Modern culture is compounded of the genuine achievements of science and the peculiar ethos of a commercial civilization. It is consequently more prone to a premature disavowal of the characteristic concepts and the moral and religious tension of. Both liberalism and Marxism are secularized and naturalized versions of the Hebrew prophetic movement and the Christian religion.
In the myth of the fall, the origin of sin is not made identical with the genesis of life.
Interpretation of Christian Ethics by Reinhold Niebuhr
The Ethic of Jesus
The universalistic element appears in the injunctions which require that the life of the neighbor be affirmed. Most of the promises of reward in the teachings of Jesus are clearly in this category of ultimate rewards. It is merely a consistent part of the entire emphasis upon absolute purity of motive in the total system of thought.
With Augustine we must realize that the peace of the world is gained by strife.
The Christian Conception of Sin
The genius of prophetic Christianity's analysis of the facts of evil and sin are to be found in the myth of the Fall. The particular virtue of the myth of the Fall is that it does justice to the paradoxical relation of spirit and nature in human evil. In the religious thought which flows from its interpretation reason and consciousness are not the unqualified instruments of good and the manifestations of the divine.
According to the myth of the Fall, evil came into the world through human responsibility. The serpent, symbol of the principle of evil, in the story of the Fall does justice to the idea that human rebellion is not the first cause and source of evil in the world. The most ideal aspirations of the human spirit always contain an alloy of idealizing pretensions.
In the myth of the Fall God is pictured as a jealous God who seeks to withhold the fruit of the tree of knowledge from man. The very crux of the spiritual problem of man is broadly suggested in this myth. Thus the myth of creation is constructed into an actual history of origins when it is really a description of the quality of existence.
The myth of the Fall is made into an account of the origin of evil, when it is really a description of its nature. It is this latter type of evil which is sin in the strictest sense of the word.
The Relevance of an Impossible Ethical Ideal
The other tries to prove the relevance of the religious ideal to the problems of everyday. In spite of the relativity of morals every conceivable moral code and every philosophy of. But the principle of equality does not exhaust the possibilities of the moral ideal involved in even the most minimal standards of justice.
Moral obligation is to this divine unity; and therefore it is more able to defy the anarchies of the world. Moral idealism in terms of the presuppositions of a particular class is also natural and inevitable; but it is the basis of tyranny and hypocrisy. Wars are the consequence of the moral attitudes not only of unrighteous but of righteous nations (righteous in the sense that they defend their interests no more than is permitted by all the moral codes of history).
Christ is thus the revelation of the very impossible possibility which the Sermon on the Mount elaborates in ethical terms. In either case the total human situation which the mythos of the Christ and the Cross illumines, is obscured. The relation of the Christ of Christian faith to the Jesus of history cannot be discussed within.
It is probably true that the combination of the finiteness of reason and the dishonesty of the human heart expresses itself with peculiarly demonic force in the class conflicts of modern civilization. They stand under the criterion of the simplest of all moral principles, that of equal justice.
The Law of Love in Politics and Economics
In the one case the fact of the "sinfulness of the world" was used as an excuse for the complacent. This is indeed a proper function of the law of love in any religion which appreciates the transcendent character of the ultimate ideal. The theory of the natural law is thus the instrument by which the orthodox Church adjusted itself to the world after the hope.
Thus one of the Nazi theologians writes: "If blood deteriorates, then spirit is also destroyed. It must be admitted that the Lutheran doctrine of the Schoepfungsordnung is not a valueless concept. It is a symbol of the religio-mythical understanding for the organic aspects of life which rationalistic morality frequently fails to appreciate.
Thus the pessimistic note derived from the emphasis upon the sinfulness of the world unduly accentuates the possibilities of anarchy, which. It may be that the political principles of the former are, at least partially, derived from the latter. Fortunately, the conflict of the Church with the empire qualified the Catholic emphasis upon the divine right of kings, imparting.
But all these weaknesses and errors cannot detract from the achievements of the Age of Reason. Historic Christianity is in the position of having the materials for the foundation and the roof of the structure of an adequate morality.
The Law of Love in Politics (continued)
Yet it was wrong in the optimism which assumed that the law of love needed only to be stated persuasively to overcome the selfishness of the human heart. The most perfect swan song of liberal politics has just been written by one of the greatest. The social theories of liberal Christianity deny, in effect, the physical basis of the life of the spirit.
If Christians are to live by the "way of the Cross" they ought to practice nonresistance. The principal defect of the liberal Christian thought on the question of violence is that it. But this cannot be done successfully if absolutistic motifs are erroneously mixed with a pragmatic analysis of the political problem.
This peril of fascism is increased by the unqualified character of the radical cynicism toward democratic institutions. It will emerge perennially in human history and be solved according to the requirements, pressures, convictions, and illusions of the hour. Fear of the overt destruction of life may lead to the perpetuation of social policies through which human life is constantly destroyed and degraded.
How shall one gauge the security of the moment against an insecure but promising future. For the Christian the love commandment must be made relevant to the relativities of the social struggle, even to hazardous and dubious relativities.
Love as a Possibility for the Individual
The ultimate reach of the ideal into the realm of the impossible does not, however, restrict the possibilities. Laws are not automatically obeyed, whether the laws of the state or the higher law of reason. Reason supplies the direction and the natural power of life-as-impulse insures the movement in the direction of the rationally projected goal.
Faith in God means faith in the transcendent unity of essence and existence, of the ideal and the real world. It is thus a fulfillment of the law; for in perfect love all law is transcended and what is and what ought to be are one. The element of love of God as a motive of social love is consonant with the fact that the attraction of the good is.
The Christian doctrine of love is thus the most adequate metaphysical and psychological framework for the approximation of the ideal of love in human life. Furthermore, a strong devotion to a cause absorbs the individual in the cause so that the entire socio-spiritual impetus of the. It is not only wanting in perfect goodness, but there is something of the perversity of evil in it.
His life is seen under the aura of the divine and he participates in the glory, dignity and beauty of existence. The moral effectiveness of the religious life thus depends upon deeper resources than moral demands upon the will.
Love as Forgiveness
This proposal is a striking example of the faith of modern rationalism in the ability of reason to transcend the partial perspectives of the natural world in which reason is rooted. Perhaps it may be found among a small group of intellectuals whose intellectual idealism is rooted in the comparative neutrality and security of the intellectual life. If any one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the righteous.
This tradition probably betrays an unconscious effort to avoid self-accusation on the part of the good people in the Christian Church through all the ages. Yet it is possible to deal with the criminal in terms of this realization and to qualify the spiritual pride of the usually self-righteous guardians of public morals. In the same way is it possible to engage in social struggles with a religious reservation in which lie the roots of the spirit of forgiveness.
Protestant theory does not give the historic and concrete institution the same aura of the Absolute. The very rise of prophetic religion is to be found in the criticism by the eighth- century Hebrew prophets of the absolute religious claims made by their race and nation. Yet the humanism of the Middle Ages was an exceedingly important seed corn for all that was good in the history of Western culture.
At some time or other the waters of the flood will recede and the ark will land. Nothing short of the knowledge of the true God will save them from the impiety of making themselves God and the cruelty of seeing their fellow men as devils because they are involved in the same pretension.
