
and goals contradict others, so that we cannot further the
freedom of environmentalists who dream of unspoiled wilder-
ness habitats without at least temporarily frustrating the
freedom of loggers in search of economic security and develop-
ers who dream of new communities in which to work and live.
Modern thought has usually dealt with this troublesome
diversity of aims by suggesting that there is value in the
achievement of any human aim. None of the goals and plans of
life that people have is, in itself, better or worse than another.
The moral and political problem is to arrange things so that as
many of them may be realized as possible. William James
articulated the basic premise behind this radical pluralism of
13
This suggests, though we cannot take the time to argue it here, that the lines
between "negative" freedoms, by which we are protected from interference by
others, and "positive" freedoms, by which we are assured of their cooperation and
assistance, should not be so sharply drawn as they sometimes are. The distinction is
analytically useful, but in practice the effective exercise of any freedom will require
resources, counsel, and cooperation from others, as well as their non-interference.
Freedom 129
human values: "Take any demand, however slight, which any
creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own
sole sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only
possible kind of proof you could adduce would be the exhi-
bition of another creature who should make a demand that ran
the other way." 14
The human sympathy which enables us to understand the
aims of others and to feel their joys and frustrations is real
enough, but a Christian Realist will note that these insights
give us at least as much reason to be wary of others' successes as
to rejoice in them. Their purposes, after all, may conflict with
our own, not only in practical terms of competition for oppor-
tunities and resources, but in more fundamental ways. We may
find the aims they pursue abhorrent, so that our sympathy with
their success is in immediate conflict with our hatred of the
result. More important, freedom can envision goals that are
exploitative, that expand the freedom of the self by limiting the
freedom of others.
Freedom, then, is both a key human good and the capacity
that makes our identification and pursuit of other goods pos-
sible, but little follows morally from the claim that a particular
aim, plan, or action is an exercise of freedom. Because the
broad tradition of moral and political liberalism tends to
regard all expressions of freedom as of equal value, it concen-
trates on removing obstacles to those expressions. Liberalism
imposes restrictions only where an individual's exercise of
freedom begins to limit the freedom of another. 15
Realism, by contrast, calls attention not to the inevitable
conflicts between one individual's freedom and another's, but
to internal contradictions that mark some exercises of freedom
as a denial of the basic realities of freedom itself. Recall that
freedom begins with human beings in particular, contingent
circumstances imagining possibilities different from the reali-
14
William James, "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," in Essays on Faith and
Morals (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1943), p. 194.
15
Cf. John Stuart Mill's principle: "the only purpose for which power can rightfully
be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to
prevent harm to others." See Mill, "On Liberty," in Selected Writings of John Stuart
Mill, ed. Maurice Cowling (New York: New American Library, 1968), p. 129.
ties they now experience.16 Being realistic about humanity
means treating them - ourselves and others - in ways that
respect that capacity and acknowledge its fundamental place
in any way of life that human beings could find acceptable. But
realism also requires that freedom does not attempt to deny or
defeat the conditions that make freedom possible. To suppose
that we could create a good that was no longer particular and
contingent, but somehow universal, permanent, and itself
unsusceptible to further change and development would be to
suppose that freedom could achieve its aims by destroying
itself. Doubtless, the freedom of many people would be
trampled in the attempt to create and maintain such a system,
but from the viewpoint of ethical naturalism the fundamental
moral problem with such efforts is not that they infringe on the
freedom of others, but that they ignore the basic realities
within which freedom functions. Freedom is a capacity of
finite, limited persons whose capacities for change are also
limited, and who can only bring about new situations that are
also themselves particular, local, and contingent. Exercises of
freedom which attempt to deny or alter this reality are wrong
from the start, even if they do not get to a point of real conflict
with the freedom of other persons.
For Reinhold Niebuhr, sin was the most adequate theo-
logical term for this denial of finitude, and the biblical myth of
the Fall and the doctrine of original sin provided the most
telling formulations of the pervasive self-contradiction in the
exercises of human freedom. The terminology became closely
associated with Niebuhr's version of Christian Realism, and for
many it is a shorthand way of saying what Christian Realism is
all about. By the end of his career, Niebuhr somewhat regret-
ted the terminology, since his readers tended to evaluate his
political thought rather quickly in terms of their own ideas
about what 'sin' means. Because modern secular thinkers often
associate the concept of sin with a religious denial of human
worth and an authoritarian suppression of human needs, the
evaluation was often negative, and the real point of Niebuhr's
16
See page 123 above.
Freedom 131
analysis was obscured.17 The point, however, is important, and
it may be as relevant to today's limited political expectations as
it was when Niebuhr first defined it against the extravagant
hopes of liberal democracy and Social Gospel theology. It will
repay our efforts to understand clearly what Niebuhr meant by
interpreting sin as the denial of human freedom and to see the
variety of forms that this denial can take.
SINT
There is a tendency in Western religions, particularly apparent
in Christianity at certain points in history, to associate sin with
finitude, change, and limitation. Truth, beauty, and goodness
exist in a world of unchanging Forms or in the mind of God.
The material world, where things develop and decay, is neces-
sarily imperfect and less good than the ideal one. The human
powers which grasp the eternal truths are superior to the
powers of perception and the mechanical skills that deal with
illusive and unwieldy matter. This approach also leads to
gender stereotypes. The male, who is concerned with reason
and order, is necessarily superior to the female, who deals with
generation, nurture, illness, and death. 18 From this point of
view, sin is the set of desires and actions that involve us with
this realm of finitude and decay, and the doctrine of original
sin is witness to the fact that we are all initially involved in it
through the very material realities of birth and sexuality.
While that is surely an incomplete picture of the Christian
understanding of sin, it represents a way of thinking which is
an especially vulnerable target for modern critics of Chris-
tianity. For them, these ideas are evidence that Christianity -
or perhaps religion in general - denies life and misinterprets
natural human limitations in order to deprive people ofjoy and
freedom, or to browbeat them into submission to religious
authority. In this century, the criticism has taken from Freud-
17
See Niebuhr's 1964 introduction to The Nature and Destiny of Man, p. viii, also Man's
Nature and His Communities, p. 24.
18
For an interesting recent study of these themes, see Margaret R. Miles, Carnal
Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1989).
ian psychology the ironic twist that it is themselves that religious

people deprive and oppress most, repressing their humanity
with a stern superego informed by what they take to be the
eternal laws of God.
It is important to Reinhold Niebuhr to reject this under-
standing of sin. Its place in historic Christian thought cannot
be denied, but it flies in the face of a more fundamental
affirmation of the goodness of Creation. "The whole Biblical
interpretation of life and history rests upon the assumption that
the created world, the world of finite, dependent and con-
tingent existence, is not evil by reason of its fmiteness."19 The
sense that worldly existence and biological life are evil is an
alien idea, pressed on biblical faith by the "dualistic and
acosmic" religions of the Hellenistic world.20 It is more at
home in the "non-historical cultures of the oriental world,"
Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, with their mystical disavo-
wals of meaningful history.21 Niebuhr's understanding of Asian
religion in this passage can hardly be defended, and recent
scholarship has shown that the relationship between Christian
and classical sources in the denial of the body and sexuality was
more complex than Niebuhr supposed.22 Nonetheless, his con-
structive point is surely correct: only as contemporary Chris-
tians find resources in their traditions to address the problems
of contingent, historical existence can Christianity speak to the
modern age which finds its questions there.
Instead of regarding our involvement in history and finitude
as evil, therefore, Niebuhr identifies sin as the denial of that
involvement:
[Humanity's] partial involvement in, and partial transcendence
over, the process of nature and thefluxof time ... is not regarded as
the evil from which man must be redeemed. The evil in the human
situation arises, rather, from the fact that men seek to deny or to
escape prematurely from the uncertainties of history and to claim a
freedom, a transcendence and an eternal and universal perspective
which is not possible for finite creatures. The problem of sin rather
19 20 21
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 167. Ibid. Ibid., II, 13.
22
Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
Freedom 133
than finiteness is, in other words, either implicitly or explicitly the

basic problem of life.23
By connecting freedom and finitude, Niebuhr offers the
critics of Christianity a more subtle answer than a simple
reaffirmation of the human life and powers that some religious
traditions have denied. If it were only a matter of declaring
good what some have thought bad, the way would be open for
unqualified endorsement of human wants and wishes, and for
an ethics which takes the satisfaction of human wants as the
main business of the moral life. By contrast, Niebuhr regards
the constraints of finitude as morally important. A large part of
the task of a realistic ethics is identifying those constraints and
settling the questions of how the limits they set on our aspir-
ations shall be handled and how the burdens they impose shall
be distributed. Working within the conditions of a real but
limited freedom, human goodness is achieved by a clear-
sighted recognition of the limits on our knowledge and power,
and by just and caring responsiveness to the tragic conflicts
which sometimes arise.
In the half-century since Niebuhr wrote The Nature and
Destiny of Man, the consensus on this point has, if anything,
grown. His work, particularly before World War II, was
directed against the still-popular belief that modern industry
could provide expanding prosperity and material comfort for
everyone, and against the Social Gospel creed that took this
realm of endless plenty to be God's will for human history, as
well as the aim of Christian action. The urgent message of
Christian Realism was that this reading of social ethics, Chris-
tian or secular, was badly mistaken.24
The late twentieth century seems to agree. Social critics have
not only all but forgotten the more extravagant hopes of the
Social Gospel; they find in secular affirmations of unlimited
prosperity both the roots of totalitarian schemes that force
people to create their own happiness and the origins of an
ecological crisis that results from the effort to make unlimited
23
N i e b u h r , The Nature and Destiny of Man, I I , 3 .
24
Bennett, Christian Realism, p p . 4 6 - 4 9 .
use of finite resources. In philosophy, the Enlightenment effort

to build a structure of knowledge on a foundation of certainty
gives way to a modest pragmatism that claims only that we
know how to do what we clearly can do, and to a rediscovery of
Aristotle's practical reason, which demands no more certainty
than the nature of changing, contingent things will admit.
Others carry the criticism even further. Martha Nussbaum
finds at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition an
impulse to control events that cannot, in fact, be controlled.
She directs us to the Greek poets, rather than the Greek
philosophers, for an appropriate recognition of "the tragic
power of circumstances over human goodness."25 Bernard
Williams argues that effective moral arguments, far from
depending on universal moral truths, can only be made from
within the acknowledged confines of a particular historical
situation.26 The hope is that within those limits clear thinking
and open discussion will enable us to set aside past mistakes
and illusions and to solve the immediate problems we face,
including the problems created by our previous solutions.
While there are important differences between these writers,
they share a broadly humanistic affirmation of the natural
needs and powers that give shape to our lives. The revulsion
from earthy, generative realities, the suspicion of the senses,
and the fear of pleasure that marked the thought of earlier
periods in Western history has become for these contemporary
thinkers almost incomprehensible, but unlike their more opti-
mistic counterparts from, say, the middle of the nineteenth
century to the middle of the twentieth, these contemporary
thinkers do not suppose that human freedom and creativity,
loosed from superstition, will be able to create Utopia or an
earthly paradise. They seem, at least initially, to share with
Reinhold Niebuhr a critical assessment of the optimistic
liberalism against which his realism was first directed. They,
like him, are less concerned with the goal of perfect justice than
25
M a r t h a C. N u s s b a u m , The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and
Philosophy ( C a m b r i d g e : C a m b r i d g e University Press, 1986), p . 50.
26
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy ( C a m b r i d g e , Mass.: H a r v a r d
University Press, 1985).
Freedom 135
with the daily choices that make for a little more human
happiness, or a little less misery, and so make a real difference
in specific human lives.
The profound antipathy of many of these authors toward sin
as a concept for interpreting political and social reality27 sug-
gests, however, that there may still be important differences
between their acceptance of human finitude and Niebuhr's
Christian Realism. One could attempt to smooth out these
differences by emphasizing, as Niebuhr did himself, that his
idea of sin is apt to be misunderstood by secular thinkers who
associate it with older notions of an inherited corruption. 28 The
theologian, in effect, apologizes for employing a particularly
difficult religious symbol to present an important public idea,
and the secular philosophers acknowledge that they have read
too much of their own idea of what 'sin' means into Niebuhr's
use of the term.
That reconciliation, however, would be too easy. The differ-
ences between Niebuhr's understanding of freedom and fini-
tude and the more recent affirmations of human limits remain
profound. What divides Niebuhr's recent interpreters is the
question of exactly what those differences are.
ORDER
One interpretation of Christian Realism stresses the new

threats to freedom which emerge when people organize them-
selves into political societies. All agree that the temptations to
deny finitude and fallibility and to make absolute claims fall
heavily on those who hold political power. The differences
appear when we ask just which ideas are apt to lead us into that
temptation.
Those who reject the Christian claim that sin is an
inescapable human reality object to more than the low esti-
mate of human moral powers this doctrine seems to imply.
27
See, for e x a m p l e , M a r t h a N u s s b a u m , " O u r Pasts, Ourselves," The Mew Republic 202
(April 9, 1990), 34. N u s s b a u m ' s essay is a review of Charles Taylor's Sources of the
Self.
28
See p a g e 130 above.
They also reject the political consequences of the doctrine.

According to these critics, when those who believe that human
aims are inevitably flawed come into power, they are likely to
exercise a tight control over their subjects to keep the human
error from getting out of hand. Moreover, because they believe
that sinful human beings are flawed in reason as well as in
purpose, they will not be very susceptible to argument or
persuasion by those they seek to control. The political result of
a belief in original sin is, in short, authoritarianism.29 The best
assurance of political freedom, by contrast, is a confidence that
people can select limited and achievable goals, discipline them-
selves to achieve them, and respond competently to the
unknown challenges that will arise in the course of the effort.
Those with less trust in human capability will, of course,
insist on stronger social and political constraints. More impor-
tant, they also argue that a realistic response to the genuine
need for authority is our best protection against the authori-
tarianism. Glenn Tinder articulates this view of political
power, and he relates it explicitly to Christian ideas of sin:
"Christianity is nearer to Machiavellism than to idealism.
Machiavelli maintained that the pride and selfishness of
human beings naturally give rise to disorder and that disorder
requires the remedy of power; since civilization depends on
order, and order on power, there can be no civilization without
power. Such views are fully in accord with Christian prin-
ciples."30 Given that power will always be used in holding
together a political community, Tinder suggests that the real
danger of authoritarianism lies with those who do not under-
stand the link between political power and human evil.
Augustinian Christians, or, to use Tinder's terminology,
"Reformation" Christians will not hesitate to use power to
secure the minimum conditions of a civilized order, but they
will not be tempted to think that they can move beyond order
to some sort of social ideal. By contrast, those who see the evil
29
Here again, Nussbaum provides a n articulate recent formulation of these ideas. See
M a r t h a Nussbaum, "Recoiling from R e a s o n , " New York Review of Books, 36
(December 7, 1989), 4 0 - 4 1 .
30
Glenn Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1989), p . 133.
Freedom 137
as incidental and eradicable will eventually be led to try for a

greater good. Their aspirations at that point blind them to
their own participation in sin, and their readiness to impose
their own vision on a reluctant public knows no limits. The best
protection against this kind of tyranny, Tinder suggests, is a
Christian community that is clear about its own understanding
of politics:
Secular theories of the state consistently obscure the evil inherent in
the twofold fact that the state always serves ends more or less par-
ticular rather than universal and imposes these ends coercively on
unconsenting members. These theories give rise to a concept that
Christianity enables us to recognize as profoundly false — the good
state, a concept not only self-contradictory, but implying that human
beings can organize morally pure spheres of life in the world and in
history. Admittedly, Christians have sometimes accepted this
concept. In doing so, however, they have allowed themselves to
accept a view that is distinctly Hellenic and pagan in its origins,
secular and humanistic in its modern development, and contrary to
the deepest Christian principles - at least as these principles are
understood in the "Reformation" tradition.31
For critics of the concept of sin, then, the doctrine poses a
threat to human freedom because it limits the scope of com-
petent political action. For Tinder, the concept protects
freedom by warning us against large political aims that crush
the freedom of individuals and groups. On those terms, history
suggests that Tinder has an important point. Christian thinkers
who have lived close to the Utopian horrors of National Social-
ism and Soviet communism often stress the inherent limits on
the creative competence of the state. 32
Even more pertinent, perhaps, is the resonance of Tinder's
themes with a strand of American Catholic thought. Although
the natural law tradition has a generally more positive evalu-
ation of the moral uses of state power and legal authority than
31
Ibid., p . 142.
32
See, for e x a m p l e , Bonhoeffer, Ethics, p . 210: " T h e divine m a n d a t e of g o v e r n m e n t
presupposes the divine mandates of labour and marriage. In the world which it
rules, the governing authority finds already present the two mandates through
which God the Creator exercises his creative power. Government cannot itself
produce life or values. It is not creative."
the Reformation sources on which Tinder relies, American
Catholics who have reflected on pressures toward social and
religious assimilation exerted by Protestant power in local and
national governments have insisted on similar constraints on
the state's role as a creator of social goods.33 We are perhaps
unlikely to confuse Hitler's Reich with a responsible affir-
mation of human freedom. Can we, however, say definitively
that the efforts to cultivate Protestant values in the public
schools and instill Protestant habits in the settlement houses
were the result of an insistence on order, rather than the work
of people who were confident in their human capacities and
seeking only to free them for a competent response to the new
problems of urban industrial life?
The need to restrain the moral fervor of the powerful and the
unruly impulses of the masses is an important theme in the
literature of Christian Realism. Indeed, for many it is the key
point of Christian Realism, the vital truth that liberal activists
with their aspirations for social transformation are apt to
overlook.
If we stop at this point, we will have no doubt framed an
important issue that divides Niebuhr, Tinder, and other Chris-
tian Realists from the confidence in human finitude articulated
by contemporary secular philosophers. To stop here, however,
also leaves the connection between human sin and human
freedom to be resolved by apparently endless historical argu-
ment about whether, in any given case, a belief in the pervasive
reality of sin has either suppressed creative freedom or pre-
served freedom by checking the impulse to totalitarian uto-
pianism.
A survey of Reinhold Niebuhr's writing leaves little doubt
which side he would take, particularly if we concentrate on his
defense of democracy during World War II, and then, later, on
his attacks on the "moral pretension" of Soviet communism.34
There are, however, other indications in his work which
suggest that the argument should be moved to another level.
33
Cf. M u r r a y , We Hold These Truths, p p . 144-45.
34
N i e b u h r , The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness', " W h y Is C o m m u n i s m So
Evil?," in Christian Realism and Political Problems, p p . 3 3 - 4 2 .
Freedom 139
The "Augustinian" or "Reformation" interpretation, with its

emphasis on the inherent limits to political creativity, provides
a realistic counterpoint to the unlimited optimism of earlier
American defenses of democracy, but Niebuhr could also
acknowledge that Augustine's realism was "excessive" in its
failure to recognize the sense of justice that animates real
political communities, and that Luther's pessimism was "too
consistent" in its failure to recognize that the creative powers of
government, though often distorted and always subject to
abuse, are nonetheless real. 35 The concept of sin is important
for understanding the human situation and human action, but
it has no simple, univocal relationship to the loss of political
freedom. Either the Christian pessimist or the liberal optimist
may be right about a particular historical situation, but neither
has a comprehensive understanding of the possibilities and
limits inherent in all situations. For that, we must turn to a
different understanding of the good to be sought and its
relationship to the persons who seek it. Only then will we be
able to see what is really wrong with the unqualified accept-
ance of human finitude and the rejection of original sin.
ANXIETY
There is yet another way to understand, respect, and live

within the limitations that human nature imposes on our social
projects. It is less developed in the literature, but it is, I think,
the most adequate contemporary interpretation of Christian
Realism. From this point of view, the problem with the con-
temporary affirmation of human finitude is not that it expects
too much, but that it demands too little. Freedom, which is the
primary human good that our social institutions must protect
and promote, depends on a critical self-awareness of the limita-
tions of our perspective on events and on a creative effort to go
beyond those limits, to imagine, and then to realize, new forms
of social life that open new possibilities for freedom. If sin
consists in denying this balance between limits and possibilities
35
See Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p. 44; "Augustine's
Political Realism," in Christian Realism and Political Problems, p. 127.
and so denying the morally meaningful reality that is known in
relationship to God, then many affirmations of human finitude
risk sin not by claiming too much for our intellectual and
political powers, but by binding them too exclusively to an
existing system of social values and meanings. A moral realism
which acknowledges the difference in principle between our
ideas about what is good and what really is good provides an
intellectual framework for the necessary conditions for freedom
in moral judgment and political arrangements. By contrast, to
accept finitude in a way that implies that our moral terms have
meaning only in the reality defined by our own culture and
language risks the loss of that self-transcendence on which
freedom depends.
Sin here is not a certain theory of moral meaning — as if an
ethical theory could be evil, and not just mistaken — but the
limitation of the moral meaning to which the theory gives
expression. To insist that whatever can be meaningfully said
must be expressible in moral terms which my own language
and culture have taught me to use is to reject the idea of a
center of value in which genuinely conflicting values can be
brought into harmony. It is to dismiss the idea of a morally
meaningful universe, if not to find it unthinkable, and so to
turn one's back on God.
Reinhold Niebuhr's most extensive treatment of the idea of
sin, at the end of the first part of The Nature and Destiny of Man,
identifies the motive behind these denials as anxiety.
In short, man, being both free and bound, both limited and limitless,
is anxious. Anxiety is the inevitable concomitant of the paradox of
freedom and finiteness in which man is involved. Anxiety is the
internal precondition of sin. It is the inevitable spiritual state of man,
standing in the paradoxical situation of freedom and finiteness.
Anxiety is the internal description of the state of temptation.36
Many things provoke this anxiety: our vulnerability to the
powers of nature and history; the inevitabilities of aging and
death; the fragility of the material possessions and social suc-
cesses on which we depend; and our own weakness, not only in
36
Freedom 141
the face of external threats, but also before the internal forces of
fear, self-contempt, and rage against others that prompt us to
bring down on ourselves the evils we most wish to avoid.
Anxiety before these vulnerabilities is not itself sin. Indeed,
without anxiety, we could not recognize the points at which life
demands our careful attention to insure that possibilities for
freedom are not prematurely crushed or needlessly wasted.
The reckless driver who apparently knows no fear or the
manager who risks safety to improve the "bottom line" is not
more free than the defensive driver who is always on the alert
for someone else's moves or the shop foreman who is constantly
checking the safety regulations. Heedless people more often fall
short of the care for life that anxiety elicits than they rise above
the fears anxiety evokes.37 The problem is that the response
anxiety requires is both a recognition of our own limits and a
trust in meanings that lie beyond us that few, if any, can grasp.
The ideal possibility is that faith in the ultimate security of God's love
would overcome all immediate insecurities of nature and history . . .
It is significant that Jesus justifies his injunction, "Be not anxious"
with the observation, "For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of these things." The freedom from anxiety which he
enjoins is a possibility only if perfect trust in divine security has been
achieved.38
The Christian theologian will want to explore further this
ideal possibility of perfect trust in God and the claim that it is
realized and exemplified in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The
Christian Realist, mindful of the obstacles to such ideals, will
focus critical attention on the responses that fall short of the
ideal in characteristic ways. Since few, if any, are capable of
complete trust, most persons will either deny the fragility of
their own efforts and give their own achievements an import-
ance and a permanence that they cannot have, or they will find
a more proximate system of values that they can understand
37
Niebuhr, following M a r t i n Heidegger, notes that the watchful care a n d seriousness
about life implied in t h e G e r m a n Sorge is a n i m p o r t a n t p a r t of the capacity for
freedom. That positive element of concern appropriate to the vulnerability and
contingency of human life is often missing from the connotation of "anxiety" in
English. See The Mature and Destiny of Man, I, 183—84n.
38
Ibid., I, 183.
and devote themselves entirely to its demands. The character-

istic forms of human sin appear in these efforts to overcome
anxiety by denying the freedom which elicits the anxiety.
Prominent among these responses is the denial of vulner-
ability itself, the insistence that whatever may be the case with
other people's lives and dreams, ours are secure. This may take
the form of a personal confidence that with the right diet,
regular exercise, and a certain vigilance against other persons'
degradation of the environment, I am protected from the
threat of ill health that I have seen break the lives of others. Or
it may assume the grander form of false confidence in political
programs that promise economic prosperity, military security,
and cultural stability. These programs assure their adherents
that the historic cycles of growth and decline are herewith
superseded, so that the present greatness - and the present
regime - will continue forever.
These attempts to overcome the anxiety that our human
vulnerability elicits through an assertion of invulnerability are
what Niebuhr and the Christian Realists call "pride." Despite
the uneasiness which this religious terminology often elicits, the
phenomenon is one which other observers who are concerned
about a realistic account of human limitations readily recog-
nize. We have strong motives to deny that the finitude that
marks every insight and achievement applies to us as well. We
readily generate theories to explain our own exceptions, just as
we seek followers who will confirm our ideas and power to
enforce their acceptance by the uneasy and the unconvinced.
The claim to a competence that is able not only to manage
within the limits of the human condition but to transcend them
is widely recognized as a source of evil, both by those who
locate our ultimate security in God and by those who do not.
There is, however, another response to anxiety of which
Niebuhr also takes note. It, too, is a response to the "paradox of
freedom and finiteness," but it does not seek escape by creating
a refuge too strong to be shaken by the forces that threaten the
lives of others. Rather, it hopes to align itself with those
powerful forces so completely that it seeks nothing beyond
what they have to give. Instead of asserting a freedom which
Freedom 143
cannot be destroyed by the limitations of human finitude,

anxiety in this form yields its freedom to some power it can
grasp and follow. It seeks the security that comes from trust in
God, but it cannot trust a center of value that both affirms and
negates its aspirations, so it transfers its trust to some center in
which what is to be done is always already clear.
Niebuhr calls this form of sin "sensuality," in contrast to
pride. "Sometimes man seeks to solve the problem of the
contradiction of finiteness and freedom, not by seeking to hide
his finiteness and comprehending the world into himself, but
by losing himself in some aspect of the world's vitalities. In that
case his sin may be defined as sensuality rather than pride." 39
In sensuality, the risks and demands of freedom are evaded,
because both the choices that freedom requires and the
awareness of our own limitations that make those choices
anxious are suppressed. We are drawn into an experience in
which what we should do seems immediately, urgently clear,
quite apart from any deliberation about it. And as long as we
are doing exactly what it seems we should, we have no fear that
we have done the wrong thing.
On the whole, Niebuhr gives less attention to sin as sensua-
lity than to sin as pride. Biblical religion, he says, regards sin
primarily as pride and self-love, and that must always be
remembered as a caution against the Hellenism that creeps
into Christian thought as a rejection of finite, bodily existence.
No doubt, Niebuhr here has in mind not just some of the early
Greek Fathers, but also the stern moral rectitude of more
recent Protestants, who quickly condemn sins of self-
indulgence with no awareness whatever of the pride and self-
love that elevated them to the position of rulers and judges of
other persons' lives.40
Niebuhr's own presentation, however, contributes to the
trivialization of sensuality that he wants to avoid. Sensuality
seems to be the sin of little people, rather than important ones,
a sin for those who cannot afford the luxury of pride. Sensuality
seems confined to individual lives and personal relationships,
39 40
Ibid.,1, 179. Ibid., I, 228.
with little hint that it might take institutional forms as well. A
balanced understanding of Christian Realism requires a
further exploration of this idea, and a fully developed concept
of sensuality will illuminate some forms of sin characteristic of
our own times that prove curiously resistant to Niebuhrian
denunciations of pride. Taken by itself, a warning against
pride may only increase the temptation of those whose char-
acteristic sin is to avoid anxiety by immersing themselves in
activities that require minimal creativity and stick close to
basic organic needs. There are ambiguities in creativity, which
result both in new expressions of freedom and in inordinate
self-assertion, but there are other, and perhaps more subtle,
ambiguities in humility. The cry of the Psalmist:
O Lord, my heart is not proud,
nor are my eyes haughty;
I do not busy myself with great matters
or things too marvelous for me.
(Psalm 131:1-2 NEB)
finds its place in the canon of scripture as a poetic expression of

the humility of the contingent creature before the eternal God.
The same thoughts, however, may be motivated by a desire to
measure our contingent achievements by a standard easier to
grasp and more to our own liking.
A more complete understanding of this form of sin begins
with recognition that the sensual evasion never involves escape
into purely natural forces and processes. As Niebuhr himself
observes, "Human passions are always characterized by unli-
mited and demonic potencies of which animal life is inno-
cent." 41 Even the most basic sensuality is shaped by cultural
creativity. Cultural forms of eroticism direct desire and
heighten anticipation. Social rituals prolong the enjoyment of
food and drink and add new aesthetic dimensions to the experi-
ence. Animals mate and eat; they do not make love or dine.
Once the role of cultural forms in these obviously sensual
enjoyments is noted, we can see more clearly an element of
what Niebuhr would call sensuality even in activities that seem
41
Ibid., I, 179.
Freedom 145
rather far removed from the vitalities and processes of nature.

Anything serves the purpose which gives us a well-regulated set
of activities that seems to justify itself. We can then lose our-
selves in doing what the system requires. Alasdair Maclntyre
has developed the idea of such a well-regulated set of activities
in his idea of a "practice." 42 The point of such practices is that
there are goods internal to the practice itself. Playing chess
well, or football, perhaps, has its own rewards. So, too, does
music or dance, solving mathematical puzzles, reading a poem,
or, perhaps, writing a book about ethics. Practices demand an
engagement with their internal critical standards. We have to
work hard at understanding what it is to play a Mozart sonata
well, and even then we may argue long over whether someone
has really done it. It is these internal goods that allow a
practice to absorb our energy and attention. Doubtless they are
rooted in basic natural activities that satisfy some demand of
our human nature - responsiveness to rhythm, for example, or
the enjoyment of order and symmetry, but the internal goods
and the criteria by which they are measured are developed far
beyond any simple conformity to natural satisfactions.
Practices do not exist in isolation. Each of us may participate
in several of them, and a well-ordered society will manage its
political affairs and the distribution of external goods in ways
that allow the greatest possible enjoyment of goods internal to
a wide variety of practices. The way of life which emerges,
Maclntyre suggests, will be one in which understandings of
excellence are widely shared and the standards for critical
evaluation of one's own performance and the works of others
will be clear and specific.
These highly developed practices and the community of
evaluation in which they are cultivated seem far removed from
what we ordinarily imply by calling something "sensual," but
they provide exactly the sort of opportunity for escape "by
finding a god in a person or process outside the self"43 that
Reinhold Niebuhr had in mind. What marks sensuality is that
42
Alasdair M a c l n t y r e , Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre D a m e , Ind.: Univer-
sity of N o t r e D a m e Press, 1988), p p . 30-46.
43
it holds anxiety at bay by total absorption in an activity that

raises no questions beyond itself. If our constitution as physical,
sexual, pleasure-seeking beings suggests some obvious opportu-
nities for that absorption, we create many more by the elabo-
ration of cultural practices on top of the basic natural vitalities.
Frequently, the theologian's critical eye cast on these more
developed activities sees them as works of pride, but the
relationship between pride and sensuality in practices such as
making music, playing tennis, or preaching sermons is very
complex. The creative effort to establish or transform a prac-
tice often requires an assertion of self against established stan-
dards and a stubborn confidence in one's own achievements
that verges upon, where it does not actually enter into, pride.
Once the practice is in place, however, it demands the dedi-
cation, attention to detail, and total commitment to perform-
ance that characterizes the sensual escape from anxiety. It
takes pride to create these cultural practices, but sensuality
uses them for its own purposes.
To the prevailing images of sensuality as a life of softness and
luxury that eventually loses all structure and discipline, we
must now add the unexpected image of the dedicated amateur
athlete whose quest for her "personal best" determines all her
choices and relationships, and even the image of the ascetic
scholar whose burning need for the precise facts and the perfect
footnote has crowded out all other questions and desires. There
are many differences between the varieties of sensuality in this
wide view of the subject. There are often good prudential
reasons to prefer one form of sensuality over another for
oneself, just as there are more dubious motives that lead us to
urge one form of sensuality instead of another on other people.
Like pride, sensuality often accompanies real accom-
plishments, and, again like pride, a measure of sensuality is so
much a part of ordinary human life that we would at first
glance think that something was missing in the life of anyone
who actually achieved the simple trust that would make both
pride and sensuality unnecessary. It takes the more extreme
forms of both pride and sensuality to remind us of the funda-
mental condition of sin that unites them. Each marks a failed
Freedom 147
effort to secure freedom by denying the tension between fini-

tude and transcendence that makes freedom possible.
SENSUALITY AND POLITICS
Sensuality thus appears as a far more prominent feature of the

condition of human sin than the term itself calls to mind.
Perhaps Karl Barth has a better name for the problem. He calls
it the sin of "sloth," though even this has a suggestion of
laziness and inertia that obscures what Barth clearly recog-
nizes: this sin is an active flight from God.
At every point, as we shall see, this is the strange inactive action of the
slothful man. It may be that this action often assumes the disguise of a
tolerant indifference in relation to God. But in fact it is the action of
the hate which wants to be free of God, which would prefer that there
were no God, that God were not the One He is - at least for him, the
slothful man.44
Barth notes that Western Christianity, and Protestantism in
particular, underemphasizes this aspect of sin.45 Niebuhr, with
his probing of the pride that shakes nations and subjects the
lives of others to its demands, is typically Protestant in this
respect, and the fact that his American audience had roots in
Protestantism that went even deeper than their secular faith in
progress may partly explain their receptiveness to his sobering
message. Yet the complementary theme is also there. Sin is
present not merely in the ambition that remakes the world to
suit its own plans, but in the sensuality that loses itself in
immediate possibilities, in the sloth that absorbs itself in petty
concerns and excuses its mediocre performance, and even in
the disciplined pursuit of excellences that have been carefully
defined by someone else.
It would be interesting to pursue the historical and sys-
tematic questions that would enable us to establish a definitive
relationship between these two faces of sin, the denial of fini-
tude in pride and the escape from freedom in sensuality or
44
K a r l Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. W . Bromiley (Edinburgh: T . & T . Clark,
1958), I V / 2 , 405.
45
Ibid., p . 403.
sloth. Perhaps it is true, as Niebuhr suggests, that pride is the

primary form of sin in the biblical texts and in the Augusti-
nian tradition. Perhaps, as Barth has it, the sin of pride is
revealed in the rejection of God's action as reconciler, while
the sin of sloth becomes apparent in the rejection of God
"wholly and utterly sanctifying and awakening and estab-
lishing grace." 46 For the practical concerns of Christian
Realism, however, systematic and historical studies of this
question are an auxiliary enterprise. The presentation of the
theological point must be dialectical, and the exposition will
be controlled not only by the structure of the theology, but
also and primarily by the assessment of the cultural situation.
When pride predominates and threatens, Niebuhr's atten-
tiveness to the transcendent power that turns our solemn
boasts to wry irony is most important. But when we are fasci-
nated by the discovery of our own limits, when we count our-
selves happy if we have done exactly everything that those
limits tell us we may and must do, then a Niebuhrian message
may sound very different from Reinhold Niebuhr's words. For
we will then have to say that unless persons and nations are
straining toward a good that stands in judgment on every con-
crete form of excellence they know and have achieved, they
have yielded to the temptations of sensuality and of sloth. In
their anxiety, they have sought to achieve freedom by denying
that they are free, and this is true even for those heirs of Puri-
tanism who compound the contradiction by working very
hard at being slothful.
It is this latter situation, I think, which faces us today in the
cultures of the developed Western democracies. This is appar-
ent not only in the self-indulgent consumer society that clerics
and professors tend to deprecate, but also in the obsessive
rituals of diet and health, exercise, safety, and ecology in
which many of us participate. It is present too, and not least
evident, in the forms of philosophy and theology that assure us
that learning to use the languages and narratives of these
limited and well-defined systems is what morality is really all
Ibid.
Freedom 149
about. A little more attention to our expanded understanding

of sensuality and sloth will show what I mean.
Alongside the temptations to pride that we identify so
readily in the lives of the powerful, there is a temptation to
sensuality or sloth that must not be ignored in the lives of those
who are confined to a more limited sphere of influence. Femin-
ist writers were among the first to notice that Niebuhr's warn-
ings against pride may undermine the assertiveness that
women need to escape the subordinate roles in which they have
been locked in the family and in society. It is not just a matter
of not having enough pride. Women are actually tempted with
sensuality. They are encouraged to believe that by attending
more or less exclusively to organic, basic needs for nurture,
they are respecting the order of nature and the finitude of
human life. Theirs is not to worry about the transcendence of
self and situation that occupies the energy and creativity of
others. They express themselves in good food and a loving
home. 47
Some do, of course. It is impossible to identify any particular
activity as invariably proud or sensual. An appreciation of the
full range of ways that anxious persons deny their freedom
makes us aware that what is for one person a meaningful
expression of creativity is for another a temptation to pride or
to sloth. Women have, however, discovered that many activi-
ties that have been held up to them as models of virtue, or at
least represented as innocent enjoyments, are in fact profound
temptations to surrender their freedom for the security of a
place in someone else's system of achievement. Their insights
should lead other persons, especially male intellectuals of the
sort who are apt to write books on ethics and politics, to
reconsider the part they have played in these systems of sub-
ordination.
Another lesson which everyone should take, however, is the
re-examination of one's own life for those points at which the
47
See Judith Plaskow, Sex, Sin and Grace: Women's Experience and the Theologies of
Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,
1980), p. 151; Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986),
pp. 39-43; and Daphne Hampson, "Reinhold Niebuhr on Sin: A Critique," in
Harries, ed., Reinhold Niebuhr and the Issues of Our Time, pp. 46-60.
appearance of choice and control is actually an illusion, result-

ing from a sensual acquiescence in limited options which have
actually been defined to suit the purposes of others. Those who
find their work meaningless and who lack significant personal
relationships will find much encouragement in a consumer-
oriented society to devote themselves to new forms of gadgetry
and to establish a firm decorative control over their limited
personal environment. These evasions of freedom, along with
the forms of indulgence more usually associated with the term
'sensuality', must be seen as genuine forms of sin.
Perhaps the most important point at which Niebuhr's
account of sin needs to be supplemented, however, is in the
delineation of institutional sources of sensuality. In addition to
the pride and collective egotism of groups that is expressed in
totalitarian politics or imperialistic foreign policies, we must
also identify a form of institutional sin that elicits sensuality or
sloth from persons by demanding commitments that preclude
responsible attention to the range of choices and responsibili-
ties that they ought to be attending to for themselves. The "up
or out," "publish or perish" career trajectories imposed by
businesses, law firms, and academic institutions provide fami-
liar examples of this sort of pressure. The pressure may origi-
nate in institutional pride, which subtly reduces persons to
instruments for the aggrandizement of the institution. It may
even originate in the identifiable pride of quite specific deans,
vice-presidents, or senior partners. Those who yield to these
pressures are often pictured as ambitious, "fast-track,"
achievers whose chief temptation would seem to be to emulate
the pride of their seniors and superiors. In fact, however, their
achievements are often expressions of sensuality and sloth. The
rising executive or scholar abandons the difficult balancing of
obligations that marks a life of freedom constrained by human
finitude, and substitutes a single set of goals defined by outside
authorities. This does not obviate the anxiety of achievement,
but it does eliminate the deeper anxiety of choice. The over-
achiever stills anxiety in precisely the way that Niebuhr
describes the sensual evasion, "by finding a god in a person
or process outside the self."
Freedom 151
There is, moreover, the possibility of a kind of sensuality that

directly involves institutions themselves. Like the sensuality of
individuals, it is a temptation that may become more attractive
if the dangers of pride are too vividly presented. Institutions,
we are told, become proud when they take themselves too
seriously and define their goals too broadly. A corporation that
thinks its purpose is to make life better, and regards its employ-
ees as participants in that noble aim, is in fact more apt to
constrict freedom than one which believes that its purpose is to
make gadgets, and pays its employees to secure their cooper-
ation in a venture that would otherwise be quite indifferent to
them. That problem of institutional pride is obvious enough,
but it should not obscure the fact that an opposite institutional
sensuality threatens those who see their collective aims too
narrowly. It may result in corporate executives who give up
any appropriate concern for the social effects of their work and
surrender themselves to a corporate process that, far from
maximizing freedom, draws more and more persons into the
service of its singular objective.
INSTITUTIONAL SLOTH
As a counterpoint to the emphasis on pride in Reinhold Nie-

buhr's theological criticism of social and political life, I have
offered a brief survey of the forms of sensuality that seem more
evident in the chastened pride and diminished expectations
that characterize society and politics today. The examples
could be multiplied, but the main features of sensuality in this
extended use of the Niebuhrian concept should now be clear.
Sensuality evades the anxiety of human freedom by entering
into a pattern of activity that draws attention away from the
self and focuses it on the activity. Whether in indulgences that
overwhelm anxiety by immediate gratification of the senses, or
in demanding forms of excellence that require concentration so
intense as to shut out other questions, one simply becomes the
lover, the athlete, or the chess master, the futures trader,
vote-getter, or vocalist. True humanity, which must both
choose these excellences and know their limits, both struggle to
master them and constantly question their worth, is traded for
the exhilaration of an activity which raises none of these
questions and asks only that we pay attention to the rules of the
game.
The elaborate patterns of activity that mark sensuality
cannot, of course, promise success in those tasks or security
from the misfortunes that may befall us while we are concen-
trating on something else. Indeed, it is characteristic of the
forms of sensuality that they constantly remind us of this
limitation. Pride usually asserts its own invulnerability. Sen-
suality playfully reminds us that "it's only a game," even when
the game is politics or high finance. Or it warns us, more
soberly, that goodness is fragile and our excellences may easily
fall victim to circumstance. In either case, sensuality provides,
alongside the patterns of competitive activity, roles for the
good sport and the cheerful loser, and appropriate rituals of
grief for those stricken by tragedy. We have practices to master,
even in defeat.
Christian Realists, always alert for signs of institutional
pride and the arrogance of power, may overlook the problems
that arise when contemporary affirmations of finitude identify
the moral life with the mastery of these practices. The closer
linking of moral goodness to specific forms of virtue recognized
by tradition may provide more concrete guidance, but it may
also lose the consciousness of freedom out of which we are able
to make moral choices. Morality becomes a problem of master-
ing yet another set of tasks.
Niebuhr's moral criticism of the sin of pride focuses on the
destructive effects that pride has on those who find themselves
in the way of its aims and pretensions. Those who relieve the
anxiety of their human condition by asserting themselves in
pride require an inordinate share of life's resources to sustain
their illusions of immortality and invulnerability. Their
demands deprive other persons of what they need to satisfy
more moderate aims. Indeed, the demands of pride actually
use persons themselves as resources, reducing them merely to
instruments of the plans of others. "The ego which falsely
makes itself the centre of existence in its pride and will-to-
Freedom 153
power inevitably subordinates other life to its will and thus

does injustice to other life."48
Set against the ambitions of the Southern planters who built
cotton fortunes on the labor of African American slaves, or the
horrors of Hitler's Reich, or even the petty brutalities of
today's speculators in futures markets, real estate, or the hotel
business, the sins of sensuality and sloth seem rather innocuous.
Indeed, in the expanded definition we have given to those
concepts, they may seem truly beneficial in comparison to the
ravages of pride. Socially defined practices, after all, may lead
us to concentrate on the internal goods that are their own
reward, and to think less of the external goods of wealth and
power that are the tools of pride. Those who concentrate on
developing their own excellences are perhaps less likely to
impose their pride on their neighbors, and less susceptible to
the lures of wealth and power that might turn them into
instruments of the pride of others. Excellences in art and music,
literature and sports are no doubt good things, and even
modest accomplishments in the virtues to which everyone may
aspire can make social life more harmonious. We could all do
with better manners. Even where the excellence achieved
provides nothing more than a distraction from the tensions and
anxieties of daily life - ethics professors trying to improve their
times for a ten-kilometer run, for example - the activity may be
a healthy alternative to the brooding self-absorption that too
readily yields to the temptations of pride.
Christian Realism need not neglect these excellences or deny
the important exercise of human freedom that is involved in
combining them in a coherent way of life. To that extent,
Maclntyre's ethics of virtue and other contemporary versions
of Aristotelian eudaimonism are compatible with the Realist's
emphasis on freedom. Eudaimonism, too, recognizes the
element of human creativity involved in all pursuits of human
good, and rejects the more reductive forms of naturalism that
try to find the whole of human good determined by human
nature. Christian Realism insists, however, that whatever moral
48
meaning human excellences may have cannot be derived from

their place in a single way of life. Moral goodness, for Christian
Realism, is primarily the ordering of lives and cultures toward
an ultimate harmony of life with life.
The concrete requirements of that harmony are not avail-
able to us with the same specificity with which we can know the
excellences and virtues of our own way of life. Excellences and
virtues can be observed and emulated in concrete examples.
Love, agape, however, is known only in an imaginative grasp of
possibilities beyond present conflicts. Its requirements are
communicated in myth and symbol, rather than by example.
The idea of an ultimate harmony of life with life that tran-
scends particular ways of life is not something that we can
enact in the present in the way that we can be courageous,
truthful, or compassionate according to the virtues of our own
community. But the idea of ultimate harmony opens up the
possibility of a different kind of moral choice. If moral meaning
is not dependent on the particular community and tradition in
which I have learned to make my choices, then it is possible to
be moral not only by choosing among the alternatives offered
by that way of life, but also by choosing against them. It is
possible to be a good person not just by emulating one or
another of the forms of the good life offered, but also by risking
those goods and perhaps losing them for myself, in an effort to
create a new form of community that achieves harmonies
between lives hopelessly divided and alien to one another in
our present ways of living.
Few will achieve that creativity in important and lasting
forms. Gandhi's dream of a unified India, the efforts of Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela to replace segregation
with racial equality, or the transformation of totalitarian states
by the work of dissidents in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union stand out as rare achievements. The people who initiate
these changes become historic figures precisely because the
changes they envision and enact go beyond ordinary political
transitions and policy changes within a social framework to
mark the beginning of a new society.
But these same people also become heroes, even to some who
Freedom 155
originally regarded them as criminals. They become heroes

precisely because people see in their achievements a possibility
that exists in relation to all conflicts, even the perfectly ordi-
nary ones that are settled by prevailing mechanisms of compro-
mise or coercion. In addition to the resolutions that involve the
victory, partial or complete, of one set of interests over another,
the idea of a moral resolution to conflict presumes that there is
a solution through which the interests of the parties, though
transformed, can be brought into a harmony which each can
recognize as good. To believe in a morally meaningful universe
is to believe that such a resolution is always possible, even in
the historic conflicts of religions, classes, and nations in which
the opposing forces seem to have at present nothing in
common. But it is also to believe that that possibility structures
even the more limited conflicts within cultures and societies,
for unless one enters into moral problem solving with a com-
mitment to these possibilities for the transformation, as well as
the vindication, of one's commitments, the moral claims
quickly deteriorate into another instrument for gaining an
advantage over the opposition. The possibilities that are
realized in historic moral transformations are thus implicitly
present in every situation of conflict. Niebuhr formulates this
claim in his repeated insistence that "the heedlessness of perfect
love is the source and end of all reciprocal relations in human
existence, preventing them from degenerating into mere calcu-
lation of advantage." 49
The morally meaningful universe of the Christian Realist
thus has a complex, dialectical relationship to the competences
and excellence that mark the human good in an ethics of
virtue. "If the Agape of New Testament morality is the negation
as well as the fulfillment of every private virtue, it is also the
negation and the fulfillment of all structures and schemes of
justice." 50
Contrary to what the critics of the idea of sin appear to
believe, Christian Realism is not a simple negation of the
possibilities and achievements of ordinary human life. The
49 50
Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 193. Ibid.
negations of Christian Realism are more complex. They are

directed, obviously, against the claims of pride which identify a
perfect society already in sight, or at least on the drawing
boards. In that, the negation is also an affirmation of the
achievements of ordinary morality and the possibilities for
concrete, limited improvements in our society. Those everyday
approximations of justice find fulfillment in the idea of a love
that unites persons despite the reality of their differences, and
the sacrifices of proximate concerns that justice sometimes
requires are justified by commitment to the possibilities that
love envisions, even when they are not compensated by a
society's approximations of reciprocity.
If Christian Realism thus conceives love as in some ways the
fulfillment of human finitude, it must negate the achievements
of those virtues and excellences, though hardly in the ways that
contemporary critics suppose. For Christian Realism negates
"every private virtue" and "all structures and schemes of
justice" primarily by insisting that the possibilities of human
freedom find their fulfillment only in love. The negation is a
revelation of the sensuality that leads us to limit moral aspir-
ations to the prevailing forms of virtue and excellence. "The
vision of universal love . . . is relevant to all social relationships.
For the freedom of man makes it impossible to set any limits of
race, sex, or social condition upon the brotherhood that may
be achieved in history."51
Those words of Reinhold Niebuhr ring somewhat dissonan-
tly in our ears, and not only because of the exclusive language
in which he expresses his gender-inclusive vision. They do not
"sound" like Christian Realism because both the critics and
the friends of Christian Realism have become too familiar with
Niebuhr's denunciations of pride and his emphasis on the
moral significance of finite humanity. However, when our
social beliefs change from the simple assertion of national,
religious, or technological pride to the simple acceptance that
our own community and culture provides the largest moral
universe we can fathom, then the more complex, dialectical
51
Freedom 157
message of Christian Realism must change to an insistence that

there are larger possibilities, and that those possibilities are
relevant even to our most limited choices. Freedom, we must
reiterate, makes it impossible to set any limits on moral
achievements within history.
There is always the danger, of course, that this
announcement will itself be heard in a simple, undialectical
way, and thus become an invitation to pride, instead of a call to
eschew sensuality and sloth. That danger is inescapable, given
the complexity of Christian Realism and the ambiguity of
history. The misinterpretation cannot be prevented, but it can
be discouraged. Christian Realists should pursue the unlimited
possibilities for moral achievement not in a single, grand
scheme that purports to indicate the one better way beyond
our present divisions and conflict, but in a multiplicity of
experiments that test the limits of existing social virtues and
give specificity and clarity to possibilities that are at present
only dimly glimpsed in the languages of myth. Properly under-
stood, the Christian Realist claim that there are no limits to our
moral achievements within history is not an invitation to pride,
but to politics.
CHAPTER 4
Politics
THE OTHERS
Christians have always been somewhat at a loss when con-
fronted with people who share their world, but not their faith.
They tend to suffer from what W. H. Auden called "the conceit
of the social worker: 'We are all here on earth to help others;
what on earth the others are here for, I don't know.' '?1
The puzzle becomes acute in politics. Here, the others tend
to stick to their own opinions and to demand a voice in the
choice, rather than passively submitting to "help" admin-
istered according to Christian insights. They insist on squab-
bling over details, rather than attending to the main point with
meek heart and due reverence.
What are we to make of this intransigent otherness, which
will not even submit to become the Other with a capital " O " -
a conceptual otherness that can be located within my own
horizon of meanings - but insists on being some particular
other, a different point of view, or a different set of interests? In
politics, I must respond to this other in some concrete way,
modifying my practices and maybe even my beliefs in ways
that take this specific otherness into account.
Politics seems not so much a field in which Christianity can
be applied as one in which it is inevitably lost. The compro-
mises and the preoccupation with mundane details that
inevitably mark political solutions often seem poor soil for
1
W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1962),
p. 14.
158
Politics 159
spiritual growth. Politics, like the theater, has been an occu-
pation that Christians are counseled to avoid.
Reinhold Niebuhr, the pre-eminent Christian Realist, was
also, however, eminently political. He was active in political
organizations, civic commissions, and partisan politics. He
reveled in the ironies and ambiguities that lead many intel-
lectuals to shrink from political controversy. Most important,
he understood that the conflicts and oppositions that make
Christians uneasy about politics may also be the most effective
instruments of social transformation. The Christian Realist is
one who understands that social ethics depends at least as
much on the seriousness with which we take our conflicts as it
does on the quality of our ideals.
The church would do more for the cause of reconciliation if, instead
of producing moral idealists who think that they can establish justice,
it would create religious and Christian realists who know that justice
will require that some men shall contend against them ... This kind
of Christian realism would understand the perennial necessity of
political relationships in society, no matter how ethical ideals rise.2
From this point of view, the others are there neither to be
served nor to be defeated. They are there to supplement, from
their own partial perspectives, the necessarily incomplete
understanding of reality with which we begin. Insofar as Chris-
tianity has something to say about how life ought to be lived in
society, it must subject that point of view to the scrutiny and
supplementation of others who do not share the same faith. Far
from merely tolerating the others in a political community,
Christian Realists recognize their own need for difference, and
indeed, for opposition. Without it, the Realist does not even
know for certain what his or her own truth is.
Niebuhr's relation to the assessment of politics in Christian
tradition is not a simple one. He believed that this tradition,
particularly in its Augustinian and Lutheran forms, offered the
only understanding of human nature realistic enough to make
good politics possible. But Niebuhr also believed that the
2
Reinhold Niebuhr, "When Will Christians Stop Fooling Themselves," in D. B.
Robertson, ed., Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), p. 43.
actual political thinking of these great historic realists was

flawed. It fell short of its possibilities, precisely because it was
so consistently realistic about self-interest and power. As a
consequence, Augustine, for example, was unable to make the
important distinctions between degrees of injustice on which
practical Christian judgments about real political choices must
rest. "On the basis of his principles he could not distinguish
between government and slavery, both of which were sup-
posedly the rule over man by man and were both a con-
sequence of, and remedy for, sin; nor could he distinguish
between a commonwealth and a robber band, for both were
bound together by collective interest." 3
Modern thinkers, by contrast, are more ready from the
outset to make discriminating political choices, but their overly
optimistic view of human nature leads them too easily to the
assumption that people are creatures of moderate desires which
can easily be brought under the control of reason. No one with
such a circumscribed view of human motivations can under-
stand the tenacity of political commitments or the intractabi-
lity of political conflicts.
Yet Niebuhr, who made his reputation as a political thinker
by dissenting from the hopeful consensus of progressive liberal
optimism, remained in some ways a liberal in his own mature
politics. Politics was for him an instrument of proximate goals,
rather than ultimate commitments. He was interested in com-
promise and pragmatic choices, rather than in theological or
ideological purity. Though he often said and did the right
thing, he probably would not abide our contemporary obses-
sion with "political correctness." For all his complaints about
liberalism, especially in its post-Enlightenment forms, what he
wanted, as he acknowledged late in his career, was a "realistic
liberalism" that would combine an appreciation of
incremental gains in justice with a realistic assessment of the
limits of reason and the power of tradition. 4
3
Niebuhr, "Augustine's Political Realism," in Christian Realism and Political Problems,
p. 127.
4
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Liberalism: Illusions and Realities," New Republic 133 (July 4,
1955). 13-
Politics 161
Whether such a combination is plausible depends on how
the Christian Realist reads the complex relationship between
Christian thought and modern politics. Our aim in this chapter
will be to study that problem, though we will not exactly
duplicate Niebuhr's reading of the history. We will, however,
arrive with him at a more positive assessment of the possibilities
of politics than other Christian thinkers have held, and that, in
turn, will serve as a starting point for an exploration of the
problem of justice in Chapter Five.
THE LIMITS OF POLITICS
It is in the nature of political units - cities, provinces, and

nations - that they gather up all people within a given geo-
graphical area, and so must create a workable community from
those who have not come together sharing a set of beliefs or
commitments. These persons may have a government that
meets their needs, keeps them secure, and allows them to live
the lives to which they aspire, but that is an achievement, not a
given. Politics is the process through which that comprehensive
community is created.
Near the beginning of Western political thought, Aristotle
identified politics as the search for the highest human good,
precisely because it takes place in these most comprehensive
communities. The good which a political community seeks
"embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than
any other, and at the highest good." 5 Politics is the culmi-
nation of ethics as the search for practical truths about the
human good.
Later, in Roman times, Stoic philosophers confronted a far
different political reality, but they, too, held that the greatest
good is the most comprehensive. The right person to ask about
the human good is the /cosmopolites, the citizen whose city is the
whole cosmos. Both Greek and Roman philosophers, then,
linked politics to a cosmic order, and to a universal reason
which could comprehend that order. Such a politics excludes
5
Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Benjamin Jowett (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988), p. 1.
those whose concerns are more local or more bound to their

immediate needs. Traders, housekeepers, aliens, and unfree
laborers have no stake in politics, and whatever human good
may be available to them will be the portion determined by
those who do participate in the political process.
From Greek and Roman sources, Christian political thought
inherited the belief that political communities, because they
are the most comprehensive, are also the places in which
human good can be sought and known in the most general
terms, even though few persons may have the material and
intellectual resources adequate to that task. The Hebrew
prophet's image of a divine creator who had made from the
formless void a world for human habitation connected with the
philosophers' idea of universal reason. "The Stoic idea of
Natural Law, which the Apologists regarded as identical with
the Christian moral law," 6 became the rule of political, as well
as moral, life.
Christians, however, also inherited memories of a people
who came together to build a tower that would reach to the
heavens, in defiance of the created order. They recalled the
people of Israel, who against the advice of their prophet
insisted on having a king like the other nations around them.
They also found themselves living in communities of fellow
Christians who shared equally in the grace of God, which
wiped out the distinctions of citizen and alien, male and
female, slave and free that elsewhere set the limits of participa-
tion.7 The immediate community of faith provided a region of
freedom and equality, while the larger world where cosmopo-
lites supposedly sought the highest good seemed to be corrup-
ted by its wealth and power. Christians were sure about the
underlying moral structure of reality. They were far less
certain that politics provides the environment in which that
moral reality can best be known.
Little wonder, then, that for many Christian writers the most
powerful image of political reality has been the image of
6
Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon
(Louisville: Wesminster/John Knox Press, 1992), I, 150.
7
Cf. Genesis 11, I Samuel 8, Galatians 3:27-29.
Politics 163
Babylon - the center of power which exists, temporarily, in
defiance of God's order. Augustine's City of God introduced a
dualism into Christian thinking about human communities.
The true commonwealth is the church, whose people are
united by a love of God. Political communities, by contrast, are
part of the human city, whose people are united merely by
their own momentarily shared interests. That is what makes
the state indistinguishable from a band of robbers.8 Although
these earthly cities are places of exile where Christians for the
moment have to dwell, they can never be a place where
Christians are at home.
One response to this sense of exile and alienation has been
to avoid political involvements entirely. These Christians
suffer the impositions of politics when necessary, but they do
not voluntarily join in its self-interested pursuits. Early
Christian monasticism, which sought to create a community
of faith outside of the decaying framework of Roman
society, and the sects of the sixteenth-century "radical
Reformation," who carried the reform of the church to the
point of attempting to create a whole new way of life, have
become paradigm examples of this Christian rejection of
politics.
Withdrawal from government and political activities has
been stressed down to the present by those who find the
promises of social transformation through Christian action
illusory, and who see the non-violent witness to one's faith as
the only possible response to intractable evils. Guy Hershber-
ger offers a modern statement of this rejection of politics:
The mission of nonresistant Christians is not a political one. It is
rather a curative mission. It is to bring healing to human society; to
prevent its further decay through a consistent witness to the truth ...
A people who provide this witness are not parasites living at the
expense of organized society. They are its greatest benefactors. Let
those who aspire to nothing higher perform the task of the magis-
tracy, the police, and the military. There will always be more than
enough people ready to fill these positions; but candidates for the
8
Augustine, City of God, ed. David Knowles (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976),
pp. 866-67, 8 8 5 -
higher place, which the nonresistant Christian alone can fill, are
altogether too few.9
Contemporary rejections of politics do not always take the
form of withdrawal from society. Those who are skeptical
about the value of political activity may nonetheless take an
active role in helping the victims of natural disasters, wars, and
social problems. They may even engage in intense and highly
focused political activity to secure support for these programs
or to oppose policies they regard as based on the use offeree or
disrespect for human life. What they share with Hershberger's
rejection of politics is the conviction that politics, as presently
constituted, is a poor forum for the articulation of Christian
truth. Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way:
[T]he church's social task isfirstof all its willingness to be a commu-
nity formed by a language that the world does not share. I do not
deny the importance for the church from time to time to speak to the
world in statements and policies, but that is not the church's primary
task. The widespread attention given to the Catholic Bishops' recent
Pastoral on nuclear war can be misleading in this respect, since it
looks as if they have had an impact on the public debate if not policy.
Thus the churches are tempted to think they will serve the world well
by drafting more and more radical statements. Yet the church's social
ethic is notfirstof all to be found in the statements by which it tries to
influence the ethos of those in power, but rather the church's social
ethic is first and foremost found in its ability to sustain a people who
are not at home in the liberal presuppositions of our civilization and
society.10
Given the widespread disillusionment with politics in
American life today, Christians of any tradition may be attrac-
ted to this rejection of politics and the suggestion that political
tasks might better be given over to those who are less scrupu-
lous about their own integrity. There is, as Hershberger
observed, never any shortage of them.
There is, however, another possible response. Augustine,
whose sharp differentiation between the City of God and the
9
Hershberger, War, Peace, and Nonresistance, p. 301.
10
Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Minnea-
polis: Winston Press, 1985), pp. 11-12.
Politics 165
human commonwealth made withdrawal from politics an
attractive possibility, nevertheless cautioned against leaving
the human city to its own devices. Despite Niebuhr's com-
plaint, Augustine was not altogether indifferent to degrees of
good and evil in the human city.11 The peace of Babylon is no
true peace, but Babylon at peace is better than Babylon at war,
and this is as true for the Christians who live there in exile as it
is for the people for whom Babylon is home.
Meanwhile, however, it is important for us also that this people
should possess this peace in this life, since so long as the two cities are
intermingled we also make use of the peace of Babylon - although the
People of God is by faith set free from Babylon, so that in the
meantime they are only pilgrims in the midst of her. That is why the
Apostle instructs the Church to pray for the kings of that city and
those in high positions, adding these words: "that we may lead a
quiet and peaceful life with all devotion and love."12
This provides a starting point for participation in politics on a
quite different basis from the Aristotelian pursuit of the human
good in common. Not the pursuit of good, but the restraint of
evil is the reason why the Christian enters politics. At a time
when the civil order was collapsing, that was reason enough,
for there was no one else to whom Christians could leave the
task while they pursued their higher aims.
Luther, living in the formative period of modern politics,
offered similar reasons. He mistrusted the secular officials and
princes that he saw around him, but he also saw the import-
ance of a strong civil power in restraining persons whose
avarice and rebellion would otherwise work great harm on
unprotected, innocent people. It will not do simply to say that
Christians should be generous and loving and not use force
against their enemies. The question is: what would then
become of all those who would be subjected to the dep-
redations of those who are not Christian?
Hence a man who would venture to govern an entire country or the
world with the Gospel would be like a shepherd who should place in
one fold wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep together and let them freely
mingle with one another and say, Help yourselves, and be good and
11 12
See Niebuhr's comment on page 160 above. Augustine, City of God, p. 892.
peaceful among yourselves; the fold is open, there is plenty of food;
have no fear of dogs and clubs. The sheep, forsooth, would keep the
peace and would allow themselves to be fed and governed in peace,
but they would not live long; nor would any beast keep from moles-
ting another.13
So Luther, like Augustine before him, encouraged Christians
to set aside the requirements of love and take up the use of
force, where force serves the public good and restrains evil.
"Therefore, should you see that there is a lack of hangmen,
beadles, judges, lords, or princes, and find that you are quali-
fied, you should offer your services and seek the place, that
necessary government may by no means be despised and
become inefficient or perish. For the world cannot and dare
not dispense with it." 14 Luther's realistic assessment of the
secular realm led him to caution Christians against expecting
very much from this political activity, but he did anticipate at
least one good result. There would be order. Good might not
be achieved, but evil would be restrained.
The Christian way of thinking about politics which Rein-
hold Niebuhr inherits from Augustine and Luther bears this
suspicion of politics into modern times. Government represents
a center of power that is necessary for order, but alien to faith.
Augustine and Luther recognize an obligation to obey the
secular ruler, and even an obligation to serve as a ruler, judge,
or executioner, should the opportunity present itself. Conduct
in that service, however, bears little relationship to the stan-
dards that govern relations between Christians, and is no
service at all to the faith. For their own part, Luther insists,
Christians should prefer to suffer evil than to wield coercive
power to correct it.15 Only the needs of the neighbor drive
them to the point of public service.
13
Martin Luther, "Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed," in
John Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), p. 371.
14
Ibid., pp. 374-75. See also Augustine on Christians taking up public office in City of
God, p. 878.
15
Martin Luther, "Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed,"
p. 388. On a more positive note, Calvin regarded the support of politics as essential
to our human nature, and Thomas Aquinas conceived of a human law which could
be framed and enforced in accordance with the requirements of the natural law. See
Politics 167
Modern democracy makes no essential change in this grim
reality. In place of the arbitrary prince, we have an elected
legislature and an accountable executive, but this merely
places more effective checks on a morally dubious power. It
does not make the power itself more moral. Government and
politics remain an unavoidable evil, for which the Christian's
only praise is to remind us that a world without government
would be even worse. Glenn Tinder makes a faithful presen-
tation of these views in contemporary terms:
Christians do not deny that governments ordinarily are evil - decep-
tive, selfish, arrogant - and often are atrocious; but they are indispen-
sable. We should keep them within constitutional limits and subject
them to popular consent; it would be futile, however, to try to do
without them or even to try to substitute for the centralized power of
government the voluntary agreement of citizens. The necessity of
living under centralized power is one of the most tragic conditions of
historical existence. It is inherent, however, in our fallen state.16
One prominent tendency in Christian thought, then, has
linked moral realism regarding a permanent order and pattern
for human life to a very different, skeptical political realism,
which insists that we must face up to the fact that people acting
in groups, people striving for power and forming governments
are going to act in ways contrary to the requirements of the
moral life. The tempting prospect of using power to secure the
good must be rejected, because that is not how real politics
works. What we can do is to enter into politics as an act of
service, risking our own inner peace to spare our neighbors the
loss of outward peace.
This Augustinian-Lutheran tradition provides a significant
warrant for political activity by Christians. Those who accept
it will by no means sit on the sidelines, and when their oppo-
sition to injustice is linked to a prophetic sense of urgency, it
will be unrelenting. Tinder, again, articulates the position in
contemporary terms: "The prophetic stance, accordingly, pre-
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, i960), II, 1487; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, Q,. 95,
a. 2.
16
Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity, p. 134.
supposes a disposition to attack concrete, visible injustices. To

pursue the ideal of a perfect justice is to ignore our fallenness;
but to attack injustices in the world around us - injustices we
must either attack or tacitly accept - is essential to the integrity
of prophetic hope." 17
In the literature on Christianity and politics, Tinder's "pro-
phetic stance" is probably a minority report, lodged as it is
between the more radical criticism of politics articulated by
Hershberger and the more enthusiastic pursuit ofjustice repre-
sented by, say, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. In
the lives of persons who understand themselves as Christians,
however, Tinder's severely realistic opposition to injustice is no
doubt better represented. Those who work in law, law enforce-
ment, and social services usually have few illusions about the
effects of their work, and they certainly do not expect to create
perfect justice. Their work is difficult and poorly paid relative
to their counterparts in business or academic positions, and
often it is physically dangerous. Their commitment, though
they might hesitate to say it this way, is to serve their neighbors
by keeping their circumstances from becoming worse. What
they do often leads them into politics, because that is where evil
can be effectively restrained, even if it cannot be eliminated.
Niebuhr took the Augustinian—Lutheran insistence on the
limitations of politics and the service of one's neighbor very
seriously. His aspiration for a "realistic" liberalism was essen-
tially directed toward a politics that would affirm human
freedom without neglecting the realities of power and self-
interest in the formation of communities.
His critical insights, however, led him beyond Luther on at
least one important point. It is not only those who have evil
intentions who need to be restrained if order is to be preserved.
Those who intend only good, who want a society more just and
more abundant than the one they know, may also have to be
kept in check, lest they destroy what order does exist and then
prove unable to replace it. Even those whose intentions are
good may inflict tremendous suffering on others in their zeal to
17
Ibid., p. 66.
Politics 169
achieve their Utopian visions. Human life is a fragile thing, and
those who die in revolutionary violence, or in reactionary
violence, or in famine and disease brought on by a breakdown
in the regular organization of agriculture and health care will
not benefit from the justice of the new order. People may well
judge the evils of the present system more tolerable than the
suffering they would endure in a transition to the new,
especially in situations where attentiveness to human finitude
makes us aware that in the end there are no guarantees that a
new regime will achieve the justice it seeks. A realistic skepti-
cism about the human capacity to achieve perfect justice
always argues against undertaking means that only the end of
perfect justice could justify. To that extent, there will be a
preference for whatever order exists over the prospect of a
revolutionary change that may result in no order at all, and
Christians contemplating political action will probably be
counseled, as they were by Augustine and Luther, to take up
the distasteful tasks that have some realistic expectations of
maintaining order, rather than the revolutionary endeavors
that merely hope to obtain justice.
THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM
Reinhold Niebuhr lived his own intense involvements with

public issues in some tension with this Augustinian—Lutheran
perspective that shaped his theological assessment of politics.
Richard Fox, in his biography, catches the irony of Niebuhr's
popularity in the early 1940s. "Niebuhr's popular reputation
was taking on a life of its own. 'Niebuhrian' was coming to
mean 'pessimistic,' even 'resigned.' Meanwhile, Niebuhr was
working beyond endurance in one cause after another to help
mold the fate that was supposedly beyond molding." 18
Niebuhr was not, however, simply living at odds with his
ideas. The cold light of Luther's pessimistic realism is needed
whenever people begin to link goodness too closely to any
center of power, established or revolutionary, but Luther and
18
Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, p . 202.
Augustine do not have the last word. Their realism is either

inconsistent, because it does not recognize that the rulers who
maintain order need to be held in check too;19 or it is too
consistent, failing in the end to distinguish the coercions of
tyranny and slavery from the incomplete, but still quite real,
achievements of rulers who do justice.20 What is needed is not
the rigid consistency of a single line of explanation, but an
assessment of politics "qualified to accord with the real and
complex facts of human nature and history."21
To understand the intellectual balance behind Niebuhr's
combination of realism and activism, we must move beyond
the consistently negative judgments of Augustine and Luther
to incorporate the more positive valuation of politics in modern
thought. Niebuhr criticized the optimism and universalism of
political liberalism, defects which he believed liberalism
acquired primarily under the influence of the continental
Enlightenment and the French Revolution. His role, as he saw
it, was not to purge Christian political thinking of these alien
elements altogether, but precisely to reconnect liberalism to its
origins in the political traditions of Christianity, so that its
important contribution would not be lost in the collapse of its
Enlightenment illusions.22
The key to that contribution is the modern idea of political
freedom, or liberty. Liberty, unlike the freedom of conscious-
ness that is central in Christian Realism's account of human
nature, is a political achievement. Ask what makes the risk and
effort of politics worthwhile, and the answer is clear: liberty. In
nature, human beings live constrained by needs and natural
forces. Life is at best a perilous struggle to do what one must to
survive another day, and at worst it is, in Hobbes' memorable
phrase "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." 23 To be
truly human is to break free of these restraints into a realm of
19
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p . xiii; Christian Realism and
20
Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems, p . 127.
21
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p . xiv.
22
Niebuhr, "Liberalism: Illusions a n d Realities," p p . 11-12. W e will have more to
say a b o u t this project of a "realistic liberalism" in C h a p t e r Five.
23
Hobbes, Leviathan, p . 186.
Politics 171
action that is governed by choice. By creating stable rules and
expectations, under which property is secure and wealth can
accumulate, people free themselves from the brutal necessities
that drive those who do not live in political communities.
In this characteristically modern way of thinking, politics
again becomes, as it was for Aristotle, the most significant
realm of human achievement, but for quite different reasons.
For Aristotle, the polis was a place in which free men used their
freedom to create human good on a larger scale. The aim was
to make a difference in the life of the community, and personal
freedom was the ticket of admission to this opportunity for
lasting honor. Women, slaves, and other dependents were
excluded. Early modern democracies imposed similar limits on
the franchise, but their aims were more individualistic. Liberty
is the goal of politics, not its premise. We enter into politics to
secure for ourselves a freedom of action that would be inconcei-
vable if we had to defend our person and our goods con-
tinuously. It is our mutual agreement to avoid doing one
another harm that makes us free.24
For liberalism, then, it is not the freedom we have by nature
that is politically important. What is politically important is
the freedom we create by consent. We are free to do whatever
we can agree with others to permit. Consent, of course, is
different from arbitrary desire; but it is a choice that knows no
natural constraints. The only rule of choice is that we must not
defeat ourselves by choosing something that will make us
individually worse off than we were before. It is likely, then,
that we will choose to make all of our desires moderate ones,
and trade off our wants with one another until we arrive at a
balance in which everyone is satisfied. If these market
mechanisms should fail, or if someone should be so imprudent
as to violate them, we will want a government at hand to set
things right and to restrain the offender. Mostly, however, we
will depend on the self-regulating actions of individuals who
24
See Locke's account of "the beginning of political societies," in John Locke, Two
Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: New American Library, 1965),
PP- 374-75-
know what they want, and who do not want anything exces-
sively.25
Where the Augustinian—Lutheran understanding of politics
required a powerful authority to insure that the weak were not
oppressed by the strong, liberal democracy creates a system of
rights based on mutual consent. Luther reminded Christians
that their well-being depended on having a good ruler, and
then he realistically warned them that the ruler was likely to be
bad. Liberal democracy not only disperses many of the powers
of the ruler among the ruled. It also provides constitutional
limits which insure that the powers of the government serve the
purposes of liberty for which they were brought into being.
Democracy, as Niebuhr puts it at the very beginning of The
Children of Light and the Children ofDarkness', is a "form of social
organization in which freedom and order are made to support,
and not to contradict, each other." 26
To be sure, modern liberal democracy is susceptible to
corruption and failure, degenerating into tyranny as bad as
Luther's princes. The forms that democratic rights typically
have taken bear marks of the interests of the bourgeois
gentlemen who first proclaimed them, and those of other
gender or lesser resources have often found their own access to
liberty denied and their interests insufficiently protected by the
particular constitutions under which they have had to live.
Nevertheless, the idea that political communities exist to secure
the liberty of those who constitute them, and that their powers
can be limited and their actions judged by reference to that
purpose, is a major human achievement.
Although the freedoms promised by liberal democracy were
sometimes formulated specifically in opposition to religious,
rather than civil, authority, Western Christianity has generally
assimilated the liberties of democratic politics into its own
accounts of the human good, and systematically related the
freedom that is the goal of politics to both the freedom of
consciousness that is essential to human nature and the spirit-
ual freedom which is the gift of God. As human rights have
25
Cf. N i e b u h r , The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p p . 4 2 - 4 3 .
26
Ibid., p . 1.
Politics 173
become a global concern, other religious traditions have
experienced similar developments.27 The freedom that politics
promises has become a religious goal, as well as a political one.
THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICS.'
Niebuhr wrote his major works on liberal democracy at a time

when it was threatened by ideological alternatives that have
now largely disappeared. The dramatic collapse of Soviet
communism has been followed by the nearly universal affir-
mation of the principles of liberal democracy, which now
receive lip service even from the various forms of authoritarian
nationalism that are its most important remaining rivals.
The resounding affirmation of democratic principles has,
however, been accompanied by a growing sense of the deterior-
ation of democratic practice. People interviewed on the street
explain the failures of government by saying that "there's just
too much politics in it." Their frustrations are echoed in more
nuanced terms by experienced administrators and legislators
who complain about the obstruction of comprehensive pro-
grams by groups that represent small, but well-organized con-
stituencies. Most important, the concern grows that the
problem is not just corruption or a failure of leadership, but a
weakness in the system of liberal democracy itself.
The liberty that is the goal of modern political life is an
instrumental good. Citizens are presumed to aim at liberty not
for its own sake, but for the security it provides them in their
pursuit of various other ends. Initially, that is supposed to be
part of the genius of liberalism. Persons who cannot agree on
what the true good is need neither submit the question to an
authority who will tell them what good to pursue, nor come to
blows with one another in an unresolvable conflict about what
the aim of their common life ought to be. They cannot agree on
the good, but they can agree on a system of order that leaves
them free to pursue the good they identify for themselves.
1
See, for example, Robert Traer, Faith in Human Rights: Support in Religious Traditions
for a Global Struggle (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1991).
Government and politics is instrumental to whatever their own
highest good may be.
An Aristotelian, asked why a person should want to engage
in politics, might plausibly reply that because politics is about
the highest human good, the exercise of leadership and poli-
tical choice is a human excellence that should be pursued for its
own sake. A Lutheran or Augustinian, as we have seen, would
respond that it is a way to meet the Christian's obligation to
serve one's neighbors, even if this service must unfortunately
take the form of hanging some of them.28 A liberal, who
appears to have a higher assessment of the goals of government,
must nonetheless reply that one engages in politics because it
serves one's own purposes.
A political realist, assessing these three responses, might well
judge that liberalism is the most secure political system,
because it has harnessed the power of self-interest to the work
of politics, and need not rely on moral or religious motivations
to insure that the necessary tasks are done. In a modern,
secular society in which people are often divided over very
different goals and distracted by many tasks, liberal democ-
racy, which can serve all goals and thus engage everyone's
interest, may seem to have the best chance of success.
A politics which confines its aims to instrumental goods and
restricts its motives to self-interest must, however, severely
restrict the scope of political discourse. If politics avoids the
potentially divisive question of what our humanity requires of
us, it cannot discuss truth and excellence. It cannot try to
persuade us to want something different from what we already
want, cannot tell us that we would be better people if we did. It
can only try to reassure the maximum number of individuals
that this program, party, or candidate has the same interests as
they do. It does not take long to do that.
There is a tendency to blame the erosion of political dis-
course on the thirty-second "sound bite," but we might also
consider the possibility that the "sound bite" exists because it is
an appropriate expression of what politics, reduced to instru-
28
See page 166 above.
Politics 175
mental goods, is all about. The sound bite is too short a space in
which to persuade you of anything, but it is a very efficient way
to find out whether a candidate agrees with what you already
believe to be in your own interest. If that is, politically speak-
ing, all you need to know, you can get your answer quickly and
get back to the conversations that really matter.
In that environment, many groups will act on fierce commit-
ments to one cause, or to a small number of closely related
causes. Political leadership becomes a matter not so much of
envisioning comprehensive programs as of convincing the
maximum number of quite specific interests that your admin-
istration offers the best prospect for attention to their par-
ticular goals. Uneasy coalitions of libertarian conservatives
and fundamentalist Protestants, or blue-collar ethnic groups
and patrician Republicans, spring up across the landscape,
win their unexpected victories, and quickly fragment when the
more wide-ranging work of government begins.
David Stockman described this phenomenon of single-issue
interest groups that have virtually eliminated the power of
government to undertake necessary, comprehensive reforms,
and he called it, ironically, "the triumph of politics." 29 One
need not share Stockman's program to share his concern.
However, the clash of groups, each defending a tightly focused
interest against modification by others, is hardly the activity of
persons who see their life in a community as an important
achievement in itself and an essential expression of their
humanity. Measured against that classical Western under-
standing of politics, the prevailing conditions of American
public life bespeak the near disappearance of politics, not its
triumph.
The perennial rejection of politics by "nonresistant Chris-
tians" like Guy Hershberger, who confine their public life to
bearing witness to another possibility, thus finds a peculiar
contemporary echo in the sullen rejection of disillusioned
liberals, who have no alternative but the cynical pursuit of
their own interests. The danger from Utopians who expect too
29
David Stockman, The Triumph of Politics (New York: Harper and Row, 1986).
much of politics appears considerably less than that posed by

apocalyptic sectarians who have given up on it entirely. In our
present situation, we do not need Reinhold Niebuhr to remind
us not to expect too much of politics. We do need a Niebuhrian
Realism that will reconnect politics with the vital center of
human activity.
Man requires freedom in his social organization because he is "essen-
tially" free, which is to say that he has the capacity for indeterminate
transcendence over the processes and limitations of nature. This
freedom enables him to make history and to elaborate communal
organizations in boundless variety and in endless depth and extent.
But he also requires community because he is by nature social. He
cannot fulfill his life within himself but only in responsible and
mutual relations with his fellows.30
Both the consistent pessimism of Augustinian-Lutheran theol-
ogy and the consistent self-interest of liberal democratic phil-
osophy prove in the end to be too consistent to grasp the
incoherencies and vitalities that make up real human life. For a
politics adequate to that, we must turn from liberty, the
freedom that politics creates, back to the essential human
freedom that is the starting point for Christian Realism's
ethics.
REALISM AND FREEDOM

For Christian Realism, the freedom which politics secures is
possible only because of the capacity for self-transcendence
that is itself a part of nature. Once that is understood, the
characteristically modern opposition between freedom and
nature is no longer possible, but it is also true that freedom is no
longer absolute. To speak of an "indefinite transcendence" of
the existing conditions of life implies that our imaginative
grasp of other possibilities cannot be restricted by a priori limits.
But that freedom does not look down on all realities from an
equal distance. It is in the nature of human freedom, as we
noted in Chapter Three, that it starts from somewhere, that it
30
Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, p. 5.
Politics 177
envisions possibilities out of quite specific discontents and
deprivations.31
The result is not only that we are unable to formulate a
universal definition of freedom; there is also no certain way to
identify an experience of it. That is what makes us prey to the
appeals of demagogues and car salesmen, religious charlatans
and hairdressers, all of whom in their own ways promise to set
us free from our problems, though the result most likely proves
in the end to be just another kind of bondage. This uncertainty
about something as important to us as freedom also makes us
prey to our own anxieties, leading us to forms of pride that
deny our vulnerabilities, or to a timidity that takes no chances
for fear that it might be wrong.
When the limits of freedom are understood in this realistic
way, the possibilities of politics take on a different shape than
they have in political liberalism. In liberalism, political com-
munities are instrumental goods which all of us create together
in order to secure for each of us the enjoyment of the more
particular goods we happen to want. If, however, our freedom
is limited in the ways that Christian Realism suggests, politics is
at once more integral and more dangerous to human life than
liberalism has made it out to be.
The dangers are obvious. Much of twentieth-century history
has shown us how fragile our aspirations are in the face of
massive power. The good we seek for ourselves and the people
we know most intimately can easily be overwhelmed by mili-
tary or economic forces that treat us merely as obstacles to be
overcome, or as instruments of someone else's purposes. Those
who are destroyed in this way are not in any direct sense
participants in politics. They are victims. Our solidarity with
them should seek to empower them in ways that end their
victimization and makes politics possible for them, too.
True political danger, however, does not begin with victimi-
zation, when someone else mobilizes forces to destroy us. It
begins when politics makes us co-conspirators in our own
oppression. Raw power can destroy us despite our best efforts
31
See Chapter Three, especially pp. 123-31, for a more extended treatment of Nie-
buhr's understanding of human freedom.
to fight or to flee. Only politics can secure our consent to the

destruction of our freedom.
It is for that reason that people in the twentieth century
have elaborated the concept of human rights that protect the
freedom of the individual from absorption into the aspirations
of the leader, or the party, or the people. Persons in their
freedom deserve protection from what politics can do to them.
Just because we know that our freedom is contingent, limited,
and embodied - because we know that freedom itself is not
absolute - we will be inclined to make the protections of
freedom as nearly absolute as we can.
A bill of rights alone is not enough, of course. Protecting
freedom from politics requires active voices, and organizations
to amplify those voices and spread their words through print
and broadcast media. It also requires organizations like
churches and universities, in which those voices can be edu-
cated to their task, and supported when it becomes difficult or
dangerous. Without communities that nurture persons who
undertake these difficult tasks of advocacy, even the freedom to
organize is a hollow commitment. If you have a little time, you
can stifle dissent by creating a narcissistic culture, in which
people do not care what happens to their neighbors, even more
effectively than you can control dissent by forbidding it.
Much of twentieth-century political thought has concen-
trated on these dangers in politics from which freedom seeks
protection. There is, however, also a participation in politics
that freedom positively needs if it is to be fully realized. This is
less well recognized, but it also follows from the nature of
freedom. Freedom cannot be carried to completion as an
individual, personal act. A prisoner who survives solitary con-
finement and psychological intimidation has created a certain
space of freedom, as has the welfare mother who dreams of
starting afresh with a decent job and a clean apartment. Even
the harassed scholar who mentally escapes the demands of
lectures, appointments, and mortgage payments to a cabin in
the woods well stocked with books and writing paper expresses
freedom in that imagining, but such expressions are obviously
incomplete.
Politics 179
Individual expressions of freedom are incomplete not only
because the dreamers individually lack the power to realize
their visions, but because most often the alternatives indi-
viduals envision are mirror images of their present problems,
rather than fully developed views of human fulfillment. The
employee harassed by the petty tyrannies of an office super-
visor may imagine what revenge she would exact if she were
seated at the head desk, or even in milder moments picture her
own reign as a benevolent despotism. That is consciousness's
minimal transcendence of present injustices, but it is hardly the
full scope of freedom. For that, she requires some understand-
ing of the needs of other workers, including the overbearing
supervisor, and some awareness of the larger purposes of the
work.
As freedom realizes its aims, those goals are also changed. In
the long run, freedom achieves its goals not by imposing them
on recalcitrant facts and resistant people, but by a process of
adjustment in which visions are reshaped to conform to mater-
ial limitations and, above all, renegotiated to secure the willing
and sustained cooperation of other persons.
Achievements that endure are the work of communities.
That does not imply that they result only from cooperative
efforts. As Niebuhr notes in speaking of the achievement of
justice, community is sometimes the union of adversaries. We
must, more often than we might like, accept these adversaries
as important participants in the achievement of durable ver-
sions of our own visions. The entrepreneur may need the union
organizer and the government regulator to turn his business
into an institution that can maintain a loyal workforce and live
alongside its neighbors, even though wage demands and pollu-
tion controls for the moment reshape his plans in ways that he
does not like. The city planner may feel defeated when the
geometrical regularities of his master plan are sacrificed to
purely local interests, but the chances are that his vision will be
more intact a hundred years later than the plans of a rival who
demands the whole plan or nothing.
Plans are sometimes dramatically changed in the political
process, and other factors may ironically reverse the intentions
of the planners, as Niebuhr loved to remind his readers.32 Few
are thoroughly satisfied with what the community makes of
their visions, and probably none would want to claim the
effects in their entirety. Such, however, are the achievements of
finite human beings. They are inevitably transformed by the
people who participate in them, and they endure, if they
endure at all, only by becoming political.
That is where politics relates integrally, rather than adventi-
tiously, to the self-transcendence that is the key to human
freedom. In its divided and sometimes chaotic reality, politics
is the best approximation we have of a community of discourse
in which our ideas about the human good could be tested
against all the real human beings that the ideas are about. To
free oneself from one's starting point is not merely to imagine
the same self in a different situation, but to understand the
possibility of a quite different human self. If I understand a
situation only in terms of how it might be altered better to suit
my needs or the needs of persons very much like me, I am not
yet free of it. But the only practical way to know that I have
grasped a different set of possibilities is to have my perceptions
confirmed, transformed, or challenged by others with quite
different experiences. Only when we understand politics in
those terms can we avoid reducing it to an instrument by which
we gain our ends at the expense of others who are less skilled in
manipulating the system.
STATE AND NATION
We might begin by rethinking the relationships between the

government, on which much of our disillusionment with poli-
tics centers, and the other institutions, which are also political,
that make up our common life. The liberal, instrumental
understanding of politics tends, as we have seen, to divide
experience into two spheres, public and private.33 In the
public sphere, our activities are designed to serve as means to
32
R e i n h o l d N i e b u h r , The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1952).
33
See page 173 above.
Politics 181
everyone's ends. What we do is regulated by bureaucratic
norms and established procedures, and the possibilities for
individual choice are strictly limited. Each person's work must
fit into a larger pattern of productivity and meet widely shared
expectations, so that every banker, dentist, stockbroker and
editor - even the solitary scholar, the creative artist, and the
personal counselor - must be very much like every other one of
that ilk. The emphasis on personal "style" which dominates
consumer marketing reveals in the end that personal expres-
sion is today largely confined to superficialities. Institutions
impress themselves on personalities long before there is a
chance to work the effects the other way around. In this highly
organized economic system, the distinction between what is
truly public, i.e. governmental, and what is nominally private,
i.e. the "private sector" not under government control, is
blurred by interlocking systems of regulation and common
patterns of bureaucratic organization.
By contrast, the private sphere is increasingly equated with
the personal, the realm outside the productive system, where
choice is limited only by the imagination and, of course, by the
amount of money one can earn in the public sphere to support
one's private aspirations.
A Niebuhrian Realist may share this uneasy sense that
private satisfactions now are stressed at the expense of public
life, but Niebuhr drew the lines of demarcation somewhat
differently from the usual distinction between public and
private. For him, the important difference was between "state"
and "nation," between the institutions of government
"through which the life of nations is organized and their wills
articulated," and the nation itself, which is this organized
community in all its parts. The organization of national life
and the articulation of the will of a people is a high moral task
for the state, but it by no means encompasses the whole of
national life, nor does it escape a critical scrutiny that asks
whether those who have power in the state really speak for the
nation, or only for their own more limited interests.34 Nie-
34
Niebuhr, "Do State and Nation Belong to God or the Devil?", in Faith and Politics,
pp. 83-87.
buhr's distinction between state and nation, though it is not
very clearly drawn, recurs throughout his work, and largely
corresponds to the more systematic distinction in Catholic
social thought between "state" and "society," or to Ernst
Troeltsch's idea of the social sphere outside the specific con-
cerns of government which is the subject of the "social" teach-
ings of the churches.35
The point, then, is not simply to press the moral claims of
public, as opposed to private life, but to identify within the
public sphere a range of institutions distinct from the state
which nonetheless engage our public concerns and require of
us something like those civic virtues that the republican tradi-
tion assigns to government service.36 In Athens or other
ancient city-states, it may have been possible to assign all
choices beyond the necessities of economic life to an undifferen-
tiated public realm. By the time that Christian political
thought emerges in the context of large territorial kingdoms,
however, it is necessary to distinguish the powers and tasks of
government from other essential elements of public life - the
church first, but also the schools, and then those emergent
forms of economic organization that encompass more than the
extended household. The classical ideal of civic virtue focuses
attention on the importance of public life, but it also distracts
from the inevitable tensions between the various institutions of
the modern public sphere, and leads to the easy identification
of the nation or the society with the state.
For those whose interest in public life extends to society as a
whole, the state poses special political problems. The modern
state reaches into all aspects of life and cannot be narrowly
confined to issues concerned directly with the limited functions
of minimal government. It is, moreover, part of the very
definition of a modern state that it has a monopoly on coercive
35
For a recent statement of this distinction in Catholic thought, see Richard
P. McBrien, Caesar's Coin: Religion and Politics in America (New York: Macmillan,
1987), pp. 123-25. For Troeltsch's distinction, see Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of
the Christian Churches, I, 27-30.
36
O n civic virtue a n d its role in c o n t e m p o r a r y public life, see William Sullivan,
Reconstructing Public Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986),
PP- 163-65.
Politics 183
power. Other social institutions may exercise strong influences
on behavior, either by moral persuasion and the pressure of the
opinions of others or by their control of economic incentives,
but the state alone has authority to compel compliance by force
and punish disobedience by loss of liberty. So while we must
insist that the state is not the whole of society, nor government
the whole of politics, the state is the one unavoidable reality in
most political calculations. The decisions made in this politics
can reach everyone in the society.
As a result, both detractors and supporters of any govern-
ment will tend to exaggerate the power of the state and over-
state its importance in the lives of individuals. Detractors will
talk about "getting government off our backs" and ridicule the
costs and complexity of bureaucratic regulations. They will,
especially if their opponents happen to be in power, point to
the failure of programs that were supposed to meet human
needs, and they will warn that the reach of the state is about to
abolish individual choice and personal privacy. Supporters, by
contrast, will cite statistics to show that private charity is not
solving the problems of homelessness and hunger, or that
voluntary programs do not really eliminate discrimination
against women and minorities in the workplace. They may,
with practice, become as vigorous as the detractors in their
denunciations of waste and fraud in government, but they will
also point out that the very scope of those costs reminds us that
government alone is large enough and powerful enough to
bring adequate resources to bear on the social problems that
we all have to face together.
While others debate the extent and limits of state power,
each successive administration, whether it comes to office as a
supporter or a detractor of that power, will closely identify its
own authority with the power of the state. This is not always
for the venal ends of securing the fortunes of the office-holders
or providing them with lucrative second careers as political
"consultants," though that may be a factor. The key point is
that even for those who think that the state has become too big
and too powerful, the power of the state is the only effective
tool they can use to attempt to reduce its size and scope. Some
of that power depends on effective use of legislation and regula-

tion, but, as Niebuhr noted, it also depends on using the
majesty of the state to lend authority to one's plans, transform-
ing them from the election platform of a political faction into
an expression of national purpose.37
So administrations or governments tend to identify them-
selves with the state, of which they have temporary custody,
and states tend to identify themselves with the majesty and the
will of the nation or the society of which they are but a part.
Nations, finally, have an idolatrous tendency to identify them-
selves with universal virtues which, at best, they only partly
realize. There is here a pyramid of hypocrisy and self-
deception which, if it is not recognized, can create a state
which overwhelms other centers of creativity and invests the
state and its leader with pretensions to virtue that no actual
person or institution can sustain. This has happened often
enough in the twentieth century to keep us wary, but it is also
true that these deceptions are plausible because states and
nations may very well represent more inclusive values than the
aims of the individuals and groups within them. As usual,
Christian Realism precludes blanket judgments about the
power of the state and requires us to evaluate specific cases
with the full range of possibilities, positive and negative, before
us.
This realistic approach to politics and government may be
contrasted to other ideas, which seek to avoid the excesses to
which the state is susceptible by limiting our reliance on its
powers. In Catholic social thought, these limitations are
summed up in the idea of subsidiarity. Under the influence of
Aquinas' teaching that politics is a natural human activity,
and not just a way of restraining sinful aggressions against the
innocent, Catholic writers since the Reformation have tended
toward a higher evaluation of the moral possibilities of political
activity than their Protestant counterparts. The rise of the
modern state, and, more particularly, nineteenth-century
European conflicts between the church and newly powerful
37
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires (New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons, 1959), pp. 34-35.
Politics 185
secular states led, however, to a doctrine that governments
should be restricted to a rather narrow range of powers neces-
sary to secure order and justice. Police power, law courts,
taxation, and defense are unquestioned prerogatives of govern-
ment, but when its activities impinge on other areas of life, on
the family, education, or religion, for example, the role of
government must be strictly subsidiary. That is, it must aid
these institutions in achieving their proper purposes, but it
must not seek to replace them or to do for them what they can,
with subsidiary assistance, achieve for themselves.38 John
Courtney Murray summarized the import of this idea for the
role of the state in a way which virtually deprives govern-
mental politics of any creative role in social life. In an interpre-
tation of the major social encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Murray
wrote:
Rerum novarum, adhering to the Western Christian political tradition,
makes it clear that government, strictly speaking, creates nothing;
that its function is to order, not to create. Perhaps more exactly, its
function is to create the conditions under which original vitalities and
forces, present in society, may have full scope to create the values by
which society lives. Perhaps still more exactly, the only value which
government is called upon to create is the value of order. But the
value of order resides primarily in the fact that it furnishes opportuni-
tates, facilitates ... for the exercise of freedoms which are the rightful
prerogative of other social magnitudes and forces. These freedoms,
rightly ordered, are the true creative sources of all manner of social
values.39
Others have interpreted Niebuhrian Realism about self-
interest and power to mean that we should avoid the pretense
of excessive virtue by minimizing the role of government in the
making and enforcing of moral choices. Robert Benne praises
38
W h a t has come to be called the doctrine of subsidiarity can be traced back to the
relations between the state a n d other social institutions prescribed in the encyclical
Rerum novarum, issued by Pope Leo X I I I in 1891. T h e term itself was introduced into
discussions in moral theology somewhat later, b u t appears in Pius X I ' s encyclical
Quadragesimo anno, a fortieth-anniversary restatement of the principles of Rerum
novarum.
39
J o h n Courtney M u r r a y , " L e o X I I I a n d Pius X I I : Government a n d the O r d e r of
Religion," in Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, ed. J. Leon Hooper
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), p. 78.
market mechanisms which remove problems of choice from the

arena of explicit political decisions and disperse them among
the individual economic choices of the populace, because this
dispersal reduces the need for divisive choices about goals and
values in the politics of government: "Market systems, by
relying on voluntary exchange relationships based on self-
interest, decrease the need for consensus on the moral, ideo-
logical, and social level. They contribute to the decentral-
ization of power by making it unnecessary to have cultural and
moral agreement." 40
Efforts to be realistic about the dangerous powers of the
modern state have thus shown a tendency to circumscribe its
powers and to isolate its politics from the creative and moral
aspects of social life. They show a preference for the decentral-
ized choices made, in Benne's Protestant model, by individuals
in the marketplace, or in Murray's understanding of the
Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, by families, local communi-
ties, and religious groups. The message seems to be that we can
risk creativity and moral judgment on a smaller scale, where
the results can be evaluated more directly and are less likely to
be thrust upon unwilling participants or unmotivated
recipients.
There is an important practical lesson in these reservations.
Leo XIII framed the doctrine of subsidiarity in response to the
disruptions of church and family by militant policies of secula-
rization. American Catholics experienced no such militant
secularism, but they readily accepted the doctrine because of
their own experiences with a militant Protestant culture in
American public schools, and because they understood the
important role that ethnic community, religious organizations,
and their own institutions for health care and social services
played in maintaining the fabric of social life. Benne's high
estimation of the marketplace as a forum for evaluating social
experiments arises in part from the recognition that innova-
tions sponsored by government are often extensive, costly, and
hard to terminate, even when they fail to meet their objectives.
40
Robert Benne, The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
ig8i),p. 143.
Politics 187
In addition, as Benne points out, adoption of an explicit policy
toward a problem requires a far higher level of public consen-
sus than a plurality of local and private experiments, which
require only the looser agreement that something ought to be
done.
When the practical lesson about restraint is raised to a
principle, however, it becomes unrealistic. It substitutes the
idea that government is at best the agency of last resort for the
solution of society's problems for a realistic evaluation of the
possibilities and limitations of the state as a center of resources,
to be deployed in specified ways for the solution of particular
problems. A realism that tempers our tendency to assume that
government can solve all our problems becomes instead the
"too consistent" pessimism of Augustinian—Lutheran realism,
which sees all forms of government as inherently limited by the
need to bring under control forces of evil which cannot be dealt
with according to the norms of Christian morality. 41
A more balanced realism, by contrast, stresses the indetermi-
nacy of human vitalities in both their individual and their
collective forms. "Actually human vitalities express themselves
from both individual and collective centers in many directions,
and both are capable of unpredictable creative and destructive
consequences."42 This does not mean that we cannot learn
from experience, but it does imply that we must wait for
experience to tell us what government can and cannot do. Its
functions cannot be limited in advance by a restrictive
doctrine.
Though it is true that government must have the power to subdue
recalcitrance, it also has a more positive function. It must guide,
direct, deflect, and rechannel conflicting and competing forces in a
community in the interest of a higher order. It must provide instru-
ments for the expression of the individual's sense of obligation to the
41
Benne, in fact, evinces a strongly Lutheran reading of Reinhold Niebuhr in the
early chapters of The Ethic of Democratic Capitalism, p p . 27-47. Murray, a n d Catholic
writers generally, would presumably w a n t to remain closer to the affirmation of
politics in T h o m a s Aquinas, b u t it is hard to see how the doctrine of subsidiarity as
M u r r a y applies it can avoid the implication that government is a special area in
which moral possibilities are more limited than they are in other spheres of social
life.
42
community as well as weapons against the individual's anti-social

lusts and ambitions.43
This affirmation of the positive functions of government is an
important qualification of Niebuhr's otherwise strong insist-
ence on government's role as the keeper of order. He was
convinced that the political liberalism which animated many
of the leaders of his time led them to overstate the role of
consent in keeping people within the limits of law and social
cooperation, and to underestimate the importance of sheer
force as the foundation of social order. That problem is real,
and the leadership which ignores it runs the danger of slipping
into anarchy, just as those who worry too much about order
may end up imposing a tyranny instead. But the delicate
balance between anarchy and tyranny, important as it is in
Niebuhr's political thought, is not for him the sum of govern-
mental politics.
Politics is about a more fundamental freedom than the set of
liberties which a government grants or the constraints which it
must impose to insure that persons can exercise their freedom
under conditions of reasonable security. Politics begins with
the capacity for indefinite transcendence of present circum-
stances. Politics is involved in every aspect of human life
because it is only in political activity that the freedom that
characterizes human beings can be realized in forms that are
more substantial and permanent than flights of imagination or
intellectual abstractions.
Real politics, of course, seldom sustains the consistency and
purity of the original vision of freedom, and politics as prac-
ticed in real communities may lack the critical rigor that
intellectual scrutiny can bring to visions and values. People
pursuing their goals in a political process at any level, from
office politics to international politics, are apt to deceive them-
selves about the universality of their values and to be deceived
by others about the extent of the agreement they share. The
ideal circumstances of communication are likely to be more
nearly approximated in careful, critical reflection than in the
43
Ibid., p. 44.
Politics 189
mixture of self-interest and social concern that characterizes
real politics.
So there is always a danger that politics will miscarry and
result in the imposition of some new form of domination, rather
than a genuine increase of freedom. The risks of this deception,
and its costs, rise as the political community grows larger and
more powerful. Although the problems of "idolatry" are
exhibited in units as small as exclusive suburbs and academic
departments, they are less likely to be perceived by the idol-
aters and more likely to wreak havoc on their neighbors when
it is a nation that confuses its goals and virtues with universal
values. We cannot solve this problem, however, by attempting
to remove the state from politics or by reducing the politics of
government to some truncated version in which moral choice
and social creativity are systematically eliminated. Freedom is
not preserved by restricting its range to institutions in which it
is unlikely to be abused, and we must understand that solving
human problems with resources that only the state can
command is as much an exercise of freedom as the use of
individual liberties.
The aim of Christian Realism is more than the check on evil
and disorder that marked the limit of what Augustine and
Luther expected from government. It is also more than the
relentless criticism of the ideological self-deceptions of the
powerful that Niebuhr regarded as a necessary complement to
the power of the state. The aim is to make government fully
political, to allow individuals to give their visions institutional
reality by enlisting the support of others, but also to transform
those visions in the light of a more inclusive idea of freedom
that emerges when persons are free to challenge, persuade, and
criticize one another. Public order is an indispensable means to
politics on this scale, but if it becomes the only purpose of
government, then politics is excluded from precisely the com-
prehensive community in which it might make the most
difference.
There is, however, an important truth in the principle of
subsidiarity. That truth is that a fully political government is
unlikely to exist without a healthy political life in other institu-
tions in society. The failure of politics on a smaller scale leads to

a situation in which people perceive other groups and other
visions only as threats to their purposes. As a result, they begin
to feel powerless to effect changes that would give their visions
institutional form, and they hold those visions tightly among
small groups of like-minded persons. The others are to be
shunned or defeated, and there is no confidence that they could
be persuaded, or that we might even create new possibilities
out of the confrontation.
Those who have not learned that confidence in schools,
churches, offices, and community organizations are unlikely to
learn it from government. However, there is no reason why
those who have learned it cannot use government to advance
political purposes as creatively as they use the other institutions
of society. Both the popular belief that "you can't legislate
morality" and the more nuanced claim that government pro-
vides only the opportunitates, facilitates for social creativity are
mistaken. Government can lead society, but it cannot substi-
tute the mass politics of government for a full range of devel-
oped political institutions throughout society.
Christian Realists, who understand that their own freedom
is bound up with these political possibilities, have an important
stake in politics in all those institutions. It is not just a means of
service to others. It is also a way of grasping that truth which
they have and do not have. 44 People of faith who reject politics
or ignore it not only leave the way open for the idolatries
propagated by those of more limited vision. They also cut
themselves off from a place in which they might meet the One
true God.
44
See Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 213-20.
CHAPTER 5
Justice
THE PROBLEM OF JUSTICE
John Rawls, at the beginning of A Theory of Justice, relates

justice and truth by saying that "Justice is the first virtue of
social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought." 1 Some
thirty years earlier, Reinhold Niebuhr had drawn a similar
connection, but with a distinctly Niebuhrian twist: "The
struggle for justice is as profound a revelation of the possibilities
and limits of historical existence as the quest for truth." 2 Where
Rawls characterizes the searches for truth and justice as the
most important achievements of thought and action, Niebuhr
sees both quests as also revealing characteristic human limi-
tations.
The contrasts suggested by these aphorisms are borne out
in each author's treatment of the problems of justice. Rawls
regards justice as a social achievement that has value for any
society of persons with diverse goals and interests, whatever
other things those persons may seek and value. Niebuhr
understands justice in relation to love, which is for him the
ultimate value that all persons share. Precisely because com-
plete justice is identical with a human good in which every-
one would participate, however, it is impossible to achieve;
and it is when we try to create human good on the scale of
nations and empires that we become most acutely aware of
our limitations.
1
John Rawls, A Theory ofJustice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971),
P- 3-
2
REALISTIC LIBERALISM?
Niebuhr and Rawls understand justice differently, and some of

these differences can be traced to changes in the historical
context in which they wrote. Though each man was attuned to
the nuances of liberal political thought in the mid-twentieth
century, changing social problems led to significant changes in
the role that an idea of justice was expected to play in public
life.
From the 1940s onward, Niebuhr thought of himself as a
critic who stood within the traditions of liberal democracy,
calling liberalism to a more realistic view of human limitations
and a more profound appreciation of human aspirations.3 His
editorial fulminations against "liberalism" were directed far
more at religious liberals and reductive naturalists than at the
commentators and theorists whose own accounts of political
liberalism often showed great appreciation for Niebuhr's cor-
rective insights.
The role in which Niebuhr cast himself as a Christian social
ethicist4 was to provide a dimension of depth, making clear the
assumptions on which liberalism's moral power rests. Like Paul
Tillich during the same period, Niebuhr understood the theo-
logical task not as distinguishing faith from politics, but as
supplying an element that was often missing in purely political
discussions.5 Tillich, more than Niebuhr, spoke of this as an
"ontological" grounding of the political discussion. The basic
idea, however, is much the same: politics requires an under-
standing of the more fundamental human realities on which it
rests if it is to deal successfully with the forces of totalitarianism
that threaten liberal democracy.
Niebuhr articulated these realities for a generation preoccu-
pied with threats posed by alien political systems in Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union. The issue, as he framed it in
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, was to formu-
3
See Niebuhr, "Liberalism: Illusions and Realities." Also, see Chapter Four, page 160.
4
Niebuhr persistently refused to describe himself as a "theologian." See Reinhold
Niebuhr, "Intellectual Autobiography," in Kegley and Bretall, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr,
P- 3-
5
Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954).
Justice 193
late a more realistic version of liberal democratic values that
would make their defense more plausible and compelling.
Domestic problems, such as racial segregation, were typi-
cally interpreted as failures to put these democratic values into
practice. Myrdal's The American Dilemma provided the classic
formulation of this point. Niebuhr's own analysis of the Civil
Rights Movement in the South as a conflict between national
standards and local practices is another example. At the level
where national authority prevails, there is a consensus that
would allow us to live together in a reasonable approximation
of justice. What must be done is to make that consensus
effective everywhere. 6 Niebuhr suggested that when the liberal
consensus and the political systems it supports are challenged
by totalitarian or materialist alternatives, it falls to the voices
that speak from the biblical tradition to articulate the premises
on which the consensus rests, correcting its tendencies toward
secularism and relativism and recalling it to the meaningful
moral universe on which it depends. 7
Niebuhr's position on these matters was echoed by other
writers at mid-century. Despite significant differences over
pragmatism and natural law between Niebuhr and his leading
Roman Catholic counterpart, the Jesuit theologian John
Courtney Murray, the two men have an ecumenical approach
to liberal democracy: The biblical faith provides the ideas
about human good and moral responsibility on which the
liberal democratic consensus rests. When that consensus is
confused or threatened, recourse to the faith that sets its funda-
mental terms is a necessary part of its self-defense and self-
renewal. 8
6
Niebuhr, The Children ofLight and the Children of Darkness, pp. xiii-xv. See also Gunnar
Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1944), p. xlvii; and Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Supreme Court
on Segregation in the Schools," Christianity and Crisis (June 14, 1954), 75—77. The
contrast between national and local standards, which is a commonplace in Niebuhr's
writings on civil rights, can be seen in his foreword to Mississippi Education
Foundation, Inc., Mississippi Black Paper (New York: Random House, 1965), and in
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Effect of the Supreme Court Decision," Christianity and
Crisis 17 (February 4, 1957), 3.
7
See Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, pp. 62-63.
8
See, for example, the discussion of "the American consensus" in Murray, We Hold
These Truths, pp. 79-123.
194 Reinhold JViebukr and Christian Realism
Changing times gave rise to a different political liberalism,
with a quite different understanding of a democracy's relation-
ship to the moral and religious beliefs of its citizens. Niebuhr's
generation believed there was a national moral consensus.
When Niebuhr died in 1971? however, the United States was in
the midst of upheavals in which vast cultural disagreements
over values had become apparent. Racial justice proved to
require far more than an equal opportunity for African
Americans to become like their white middle-class counter-
parts. Demands for the recognition of alternative traditions
and values became prominent, first among African Americans
and then among many other groups united by ethnic identity,
social status, or physical or mental challenges. The role of the
United States as a global military and economic power came
into question, and a counter-culture emerged that defined itself
precisely by its opposition to the values and goods that Nie-
buhr's generation might have identified as the American con-
sensus.
In the same year that Niebuhr died, John Rawls published A
Theory of Justice, beginning with his memorable claim that
"justice is the first virtue of social institutions." He might also
have said that it is the last hope of a pluralistic society. In place
of a political system based on a value consensus that everyone
could share, it seemed necessary to specify the claims which
individuals have on society's goods and to provide rights that
would protect the use of those goods in pursuit of self-chosen
aims. By settling on one or another of those criteria, we could
determine the minimal requirements of social justice, even if
we continued to disagree on almost everything else.
As Niebuhr differs from other Protestant Christian Realists
and from his Catholic contemporaries, so too there are sig-
nificant differences between Rawls and other late-century
liberals, primarily over the constraints that justice imposes on
individual freedom of choice. What the liberal theorists agree
upon, however, is that justice can be determined by rules that
do not depend on a shared idea of human fulfillment. When
liberal democracies are divided on questions of policy or
threatened by totalitarianism, it is primarily because someone
Justice 195
claims to have discovered the true way of life or a comprehen-
sive good. Strife and tyranny follow when those who agree seek
to impose that good on those who do not. The solution is not a
more articulate rendition of the underlying consensus, but
clearer thinking that demonstrates that such a consensus is
unnecessary. Liberal democracy is about the new human possi-
bility that we can live together in reasonable harmony without
agreeing on God or the good.
A Theory of Justice achieved its status as a contemporary
classic not only for the intellectual power of Rawls' system,
but also for the clarity with which he provided the sharply
defined, minimal version of justice that the times seemed to
require. 9 It is instructive to compare his explicit premises at a
couple of points with Niebuhr's unspoken assumptions.
A Theory of Justice asks us to conceive of persons trying to
settle the basic rules of justice in a hypothetical situation in
which they do not know the specific interests, resources, and
roles that they will have in the society for which they are
making the rules. If we can figure out what rules people in this
"original position" would plausibly choose, we will have prin-
ciples of justice that distribute society's burdens and benefits
fairly, rather than reflecting the interests of one group that is
prestigious and powerful.10
One thing we must assume about persons in the original
position is that they are, as Rawls puts it, "mutually disinter-
ested."11 That is, they are in general neither altruistic nor
egoistic in their relations with other persons. Egoists, who
consistently seek their own advantage without regard to the
interests and welfare of others, cannot make a commitment to
justice, because that would require them to limit their selfish
pursuits. Altruists, who consistently put the good of others
9
A Theory of Justice remains the most important systematic statement of the liberal
theory of justice, and one in relation to which all other versions of liberalism frame
their positions. Rawls has subsequently clarified and expanded his theory, most
importantly by acknowledging that the premises of "justice as fairness" are not
dictated by reason alone, but articulate the values shared by citizens of modern
liberal democracies. See especially John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1993).
10 n
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 12, 17-22. Ibid., pp. 13, 127-28.
i g6 Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
ahead of their own welfare, create the same problem in a
different way. Persons who have no interests they seek to
defend cannot make a commitment to justice because they are
already willing to sacrifice everything for the good of their
neighbors. There is nothing they seek to withhold, so they
cannot make rules governing what they must be willing to
surrender.12
Persons capable of determining what justice requires, then,
are primarily conceived as those who go about their business
pursuing their own ends. They do not need to defeat their
neighbors for their own well-being, but neither does their
well-being depend on others. Justice is about how persons
whose happiness and well-being depends primarily on the
pursuit of their own ends will live with others who are similarly
motivated. They may need rules to protect them from the
egoists, as the altruists may need rules to be protected from
themselves, but justice is about the terms that mutually disin-
terested persons establish to regulate their relations as they
pursue aims that are important to them individually.
For Niebuhr, the pursuit of justice requires that we under-
stand what it would mean for real persons to live well. We must
know what we would want for them if we loved them. This is
necessary to formulate the requirements ofjustice, even if what
we are actually prepared to give is a good deal less than love
requires, and also if what love requires proves to be quite
different from what the others actually want.
For Rawls, by contrast, mutual disinterest begins with a
respect for the fact that the other person has aims and goals,
although you need not care at all whether these particular
goals are realized. The important thing is not that you agree
that the aims and goals are crucial to the other person's good,
but that you do not arbitrarily deprive any person of the
capacities and resources needed to achieve his or her purposes,
whatever they may be.
12
Niebuhr, incidentally uses the term 'disinterested' in a quite different, almost
opposite, sense. For Niebuhr, the "disinterested" persons are those who do not cling
to their own interests, those who are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the
good of others. See, for example, Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Ethics of Jesus and the
Social Problem," in Robertson, ed., Love and Justice, p. 31.
Justice 197
Rawls' interpretation of liberal democracy is controversial,
in part because his principles ofjustice would severely limit the
entitlement of persons to forms of wealth and power that they
might accumulate in the course of their freely chosen activi-
ties.13 Nevertheless, political freedom, or liberty, is central to
Rawls' political philosophy, as it is to other versions of liberal-
ism.14 The whole point of formulating principles of justice is
that persons be free for a good life of their own choosing, that
they not be required to pursue certain goals or acquire certain
virtues just because someone else judges that these are good.
For recent versions of liberalism, then, justice sets the bound-
aries within which freedom may pursue goods of its own
choosing. Whether these boundaries are relatively more
narrow, as they are under Rawls' "difference principle," 15
which limits the acquisition of goods by the requirement that
advantages gained must also help the least well off, or rela-
tively more wide, as in libertarian versions that allow virtually
any acquisition that is not obtained by fraud or coercion,
justice marks off that area of our lives that we must yield to the
determinations of others, precisely so that those others cannot
determine for us what we will call good.
In the years since Niebuhr and his contemporaries called
attention to the cultural roots of a "realistic liberalism" in
Western traditions and values that are older than liberalism
itself, liberal theorists have thus tried to formulate a liberalism
that would not require those roots. The premises of a liberal
theory of justice adequate to that task have become more
explicit than they were in Niebuhr's day, and the differences
between Christian Realism and political liberalism on matters
of justice have become correspondingly more clear. To under-
stand Niebuhr's position as an alternative to, and not merely as
a clarification of, the prevailing political consensus, we must
attempt a more systematic statement of his understanding of
justice. A complete Christian Realist theory of justice, if such a
13
See, for example, the criticism of Rawls' difference principle in Robert Nozick,
Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 192-209.
14
Freedom of choice is central to this political freedom, which makes it somewhat
different from 'freedom' as Reinhold Niebuhr uses the term. See pp. 123-26 above.
15
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 75.
thing were possible, is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter.

Nor can we expect to mount a thoroughgoing defense of the
Christian Realist perspective against the liberal alternatives.
What we can do is to show how the connection between justice
and the human good that contemporary liberalism seeks to
render unnecessary provides the basis for a more realistic, and
sometimes more demanding, picture of what it means to do
justice.
BENEVOLENCE
Throughout this book, we have seen in Niebuhr's thought a
political realism that seeks to unmask distortions of justice
caused by self-interest. Often, this is the most prominent
feature of Niebuhr's political analysis, and it is the aspect of his
thought that is perhaps most often identified as "Niebuhrian."
Nevertheless, we will be unable to grasp Niebuhr's under-
standing of justice and its relevance for a contemporary Chris-
tian Realism unless we also remember his moral realism, which
finds alongside the forces of self-interest a real sense of moral
obligation, which also has its effect on human action. People
continue to appeal to justice, not because they cannot find a
more effective language to promote their selfish aims, but
because their aims are not only selfish. They also feel a sense of
obligation that both affirms and limits their individual aspir-
ations in relation to a larger whole, and that binds them to one
another.
The "mutually disinterested" contracting parties in Rawls'
original position are clearly abstractions from this more com-
plete account of human interdependence and mutuality. That
is something that Rawls himself would freely admit. His
strategy is to deal with self-interest precisely by constructing an
abstraction that shows how it can be contained without violat-
ing its own terms. Niebuhr's aim, consistent with the Realist's
admonition to take everything into account, is to show how
self-interest is limited by an equally fundamental sense of
mutuality and obligation.
Obligation is, in the first instance, experienced in our
Justice 199
relationships with particular others for whom our affection
overwhelms the calculation of personal advantage. Those par-
ticular affections, however, can also become the basis for a
more general understanding of what others want and need.
Indeed, without the primary knowledge of other persons that
comes from loving some particular others, we will be ill-
equipped to understand what justice requires that we render to
all persons, whether or not they are known to us, and whether
or not we love them.16
The love that is relevant to justice is not primarily an
emotional response. It is the disposition to seek the well-being
of persons generally that theologians and moral philosophers
have called "benevolence." 17 Love draws our understanding of
what justice requires in a more and more inclusive and gener-
ous direction, rather than allowing us to settle into a mutually
disinterested, minimalist definition of justice. Without love,
Niebuhr observed, the determination ofjustice quickly deterio-
rates into "mere calculation of advantage." 18
The identification of love as the primary moral norm is
drawn directly from the biblical witness to what Niebuhr calls
"prophetic religion," and the specification of what love
requires is formulated by reference to what the New Testament
says about agape.19 Niebuhr's insistence on this point drew
criticism from more consistently humanist or naturalist20 philo-
16
Reinhold Niebuhr, Man's Mature and His Communities, p. 107. Niebuhr's thinking on
this point was significantly influenced by Erik Erikson. See Brown, Niebuhr and His
Age, p. 232.
17
See, for example, Frances Hutcheson, "An Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and
Evil," in D.D. Raphael, ed., British Moralists, 1650-1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1969), I, 272-80.
18
Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 193. It may also be the case, as Niebuhr observes, that
this calculation will "tend to weight the standard of justice on the side of the one
who defines the standard" (ibid., p. 190). However, we should not, as Niebuhr
sometimes does, treat this tendency to perpetuate the distortion of moral standards
by power as a defect of moral rationalism. The rational standard, consistently
applied, aims to defeat special pleading concealed by ideology, as well as more
obvious self-seeking exceptions.
19
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p p . 22-28; Faith and History, p p . 173-79.
20
" N a t u r a l i s m " was the label that some of Niebuhr's most important critics, includ-
ing J o h n Dewey, preferred for their own philosophy. I n this context, of course,
" n a t u r a l i s m " refers to the position I called "reductive naturalism" in C h a p t e r T w o .
See Rice, Reinhold Niebuhr and John Dewey, p. 153.
sophers, who argued that the theological claims in Niebuhr's

ethics were unnecessary, divisive, and unpersuasive to many
who could otherwise agree on the practical requirements of
justice.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the biblical
interpretation of the connection between justice and love pre-
cludes a more general humanistic argument about the require-
ments of justice. The requirements of agape exceed the possi-
bilities of discursive formulation and can be grasped only in
myth and symbol, but agape is approximated in history by a
certain clarity and honesty about my needs, which in turn
allows me to see the needs of my neighbors on their own terms,
rather than in terms of what I want and need from them. For
these purposes, the best evidence that I have achieved some
understanding of what love requires is that I can talk about the
good of others in terms that they can recognize.
To love another is to wish that person's good. To speak
about that love in socially shared terms requires a concept of
what that good is. We may reassure the beloved in person
without getting very specific, but we will not be able to discuss
our love with her doctor or with his children, much less to
create a community in which the beloved will find justice,
unless we have an idea we can share of what would allow her or
him to flourish.
A search for justice that is related to love must include an
understanding of human good. Indeed, the theological empha-
sis on love for the neighbor shares with other versions of moral
realism and ethical naturalism the basic idea that the neigh-
bor's good has an objective reality, independent of the neigh-
bor's preferences and desires. So it is possible to want the good
of the neighbor without wanting simply what the neighbor
wants.
Much of love's anguish results from situations in which we
seek another person's true good in opposition to his or her own
desires. Those whom we do not love we are likely to leave to
their own devices. We may even take a certain grim satisfaction
in seeing the ambitious co-worker who subordinates relation-
ships to career achieve the lonely success he so earnestly
Justice 201
desired. By contrast, love impels us to try to show people what
they are doing to themselves, even when they make it clear that
they do not want to know. Love makes moral realists of us all.
We cannot avoid telling those whom we love - and the bosses,
helpers, friends, and physicians who participate in their lives
along with us - what is really good for them.
There is, of course, a significant danger of exploitation and
oppression in that love. History supplies many examples of
persons whose idea of seeking the good of others included
providing them with ample opportunities to serve those who
were looking out for their good. We also recognize many
instances in which persons with a dull and prosaic notion of
happiness have tried to express their love by relieving the
creative tensions and the passions for truth that shape the lives
of their more venturesome companions. The fact that others
have a good that is independent of their wishes does not, in
itself, insure that my notion of their good will be the correct
one, nor does love alone authorize me to impose my notion on
them.
This problem, however, is inherent in all forms of moral
realism, including the versions of ethical naturalism that insist
on conducting moral arguments strictly in human terms, with
no appeal to biblical ideas about God. The only alternative is
complete subjectivism, which today frequently results when an
appropriate reluctance to impose our notion of good on others
shades over into an uncritical affirmation of all their traditions,
values, and preferences.21 Moral realism cannot avoid the risk
that it will impose alien values on others under the guise of
promoting a general human good. Responsible moral realism
must therefore pay particular attention to critical principles
that help to distinguish egocentric or ethnocentric thinking
from a genuine account of the human good. Responsible moral
realists will also retain a healthy respect for the probable
contamination of self-interest in even our most objective efforts
to apply those critical principles. But the responsible realist will
21
See Martha Nussbaum, "Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of
Aristotelian Essentialism," Political Theory 20 (May 1992), 202-5, for examples of
this uncritical subjectivism in current academic debates about cultural diversity.
not find in these limitations a reason to give up moral judgment

altogether.
JUSTITIA ORIGINALIS
Benevolence, the steady disposition to seek the good of others as

love understands their good, clearly distinguishes the Christian
Realist's starting point from the mutual disinterest of Rawls'
original position, but benevolence alone does not solve the
problems of justice. Justice is concerned with how the goods
that make up the human good are to be distributed, whether
these are material goods, such as food and clothing, or less
tangible, but equally necessary goods, such as self-respect.
The classical formula for Western thinking about distribu-
tive justice is suum cuique: render to each person what is due.
That formula provides no real guidance, of course, until it is
linked with a determinate understanding of how persons are
related so that each knows what is owed to any given other. In
Aristotle's Athens, the honor due to persons was sharply differ-
entiated by rank and achievement, so that what one person
should receive by way of both social deference and material
goods might be very different from what was due to a more
humble neighbor.
Aristocratic understandings of justice, such as Aristotle's,
prize the achievements of certain talented persons, and allocate
society's resources to insure that these talents will be devel-
oped. Similarly, an oligarchic view of justice suggests that the
necessary conditions of order and prosperity depend on con-
centrating the wealth and power in the hands of a few persons,
while the mass of the people is excluded. Oligarchic justice is
satisfied if goods are distributed to sustain the power of the few.
Aristocratic and oligarchic conceptions are not in much
favor today as theories of justice, though they are perhaps more
widely believed and practiced than they are defended by
argument. What they share with Christian Realism is a moral
realism that distinguishes them from modern liberal theories of
justice. Like all moral realisms, they have a definite idea of
what the human good is, which in turn determines what goods
Justice 203
are important to distribute. What distinguishes oligarchic and
aristocratic versions of moral realism from the Christian Real-
ist's interest in justice and human good is the Christian Real-
ist's theological realism. Aristocratic and oligarchic accounts
presuppose a competition for limited resources in which justice
is done when recognized goods are distributed to individuals in
accordance with a recognized scale of values. For Christian
Realism, by contrast, life culminates in "the ideal possibility of
perfect love, in which all inner contradictions within the self,
and all conflicts and tensions between the self and the other are
overcome by the complete obedience of all wills to the will of
God." 22
In this theological perspective, justice is less a matter of the
distribution of specific goods and is more closely related to
justitia originalis, the "original righteousness" in which persons
live in freedom without the anxious denials of their finitude
that lead them to assert their invulnerability by dominating
others, or to seek escape from their own contingency by sub-
mitting to the will or the plan of another. 23 To do justice to
another person, to render to that person what is due, is, in the
context of original righteousness, no less than to seek the
person's good. Niebuhr spends no time on a definition of
justice, 24 because if such a definition were more than the
formal suum cuique, it would have to specify the entirety of the
human good as the due to which an individual is entitled.
Absolute justice is identical with love.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF JUSTICE
In the real world in which we live, however, we anticipate that

we will not be able to do for everyone everything that love
requires. This is not simply the result of our inability to
summon the reserves of concern and care that love requires for
everyone we meet, although that is part of the problem. We
22
N i e b u h r , The Nature and Destiny of Man, I I , 246.
23
See N i e b u h r , The Nature and Destiny of Man, I, 182-86, and, generally, the discussion
of freedom a n d sin in Chapter Three.
24
Gordon Harland, The Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (New York: Oxford University
Press, i960), p . 23.
also lack the resources to meet everyone's needs, even if we
were willing to do so.
Rawls clarifies these limitations by describing what he calls
the "circumstances of justice." These include both objective
and subjective conditions that lead human beings to be con-
cerned about justice. Human beings want and need things that
are in limited supply. Everything is not available simply for the
taking, but neither are the basic goods that make life possible so
scarce that we have little hope of obtaining them. Because we
are time-bound, finite persons who cannot wait forever to
obtain what we need and want, we are concerned about the
distribution of these scarce goods. The facts of our finitude and
the limited supply of things are among the objective circum-
stances of justice. The subjective circumstances include the
basic fact that we do care whether our wants are satisfied or
not, and the fact that, for the most part, any interest we have in
the well-being of others is tempered by a more immediate
concern for our own.25
The absolutism of Jesus' ethics in the Gospels ignores these
circumstances of justice. As Niebuhr observed in his early
work, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Jesus sets aside all the
egoism in human life, and even every element of prudent
self-concern.26 So much for the subjective circumstances of
justice. What Niebuhr does not add is that Jesus also sets aside
the objective circumstances, the limits on material resources
that constrain love for others. In response to the Disciples'
anxious query about how they should provide for the multi-
tudes, Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two
fish.
Jesus, of course, also lives in a world where weariness and the
excessive demands of others take their toll, and it is of the
utmost importance that, in the end, love of persons in that
world requires complete self-sacrifice. Still, the point of both
the teaching and the miracles in the Gospels seems to be to
25
R a w l s , A Theory of Justice, p p . 126-30, Political Liberalism, p . 66. As R a w l s himself
notes, David Hume was the first modern philosopher to examine the circumstances
that make questions of justice relevant and important.
26
N i e b u h r , An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p p . 2 2 - 2 3 .
Justice 205
show us what love would do, without the mental and material
constraints that limit it in our ordinary experience.27 As
Niebuhr observes, "The ethical demands made by Jesus are
incapable of fulfillment in the present existence of man. They
proceed from a transcendent divine unity of essential reality,
and their final fulfillment is possible only when God transmutes
the present chaos of this world into its final unity." 28
It appears, then, that the New Testament calls attention to
the circumstances of justice principally by denying them.
Miracles suspend the objective circumstances that make us
worry about distribution and create a space in which persons
have what they need and are relieved of diseases that keep
them from fullness of life, while Jesus' unyielding insistence on
love abolishes the self-interest that leads us to care about our
share in comparison with that held by another.
Denying the circumstances of justice, however, appears to
have the effect of abolishing justice itself. As Rawls observes,
"justice is the virtue of practices where there are competing
interests and where persons feel entitled to press their rights on
each other. In an association of saints agreeing on a common
ideal, if such a community could exist, disputes about justice
would not occur." 29 As there would be no need for justice if our
objective circumstances provided everything we want, so there
would be no reason to think about justice if our subjective
circumstances were such that we did not care whether it was
ourselves or another who enjoyed whatever goods the circum-
stances made available.
RELATIVE JUSTICE
One might suppose, then, that Christians would have little to

say about the problem of justice as Rawls understands it.
Christian thinking about justice becomes more interesting as
the Christians become less faithful, i.e. less committed to their
common ideal and more concerned to secure their own inter-
27
See M a r k 6:35-44, c o m p a r e M a r k 6:30—32.
28
29
R a w l s , A Theory of Justice, p . 129.
ests. Only then do they come to grips with the circumstances of

justice, which concern the objective realities of scarcity, and
also with the subjective circumstance that persons have a
plurality of interests and rarely subordinate all of their aims to
one common ideal, even when they profess it as their highest
good.
Niebuhr, however, sees a more complex relationship
between the ideal and the requirements of justice. Justice is
concerned not only with the problems of scarcity and conflict,
but also with the aspiration to harmony with our neighbors
that leaves us dissatisfied with the interim resolutions of con-
flict. We pursue our desires and we protect our interests, but
that is not all we want. We also want to have those aims
recognized and protected by our neighbors, as well. We want
some confirmation that what we have chosen for ourselves is
truly good, meaning that it can also be valued by others and
incorporated into an understanding of their own good. We
cannot pretend to accomplish what complete justice requires,
but neither can we settle for a version of justice that simply
offers adequate protection for existing interests.
The biblical myths of creation, fall, and consummation
enable us to grasp this complex relationship between the
requirements of "original righteousness" and the balance of
competing interests that is possible in history, while a strictly
rational account of the circumstances of justice sunders it. The
story of creation enables us to imagine human relationships in
which the circumstances of justice do not obtain, while Jesus'
words and miracles anticipate the eschatological fulfillment in
which "God transmutes the present chaos of this world into its
final unity." In this way we recognize the contingent and
provisional character of the hold which the circumstances of
justice have upon us, despite the fact that they must constrain
all of our historical choices.
There are forms of Christianity which, by separating the
Gospel from the circumstances of justice, deprive our efforts to
do justice of theological significance. An example of this is
"orthodox Christianity," as Niebuhr describes it in An Interpre-
tation of Christian Ethics. This version of Christian ethics "failed
Justice 207
to derive any significant political-moral principles from the
law of love." 30
Christian Realism, however, points to the biblical suspen-
sion of the circumstances of justice, not to set up an alternative
moral reality for Christians to dwell in, but precisely to rede-
fine the circumstances of justice for everyone. The biblical
account of human sin and the requirements of original right-
eousness are "maintained not purely by Scriptural authority
but by the cumulative experience of the race." 31 To the sub-
jective circumstances of justice, among which Rawls identifies
the factual pluralism of human aims and the concern that we
all have to protect our own interests, Niebuhr would insist that
experience - and not just Christian faith - requires us to add a
disposition not to be satisfied with any system of justice that
only balances competing interests. To the objective circum-
stances of justice, which Rawls links to the conditions of scar-
city that require us to be concerned about distribution in the
first place, Niebuhr adds that the objective circumstances of
justice must include the impossibility of a system of justice that
fully satisfies the subjective circumstances of justice.
In place of the incommensurability which Rawls' liberal
theory finds between the law of love and the circumstances of
justice, Niebuhr's Christian Realism establishes a complex,
dialectical relationship of affirmation and negation. There is
an absolute justice which renders to each person what is
required for full participation in the human good, but this
justice is never realized in history. There is also a justice that is
relevant for social choices, that turns on degrees of good and
evil, but this justice is always a relative justice. As Karen
Lebacqz observes, "Relative justice involves the calculation of
competing interests, the specification of rights and duties, and
the balancing of life forces."32
Relative justice stands in both a positive and a negative
30
N i e b u h r , An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p . 87. N i e b u h r ' s criticism of " o r t h o d o x
Christianity" is, of course, directed against a version of dogmatic Protestantism, not
against the theology a n d ethics of Eastern O r t h o d o x y .
31
Ibid., p . 283.
32
K a r e n Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice (Nashville: A b i n g d o n Press, 1986), p . 86.
relationship to the ultimate law by which it is ordered. As

Reinhold Niebuhr puts it:
Love is both the fulfillment and the negation of all achievements of
justice in history. Or expressed from the opposite standpoint, the
achievements of justice in history may rise in indeterminate degrees
to find their fulfillment in a more perfect love and brotherhood; but
each new level of fulfillment also contains elements which stand in
contradiction to perfect love.33
The law of love thus becomes available as a guide to choice and
action in history through a relative justice which expresses its
meaning only partially. The law of love provides the norms for
relative justice, but it also provides "an ultimate perspective by
which their limitations are discovered."34
Relative justice must be assessed in relation to both the law
of love and the more self-interested and exploitative conditions
which they have overcome. As Niebuhr put it succinctly,
"Equal justice is the approximation of brotherhood under the
conditions of sin." 35 Perhaps we might rephrase the aphorism
with the less pithy, but more precise, statement that relative
justice is love expressed within the bounds of finitude. The
rephrasing not only acknowledges the more recent require-
ments of gender justice, but avoids any confusion of relative
justice with sin. Relative justice is achieved under the specific
conditions in which our finite lives, with their limited resources
and limited reserves of care, have been cast. These conditions,
to be sure, include the patterns of discrimination and exploita-
tion that our past sins have created. The "conditions of sin"
thus define relative justice in the sense that every attempt to do
justice must struggle against specific evils, and every achieve-
ment of justice will be limited by other evils which it leaves
untouched, and perhaps unnoticed.
Finitude, however, is not sin,36 and the achievements of
relative justice must not be rejected because they are less than
perfect justice, nor can we evade the demands to do justice in
some particular way with the excuse that this way leaves some
33
N i e b u h r , The Nature and Destiny of Man, I I , 246.
34
35 36
N i e b u h r , The Mature and Destiny of Man, I I , 254. Seepage 132.
Justice 209
other injustice intact, or creates some lesser injustice in its
execution. We are, as Niebuhr put it, "responsible for making
choices between greater and lesser evils, even when our Chris-
tian faith, illuminating the human scene, makes it quite appar-
ent that there is no pure good in history; and probably no pure
evil, either." 37
JUSTICE IN CONTEXT
Niebuhr's insistence on the importance of these limited choices

between degrees of good and evil reflects the engagement with
issues of justice that marked the start of his career and con-
tinued alongside his more reflective, academic treatments of
the subject for the rest of his life. During his years as a pastor in
Detroit, Niebuhr was a staunch advocate of unionization in the
automobile industry, especially during a protracted public
controversy with Ford in 1926. As chair of Detroit's Interracial
Committee during the same year, he also worked to improve
race relations in the city and to provide more opportunities for
the growing African American population. 38 His ideas about
justice were not formed in reflection on abstract considerations
of fairness, but in the context of specific, local grievances,
expressed more often in outraged protests and angry demands
than in reasoned arguments.
His own broad knowledge and his wide range of personal
contacts enabled him to sympathize with the claims and
counterclaims, but also to see their limitations. Workers in the
industrial cities of the United States were not merely demand-
ing better wages and hours and a larger share of the profits of
their labor. They were part of a global proletarian movement
that would shortly transform the exploitative relations between
labor and capital that grew out of the industrial revolution.
Yet one could not be swept away by their enthusiasm for the
illusion that they were about to create a system of perfect
37
Niebuhr, "Theology a n d Political T h o u g h t in the Western W o r l d , " in Faith and
Politics, p . 55. See page 73 above.
38
O n this see especially Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, p p . 88-100; and Brown, Niebuhr and His
Age, p p . 23-35.
21 o Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism
justice. Employers in the United States were, on the whole,

more attentive to their workers than their counterparts in other
countries. Yet they inevitably claimed a greater reward for
their leadership and their generosity than was strictly warran-
ted. The commitment of white leaders to greater racial
harmony and their attentiveness to the grievances of the
African American community were applauded. Yet black and
white were both reminded that no group willingly gives up real
power unless confronted by real force.39
Judgments about relative justice begin with this assessment
of claims and counterclaims, against the backdrop of a par-
ticular society, at a particular time in history. The demands for
justice that call for attention do not arise because persons have
measured their situations against a standard of justice and
found them wanting. Rather, the experience of local depri-
vations and exploitations becomes the standard of justice.
Often, what emerges is not a general principle, but simply the
wider extension of the local claim. Justice becomes identical
with, say, the forty-hour week, or with the principle of one
person, one vote. The issues have changed since Niebuhr wrote
his first major works on social ethics in the 1930s, but still today
most persons who seek justice understand it in very specific
terms.
T^he dialectic of claim and counterclaim is what determines
relative justice. What people ask for in specific situations, what
they identify as proximate political goals, and what they think
they may demand from others define justice for them in practi-
cal terms. What the others refuse to grant, what they insist on
holding on to as their own, and what demands they find
unacceptable provide an alternative understanding of justice.
The prevailing standard of justice will be set in these actual
experiences of conflict, and the more successful efforts to deter-
mine what the society will call just at any point in time will be
those that follow this dialectic carefully and attend to the
details of the claims and counterclaims, not those that attempt
39
These themes are found throughout Niebuhr's early work, especially in the final
chapter of Moral Man and Immoral Society, pp. 257-77.
Justice 211
to generalize social norms out of the clash of unreconciled
expectations.
The brilliance of Niebuhr's political analysis has never been
in doubt. The question for ethics, however, is whether the
normative implications of this study of the dialectic of justice
come to something more than a warning to pay attention to the
details. Every society strikes some balance between contending
forces. The powerful will rarely yield, except on issues that do
not affect their underlying control of events, and the powerless
can never be entirely ignored, if only because they pose a
threat to the leisurely enjoyment of power. So there will be a
balance based on oppositions that an astute observer can
identify. If this equilibrium is all that real societies know of
justice, how do we distinguish the Christian Realist's relative
justice from the anomic relativism for which, as Duncan B.
Forrester puts it, "justice is a weapon, a tool, and instrument
for getting what we want"? 40 Is the Christian Realist a skilled
dialectician who knows what is likely to happen next, or an
ethicist who can identify the difference that separates what is
and what is likely to be from what ought to be?
The question becomes more difficult when we consider the
very different directions in which recent writers have devel-
oped Niebuhr's thought and its implications for contemporary
political issues. Some find in Christian Realism what John
Bennett has called "the radical imperative" to join forces with
those who raise the most fundamental questions about
economic and political power, especially when these forces are
at work on a global scale.41 Michael Novak, by contrast,
portrays Niebuhr as the forerunner of a conservative ethic of
"democratic capitalism."42 Between these points toward the
extreme ends of the spectrum of interpretations there are many
others also to be noted. Most of the interpreters are keen
40
D u n c a n B. Forrester, "Political Justice a n d Christian Theology," Studies in Christian
Ethics 3 (1991), 2.
41
J o h n C. Bennett, The Radical Imperative (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975).
Also Glenn R . Bucher, "Christian Political Realism After Reinhold Niebuhr: T h e
Case of J o h n C. Bennett," Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 41 (1986), 43-58.
42
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (New York: Simon a n d Schuster,
1982), p p . 313-29.
observers of events, and it is possible to conclude that this

keenness is all they have in common as a legacy from Reinhold
Niebuhr. 43
Niebuhr's most severe critics, in fact, are those who find his
dialectic actually subversive of the claims of the poor. The
charge is often made by proponents of liberation theology,
who, like Niebuhr, begin with the recognition that all claims
about justice are historical and contextual. We cannot begin to
evaluate them until we know who is making them and what
place these persons occupy in the society in question. What we
can know, however, is that the preponderance of power,
including the power to manipulate intellectual systems of
analysis and the media of communication and persuasion, will
lie with those who have economic control and occupy the
prestigious social roles. Reinhold Niebuhr would accept all of
that.
The liberation analysis diverges at the point where Niebuhr
appears to attempt an evenhanded assessment of the claims
and counterclaims at work in social conflict. For liberation
theology, Christian ethics does not begin with objectivity. It
begins with a "fundamental option for the poor." 44
Because the preponderance of power lies with those who
already have it, any analysis that does not seek to overturn the
existing order effectively counsels that it be left in place. Jose
43
H a r l a n Beckley, Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John
A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992),
pp. 3 4 0 - 4 1 . Beckley develops a nuanced account of Niebuhr's legacy that takes
these criticisms into account while leaving Niebuhr's role as a reformer intact, but
he notes that N i e b u h r "seemingly lacked grounds for advocating specific policy
reforms."
44
T h e idea of an "option for the p o o r " has been basic to R o m a n Catholic social ethics
in the years since V a t i c a n I I . Originating with Latin American liberation theo-
logians and enunciated by the Conference of Latin American Bishops at Medellin,
Colombia, in 1968, the idea was subsequently adopted in the document Justice in the
World, issued by the Synod of Bishops meeting in R o m e in 1971. While the idea
receives a variety of interpretations with more or less radical implications for the
church's social role, the basic point that Christians are required by scripture to side
with the poor in situations of moral choice may now be regarded as an accepted
n o r m in Catholic social ethics. See, in general, J o s e p h Gremillion, ed., The Gospel of
Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching Since Pope John (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis
Books, 1976), and Donal Dorr, Option for the Poor: A Hundred Tears of Vatican Social
Teaching (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1983).
Justice 213
Miguez Bonino characterizes this "Constantinian" theology as
one which says, in effect, "whenever an alternative emerges,
the Christian ought to work for the best possible solution, the
most just and generous one, short of endangering the existing
order."45 The contextual nature of all claims to justice leaves no
neutral position for an observer, not even the neutrality of one
who traces a dialectical movement in which equality and
freedom gradually advance. In the framework of this analysis,
Niebuhr's evenhanded dialectical position, which emphasizes
equally the social necessity of power and the tendency of power
to become inordinate, the rightful resentment of inequality by
the poor, and the impossibility of perfect equality, becomes
nothing more than an apology for the status quo. 46
The contextual understanding of justice with which Rein-
hold Niebuhr begins thus proves to be a source of criticism
among more recent students of his thought. This is not, in
general, because they reject the contextualization of ethics.
Few today would maintain that there is any method of ethical
analysis that can arrive at significant moral judgments without
some preliminary social and moral commitments. The question
seems to be whether Niebuhr's contextualization of justice
offers any real normative guidance. Critics insist, with the
liberation theologians, that the contextual analyst who wants
to work for justice must also make a fundamental choice for one
side in the conflict.
GENERALIZATIONS ABOUT JUSTICE
The criticisms have a point, but the normative element that

often turns up missing in Niebuhr's dialectical analysis of the
forces at work in a social context is nothing so obscure as an
unspoken normative principle, nor is it as arbitrary as a
"fundamental option" that is taken outside of the framework of
analysis. Niebuhr's norm of justice is the law of love.
45
Jose Miguez Bonino, Toward a Christian Political Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
!983) 3 P- 8 3 .
46
For general studies of this controversy, see R u u r d Veldhuis, Realism vs. Utopianism
(Assen: V a n G o r c u m , 1975), a n d Dennis M c C a n n , Christian Realism and Liberation
Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1981).
Clearly, however, justice cannot be as simple as prescribing
what love requires, even when love takes the more realistic and
critical form that Niebuhr's account gives it. The determi-
nation of relative justice in a particular social context can
never proceed with precision.
Rules of justice do not follow in a "necessary manner" from some
basic proposition of justice. They are the fruit of a rational survey of
the whole field of human interests, of the structure of human life and
of the causal sequences in human relations. They embody too many
contingent elements and are subject to such inevitable distortion by
interest and passion that they cannot be placed in the same category
with the logical propositions of mathematics or the analytic propo-
sitions of science. They are the product of social wisdom and
unwisdom.47
Part of the work of those who called themselves "theological
realists" in the early decades of this century was to apply this
social wisdom to the search for justice, moving away from the
Social Gospel's general identification of the Kingdom of God
with the progress of democracy, and providing more specific
guidance on questions of public policy. From the Oxford
Conference on Church, Community, and State, held in 1937,
emerged the concept of "middle axioms." John C. Bennett
later used this approach to Christian social ethics extensively in
the United States.
Middle axioms lie between the most general principles of
justice and the details of public policy.48 The claim that
"justice requires a universal system of education available to
all persons" is such a middle axiom, which falls somewhere
between the very general claim that a just society is concerned
with the welfare of all its citizens and the policy decisions
which specify that such education shall be provided by locally
elected school boards, or shall extend through the twelfth
grade, or shall be financed by property taxes.
Other Christian Realists made extensive use of this method
of cautious generalization. Niebuhr, though he praised the
47
N i e b u h r , Faith and History, p . 193.
48
J o h n C. Bennett, Christian Ethics and Social Policy (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1946), p p . 59, 76-77.
Justice 215
work of his colleague, did not.49 For him, the important gen-
eralizations have less immediate application to policy and a
broader historical scope. The wisdom that guides judgments
about justice comes from understanding the claims that are in
the center of present controversy in light of a global awareness
of claims that are being made in other parts of the world, and a
historical consciousness of how these claims have developed
over time.
The essay "Liberty and Equality" illustrates Niebuhr's
method. 50 A sweeping review of Western political history, with
sideward glances at other parts of the world, is brought to bear
on the pressing question of the moment, the problem of racial
equality in United States constitutional law. The "regulative
principle" of equality provides no simple rule of justice that
can be applied to the constitutional questions, but the astute
observer nonetheless arrives at an understanding of equality to
guide legal arrangements that is more than a report of the
current balance of social powers. Equality governs the future
development of rights and duties, within the practical limits of
what social order requires.
The "American dilemma" is on the way of being resolved, and one of
the instruments of its resolution has proved to be the constitutional
insistence on equality as a criterion of justice, an insistence which the
Supreme Court has recently implemented after generations of hesi-
tation in regard to the application of the principle to our relation
with a minority group, which has the advantage of diverging obvi-
ously from the dominant type in our nation and which still bears the
onus of former subjugation in slavery. At last the seeming senti-
mentality of the preamble of our Declaration of Independence - the
declaration that "all men are created equal" - has assumed political
reality and relevance. It is not true that all men are created equal,
but the statement is a symbol for the fact that all men are to be
treated equally, within the terms of the gradations of function which
every healthy society uses for its organization.51
49
See Brown, Niebuhr and His Age, p . 136.
50
Reinhold Niebuhr, "Liberty a n d Equality," The Tale Review 47 (September, 1957),
1-14. This important essay has been reprinted in several places, including Reinhold
Niebuhr, Pious and Secular America (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958),
pp. 61-77, a n d Faith and Politics, p p . 185-97. T h e page references for "Liberty a n d
Equality" in these notes are to Pious and Secular America.
51
"Liberty a n d Equality," p p . 76-77.
Niebuhr is at this point perhaps less cautious than elsewhere to

note that "the gradations of function" that exist in every
society always include a disproportionate reward for the
powerful, and he would later admit that racial justice proved
more elusive than he had anticipated following the first series
of public school desegregation orders by the Federal courts in
the 1950s.
Nevertheless, the sentences quoted aptly illustrate his
approach to normative questions of justice. As a political
realist, he is always attentive to the forces that "offer resistance
to established norms." 52 He has a sociological and historical
explanation for the "hesitation" to apply the norm of equality
in questions of race. (His formulation of that explanation
reveals the assumption, probably unnoticed, that he and his
readers, if not the Supreme Court as well, share the perspective
of the white majority reflecting on "our" relation to the
African American minority and its claims.) Yet the norm of
equality has real effect in this context. The ideal of the
Declaration of Independence, the principle that "all men are
created equal," cannot be taken literally or treated as a simple
historical possibility, but it does direct the course of consti-
tutional interpretation. A claim to justice put forward on this
basis may be resisted by political maneuvering, or even put
down by force. Certainly we should not assume that the domi-
nant groups in society will arrive at a commitment to equality
on the basis of a dispassionate examination of their foun-
dational political documents. The minority will have to find
advocates to make the argument, and perhaps muster some
raw power to insure that the argument will be heard. Once
made, however, the moral basis for the claim cannot be
evaded.
After several decades, Niebuhr's judgment here reveals some
hesitation of his own that may not have been evident in
context. Despite this, all of the elements of the Christian
Realist's approach to questions of justice are here. A specific
claim is interpreted in the context of larger social and historical
52
Niebuhr, "Augustine's Political Realism," p. 119.
Justice 217
developments, and this investigation yields not only a catalog
of opposing forces and interests, but also a dominant idea of
justice, which is itself embedded in the history and the myths of
the society in question. Symbolic expressions of the require-
ments of justice cannot be perfectly realized, but they can be
rendered into practical norms that will determine how we
should apply our efforts in the struggles over concrete issues.
Moral commitment alone will not determine the outcome, and
political realism will never confuse what is right with what is
probable, especially in the short run. Moral realism, however,
will never decide where to risk commitment simply on the basis
of power. Christian Realism must include both moral and
political realism.
REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES
Justice is not simply the dialectical ebb and flow of power. It

requires us to align ourselves in certain ways in the dynamics of
historical conflicts, choosing loyalties and policies that make
for greater equality, rather than widening the differences
between individuals and groups; and choosing greater liberty,
rather than policies that limit persons to preassigned social
roles and possibilities. These "regulative principles" of liberty
and equality provide the principal norms of justice,53 though
any hope that they will easily tell us what we must do to be just
is dashed by the obvious fact of history that the requirements of
liberty and the requirements of equality often conflict.
Like the law of love, which is the most general moral norm,
regulative principles state ideals which no choices in history
can fully realize. Those who attempt to treat the principles of
justice as simple historical possibilities are as doomed to failure
53
This concept is clearly stated in The Mature and Destiny of Man, II, 254. There,
however, Niebuhr speaks of "transcendent principles." The terminology of "regu-
lative principles" appears in later works, especially "Liberty and Equality," p. 61.
See also Man's Nature and His Communities, p. 26. Beckley suggests that the concept,
though not the terminology, of the regulative principle emerged in the early 1930s,
though at that time Niebuhr treated equality alone as the regulative principle of
justice. See Beckley, A Passion for Justice, p. 214.
as those who think they can live in history guided only by the
law of love.
Regulative principles are general, not only in the sense that
they are broadly formulated, but also in the sense that they are
widely acknowledged. Equality, the principle that persons are
to be treated as equals, and liberty, the principle that they are
to be allowed as much freedom as possible within the limits of
social cohesion, thus qualify as regulative principles. "Stiff
upper lip," the principle that one's private problems are not to
be displayed in public, may be equally broad, but it is specific
to certain social classes and cultures, and so is not a regulative
principle.
Indeed, regulative principles must have a "practical univer-
sality" or be "essentially universal." 54 What Niebuhr means by
those qualifiers, apparently, is that the universality of regula-
tive principles can only be tested in history, by interpretive
methods that synthesize a number of culturally and historically
specific ideals into a more inclusive one. There is "no universal
reason in history," and therefore no rational test by which the
universality of a principle could be determined once and for
all.55 Regulative principles are "practically universal," in the
sense that thoughtful interpretation and a broad knowledge of
history and cultures must not show them to be limited to a
specific time and place. Their universality is not guaranteed by
their place in some logical system of justice. Indeed, it is
implicit in the historical, interpretive method by which the
regulative principles are identified that further investigation
might show us that our identification of some idea as a regula-
tive principle was mistaken, or might turn up additional prin-
ciples that have not yet been recognized.56
54 55
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 254. Ibid., II, 252.
56
In an essay first published in 1963, Niebuhr provides an expanded list of "the
various regulative principles of justice," which here includes "equality and liberty,
security of the community or the freedom of the individual, the order of the integral
community and, as is now increasingly the case, the peace of the world commu-
nity." See Niebuhr, "The Development of a Social Ethic in the Ecumenical
Movement," in Faith and Politics, p. 177. On the other hand, Niebuhr sometimes
reduces the regulative principles to one, as when he wrote in 1955 that "the
Supreme Court has made us aware of the great moral resource we possess in our
Constitution in its insistence on equality as the regulative principle of justice." See
Justice 219
Regulative principles are "practically universal," but they
are not absolute. The realization of a regulative principle by
actual communities and individuals is limited not only by the
exigencies of history, which do not allow us to treat them as
simple possibilities, but also by the limitations of the principles
themselves, which may be in conflict with other valid prin-
ciples that also apply to the situation in which we find our-
selves.
Regulative principles, then, form a complex normative
system in which they are in a dialectical relationship of affir-
mation and negation both to the law of love and to other
regulative principles. Niebuhr's treatment of these moral prin-
ciples is broadly similar to other non-foundationalist, non-
relativist versions of moral realism which we reviewed in
Chapter Two. Our present purpose, however, is to understand
the practical implications of thinking about justice in this
framework. A general knowledge of how "regulative prin-
ciples" work in Niebuhr's ethics makes it easier to understand
the relationships that he sets up between "liberty" and
"equality," and reminds us again of the relationship both of
affirmation and negation that is crucial at every point to his
understanding of the law of love as a rule for human life.
EQUALITY
The "practical universality" of equality is evident in its promi-

nence in demands for justice from the ancient Greek philoso-
phers to modern times.57 Persons who seek justice want to be
treated equally with others in their opportunities for edu-
cation, in their access to jobs and housing, in the way that their
votes are counted, or in the resources they have available to
meet their needs. Unfortunately, when this dominant feature
of the demands for justice is given a normative formulation,
there is no obvious way in which all people are equal that
would easily prescribe how we should treat them equally. As
Niebuhr, "The Race Problem in America," Christianity and Crisis 15 (December 26,
57
!955)> 170-
the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner observed, justice necessarily

deals with an abstract concept of human dignity, not with
concrete persons and their individual needs. Justice "knows no
'thou'; it knows only the intellectual value, the intellectual
thing - the dignity of man." 58
Equality, taken by itself, is not realistic. Persons are not
equal. They are different. But when we must deal with persons
in large groups and in whole societies, equality becomes an
instrument of love by opposing all the inequalities that do not
result from love, but from the exercise of power over those in
need. When equality is a regulative principle of justice, the
generalization and abstraction from real personality that else-
where renders persons subject to exploitation now establishes
the conditions under which they can flourish. For any par-
ticular person, these conditions can be stated quite specifically,
but it is also possible to generalize about the things that persons
need in order to live well.
People who are flourishing are able to recognize and enjoy
their own capacities. They take pleasure in their accom-
plishments and enjoy doing things well, especially those activi-
ties at which they are, as a result of aptitude and practice,
noticeably more talented than others. They thrive on chal-
lenges that require them to use these talents and to develop
them further. To flourish in this way, persons require opportu-
nities to test their capacities, and the assistance of others who
will help them with these processes of discernment and devel-
opment.
These people also understand their individual gifts in ways
that give them a place among other persons. They seek out
ways to make a distinctive contribution to the good of their
neighbors, which in turn contributes to their own individual
sense of identity and value. They develop their talents in ways
that are attentive to how their accomplishments are under-
stood and received by others, rather than in self-absorption
58
Emil Brunner, Justice and the Social Order, trans. Mary Hottinger (New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1945), p. 127. For Niebuhr's positive evaluation of this work by
Brunner, see Brown, Niebuhr and His Age, p. 135. See also, however, a criticism of
Brunner's earlier work in Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 255^
Justice 221
that concentrates only on their own awareness and enjoyment.
For this, they require a community of persons that genuinely
needs at least some of the things they have to offer, and that is
prepared to reward them appropriately for their accom-
plishments, not least by providing them with the means to
continue and to enhance those achievements in the future. In
other words, people thrive in a community that provides them
with opportunities for creative work and that rewards them for
their efforts, rather than exploiting their abilities.
All this is, as we noted, very general and abstracted from the
details of individual persons and their needs. It means one
thing for a child who has learning difficulties, seeking to master
the skills that bring a measure of autonomy and enjoying the
mastery of tasks that other children perform routinely. It
means something quite different for a talented musician or for a
master teacher, and something else again for a middle-aged
factory worker whose job is threatened by technological and
economic changes. It is, however, this ability to generalize
about the requirements of the good life that enables us specify
what it means to say, as Niebuhr does, that all persons "are to
be treated equally, within the terms of the gradations of func-
tion which every healthy society uses for its organization." 59
We can hardly say that the gifted teacher and the talented
musician should be treated equally in the sense that society
should provide them with the same conditions under which to
exercise their individual gifts and goals. Nor can we say that
the musician and the child with learning difficulties should be
equally rewarded for their efforts. An equal opportunity to
compete for a place in medical school is probably equally
irrelevant to both the child and the factory worker, yet we can
specify in some general way the conditions that each of these,
and other persons, too, require from their communities in order
to live good lives.
Formulated in these terms, true equality among persons
would require that they all live equally well. It is obvious that
people are not "created equal" in this sense. Circumstances of
59
"Liberty and Equality," p. 77. See page 215 above.
birth and accidents of history result in very different outcomes,

even for persons of similar natural gifts, to say nothing of the
fact that the clever or the strong are likely to find it easier to
make their lives good than others who are less well endowed.
Moreover, differences in temperament often result in two
persons of roughly equal gifts feeling markedly different levels
of satisfaction with their lives. Even persons who enjoy simi-
larly favorable circumstances are not created equally happy, as
anyone will know whose job requires him or her to respond to
the complaints of customers, rectify employee grievances, or
assign unpopular tasks.
Still, we are required to treat them equally. The persons who
answer their complaints or assign tasks to them must do so
impartially. That does not mean that they will all be treated
alike. Some will receive far more attention than others, absorb-
ing more of our time and limited resources, not because their
querulous personalities demand it, but because the complex-
ities of their situations require it, if we are to equalize the
possibilities for them to live well to the extent that this depends
on the resources we have under our control.
To put the matter more generally, justice does not require
that we make everyone happy, although love conceives the
possibility that they will all be so, "when God transmutes the
present chaos of this world into its final unity." 60 What justice
does require is that insofar as we control the resources that
affect the well-being of others, whether these are material
goods, or the attentions they need to develop and flourish, or
the costs and burdens that must be allocated to meet individual
and community needs, we must strive to insure that each
person is equally able to enjoy a good life. Occasionally, we will
be able to do this simply by treating all of them alike, but more
often, we will have to be attentive to their individual circum-
stances - determining the excellences of which they are indi-
vidually capable, compensating for different abilities, and cor-
recting the effects of past injustice.
Equal justice reduces distinctions between persons. Using
60
Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p. 35. See page 205 above.
Justice 223
differences of wealth, rank, gender, or ethnicity as indicators to
exclude persons from opportunities to develop talents and
enjoy the exercise of their capabilities in ways that are avail-
able to others result in inequalities of human good, and
advances of justice throughout history have been marked by
challenges to these distinctions. Requirements of birth, relig-
ious affiliation, and gender that once determined access to
higher education in the United States and in Europe are today
for the most part illegal in those places. While there are
differences between persons that appropriately influence their
access to opportunities and resources, equal justice prompts a
strict scrutiny of such claims. Thus, while good eyesight is
deemed relevant to the opportunity to become an airline pilot,
owning property is no longer regarded as a qualification for
voting.
The struggles for justice with which Reinhold Niebuhr was
primarily concerned had to do with ending discrimination
between persons, especially, in the United States, on the basis
of race. His analysis of the meaning of equal justice bears the
marks of this context, even when he does not allude specifically
to the problems of desegregation and sets the analysis in a
larger historical framework. Equal justice is about challenges
to privileges that cannot be justified by the requirements of
social function or by genuinely different needs.61
While these challenges are important, it would be a mistake
to suppose that equal justice is always about eliminating differ-
ences. Sometimes, in order to secure justice, it is necessary that
differences be preserved. Because persons truly are different,
and not equal, treating them equally requires us to acknowl-
edge distinctive abilities, varieties of wisdom and beauty, and
different forms of cultural creativity. Otherwise, equal justice is
reduced to an equal opportunity to approximate some type
that is identified, subtly or explicitly, as the norm. Equal
opportunity is an important part of justice, but it is not the
whole of it. It serves the needs of a woman whose skills and
temperament enable her to express herself well in traditionally
61
Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, II, 254-55.
male preserves like the symphony conductor's podium or the

trial lawyer's courtroom. It offers less hope to the African
American writer or artist who wants to speak in the cadences of
the Mississippi Delta or to paint in colors and figures rooted in
West Africa.
A large part of the struggle for justice since Niebuhr's time
has sought to value and preserve this diversity. Although the
issues are in many ways similar to those at the heart of the
earlier Civil Rights Movement, these claims to justice are also
new in important ways. Failure to understand that newness
accounts for much of the confusion that now attends the
struggle for justice.62 The Civil Rights Movement provoked
outrage and violence because those who launched it defied
white Americans' cherished sense of superiority. They insisted
that African Americans were, in ways that racist whites could
never accept, the same as Americans of European ancestry.
Today, by contrast, Black Nationalists, radical feminists, gay
and lesbian activists, and hosts of others claim a justice that
rests precisely on protection for their differences. The Civil
Rights Movement demanded acceptance on terms that resist-
ant whites found uncomfortable because the terms were so
familiar. Movements of liberation and empowerment are often
uninterested in acceptance and demand instead the freedom to
live out a quite different identity. A powerful desire to escape
the constraints of stigma and predetermined social roles under-
lies both sorts of demand for justice, but one demanded access,
while the other demands control of its own exclusions. Is it any
wonder that a generation of whites and African Americans,
who once struggled to find a place in one another's workplaces
and neighborhoods, and eventually in each other's homes and
hearts, now shake their graying heads over this new justice?
And is it not also understandable that those who demand
recognition of their difference look back on the Civil Rights
Movement as a kind of sell-out, or at best a part of the
prehistory of the struggle for real equality?
62
Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in Amy Gutman, ed., Multicultura-
lism and "The Politics of Recognition" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992),
PP- 2 5-73-
Justice 225
What links these two chapters from our recent past in the
larger historical struggle for equal justice is the idea that justice
is a claim to the human good. The persistent theme of justice is
that those who have been ruled ineligible for the good life, or
dismissed as incapable of it, are in fact equally entitled to it.
Initially, that claim is vindicated simply by achieving the good
on the prevailing terms; but eventually, to the extent that there
are real differences between the parties in the struggle for
justice, success in achieving equal access will result in new
versions of what that good really is. What begins simply as an
extension of the group considered eligible for the good life
yields a proliferation of the types of human good available to be
sought.
Alongside the dialectic that renders equal justice both an
affirmation and a negation of the ultimate law of love, then, we
must include an internal dialectic of equality that both affirms
difference and calls it into question. Niebuhr was most familiar
with the equal justice that questions differences, but Christian
Realism may also require us to risk preserving them. No
formula settles the direction of our efforts in advance, nor can
we identify differentiations based on race, gender, education,
or ability as just or unjust, categorically. We can only examine
the claims as they are raised, and ask whether the situation that
would ensue if the claims were met would be more, or less, like
the human good that love persistently seeks.
LIBERTY
Niebuhr grants a certain priority to equality in his account of

justice. "A higher justice always means a more equal justice,"
he asserts.63 Equality is, however, only one of the two impor-
tant regulative principles of justice. The other is liberty.
Alongside the claims to equality, which are always arti-
ficially secured in the face of the real differences that render us
in some respects unequal, there are also claims to political
liberty. Persons demand not only fairness from their political
communities, but also a measure of freedom.
63
[LJiberty is the "due" of each man because man has an essential

freedom as spiritual personality which makes it monstrous for any
community to use him merely as a tool. The community cannot be
merely the fulfillment of man. It is also his frustration. An adequate
ethic consequently insists on a degree of freedom which acknowledges
the individual as a "child of God" and as able and encouraged to say
"we must obey God rather than men."64
Niebuhr sets up the regulative principle of liberty in dialecti-
cal opposition to the principle of equality, confident that over
the long run, justice will appear in the balance that is struck
between these two incomplete and partial realizations of it. At
first glance, however, the opposition appears to be more com-
plete than that. Resistance to the requirements of equal justice
usually takes the form of a reassertion of liberty. Those who
wish to maintain racial separation demand freedom of associ-
ation, in opposition to the open access that equal justice pro-
vides. Those who oppose a more equal distribution of resources
demand freedom in the use of their property, in opposition to
the taxes that equal justice requires.
Because perfect justice is an impossibility, partial efforts at
justice tend to become coercive. They force us to give up a
portion of our freedom to choose our neighbors, co-workers,
and employees. They require us to spend our resources on
equipment to provide equal access for those whose abilities are
different from the majority. They limit the advantages of
wealth and influence that we are able to pass on for the benefit
of our children, friends, and favored causes. Also, they tend in
a modern, bureaucratic state to bury us under mounds of
paperwork by which we prove that we have met the require-
ments of equal justice. The exercise of liberty does not usually
require such extensive documentation.
As we approach the limits of equal justice in history, coer-
cion becomes more necessary if such justice as we are able to
secure is to prevail. The dialectic of liberty and equality
approaches its antithesis as the measures we employ to enforce
equality become so oppressive that they threaten the human
64
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Problem of a Protestant Social Ethic," Union Seminary
Quarterly Review, 15 (November, 1959), 9.
Justice 227
good that justice seeks. This point will be reached earlier for
those whose positions in society are relatively privileged, and
they will be the first to reassert the claims of freedom.
The underlying problem, however, does not depend on class
interests. Even a perfectly docile citizenry living under a per-
fectly just government cannot be said to live well if they live
entirely according to someone else's plan. Self-transcendence
results in a measure of creativity and autonomy. Political
systems must incorporate these expressions of human freedom
in their table of political freedoms, if they are to make possible
the human good that is the aim of justice.
So liberty, like equality, is a regulative principle of justice.
The linking of liberty and justice in our political thinking is not
as ancient as the connection between justice and equality.
Niebuhr dates it from the English sectarian movements of the
seventeenth century. 65 Here, the freedom of conscience to
disobey secular authorities who strayed into the area of relig-
ious belief becomes a political principle as well. Some parts of
life ought to be free from external constraints, and persons are
treated justly only when they are free in these matters.
Actually, all that is cherished in the standard of an "open society" in
Western civilization had some roots in a curious blend of left-wing
Calvinism and sectarian perfectionism of the seventeenth century. In
addition it was necessary to garner those aspects of truth in the
political policy of the English Reformation, particularly of the Eliza-
bethan Settlement, so clearly elaborated in Hooker's Laws of Ecclesi-
astical Polity in which the conservative monarchism of Edmund Burke
and the liberal theories ofJohn Locke were both present in embryo.66
The connection between liberty and justice in Western thought
thus had to do specifically with limits on the powers of govern-
ment, and had less to do with persons in their relations to one
another. In contrast to the active measures required to create
and sustain equality, liberty could be secured by devising a
government that did not intervene in the natural freedom of its
people.
65
Niebuhr, "Liberty a n d Equality," p . 68.
66
Niebuhr, " T h e Development of a n Ecumenical Social Ethic," in Faith and Politics,
p. 172.
It is primarily this freedom of persons in relation to their
government that Reinhold Niebuhr had in mind when he
wrote about liberty. If equality was the principal internal
question for the United States, facing the realities of racial
separation, liberty was the global issue, as totalitarian govern-
ments, equipped with modern technical means to control
public opinion and action, attempted to subordinate indi-
vidual freedom completely to the purposes of the state.
Niebuhr was not so unrealistic as to suppose, however, that
unchecked freedom would secure human well-being. The
ambiguous potentialities of self-transcendence, which can be
used for good or evil purposes, require some limitation if society
is to function in the regular, orderly way that human well-
being requires. "Nevertheless, the tendency of the community
to claim the individual's devotion too absolutely, and to dis-
regard his hopes, fears, and ambitions which are in conflict
with, or irrelevant to, the communal end, makes it necessary to
challenge the community in the name of liberty." 67 Maintain-
ing a steady, critical attitude toward all government seemed to
be the only secure way to prevent the sudden eruption of
totalitarian systems that would sweep aside all liberties in their
drive to aggrandize the state.68
The freedom of conscience against the demands of overbear-
ing state power is essential, but a longer view of the problem of
liberty will suggest that the state is not the only thing that
threatens it. Persons not only need to be free from their commu-
nities at times; they also require the freedom to be for them.
The creative possibilities of interpersonal cooperation and
institution building must be engaged if they are to rise in more
than momentary ways above the constraints of their situations.
Black South Africans, for example, certainly understand the
restrictions on liberty that the policy and practice of apartheid
imposed. Their demand for freedom, however, was not only a
demand for the abolition of apartheid. It involved full partici-
pation in government. Those who take political participation
67
Niebuhr, "Liberty and Equality," p. 66.
68
See especially Reinhold Niebuhr, " D o the State a n d the Nation Belong to G o d or
the Devil?" in Faith and Politics, p p . 9 9 - 1 0 1 .
Justice 229
for granted may be especially alert to the ways in which
community frustrates the individual and see their liberty pri-
marily in terms of a secure knowledge that those frustrations
will be constitutionally checked and limited. Those who have
been excluded from politics know about frustrated liberty, but
they are often quite willing to risk those frustrations in order to
be free to build their future, as well as to dream it.
Just as the liberty that is essential to our humanity leaves us
unsatisfied with a good that others have chosen for us, so
liberty also requires that once the good is known, we must be
free to participate in its creation. Indeed, we must be enabled
to participate, if we are to receive what recent Roman Catholic
ethics has called "social justice." Karen Lebacqz explains:
Rights are not simply claims to be attributed to individuals apart
from community. Because human beings are social by their very
nature, human dignity will be addressed in social relationships.
"Justice" is not simply a matter of proper distribution of good
(distributive justice) but also of permitting and indeed requiring each
person to participate in the production of those goods (social
justice).69
We are not free simply because someone else has elected to give
us the goods that freedom seeks, not even if these are the goods
we ourselves would choose to pursue.
It is on this point that some of Niebuhr's accounts of human
rights and racial justice fail to mirror the anger and frustration
that mounted in the African American community even after
the end of legal segregation.70 The freedom to enjoy public
facilities and services, and even the freedom to participate in
public life by voting, could hardly count as full freedom when
they had to be achieved by the action of courts and legislative
bodies in which African Americans were minimally repre-
sented, and when they pointedly ignored the question of the
economic resources that would be necessary to achieve the
power to shape these political processes for themselves.
By the end of his life, Niebuhr had begun to revise the
69
Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice, p . 69.
70
Herbert O . Edwards, "Racism a n d Christian Ethics in America," Katallagete,
(Winter, 1971), p p . 15-24.
formulations that sometimes appeared to limit the positive side
of the government's role in liberty to the power to grant a bare
political freedom.71 The constructive treatment of politics in
Christian Realism, however, had long provided the basis for
such a move. As we saw in Chapter Four, political participa-
tion is a basic form of human creativity, without which our
freedom has no definitive aims and no lasting results. To seek
the good of others requires that we empower them for this
participation in their own right. Because justice requires both
liberty and equality, we cannot render to persons what they
are due simply by giving them a full share of their entitlements
- though that is important. They must also be free to take part
in the deliberations that determine what those entitlements
are, and they must resist in the name of this more complete
liberty any version of liberty that offers freedom without par-
ticipation, or any version of equality that offers entitlements
without deliberation.
As with equality, a fully developed Christian Realism
requires a more complex understanding of liberty, introducing
a new dialectic between participation and autonomy within
liberty, alongside the dialectic between liberty and equality
that shapes the concrete requirements of justice. Christian
Realism has historically been more alert to the dangers that
governments can pose to autonomy. Its future effectiveness
may depend on a new attentiveness to the importance of
participation.
JUSTICE, H O P E , AND HUMAN GOOD
This chapter began with an effort to clarify Reinhold Nie-

buhr's understanding of justice in the light of recent develop-
ments in liberal political theory. Niebuhr's assumption, typical
of the public theology of his generation, was that American
democracy rested implicitly on important propositions that
were drawn from Christian reflections on human nature and
71
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Negro Minority and Its Fate in a Self-Righteous Nation,"
in Charles C. Brown, ed., A Reinhold Niebuhr Reader (Philadelphia: Trinity Press
International, 1992), pp. 118—24.
Justice 231
human communities. Liberal philosophy of the last two
decades, by contrast, has sought to construct a moral consensus
on more minimal agreements, independent of any but the most
general claims about humanity's present character and ulti-
mate destiny.
There are large differences between Reinhold Niebuhr's
interpretation ofjustice and contemporary liberal theories. For
Niebuhr, love is essential to prevent the search for justice from
deteriorating into an assertion of self-interest, and the ultimate
harmony of individual goods is the presupposition of our more
immediate moral obligations. For John Rawls, justice makes
sufficient sense as the pursuit of individually chosen goods,
governed by agreed rules of fairness. More extensive presuppo-
sitions are unnecessary, and they may even threaten the
mutual tolerance that is essential to social peace.
We must, however, avoid overstating the practical differ-
ences between these widely divergent understandings of
justice. Certainly Christian Realism has more in common with
political liberalism than either shares with the relativist and
historicist accounts of justice which reduce its requirements to
assertions of particular interests or to customary practices
weighted with the legitimacy of traditional authority. Both
political liberals and Christian Realists hold that the norms of
justice extend across the boundaries of nations and interest
groups, and though they differ sharply over the role that beliefs
about human nature and destiny may play when conflicts are
resolved in accordance with those norms, both agree that such
resolutions are possible.
In 1944, Niebuhr drew the lines to divide "the children of
light," who believe that "self-interest should be brought under
the discipline of a higher law," from "the children of dark-
ness," who "know no law beyond their will and interest."72
Liberals, Niebuhr believed, belonged among the children of
light, although they were "foolish" children for their tendency
to believe that the victory of justice over self-interest could
easily be accomplished, either in their own lives or in their
democratic nations.
72
Much has changed in our world and our thinking since then,
but the most important intellectual dividing lines remain
where Niebuhr drew them. In 1944, the battle lines were real,
as well as metaphorical, and the children of darkness repre-
sented an evil that even staunch relativists usually take pains to
deplore. 73 Today's children of light are perhaps less clear
about what they believe, and less confident about their formu-
lations of it. Those who acknowledge "no law beyond their will
and interest," by contrast, are often not so much self-willed
cynics asserting their power over others as they are disillu-
sioned seekers who have earnestly desired another, more
encompassing law, but failed to find it. The differences
between today's children of darkness and their predecessors at
the middle of the century are important, but the fundamental
choice remains to be made between the two kinds of children
that Niebuhr himself distinguished.
The important contribution that Christian Realism made to
an earlier generation of the children of light was to introduce a
probing, skeptical unmasking of hidden interests that was
designed to keep the foolish children of light from falling victim
to sentimental, idealized versions of their own moral commit-
ments. False hopes for an easy realization of justice in history
would only prove too weak for the struggle against a cynical foe
who harbored no such illusions. Today, it may be that Chris-
tian Realism best serves the children of light, especially the
political liberals among them, by reintroducing the motive
power of moral and religious ideals to those who learned too
well the earlier lesson against sentimentality.
Niebuhr's reference to the "sentimentality" of the affir-
mation of equality in the Declaration of Independence 74
should not be taken to imply that such symbols are irrelevant
to the pursuit of justice, or that they become important only
when a pragmatist reformulates them as realizable norms. We
have already seen that Christian theology depends on the same
sort of attractive, but impossible, formulations of the human
73
See, for e x a m p l e , Gilbert H a r m a n , " M o r a l Relativism D e f e n d e d , " Philosophical
Review, 84 (1975), 3-22.
74
See p a g e 215 above.
Justice 233
good that appear in the Declaration of Independence. The
myths of the law, like the myths of faith, grasp possibilities that
can neither be formulated in strictly rational terms nor perfec-
tly realized in actual human communities. So, too, the Utopian
illusions of revolutionaries symbolize aspirations based on real
human needs, even if the sober, rational observer understands
that their promises can never be kept.75
Myths, Utopias, and dreams of perfect justice provide the
energy that keeps the struggle for justice going. They have
power to motivate people who would otherwise remain
absorbed in the details of their personal struggles. More
important, these images of what perfect justice would be like
provide the basis for the specific claims and demands that are
the stuff of controversy in daily social and political life. Persons
and groups who nourish dreams of perfect justice make
demands for specific, realizable approximations of their goal.
The dream of the "beloved community" in which each person's
needs are met and each person's gifts are valued becomes the
basis, not only for a community of care and respect among those
who share the dream, but also for a demand for equal rights in
the wider society. Richard Bernstein describes a civil rights
gathering in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1964 in terms that
echo this point:
[TJhere were two things that deeply impressed me - that I was
witnessing the creation of just one of those public spaces that Arendt
describes, and that what gave the participants the courage, hope, and
conviction to participate was informed by their communal religious
bonds ... We know how rare and fragile such events can be — how
they occur in extraordinary circumstances when individuals feel a
deep sense of crisis and injustice, and are motivated to come together.
But the danger that we face today is one of forgetfulness and an overly
"sophisticated" cynicism that erodes what Ernst Bloch called the
principle of hope.76
Bernstein is no doubt correct that a moral realist at the end
of Reinhold Niebuhr's century must worry about "overly
'sophisticated' cynicism" as Niebuhr worried about "senti-
75
Cf. N i e b u h r , Moral Man and Immoral Society, p . 277.
76
Richard Bernstein, "The Meaning of Public Life," in Robin W. Lovin, ed., Religion
and American Public Life (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), pp. 48-49.
mentality." Both the sentimental wish that dreams may
become reality and the cynical assumption that what people
dream is a thinly disguised report on their immediate interests
obscure the real relationship between the symbols of ultimate
good and the claims people make in political situations.
The Utopian or mythical ideas that shape concrete political
demands connect the struggle for justice to the human good.
Persons demand as equal justice a reality they conceive in
freedom, and what they conceive in freedom, they regard as
good. It may be that a system of justice can be elaborated in
theory on more minimal assumptions, but that will not reduce
the hopes that people bring to politics.
Conclusion
NIEBUHR S CENTURY
Historical epochs do not conform to the calendar. Someone has

remarked that the twentieth century began in 1914, when
World War I shattered the political assumptions and social
stabilities of nineteenth-century Europe. Future generations
may well say that the twentieth century ended in 1989, when
the sudden collapse of communism in Eastern Europe signalled
the end of the bipolar world, divided between two hegemonic
superpowers.
The years between, what we will remember as the twentieth
century, were a time of nation-states that dominated large
sections of the globe and took to arms in the name of even
larger values. It was a century that needed realism, if its leaders
were to escape moral pretensions that would tempt them to
crusades, and if its people were to resist concealed powers that
threatened to put their lives at the service of other people's
interests.
It was Reinhold Niebuhr's century. A young man at its start,
he learned its illusion-shattering lessons well. He first found his
intellectual center with a group of "younger theologians" for
whom the expectations of Jesus' ethics could not be a "simple
historical possibility," but who also understood "the truth in
myths" that was more enduring than the rational expectations
of scientific progress.
When Niebuhr turned his critical realism on religious hope
itself, in Moral Man and Immoral Society, some of his theological
colleagues thought that he had surrendered Christian hope
235
and handed the power of social transformation over to fanati-
cal revolutionaries.1 In time, Niebuhr would come to expect
much less from revolutionaries, and his greatest work, The
Nature and Destiny of Man, concentrates precisely on the power
of the Christian view of human nature to sustain hope without
yielding to pride. 2 Moral Man and Immoral Society is an incom-
plete statement of Christian Realism, but in writing it,
Niebuhr learned to trace the power of ideas, illusions, and
self-deceptions in the movement of large historical forces, and
so he came to interpret the events of his century for a much
wider audience than other theologians could command.
His was a world of mass movements and great powers. What
the leaders who controlled these forces believed about their
place in the world was important, if for no other reason than
that they would act to achieve their supposed destiny. As
Niebuhr understood the realist's task, however, it was not to
weigh the truth of these claims, but to assess the power that lay
behind them, so as to construct the delicate balance of forces
under which human survival, and even human flourishing,
might be possible. In a world divided between sharply con-
flicting ideologies, the triumph of any one of them would inflict
costs that human civilization could not bear.
Ronald Stone has aptly summarized Niebuhr's global poli-
tical realism, especially in the Cold War years:
He envisaged the competition extending for decades or even longer.
There could be no resolution through war, but neither partner in the
competition could be expected to surrender its respective myths or
ideologies. Wise statesmanship was the most important element in
maintaining the uneasy partnership in preventing nuclear war. He
had no great confidence in education, cultural exchanges, religious
impulses, or disarmament plans eliminating the tension caused by the
two continental empires competing for influence and interests in the
world. This view of the world, essentially of two nuclear-armed
scorpions locked in a small bottle, was not a world he would have
wished for, but it was the world he perceived.3
1
See Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr, pp. 142-43.
2
3
Ronald H. Stone, Christian Realism and Peacemaking (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1988), p. 38.
Conclusion 237
It was also a world he was well prepared to explain, especially
to a younger generation of theologians and political leaders
who might wish to make it more congenial to their own hopes
and dreams, the way young men in Niebuhr's generation had
tried to make it a "world safe for democracy." It was not a
world that most people actually wanted, but it proved to be
sufficiently stable to avert catastrophe, and Niebuhr had
cogent reasons why apparently higher aspirations had to be
postponed or foregone to insure that stability.
Niebuhr feared that if this world ceased to be, it would
disappear in a nuclear holocaust. In the end, it fell apart
because the people who had been persuaded or coerced into
maintaining the pressure from the East simply walked away
from it, leaving a startled West to contemplate how much of its
supposedly free way of life had actually been structured by the
exigencies of the conflict.
When Niebuhr died in 1971, the forces that would bring
about this dissolution were just barely visible. Christian
Realism confers no predictive powers. (It was, after all, Rein-
hold Niebuhr who predicted in 1933 that the German
industrialists who had supported Hitler against the socialists
would quickly rein him in if his nationalistic ambitions started
to impinge on their commercial interests.)4 So it is little wonder
that readers who today come new to Niebuhr's work are often
struck by what is missing.
In the basic texts of Christian Realism, there is much about
the truth in myths, and little about ordinary, empirical truth.
Niebuhr's realism takes account of ideological self-deception,
but says little about the inability of totalitarian systems to
sustain the flow of information that a modern, technological
society requires. Propaganda does overwhelm common sense,
especially when conditions are unfamiliar and dangerous, but
its staying power proves very limited. What we now know both
about the life of people in the former Soviet Union and about
the reading of scripture in communities of the oppressed sug-
gests that ordinary people form a remarkably accurate picture
4
Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Opposition in Germany," New Republic 75 (June 28, 1933),
169-71.
of what is going on around them, even when there are powerful

forces at work to conceal it from them.5
Niebuhr, more than many of his contemporaries, did under-
stand the bonds of ethnicity, territory, and language that seem
to be replacing ideological commitments as the principal
sources of violent conflict in the post-Cold War world. But he
regarded these evidences of "tribalism" as important prin-
cipally when they become entangled with more modern differ-
ences based on class and economic power, and in any case, he
anticipated that these forms of pluralism would be "digested"
by democratic nations which achieved legal formulations of
universal human rights.6 As we have seen in the more extended
discussion of Niebuhr's ideas about justice, he gives little
thought to an equality that would sustain differences between
persons, rather than rendering them irrelevant.7
Because the balance of power was so important to the world
Niebuhr knew, stability assumed a normative role in its own
right. "Security," "order," and "peace" are mentioned as
possible "regulative principles" of justice, alongside liberty
and equality.8 The risks of disorder, both to those who hold
power and to those who may be crushed in the effort to obtain
it, often temper the search for justice with a realistic respect for
the opposition.
REALISM AND ITS CRITICS
It is hardly surprising, then, that some contemporary observers

find the classic texts of Christian Realism largely irrelevant to a
global community based on rapid transfers of goods and infor-
mation, and shaped by economic forces that governments are
often unable to control. Others find Niebuhr's work actually
opposed to their demands for recognition and justice. His
5
On these points, see, for example, Hedrick Smith, The New Russians (New York:
Avon Books, 1991), pp. 21-25; and Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984).
6
Niebuhr, Man's Nature and His Communities, pp. 86-88, 99.
7
See pp. 228-30 above.
8
Niebuhr, "The Development of a Social Ethic in the Ecumenical Movement," in
Faith and Politics, p. 177. See page 218, note 56 above.
Conclusion 239
emphases on the ambiguity of all moral claims and the import-
ance of political stability summarize attitudes they must over-
come to achieve their goals. For them, Christian Realism has
become part of the ideology of conservatism.9
Today's Christian Realist, however, may prove surprisingly
responsive to these criticisms of the classic formulations. After
all, what the critics are describing are the results of technical
developments and economic changes that had barely begun in
Niebuhr's time. The Christian Realist's commitment "to take
all factors in a social and political situation . . . into account" 10
supports these new understandings. The Christian Realist has
no a priori commitment to the particular set of social, political,
and economic forces that proved decisive in the situations that
Reinhold Niebuhr analyzed.
Feminist theologians have a slightly different criticism that
goes closer to the heart of Niebuhr's thinking. For them, the
understanding of human nature that shapes Christian Real-
ism's hopes for human fulfillment and its characteristic warn-
ings about the temptations of power is too narrow. It depends
too much on the excesses of pride that accompany positions of
power and understands too little of the loss of selfhood that
befalls women and others who are taught to seek fulfillment by
denying their own hopes and plans. It is important to note that
in his more systematic statements, Niebuhr does balance his
emphasis on pride with a warning against the dangers of
"sensuality."11 Still, the critics are right to correct the limita-
tions of the masculine, agential humanity that provides most of
Reinhold Niebuhr's "human nature."
Today's Christian Realist will not defend a narrow concep-
tion of human nature. He or she will be as concerned to
understand the moral life of those whose choices are limited
and denied as to point out the dynamics of pride. She will not,
however, overlook the fact that the contemporary feminist
critics, no less than the Christian Realists of the mid-century
9
Bill Kellerman, "Apologist of Power: The Long Shadow of Reinhold Niebuhr's
Christian Realism," Sojourners 16 (March, 1987), 15-20.
10
Niebuhr, "Augustine's Political Realism," in Faith and Politics, p. 119.
11
See the more extended discussion of this point on pp. 142-47 above.
whom they criticize, make an argument that turns on how we
understand human nature. A conception of human nature that
includes the aesthetic as well as the agential, the emotional
commitment as well as the rational calculation of con-
sequences, and that spreads these characteristics across both
the male and the female members of the human species will
provide a richer understanding of human fulfillment on which
to base our moral principles and our political goals. This new
assessment, however, shares with earlier versions of Christian
Realism a conviction that the human good is the proper subject
of ethics, and that we cannot settle our disagreements about
what we ought to do without reference to our understandings
of a fully human life.
Implicit in many of the critiques of Christian Realism, then,
are the Christian Realists' own patterns of argument: Prescrip-
tions for action are based on attention to the complexity of
forces at work in a situation, especially the trends that go
unnoticed because they are pervasive, and the interests that go
undetected because they are concealed by appeals to more
general values. Understanding how a social system ought to
function rests on understanding how to meet the needs of
human nature and how to avoid the distortions to which it is
susceptible. To see what Christian Realism is, we need to
attend not only to the works of those who chose the label for
themselves, but also to those who have used its methods to
move beyond the limitations of its first practitioners.
APOLOGETIC THEOLOGY
The question about Christian Realism at the end of Reinhold

Niebuhr's century is not a question about whether we can
apply Niebuhr's political principles directly to new problems.
Especially, the question is not a counterfactual speculation
about what Reinhold Niebuhr would say and do if he were
here today. The question about Christian Realism is about the
most general convictions of those who sought a "realistic theol-
ogy." They believed that the truth about God must in the end
prove consistent with every other kind of truth we can know,
Conclusion 241
and they believed that by attending to reality, without insisting
in advance that it conform to faith's expectations, we would in
the end find "whatever ground of courage, hope, and faith is
actually there, independent of human preferences and
desires .. ." 12 They believed, partly on the basis of their study
of Christian history, and more out of their experience of life in
Christian communities, that this realism has been a persistent
characteristic of Christianity, so that attentiveness to what
Christians have thought about human life is likely to prove
more accurate as a guide to present possibilities than any of the
alternative understandings of the human condition.
The subject matter of this book has been Christian Realism,
rather than the specific judgments about public policy and
international affairs with which Christian Realists have been
preoccupied. We have examined a loose family connection of
realisms - political, moral, and theological. Christian Realists
have typically held versions of all three of these sorts of realism,
although holding one of them does not rigorously entail
holding the others. Certainly there have been those readers
who applauded their political realism, but were baffled by
their theology, and others who believed that moral realism
requires stricter adherence to principles than the political
realists would admit. The Christian Realists, however, tried to
hold all three sorts of realism together. 13
For them, each realism was a search for the truth about an
aspect of reality, guided by a pragmatic method and starting
from naturalistic evidence. Niebuhr and his counterparts
among the Younger Theologians would not at first have been
satisfied with either of those labels, but from a broader perspec-
tive on the options in twentieth-century philosophy we find in
pragmatism and naturalism important ways to characterize
the Christian Realists' way of choosing courses of action and
understanding reality.
Niebuhr himself eventually adopted "Christian pragma-
tism" as an appropriate name for "the firm resolve that inher-
ited dogmas and generalizations will not be accepted, no
12
13
See the more extended discussion of this point on pp. 3-31 above.
matter how revered or venerable, if they do not contribute to
the establishment of justice in a given situation." 14 Justice is
measured by how well a solution works in context. We assess
the gains in relation to particular historical antecedents, and
we determine the risks posed by specific obstacles. Practical
justice is achieved as the principles of justice become coherent
with the rest of the requirements of life in an organized society,
for such justice can be done, not merely imagined.
Niebuhr was always suspicious of naturalism understood in a
narrow and reductive way. Nevertheless, the term is appro-
priate to Niebuhr's ethics and theology, for which human
experience is a primary point of reference for understanding
both the requirements of morality and the reality of God. For
Christian Realism, there can be no claims to moral and relig-
ious truth that stand in simple contradiction to the rest of what
we know.
Ideally, there should be a constant commerce between the specific
truths, revealed by the various historical disciplines and the final
truth about man and history as known from the standpoint of the
Christian faith. In such a commerce the Christian truth is enriched
by the specific insights which are contributed by every discipline of
culture. But it also enriches the total culture and saves it from
idolatrous aberrations.15
It is this pragmatism and naturalism that relates Christian
Realism to all forms of human knowledge which also relates it
at once to other ways of thinking about ethics and politics.
While Reinhold Niebuhr's authority in American intellectual
and political life is sometimes cited as evidence that the mid-
century decades were still under the sway of a Protestant,
Christian culture, Niebuhr himself knew better. As early as
1937 he declared, "For the past two hundred years the Chris-
tian Church has been proclaiming the gospel in a world which
no longer accepted the essentials of the Christian faith."16
Obviously, one cannot tell such a world that the Christian faith
14
Niebuhr, "Theology and Political Thought in the Western World," in Faith and
Politics, p. 55.
15
Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 167.
16
Niebuhr, Christianity and Power Politics, p. 203.
Conclusion 243
is simply what it already knows; but one can make a case for
the Christian faith in terms consistent with the way in which
that world settles questions of truth. Pragmatism and natural-
ism speak in those terms to the modern world, especially in
America.
It is this approach to the questions of ethics, politics, and
theology that marks a Christian Realist in the 1930s or the
1990s. In Niebuhr's day, it set the defense of the biblical
worldview that he undertook apart from the return to the
"world of the Bible" proclaimed by Karl Barth and his follow-
ers. Today, it sets Christian Realism apart from systems of
theology that concentrate on the meaning internal to Christian
belief and reject the task of vindicating its claims before a more
general critical audience.17
That is not to say that Christian Realists simply accept their
assignment on the terms laid down by secular critics. Part of
the task of a naturalistic Christian ethics is to broaden the
understanding of nature, incorporating complex human aspir-
ations and religious affections into our understanding of what
is natural, and rejecting the reductive naturalism that simpli-
fies the account of our lives by ignoring the complexity of the
evidence. Part of Christian pragmatism is to question a coher-
ence theory of truth that ignores the incoherences that are
essential marks of the limits of our understanding.
The Christian Realist ventures into apologetic theology not
simply to answer questions, but also to challenge the terms in
which the questions are put. The Christian understanding of
human life and its fulfillment is not just a summary of conven-
tional wisdom. Indeed, it is at many points contradictory to
ordinary notions of happiness, and because the Christian
cannot prove its validity short of a final assessment beyond
history, its validation in terms of pragmatic, natural reason
always remains limited and incomplete.18
Still, the apologetic task is important, if only because the
apologist is always also the skeptic and the critic. One of the
clearest insights of Christian Realism is that those who hold to
17
For a more extensive discussion of this topic, see Placher, Unapologetic Theology.
1R
18 Niebuhr, Faith and History, p. 152. See above, pp. 38-41.
Christian faith do not live only in Barth's "strange new world
of the Bible," but also in the modern world whose assumptions
have made the Bible's world strange to us. Perhaps the Bible's
world has always been strange,19 but it will be strange to each
age in its own way. Unless we can explain the Bible, at least
provisionally, in terms that are coherent with the rest of what
we know and believe, we will never know what its strangeness
means for us.20
CHRISTIAN REALISM IN A NEW CENTURY

When we turn from theology to the tasks of ordering our
political life together, the Christian Realist proceeds with
humility and with confidence. As we have observed, Christian
Realism confers no predictive powers. A habit of attention to
all the forces at work in a social and political situation does not
always allow us to plot their trajectories accurately. Nor does
the Christian Realist escape the distortion of insight by inter-
est. No one does. The marks of ideology and gender, race and
class will be inscribed in every judgment, in ways that will
often be most evident to those whose interests differ.
All that should make the Christian Realist humble. The
confidence comes from the awareness that, sooner or later,
those who see matters differently will have to make their own
case in realistic terms. It will then be possible to bring the
insights of the biblical view of human nature to bear on the
inadequacies of the alternative proposals, whatever the limita-
tions of the Christian Realist's position may be at the outset.
The architecture of Christian Realist political thought that
Reinhold Niebuhr sketched provides the starting point for a
political presentation of the biblical alternative. Politics begins
with the good that individuals in their freedom conceive for
themselves.21 While freedom is shaped by community, and
may, under unfavorable circumstances, all but disappear for
particular individuals, the capacity to claim for oneself more
19
" F o r J e w s d e m a n d signs a n d Greeks desire wisdom, b u t we proclaim Christ
crucified," I Corinthians 1:22-23 ( N R S V ) .
20 21
See p p . 158-61 above. See above, p p . 123-27.
Conclusion 245
than what is simply given is basic to human life, and the
recognition of these claims in one another is the starting point
for all politics. This idea of human dignity seems to lie behind
all modern doctrines of human rights. However difficult it may
be to identify specific, substantive rights that truly have uni-
versal applications, political arrangements derive their legiti-
macy from the recognition that everyone has some claims that
deserve to be honored by any community.
From this freedom of human consciousness to imagine a
good that transcends circumstances, many different political
arrangements may follow. It is important for Christian
Realism that there is rarely a straight line from individual
aspiration to social reality. Politics is a dialectical process, in
which aspirations are constantly tested and revised in relation
to material limits and competing goals. The judgments we
make about politics are inevitably contextual.22 We assess
specific demands against a specific existing order, measuring
the requirements of justice not only against the ultimate law of
love, but also against the costs and risks of change.
The freedom inherent in human nature and the ambiguity of
every political expression of that freedom provide the dynamics
of Niebuhr's approach to politics, and they will no doubt
endure despite the changes in our circumstances. A future
Christian Realism must, however, view the relations between
these elements quite differently from the mid-century Realism
that sought social stability and a balance of power between two
competing ideologies.
The Cold War gave occasions for a rehearsal of the values of
freedom against the limitations of a closed society. The
meaning of freedom could be explicated by contrast to the
places where it was denied, even if political realism also
required the occasional limitation of freedom for security
reasons. Today, in large parts of the world, the liberal freedoms
of speech, press, and association and the values of multi-party
democracy are generally affirmed. It is less likely that freedom
will be deliberately restricted than that it will be trivialized by
22
See above, pp. 209-13.
excessive familiarity. The risk is that freedom will come to
mean nothing more than free choice among a range of options
that the market provides. We are free because we can choose
detergents or careers without the constraints of centralized
planning, and because we can change either if a more attrac-
tive alternative comes along.
In that context, the role of Christian Realism is not to talk
about realistic limits, but to expand political imagination.
People need to envision not just another career, but whole new
ways of organizing work and new systems of economic security.
Traditions that have been suppressed and kept out of the
political discourse need to be explored, and new ways of
leading and sharing power must be tried. Practical constraints
and competing visions will, of course, remain, and Christian
Realists are not likely to forget this. When no one any longer
dares to be Utopian, however, the role of the Realist may be to
recall that the human reality also includes the capacity for such
dreams. 23
Expanding our political imagination in this way might lead
in turn to a rediscovery of the importance of politics in our
lives. Among the lessons of this extended study of Christian
Realism is the fact that our human nature is profoundly poli-
tical. We need the negotiations and the arguments, the cooper-
ation and the oppositions that an inclusive political community
provides, not only to get anything done, but also to know
anything about reality and how we are related to it.
When we think about the human need for community, our
attention is usually focused on intimate relationships and on
the family, where strengths are built and where devastating
distortions of personality can happen. 'Community,' where it
extends beyond these intimate bonds at all, tends to refer to the
face-to-face interactions of neighborhoods, small towns, and
social groups. 'Politics' refers to what happens in the deperso-
nalized space beyond community. In fact, however, politics,
with its demands for recognition and its search for cooperation,
23
Cf. Roger Shinn, "Realism, Radicalism, and Eschatology in Reinhold Niebuhr: A
Reassessment," in Nathan A. Scott, Jr., ed., The Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1975), pp. 98-99.
Conclusion 247
goes on even in the intimate communities, and the need to be
part of a community where recognition and cooperation take
place extends far beyond the limits of our personal relation-
ships. Politics, as we have understood it here, encompasses the
search for knowledge of the self and knowledge of God that
Calvin identified as the two parts of true wisdom.24
The usual contemporary views of politics are strikingly at
variance with this Christian Realist assessment. For some, who
find their humanity limited and denied by the dominant poli-
tical powers, politics is an oppressive reality to be named, first,
and then broken. The political task is to unmask the forms of
political oppression that sustain the interests of the powerful.
Then we shall enter a new era, which will be somehow post-
political, at least in the sense that the opposed interests that
now structure our human communities will no longer exist.
The failure of the institutionalized Marxist versions of this
vision have not diminished its attractions for those who have
experienced political repression.
For others more comfortably situated, politics is not some-
thing to be broken, but something to be avoided. Knowledge of
self and God are something they seek in private life, where the
results are more clearly under their own control. Public life is
important only as a place to obtain the resources for private
life, and politics serves to insure that one's access to the
resources is not restricted and that one's freedom in their
private use is not limited.
These two contemporary views, in different proportions in
different places, characterize much of the thinking about poli-
tics as we come to the end of Reinhold Niebuhr's century.
Niebuhr's warnings, directed first at liberal optimists and
Social Gospel idealists, not to expect too much from politics
come too late for these contemporaries, who in their different
ways expect from politics exactly nothing. In a new century,
Christian Realism must teach us to think again about politics,
so that we will not expect too little of it. Because we are so
constituted as to hope for the perfect harmony of life with life,
24
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, i, i.
there is no way in which politics can give us all of what we seek.
But there is no way to achieve any of what we hope, no way,
indeed, even to know what it is that we hope, that does not pass
through politics.
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Index
agape, 27, 155, 199 equality, 217, 219-25

anxiety, 139-43 Erickson, Erik, 199
Aquinas, Thomas, 75 ethical naturalism, 107, 119
Aristotle, 75, 125, 161, 202 ethical rationalism, 74, 83
Auden, W. H., 158 ethical theory, 73
Augustine, 160, 163, 164
fanaticism, 89, 98
Barth, Karl, 39, 147 finitude, 131, 208
Beckley, Harlan, 212, 217 Finnis, John, 121
benevolence, 199 Forrester, Duncan B., 211
Benne, Robert, 185 Fox, Richard W., 2, 169
Bennett, John C , 2, 211, 214 Frankena, William K., 72
Bernstein, Richard, 233 freedom, 17, 123, 170, 176, 178
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 103, 137
Brink, David, 12, 109 Gandhi, 154
Brown, Charles, 2, 199, 215 Gewirth, Alan, 76
Brown, Peter, 132 government, role of, 185, 187, 190
Brunner, Emil, 220 Green, Ronald M., 78, 80
Buddhism, 81 Gustafson, James, 34
Catholic Bishops, National Conference Hampson, Daphne, 149

of, 101 Hare, R. M., 84
Christian pragmatism, 48, 60, 73 Harman, Gilbert, 12
Christian Realism, 1, 18, 28, 68, 104, Hauerwas, Stanley, 90, 94, 164
i59> 203,217 Heidegger, Martin, 141
civic virtues, 182 Hershberger, Guy, 93, 163
coherence, 46, 56, 63 Hobbes, Thomas, 109, 170
communitarianism, 97 Horton, Walter Marshall, 1, 44, 46, 104
community, 221 human dignity, 126
compromise, 97 human good, 119, 225
consensus, 193 human nature, 16, 120, 170, 172
consent, 171, 172 human rights, 172, 178
Corrington, Robert, 47
idolatry, 189
deep structure, 78, 81 illusions, 87, 98
Dewey, John, 39, 199 intuitionism, 108
Dignitatis humanae, 127
James, William, 39, 47, 65, 128
Edwards, Jonathan, 115 Jesus, ethics of, 6, 58, 64, 91, 204
254
Index 255
justice, circumstances of, 204, 206 practice, 145
justice, relative, 207 pragmatic method, 82
justified belief, 51 pragmatism, 47
justitia originalis, 203 pride, 142
public life, 181
Kant, Immanuel, 60, 76, 83, 104 Putnam, Hilary, 21
Keller, Catherine, 149
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 154 racial justice, 194, 215, 223, 229
radical monotheism, 64
Lasch, Christopher, 101 Rasmussen, Larry, 33
Lebacqz, Karen, 207, 229 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 5
liberalism, 129, 160, 170, 192, 231 Rawls, John, 55, 191-94, 204
liberalism, theological, 42 reciprocity, 84
liberation theology, 212 ReederJohnP., 78
liberty, 170, 217, 225 regulative principles, 26, 217
love, 85, 196-99, 213 responsibility, 93, 99
Luther, Martin, 165 Rice, Daniel F., 10, 34
Ricoeur, Paul, 121
McBrien, Richard, 182 Rorty, Richard, 50
McCann, Dennis, 7
McClendon, James, 90 Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, 12
Macintosh, Douglas C , 1, 42, 48, 51, 63 self-interest, 3, 9, 31
Maclntyre, Alasdair, 145 self-transcendence, 17, 114, 124, 176,
Mandela, Nelson, 154 228
Mannheim, Karl, 90 sensuality, 143-51
Marxism, 7, 86, 88 sin, 143, 208
middle axioms, 214 sloth, 147
Miguez Bonino, Jose, 213 sloth, institutional, 151
Miles, Margaret, 131 Social Gospel, 1, 91, 131
Mill, John Stuart, 129 Soskice, Janet, 35
moral realism, 12, 20, 107, 167, 198, 217 state, 181
Morgenthau, Hans, 10 Stockman, David, 175
Murdoch, Iris, 90 Stoicism, 161
Murray, John Courtney, 127, 138, 185 Stout, Jeffrey, 35, 52, 67
Myrdal, Gunnar, 193 Strawson, P. F., n o
myth, 22, 32, 87, 98, 206, 233 subsidiarity, 184, 189
Sullivan, William, 182
Nagel, Thomas, 125
narrative, 92, 105 Taylor, Charles, 90, 107, 121
narrative ethics, 95 theological realism, 20, 30, 33, 203
natural law, 15, 75, 162 Tillich, Paul, 192
naturalism, ethical, 14 Tinder, Glenn, 136, 167
naturalism, reductive, 14, n o Troeltsch, Ernst, 182
Niebuhr, H. Richard, 36, 43, 64
Novak, Michael, 211 virtue, 95
Nussbaum, Martha, 134 virtue ethics, 95
voluntarism, 108
option for the poor, 212
order, 169, 189 West, Cornel, 48
White, Morton, n o , 116
Peirce, Charles S., 39, 47 Williams, Bernard, 134
Plaskow, Judith, 149
political realism, 3, 167, 174, 198, 216, 217 Yoder, John H., 94, 99

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Reinhold Niebuhr (1892—1971) was a major American

theologian and political thinker of the mid-twentieth

© Cambridge University Press 1995

First published 1995

Library of Congress cataloging in publication data

ISBN o 521 44363 6 hardback

Transferred to digital printing 2004

An introduction to Christian Realism i

Select bibliography 249

A final word of thanks is due to the students, clergy, and laity

During the first half of the twentieth century, Protestant theo-

Realism' belongs perhaps as much to John C. Bennett as to

to moral norms and ideals, rather than to self-interest, whether

The frustration and illumination of reading Reinhold Niebuhr

REALISM AND SUSPICION

Realism implies recognition of the limits of purely moral solu-

THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL REALISM

Self-interest is pervasive in politics. Niebuhr's realism requires

extent they will have real effects. To be realistic in Niebuhr's

truth which depend on a simple correspondence between true

premises, and he would no doubt be surprised to see how

argue about the requirements of nature, but we cannot ignore

In freedom, persons apprehend alternatives to their present

rights and standards of justice, and it is to those arrangements

is to demand justice with a specificity and certainty that we

MYTH AND MORAL TRUTH

Closer attention to the symbolic or mythic use of moral lan-

Moral language, rather, resolves conflicts between persons and

CONFIDENCE AND CRITICISM

In this introduction, we have separately considered several

STARTING WITH THEOLOGY

Reinhold Niebuhr challenged both liberalism and orthodoxy

important difference in the public discussion. It is just when

aspirations must be understood in relation to God, who sets

The idea that God is love is a symbol for an ultimate unity of

scientific objectivity combined with suppressed data and the

Answering Jeffrey Stout's question this way, however, appears

In the aftermath of World War I, the American realists

faith in the final unity of human life are intellectually free to go

THE SEARCH FOR REALISM

The theologians' search for more adequate ways of speaking

of youth raised questions about Western society that cut deeper

alternative to the "correspondence" theory of truth, which

Macintosh supported pragmatism against those stark alter-

formulation suggests that religious beliefs and traditional

hold, and there is always the possibility that new evidence or a

PRAGMATIC RELATIVISM AND "BIBLICAL REALISM"

This pragmatic relativism, which has been developed more

beliefs by saying that people are free to choose whichever

ces of religious dogmatism that yield a rigid certainty of belief

Up to this point, the practical conclusions of the "biblical

Rawls has recently labeled the "overlapping consensus"

Reticence in pressing one's own claims and a tolerance for

The effort to establish coherence among diverse cognitive

"cynical," will insist that moral solutions are nothing more

compelling because it presents this demand in an uncompro-

differences imposed by nature and history suggests many prob-

THE LAW OF LOVE

become, the less likely it is that we can resolve the differences

tensions and conflicts of human experience resolved. The most

Throughout this chapter, we have been delineating a version of

life which must be possible if all of these valuing subjects are

REALISM AND THE LAW OF LOVE