Approaches to the Problem of Selfhood and History
Chapter 14: Faith and Dogma in the New Covenant Community
The structures of meaning in religions of history and revelation are undoubtedly sustained by specific and explicit acts of faith in contrast to those world views which also have some
ultimate principle of meaning but which seek to obscure the act of faith which sustains them by making the system appear to be sustained by a rationally analyzable coherence.
Thus, for instance, the obscurity of meaning in the Prophetic interpretation gave rise to the Messianic faith that God would "act" to eliminate the obscurities. These obscurities and
ambiguities can be briefly enumerated. Reward and punishment were not justly apportioned to virtue and vice. The innocent suffered and the "wicked flourished like a green bay tree." Israel itself, which rightly stood under divine condemnation according to the prophets, was
nevertheless an innocent sufferer compared to the mighty nations which were the executors of divine judgement. When would the "righteous" be vindicated? When would Israel be
vindicated? When would the tension between the law and the inclination of the human heart be overcome by a "new covenant" providing for a law written into the human heart? (Jeremiah) These obscurities persuaded the more rationalistic Greeks either to dismiss history as having no moral meaning or to hope that "reason" would gradually eliminate its obscurities and cross purposes. The prophets hoped instead that the drama of history would be clarified not by the gradual emergence of a logic immanent within it or by the imposition of logic upon it. It would
be clarified dramatically by a divine action in which the "mercy" of God first revealed in the covenant would be displayed in a new way. This dramatic action was "expected" in the sense that it seemed to follow inevitably from the "constancy" of the divine mercy. But it was also unpredictable in the sense that mercy was not subject to any law inherent in history. It must be observed that many human ends, which can not be regarded as ultimate, were supposed to be vindicated in that final vindication. Israel was to be restored as a nation. (Is the establishment of the present State of Israel a fulfillment of that Messianic promise?) The "righteous" were to be vindicated despite the fact that in the final reaches of prophetic insight there were no significant distinctions between the righteous and the unrighteous. The "innocent" were to be avenged despite the fact that it seems to be a permanent character of history to establish norms which are equally painful for both the criminals and for the truly innocent.
In short, there were many false expectations in the hope of this dramatic Messianic denouement.
The Christian community came into historic being by a common venture of faith that this
expected act of God took place in the whole drama of Christ’s life. Christ had to be accepted by an act of faith, for the event took place in history and nothing takes place so inevitably that it can be proved to be the natural consequence of the previous "conditions of history." The early Church accepted Christ as the "expected" one, as the "desire of the ages." It interpreted the
"new covenant" as a logical extension of the first covenant. But this faith could not compel the original nation-church to accept him. He was rejected by the original covenant community, and there were thus two, rather than one faiths. At best, the two can regard themselves as two
versions of one faith, each thinking of the other as an heretical version of the common faith.
Since such faith is by commitment, the interpretation of the faith can not follow as a rational deduction from the given facts. Yet faith can not be irrational or capricious. It must validate itself as an interpretation of the facts of existence.
Looking at these facts from the standpoint of the commitments of the Christian faith, they would appear as follows: The Christ event which Christian faith regards, retrospectively, as the culmination of history could not be regarded prospectively as such a fulfillment. It is however the more impressive retrospectively because it could not be fully anticipated. It is the more impressive because some of the expectations hoped for the fulfillment and vindication of forces and factors in history (the nation and the "righteous") which do not deserve to be singled out as the bearers of historic fulfillment. The Christ was expected to be a triumphant Messiah, and he is in fact a "suffering servant" who does not bring the struggle between good and evil to a triumphant conclusion. Instead, the drama of his life reveals that the nominally "righteous" are involved in the crucifixion and that the only resolution of the variance between God and man was for God to take the sins of men upon Himself. Thus the suffering Messiah became, in the eyes of faith, a clue to the mystery of the mercy and the justice of God, , and the atonement became the real content of the revelation. On these grounds the Christ event was recognized to be the "end" of history, not in the sense of its "finis" but as its telos. History would go on, and human pride and arrogance would create unimaginable evils. But nothing would surprise or
dismay the person who had once penetrated to the mystery by the help of this key.
It is important to note that the analysis of the whole human situation anticipates the unlimited possibilities for good and civil in every human life and of developing human freedom in history and of the continued variance between men and God whenever human actions are ultimately considered.
In short, the truth of the interpretation of life and history, derived from the revelation in Christ is most apparent at those points at which the revelation outraged and disappointed the Messianic expectations and defied the canons of "rationality" which were subsequently used to justify or to refute the truth of the revelation. We shall have occasion later to analyze the corruptions which have obscured this truth whenever men have sought to accommodate it to their perspective. It is true precisely because it comes as a refutation of partial and parochial viewpoints, and of the desire of men and nations, of priests and philosophers, of cultures and civilizations to vindicate themselves. It can be empirically verified as the truth, but it can not be anticipated or established by all empirical analysis of any human situation because every such empirical analysis will lack the challenge to the egoistic corruption in the viewpoints of nations, cultures and classes, which insinuate themselves into every definition of the ultimate truth, and will reduce the height and significance of human freedom in order to fit the human drama into some scheme of natural or rational coherence.
The Christian Church soon faced the problems of preventing a truth apprehended by faith, and not subject to the tests of coherence which govern the test of truth in philosophy and science, from degenerating into private caprice. What was to prevent anyone from appropriating this revelation and corrupting it according to his own fancy?
The answer to this problem was the establishment of the authority of the covenant community, the Christian Church, which would try to reach a consensus on the interpretation of the
revelation and prevent the caprice of private visions and fancies. In a series of Church Councils dealing primarily with the Christological issue, that is, with the question of the significance of the Christ revelation, the agreements which were arrived at were promulgated as "dogmas." The word "dogma" was adapted from Roman imperial usage in which it meant imperial decree. It has achieved a hated connotation in the lexicon of modernity, for it connotes the arbitrary assertion of what can not be proved scientifically. As a matter of fact, it was intended to avoid the arbitrariness of private interpretation and to assure the "public" character of the truth in a realm of truth in which poetic and dramatic symbols of the truth did not allow for establishment of the kind of universal validity which modern science boasts and which the philosophers seek in vain.
In short, dogma, in the best sense, is the inevitable guard of truth in the realm of history and drama in which a religion of history and revelation moves, in contrast to the realm of structures which may be analyzed exactly and meticulously until unanimity of interpretation is reached.
Dogma at its best, represents the consensus of a covenant community which lives upon the basis of common convictions and commitments to a revelation of the truth which can not be accepted as true in the manner of philosophical and scientific truths, because the truth does not follow inevitably from the analysis of the processes of nature and history. We must consider presently the baneful effects of trying to enforce any such consensus upon a political community by political power.
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The Self and the Dramas of History by Reinhold Niebuhr
Part II: Two Components of Western Culture and Their Attitudes Toward the Self
One of the foremost philsophers and theologians of the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr was for many years a Professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York City. He is the author of many classics in their field, including The Nature and Destiny of Man, Moral Man and Immoral Society, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, and Discerning the Signs of Our Times. He was also the founding editor of the publication Christianity and Crisis. The Self and the Dramas of History, was published in 1955 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. This material prepared for Religion Online by Harry and Grace Adams.