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    The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr
    The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr
    The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr
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    The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr

    By Kenneth Morris Hamilton

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    Humanity and Its Faith: The Apprehension of Total Reality

    Kenneth Hamilton

    In this chapter, Hamilton identifies the manner in which religious faith for Niebuhr answers a specific question that arises out of Niebuhr’s overall concern with the nature of humanity.  Humans, to Niebuhr, are essentially spiritual beings and this is evident in the dogged existence of a reality which is, according to Niebuhr, truly apprehensible to the spiritual dimension of humankind.  This reality then becomes the foundational principle to which all other principles, including the biblical kerygma, must conform.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilfrid Laurier University Press
    Release dateSep 3, 2013
    ISBN9781554583324
    The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr
    Author

    Kenneth Morris Hamilton

    Kenneth Hamilton arrived in Canada from England in 1951 and served as a minister in Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, for seven years. In 1958 he joined the teaching staff of United College (later the University of Winnipeg) in the Faculty of Theology, where his career spanned three decades. Kenneth Hamilton was the author of over thirty published books and numerous essays on philosophy, theology, ethics, and literature.

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      The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr - Kenneth Morris Hamilton

      The Doctrine of

      Humanity in the Theology of

      Reinhold Niebuhr

      Editions SR / Éditions SR

      Editions SR / Éditions SR is a general series of books in the study of religion, encompassing the fields of study of the constituent societies of the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion / Corporation canadienne des sciences religieuses. These societies are: Canadian Society of Biblical Studies / Société canadienne des études bibliques; Canadian Society of Church Historic Studies / Association canadienne des études des patristiques; Canadian Society for Study of Religion / Société canadienne pour l’étude de la religion.

      General Editor

      Aaron Hughes

      The Doctrine of Humanity in the Theology of

      Reinhold Niebuhr

      Kenneth Morris Hamilton

      Jane Barter Moulaison, editor

      This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Hamilton, Kenneth

      The doctrine of humanity in the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr / Kenneth Morris Hamilton and Jane Barter Moulaison, editor.

      (Editions SR series)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Issued also in electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-1-55458-628-8

      1. Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1892–1971. 2. Theological anthropology—Christianity—History of doctrines–20th century. I. Barter Moulaison, Jane, 1969– II. Title. III. Series: Editions SR

      BX4827.N5H36 2013           230.092             C2012-907170-6

      ———

      Electronic monographs.

      Issued also in print format.

      ISBN 978-1-55458-644-8 (PDF)—ISBN 978-1-55458-332-4 (EPUB)

      1. Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1892—1971. 2. Theological anthropology—Christianity—History of doctrines—20th century. I. Barter Moulaison, Jane, 1969– II. Title. III. Series: Editions SR (Online)

      BX4827.N5H36                  2013 230.092        C2012-907171-4

      Cover design by Blakeley Words+Pictures. Text design by James Leahy. Front-cover image: Ode to Niebuhr (detail), by Harry A. Rich; acrylic on canvas, 50˝ × 50˝. Artist’s comment: Using the Bible as his touchstone, Niebuhr attempted to understand how and why, within the bounds of human nature, evil, violence, and suffering co-exist with love, community, peace, faith, grace, and transcendence. This painting attempts to present Niebuhr’s quest/struggle to explain this conflict.

      © 2013 Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

      www.wlupress.wlu.ca

      This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.

      Printed in Canada

      Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

      Contents

      Preface

      Acknowledgements

      Abbreviations

      Editor’s Introduction

      Part One: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Doctrine of Humanity: An Investigation

      1 Niebuhr as a Theologian and His Relation to Theological Tradition

      2 Niebuhr’s General Theological Method

      3 Human Nature: Self-Transcendence

      4 Human Nature: Sin

      5 Human Nature and the Norm of Love

      6 Humanity and the Problem of History

      7 Humanity and Its Faith: The Apprehension of Total Reality

      Part Two: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian Anthropology in Its Context

      8 Away from Nineteenth-Century Religion

      9 Christian Realism

      10 Neo-Supernaturalsim

      11 The Christian Interpretation of the Human Situation

      Conclusion

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Index

      Preface

      The number of books and shorter studies interpreting Reinhold Niebuhr’s thinking is already large and continues to grow, so that the need for an additional work in this area may not seem obvious. Nevertheless, there are at least four reasons why the present study is by no means redundant and has, therefore been undertaken.

      The first is the challenge of Niebuhr’s teaching as a creative force in our age. Every great person lays upon his contemporaries and later generations the necessity of understanding him, and so does Niebuhr. And, if there is safety in a multitude of counsellors (Proverbs 11:14, 24:6), there is also increased likelihood of genuine understanding after an author’s works have been subjected to critical analysis from many different viewpoints. What merits interpretation in the first place begins a process that can never be halted by the plea that enough has been said already.

      The second is that, to date, a considerable part of the literature concerning Niebuhr has displayed all too little critical rigour. Niebuhr’s wide influence has made him the focus of both enthusiastic praise and carping denigration. This response is inevitable in connection with any thinker still alive, and it is particularly obvious in connection with one who is involved in contemporary affairs as deeply as Niebuhr has always been, and whose work has been so consistently polemical. There is still room, among the voices either celebrating Niebuhr’s achievements or deploring them, for questioning the basis of his teaching and probing into the principles underlying his practice. The present study seeks above all to be critical, in the sense of trying to estimate the validity of what it reviews instead of merely adding to the chorus of praise or blame. It attempts to cut through certain current stereotyped versions of Niebuhr’s teaching in order to separate his actual ideas from the labelled and packaged versions of these, which sometimes pass for the original product.

      The third reason for this investigation is that, while there has been much excellent critical work done in connection with Niebuhr’s thought, a large percentage is less than comprehensive. Either it is specialized, examining one particular aspect of Niebuhr’s teaching, or, though concerned with his teaching as a whole, it was written at too early a date to present a complete picture.¹ One of the chief aims of this thesis is to draw together themes treated by previous critics and attempt to bring the insights of these critics into some kind of synthesis.

      The fourth reason is that the specific topic to be investigated is the one least adequately covered in all that has been written about Niebuhr. What Niebuhr says about the nature of humanity is so clearly at the centre of his thought that it is impossible to ignore. Yet many commentators and critics are content to begin from this point rather than with it. Accepting his doctrine of humanity (or rejecting it), they turn away to make their judgments about his work in this area or in that. In view of the bulk of critical writing on Niebuhr now available, it is remarkable how little systematic study has been made of this fundamental aspect of his thought.

      Regarding the form of this investigation, it divides naturally into two parts. Part 1 considers Niebuhr’s anthropology as part of his total theological teaching. Since his largest and most important work is on the subject of human nature viewed in a Christian perspective, much of the argument here is centred on a critical examination of that work. Part 2 is devoted to a survey of the personal factors and the external influences that have made Niebuhr’s anthropological teaching what it is and given it such importance in the intellectual life of this century. The formal division of the thesis reflects my conclusions concerning the nature of Niebuhr’s thought, in which (so I contend) theoretical and practical concerns both play their part while remaining imperfectly reconciled. Niebuhr is at one and the same time consistent and inconsistent, a theorist and an anti-theorist. Thus, his thinking is decidedly elusive. Yet, by approaching it at two different levels—one predominately abstract and the other concretely based in history—I believe that I have been able to discover something of its distinctive character where it reveals itself most fully: in its presentation of humanity.

      Much of Niebuhr’s writing has been for periodicals. His short essays and articles, often written to serve the interests of the moment, provide a rich mine of information for those concerned with his contribution to political, sociological, economic, and ethical thought and to the ongoing life of the Christian churches. But, because my purpose is to trace the more permanent elements in his theological teaching, I have concentrated on his publications in book form. With a few notable exceptions, I have not loaded these pages with references to writings outside these limits. Niebuhr’s co-authored book, written in collaboration with Alan Heimert, A Nation So Conceived: Reflections on the History of America from Its Early Visions to Its Present Power (New York: Scribner’s, 1963) also falls outside the scope of this work.

      Kenneth Hamilton

      Acknowledgements

      This book had a lengthy gestation. Its birth, to me, is nothing short of a miracle. I want, therefore, to thank its many midwives, coaches, and cheerers-on. First, thanks must go to my research assistants: Katie Schewe and Kristian Klippenstein. Katie was heroic as she ably transported a faded and lengthy typewritten thesis into the twenty-first century. Kristian has developed into a master indexer. I thank him again for his reliability and precision. Thanks are also due to my young cousin Kyle Stewart, who ably assisted me with several last-minute details in the preparation of this manuscript. The University of Winnipeg offered financial support to me and in honour of a beloved colleague. Wilfrid Laurier University Press was wonderful and surprising in believing that this book deserved to see the light of day. I thank Kate Merriman, whose copy-editing work was judicious, painstaking, but, most of all, theologically astute. Kenneth’s family was gracious and kind in permitting me to come to know and appreciate Kenneth the man, even after he was gone. But above all, I would like to acknowledge Kenneth Hamilton: theologian, pastor, teacher, and faithful servant. I am blessed to have met him and to have accompanied his words’ delivery.

      This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

      Abbreviations

      Books by Reinhold Niebuhr

      Selections from Niebuhr’s Shorter Writings

      Editor’s Introduction

      It was an unlikely meeting. I had been told that Kenneth Hamilton had become a recluse, barely making the usual rounds of school and church, gallery and concert hall—those usual haunts where clergy and academics tend to gather. It was 2007 and he was almost ninety; he deserved the rest, I thought, and contented myself with asking his former students—now retirees themselves—about the man who once held the job that I currently hold. But then, in the course of doing research for a paper on Reinhold Niebuhr,¹ I came across Hamilton’s dissertation. It was remarkably robust, and as I began to read it, I came to see that it was no ordinary thesis. I did not remember a book by Hamilton on Niebuhr, although I had quickly become familiar with his work since coming to Winnipeg in 2005. After further research, I got up the nerve to give Kenneth Hamilton a call. Contrary to the rumours, Kenneth Hamilton was engaged and engaging. I drove him to his favourite lunch place and there I nervously inquired after his 1965 project.

      Kenneth explained why this thesis never saw the light of day. He was already a full-time professor at United College (now the University of Winnipeg), and already an accomplished author. The thesis had become to him a hurdle that needed to be jumped in order to gain his doctorate of theology. As he describes it in his (unpublished) memoir of his time in Toronto,

      Altogether, my periods of stay in Toronto were enriching ones. I came to love simply walking around the campus or else exploring the city centre. Then there was the advantage of having the resources of the various college libraries so readily available. Besides, I was at this time beginning to enjoy the heady feeling of knowing that I could write with fair ease and actually have a good chance of having my efforts published. My second book (the one on Paul Tillich) was to come out round about the time when my second period in Toronto was to end. When I showed the proof-sheets to the Principal of Emmanuel, A.B. Moore, he said that such a published book could always be accepted in place of a dissertation.² … I wanted to go on with the topic I had chosen, however, and the result was that it took me another four years to complete my thesis and gain the Th.D. degree.

      I learned more about his time at Emmanuel in conversation over lunch, and was surprised by the several parallels in our academic and ecclesial journeys. I had also studied at Emmanuel, and like him, I earned my first theological degree at Pine Hill Divinity School (which was part of the Atlantic School of Theology by the time I studied there in the 1990s). We also shared the experience of working with our spouses at the University of Winnipeg, a university of which we were both duly proud. Our spouses were professors of literature there—mine French, his English. Like Hamilton, I left the United Church to be among the Anglicans, although I suspect for different reasons, and I do not believe that he ever formally left the United Church. But the current differences in energy for academic work and enthusiasm for academic engagement were stark: Hamilton graciously agreed to let me seek a publisher, but he was not interested in collaborating with me. This kind of work was of an earlier season of his life, a season that he had cherished but had, I believe, resolutely left behind, perhaps with some relief.

      Kenneth Hamilton finished the dissertation in 1965, but other projects soon attracted his interest. In addition to over seventy articles, he published several significant books in the period between the awarding of the doctorate and his retirement from the University of Winnipeg in 1982. These include Revolt against Heaven (1965); God Is Dead (1966); What’s New in Religion (1968); Life in One’s Stride (1968); and To Turn from Idols (1973). In 1966 he was asked by the CBC to write a radio script on the various visions of existence found in modern literature. This was broadcast with the title The Human Condition. Eerdmans published it the next year as In Search of Contemporary Man. He also wrote books with his wife, the late Alice Hamilton, an English professor at the University of Winnipeg. These include John Updike: A Critical Essay (1967), which was followed by The Elements of John Updike (1970).

      Kenneth Hamilton died in the summer of 2009. By that time, we knew that this book was moving toward publication. I was told by his family that he was pleased by this. When I visited him in the hospital after his stroke, just days before his death, I was surprised again by his eloquence and his lucidity. He spoke of how grateful he was for the many, many blessings that he had experienced in his life. In particular, he spoke of his family, his late wife, Alice, and his widow, Birdie. Even in his dying he was a teacher, and he showed how a Christian could face death with gratitude and grace.

      Why this book? What would a piece of writing that is almost fifty years old have to offer scholars and practitioners of theology today? Although Niebuhr’s influence may have peaked in the mid-twentieth century, enthusiasm for his approach to religion and politics has never disappeared entirely from the North American political scene. Most recently, a renaissance of interest in his writings was inspired when President Barack Obama named Reinhold Niebuhr as, alternately, his favorite philosopher³ and his favorite theologian.⁴ As Obama said in an interview, when asked to expound on Niebuhr’s influence on him, I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away … the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.⁵

      That the president of the United States finds in Niebuhr a resource should be of no small surprise to us given the growing opposition among progressives to religion in the public sphere. Yet Obama is not alone in invoking Niebuhr as an ally in his political struggles. Politicians and theorists from a variety of positions—both liberal and conservative—have looked to him for guidance on contemporary questions in American politics. Those critical of American imperialism find in Niebuhr a prophet crying out against the global superpower. As Richard Crouter points out, much of the Niebuhr revival coincided with George W. Bush’s presidency.⁶ In particular, appropriations of Niebuhr by such writers as Gary Dorrien, Chalmers Johnson, and Andrew J. Bacevich represent a hearkening to Niebuhr’s stern warnings against America’s unwitting, thus ironic, drive toward imperialism.⁷ Such retrieval of Niebuhr is particularly interested in his analysis of the moral character (and deficit) of the United States as described in The Irony of American History.⁸ In Irony Niebuhr reveals American exceptionalism to be a pernicious myth. Although America understood its role historically in covenantal terms, America consistently failed to understand this role with sufficient humility, and thus its identity—one that sets out to be a light to the nations, but one that simultaneously misinterprets its mission in hubristic ways—takes on a tragic cast.

      On the other hand, many political conservatives have invoked Niebuhr because of his political realism. To them, Niebuhr represents an honest assessment of the nature of political conflict and provides the most practical guide to dealing with the burden of American power in a violent world.⁹

      Perhaps the confusion over Niebuhr’s political legacy is due to the fact that the political analyst today soon discovers that there is no easy translation of Niebuhr’s agenda to our own. His time, his idiom, and his culture, although temporally proximate, are separated from us by the great chasm of secularism. Niebuhr was perhaps the last theologian who would exercise an influence of any gravity over the politics of America. Theologians today no longer have the cultural credibility that would land them on the cover of Time magazine or qualify them as recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964) or, for that matter, garner much interest from politicians and political theorists whatsoever. And so, whatever interpretation the president of the United States made of his theological and philosophical hero, it would likely have been of the kind that would be compatible with the imperatives of secularism. For Obama, as well as for the increasing number of political theorists who draw on Niebuhr to articulate political theory, Niebuhr’s writing will need to be divested of his Christian commitments if he is to be allowed to have a prophetic role in North American politics today. Indeed, throughout his references to Niebuhr, Obama is explicit only about the political implications of his theology: Niebuhr’s theology itself is nowhere explicitly addressed. In this respect, President Obama shares a good deal with many other political theorists¹⁰ who pass over Niebuhr’s theology in silence in favour of his seemingly more relevant prognostications.

      In a sense, it is natural for Obama and other political analysts to sidestep Niebuhr’s theology. After all, Niebuhr himself protested that he was not a theologian.¹¹ The claim that his work is more properly described as that of a social ethicist perhaps makes the tendency to read him as a secular theorist understandable. And yet, it is precisely here—in Niebuhr’s theological disclaimer—that Hamilton’s work proves so important. Hamilton shows how, in spite of his objections to the contrary, Niebuhr makes normative theological claims. Those claims tend to revolve around what is for Niebuhr the perennial biblical theme: the nature and destiny of humankind. While one might glean a sense of what the humanum consists in through sheer observation, it is, in fact, the biblical view of humanity that is necessary to shatter our illusions of self-mastery and progress. As Niebuhr put it, Only within terms of the Christian faith can man not only understand the reality of evil in himself but escape the error of attributing that evil to anyone but himself.¹² So, while Niebuhr demurs from being called a theologian, he is, in fact, thoroughly concerned with the theological theme of anthropology, or the doctrine of humanity. Niebuhr will reflect on the humanum from several different vantages, and indeed, it is this task—gaining a full sense of the nature and destiny of humankind—that is Niebuhr’s consistent focus throughout the various stages of his writing, as Hamilton argues here. It is not in thinking about Niebuhr’s anthropology that his reader is rewarded, but, as Hamilton puts it, in thinking with it—allowing his anthropology to become a first principle in our reflections on political life so that we come to see him as one who reads the world, and particularly the public square, as penetrated and permeated by this fundamental theological truth. To think with Niebuhr on the nature and destiny of humanity is also to see with him the scope and the limit of politics.

      In this sense, Niebuhr stands in a long line of political thinkers who reason that, prior to making a case for a particular form of government, one first has to assess the nature and the capacities of humanity for rational self-governance. Thus Thomas Hobbes begins his landmark work, Leviathan, by way of anthropology. Fundamental to Hobbes’s social contract is humanity’s wretchedness within a state of nature, and thus Part 1 of the Leviathan concerns itself with human nature and its capacity before going on to construct a theory of the commonwealth. Yet Hobbes himself concedes to the unscientific and even theological nature of thought that demands self-knowledge and sound doctrine:¹³ He that is to govern a whole nation must read in himself, not this or that particular man, but mankind, which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any language or science; yet when I shall have set down my own reading properly and perspicuously, the pains left another will be only to consider if he also finds not the same in himself. For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration.¹⁴ In other words, the task of the political theorist/politician is to make generalizations based on experience that, though not empirically verifiable, can be validated by its resonance with the experience of others.

      In a way, Niebuhr’s theological method amounts to the same: it is to extrapolate from one’s experience and one’s observations of human history certain fundamental truths about humankind that limit the range of political possibilities and promote the modest possibilities of human freedom. Given the general nature of this kind of reflection, it is not surprising that Niebuhr is invoked by political thinkers of virtually every stripe. Hence, the correlation of one’s own intuition of the self and its capacities is dependent on its resonance with others—its capacity to speak to them. Niebuhr’s biblical method is similar. The biblical witness is to be trusted for its accurate and realistic depiction of humankind. As Hamilton explains, thinking with Niebuhr’s anthropology means subjecting biblical claims to a prior experience, one that is universally apprehensible: "In other words, the kerygmatic motif is subordinated to the ontological."¹⁵ While such a manoeuvre might be displeasing to the theologian, it also creates a political challenge for the would-be prophet, for how [is] prophetic religion … to show the relevance of the Christian law of love to effective political strategy?¹⁶ Prophetic religion may clarify prior assumptions; it may even bring them to greater articulation, but it cannot, in the end, prophesy against them. Or, as Stanley Hauerwas puts it, theology was tested—or, to use his language, validated by its ability to provide a provocative account of the human condition.¹⁷ The hermeneutical circle from the human condition to the text and back to its original subject matter is a closed and self-reinforcing one.

      Niebuhr’s break with his earlier theology involved not so much a change in theological method as a revision of his previously held optimism about the human condition and its capacity to effect lasting change in society. This realistic assessment of the human condition became the foundation for what would later be known as Niebuhr’s Christian realism. Christian realism strove against the naïveté of men of good will whose efforts to apply spiritual ideals to common life gave rise to a faulty (and potentially dangerous) optimism about human capacity to effect lasting and comprehensive change in the public sphere. Although the definition of realism is a decidedly slippery one, in Niebuhr’s hands it primarily denotes the disposition to take all factors in a social and a political situation, which offer resistance to established norms, into account, particularly the factors of self-interest and power.¹⁸ Niebuhr eschews an idealism that could be said to adhere to loyalty to moral norms and ideals, rather than to self-interest, whether individual or collective¹⁹ as fraught with self-deception and instability.

      Both here and throughout his writings, Niebuhr is unconcerned with what he terms the rationalistic account of realism, the underpinnings of which might be found in an epistemological (in modern philosophy) or metaphysical (in classical theology and philosophy) account of how the judgments that we render in our moral, social, and linguistic representations correlate to an objective reality. Niebuhr’s concern with the pragmatic and the political spurred him to at least defer such questions in his appropriation of the term. For him, realism was rooted in political and historical existence: we must have a realistic sense of the limited capacity of sinful humanity to transcend self-interest.

      In this book, Hamilton exposes a host of problems that accompany Niebuhr’s characteristic treatment of realism. First, it takes as self-evident what is already a rather complex set of assumptions about human action and history: Niebuhr’s assessment of the human condition as consisting of both our tragically limited capacities and our eternal aspirations has, as Hamilton displays, the makings of a proto-ontology. It is a proto-ontology because, unlike Tillich, the foundations of Niebuhr’s system are never fully and systematically worked out. It is ontology because, for Niebuhr, the very structure of human capacities is fixed and universal.

      Hamilton’s claim here may well be challenged by some of Niebuhr’s prominent defenders. In particular, Robin Lovin celebrates Niebuhr’s capacity to defy the stultifying logic of theological systems by emphasizing the contradictory and the complex vicissitudes of history. It is this kind of realism—a realism that is based on bald historical fact—that makes Niebuhr’s theology so compelling. According to Lovin,

      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 initially measure their success 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 paradoxical, 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. 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 tensions and conflicts of human experience resolved. The most coherent theological statement, that is to say, will be the one that includes an element of incoherence.²⁰

      Yet, as Hamilton shows, even with this element of incoherence, there remains a dogged coherence in the long and tragic march of history that human efforts cannot correct. This realistic assessment of human nature, as grounded in history, takes on the tenor of inevitability as Niebuhr prognosticates that efforts to apply the gospel, the law of love, to society are doomed to failure. Thus, for Niebuhr, the prophetic can involve only a resolute grasp of this reality and a firm will to resist attempts to create heaven on earth. There is no constructive dimension of the prophetic—it is merely critical; it is merely lament. As Hamilton argues in this book, Niebuhr’s project will issue in a complex and sustained understanding of the necessity of political compromises within this world, compromises that the Christian

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