H. Richard
Niebuhr’s Doctrine of Revelation
in the Context of
Contemporary Theology
by Robert M. Price
Richard Coleman, in his fascinating and helpful book Issues of
Theological Warfare: Evangelicals and Liberals, undertakes to
explain the theological position of each protagonist to the other. The
difficulty is obvious and did not go unnoticed by reviewers. It is the
pride of Evangelical theologians that one can fairly represent the
thought of their movement in systematic fashion. But does the
bewildering maelstrom of Liberal Protestant thought lend itself to such
pat schematization? Probably not, yet why is Coleman's thumbnail system
of Liberal theology so helpful?
We suggest that there are wide areas of
agreement, or trends, which from time to time enable us to characterize
Liberal theology as a whole. Or, to be more modest, there are at least
broad types of Liberal theologies; or, even more modestly still, there
are certain spectra in which the thought of a given Liberal theologian
can be placed.
The utility of such "placing" may be that it becomes
apparent where a thinker might have taken his theology, or where he
should have taken it in order to be consistent. We will ask such
questions with regard to H. Richard Niebuhr, narrowing our focus to
Niebuhr's doctrine of revelation. When we compare his theories with
those of conceptually kindred theologians who differ on this or that
point, we have the opportunity, as it were, to test Niebuhr's thought
with reference to a theological "control group." But on to the
discussion itself.
As is well known, Niebuhr's acquaintance with the thought of Ernst
Troeltsch made him attentive to the problem of historical relativism.
How can the observer standing in the midst of the shifting sands of
history claim any absolute or normative reference point? Here appears
our first question: According to Niebuhr, can revelation really tell us
about reality?
Niebuhr admits the gravity of the problem as well as the high stakes he
is gambling: “We are aware... that all our philosophical ideas,
religious dogmas and moral imperatives are historically conditioned and
this awareness tempts us to a new agnosticism.”1
This is a problem dealt with engagingly in Peter Berger's A Rumor of Angels. Berger suggests that all "signals of transcendence” in ordinary life be used to base a new theological reconstruction. Niebuhr dissents from this kind of solution. Such a course of action would be illusory since it could never start at ground zero as it pretends to do. Berger cannot help but use his traditionally-communally received religious notions to interpret such apparently neutral "signals." As Gordon Kaufman would say, Berger only has an idea of "transcendence” at all because he has received the concept from his religious tradition. Niebuhr proposes something different from an attempted escape from conditionedness:
This is a problem dealt with engagingly in Peter Berger's A Rumor of Angels. Berger suggests that all "signals of transcendence” in ordinary life be used to base a new theological reconstruction. Niebuhr dissents from this kind of solution. Such a course of action would be illusory since it could never start at ground zero as it pretends to do. Berger cannot help but use his traditionally-communally received religious notions to interpret such apparently neutral "signals." As Gordon Kaufman would say, Berger only has an idea of "transcendence” at all because he has received the concept from his religious tradition. Niebuhr proposes something different from an attempted escape from conditionedness:
It is not apparent that one who knows that his
concepts are not universal must also doubt that they are concepts of the
universal, or that one who understands how all his experience is
historically mediated must believe that nothing is mediated through
history.2
Thus it seems that for Niebuhr, revelation, though historically
mediated, can indeed tell us about reality. It may "see in a glass
darkly," but see it does.
Here Niebuhr is very close to Tillich with his concept of religious symbols. Symbols, the media of revelation, participate in the Ultimate (or Holy) to which they point, yet without being identical to or exhausting that reality. Or in Francis Schaefer’s terms, they give us "true truth" without being "exhaustive truth."
Here Niebuhr is very close to Tillich with his concept of religious symbols. Symbols, the media of revelation, participate in the Ultimate (or Holy) to which they point, yet without being identical to or exhausting that reality. Or in Francis Schaefer’s terms, they give us "true truth" without being "exhaustive truth."
But this does not give us the whole picture in Niebuhr. There are other
statements in his writings, particularly in the key text The Meaning
of Revelation, which sound much more consonant with an entirely
different theological perspective. Niebuhr wants above all things to be
fair. But one may wonder if he doesn't sometimes bend so far over
backwards as to fall. He begins by pointing out that Christian
assertions about reality are not exhaustive, even though sufficiently
true. He seems to go on to suggest that all assertions, no matter how
contradictory, at least might be equally valid. For instance,
The events of history to which Christian revelation
refers may be regarded from the scientific, objective, non-committed
point of view.... when this is done it is apparent that the scientist
has as little need for the hypothesis of divine action as Laplace had in
his astronomy. 3
Moreover it seems evident that the terms the
external historian employs are not more truly descriptive of the
things-in-themselves than those the [believer] uses and that the
former's understanding of what really happened is not more accurate than
the latter's. 4
The difference is one of perspective. It all depends 'on the
"imaginative” gestalt one uses to order the otherwise random data
of experience. And Niebuhr makes it clear that no finite knower can know
the "ultimate nature of the event.”5
Here he is close to Bultmann:
objectivity of historical knowledge is not
attainable in the sense of absolute ultimate knowledge, nor in the sense
that the phenomena could be known in their very "being in themselves"
which the historian could perceive in pure receptivity. This "being in
itself" is an illusion of an objectivising type of thinking.6
What we are suggesting is that certain statements
of Niebuhr tend to undermine his denial of agnostic relativism. In his
skepticism about knowing the "ultimate nature of the event," Niebuhr
almost approaches Paul Van Buren, a radical theologian on the fringe of
the "Death of God" movement. Van Buren speaks of the "dissolution of the
Absolute.” He adopts a radical "pluralism"
which denies that things are ultimately to be characterized in any one
fashion. All Christians know is that the story of Jesus has inexplicably
grasped them with its contagion of freedom. He writes:
“Meaning" is not some... shadowy element which lies
"in" history. "Meaning"... refers to the attitude of the viewer.... It
points to the way in which he sees history, to the discernment
and commitment arising out of his study of one piece of history which
influences the way in which he looks at the rest of history and also his
own life. Logically, to find "meaning in history" is to have a "blik."7
Before such questions as whether there is some
absolute being, even "Being itself,” [the Christian] will be wise to
remain silent. . . . What he has to tell is the story of Jesus and the
strange story of how his freedom became contagious on Easter.8
Van Buren has been quoted at some length so that
the reader may feel the impact of the similarity between Niebuhr’s
statements (and the outlook implied in them) and the essentially
agnostic and relativistic viewpoint of Van Buren, and all
this despite Niebuhr’s disavowal of “a new agnosticism.” It seems that
Niebuhr, to be consistent, should have, with Tillich, maintained an
anchoring (though not exhaustive) truth-claim in Reality. Or with
Van Buren, he should have gone the whole way to pluralistic, agnostic
relativism. We could be charitable and speak of a "tension" in
Niebuhr’s thought, but why equivocate? This seems like a confusing
contradiction.
Moving now to a second important facet of Niebuhr’s doctrine
of revelation, we must ask about the status of the “Thou” encountered
in revelation. Niebuhr plainly rejects the old notion of “propositional
revelation" for "personal revelation, or encounter” (It is this
preference, among other things, which has led commentators to place
Niebuhr in the “Neo-orthodox" camp of theologians. It will become
apparent that we question this piece of theological taxonomy.) Yet as
James W. Fowler inadvertently demonstrates, the “personality" of God is
one of the most elusive and ambiguous elements of Niebuhr's system (if
it can be called a system). In his study of Niebuhr's thought, we are
told how Niebuhr came increasingly to personalize his originally
abstract concept of God, yet we are left with equivocal expressions like
this: "we recognize that the Creator has something like personality.”9
The difficulty seems to be that Niebuhr defines God as
the (abstract) "principle of being itself,”10
yet he adds "The ultimate principle is not logical, not mechanical... it
is personal."11
Are not these two statements difficult to hold together? Niebuhr sets
himself the same task as does John A. T. Robinson when the latter
describes his "conviction that reality at its deepest is to be
interpreted not simply at the level of its impersonal, mathematical
regularities but in categories like love and trust, freedom,
responsibility, and purpose.”12
Accordingly, for Niebuhr one's act of faith (trust plus loyalty) in God
is one's affirmative acceptance of his own absolute dependence on the
One.
Thus far, Niebuhr's God-concept is remarkably
similar to Tillich's. Both would fit into what Gordon Kaufman calls the
"teleological" model of transcendence, where God as Being is conceived
as the unmoved mover. Though "personality" language may be used of such
a God, it is only in a severely qualified sense. That is, to use
Tillich's own distinction, God is here understood as the superpersonal
"ground of all personality." The "personal" qualities which so concern
Niebuhr (and Robinson) are rooted in the ultimate ontological reality;
e.g., "love" is grounded in the universal process of separation and
return. One's faith-response to this absolute dependence on, or
ontological participation in, Being is "the courage to be.” Yet Tillich
is forthright in his admission that such faith is in "the God beyond the
God of theism,” i.e., beyond (the image of) the personal God.
Niebuhr wants to take the personality of God
farther. He characterizes God as the structure of causation and
purposiveness. Intentionality is present in the historical context as a
whole. With this development Niebuhr moves into Kaufman's second model
of transcendence, the "interpersonal" model. Here personalistic
language, according to Kaufman, is more directly appropriate since in a
real sense we are talking about a "living" God who "acts" and who
reveals himself in a succession of revelatory events (though not
discontinuous, miraculously caused events). This factor of intentional
will makes the difference. Or does it?
Niebuhr seems to run into an enormously significant
problem here. God’s intentional will actually seems to make no
difference. It "dies the death of a thousand qualifications" since it is
essentially unverifiable.
Love to God is conviction that there is a
faithfulness at the heart of things: unity, reason, form and meaning in
the plurality of being. It is the accompanying will to maintain or
assert that unity, form and reason despite all appearances.13
What kind of "unity, reason, form and meaning" are compatible with any
apparent state of affairs, no matter how chaotic? If language means
anything, such words are surely meant to make a claim about the
discernable state of reality. Yet Niebuhr says they have really nothing
to do with discernable reality. To put the dilemma in slightly different
terms, let us consider another of Niebuhr’s statements: "This same
structure in things... ‘means intensely and means good' not the good
which we desire, but the good which we would desire if we were good and
really wise.”14
In other words, we can be confident that God's providential direction
of things will issue in what is good. Unfortunately, however, God’s
standards of “good” seem to have very little to do with ours! So, in the
long run, we can be confident of nothing except that things will turn
out as they turn out! Our standards of good give no indication of
how things will turn out, though at the beginning of the quote they
sounded like they could. Niebuhr's talk about “unity, form, reason,
meaning,” or "willing the good” is finally just bait on the hook of
theodicy. The all-important “intentionality” recedes from the arena of
meaningful discourse.
Incidentally, these observations would tend to
corroborate our earlier observation. That is, Niebuhr implies that
faith/revelation does not allow us definitely to characterize reality in
any way. Rather it gives us only a subjective “blik," in this case a
positive disposition toward whatever happens rather than an assurance
that something definite (definable) is happening, i.e., provident
direction toward a meaningfully; good end. It only seems to give such
assurance if one doesn't look too closely.
Niebuhr would have done well to stay (with Tillich)
within Kaufman's first, "teleological,” model of transcendence. This
model is quite adequate to Niebuhr's discussions in, e.g., Radical
Monotheism and Western Culture (“Radical Faith Incarnate and
Revealed in History") and The Responsible Self (“Responsibility
in Absolute Dependence"), where he speaks of one’s encounter with, or
responsibility toward, the One in whom we participate and meet in all
our finite relations. The idea seems to be that one’s relation to Being
may be characterized as “personal" because life is not a spectator
sport. Involvement in it is lived with the passion of subjectivity and
requires an I-Thou, not I-it, relationship. This might imply that the
“personal” applies, strictly speaking, more to the character of my
relating than to that to which I relate.
Our comparisons of H. Richard Niebuhr with other
contemporary theologians have attempted to clarify various threads of
his thought by placing them in a larger context. In so doing, we have
found reason to suggest that Niebuhr sometimes inadvertently tries to
combine incompatible notions and sometimes tends toward positions much
more radically liberal than one would at first think.
References
1 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1974), p. ix.
2
Ibid., p. 13.
3
Ibid., p. 41.
4
Ibid., p. 45.
5
Ibid., p. 61
6
Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology, The Presence of Eternity
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962), p. 121.
7
Paul Van Buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York:
Macmillan Company, 1966), pp. 112-113.
8
Ibid., p. 144.
9
H. Richard Niebuhr, quoted in James W. Fowler, To See the Kingdom,
the Theological Vision of H. Richard Niebuhr (New York: Abingdon
Press, 1974), p. 182.
10 H. Richard Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1970), p. 32.
11 Niebuhr, quoted in Fowler, p. 194.
12 John A. T. Robinson, Exploration into God (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1967), p. 29.
13 H. Richard Niebuhr, The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry
(New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), p. 37.
14 Niebuhr, quoted in Fowler, p. 80.
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