‘Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr’ by Victor Nuovo (2009)
Victor Nouvo (1931-2023) was my teacher, philosophical mentor and friend, and I continue hugely to miss his wise counsel three years after his death. Anyway, as I was looking for something this morning on an old hard-drive, I came across the following piece Victor wrote in 2009. Given that the mid-term elections are tomorrow, and that President Barack Obama has made a couple of powerful speeches in recent days, rightly challenging President Trump’s almost entirely amoral presidency, I thought there might be a few of my American readers who would value having sight of this piece written by Victor in 2009. I don’t know if the piece was published anywhere, but Victor kindly sent it to me at the time. I hope that, somehow, the kind of intelligence, moral seriousness and gravitas shown by both Niebuhr and Obama (and, indeed, my friend Victor), can somehow be returned to the American political and religious scene at some point in the not too distant future. Until then, I will continue to keep my American friends and colleagues in my thoughts and prayers, especially over the next couple of days and weeks . . .
Remembering Reinhold Niebuhr
This noteworthy revival of the thought of Professor Niebuhr has caught my attention, because I was once his student. I first discovered Niebuhr’s writings as a senior in college; I found them bold, exciting, and liberating; I wrote an undergraduate essay on his theory of history. The prospect of studying with Niebuhr led me to Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he taught for many years. Niebuhr was winding down his academic career; he had suffered a stroke, which impaired him physically; he no longer strode across the room lecturing, scorning a lectern, but sat behind a table; his speech was slurred slightly, and his voice subdued and gravelly. But his intellect was unimpaired; he lectured only from notes and directly addressed the audience holding us in his hawk-like gaze; his discourse was flowing. Union Theological Seminary seemed then to me, and to many others, to be the theological center of the world at a time when theology was fashionable; it had a remarkable international coterie of students and faculty; it was prosperous and well publicized in all the right circles, in large part through the efforts of its President, Henry Pitney Van Dusen, wellborn, well connected, a genuine aristocrat in looks and demeanor. But Reinhold Niebuhr was Union’s most distinguished personage. He gave it the luster of his glory, for he was not only a great teacher: he was the dean of political reformers in New York City, the intellectual guide to the progressive wing of the Democratic party; he was a world figure of great renown, perhaps greater outside of the church than within it, among tough-minded intellectuals. He made political theology popular in places where it would have otherwise been ignored.
Niebuhr styled his outlook on the world as Christian Realism. He accepted the biblical prophetical demands of justice and mercy as unequivocal and absolute, along with the prophetical insight that the human propensity for evil was deep seated and not easily overcome, least of all by sweet reason or idealistic sentiments, and that in some instances, when this evil tendency within burst forth in totalitarian violence and fanaticism, as it did during the years leading up to the Second World War, it had to be resisted resolutely by force, although not with an easy conscience. Niebuhr situated Jesus of Nazareth within this critical prophetical tradition.
According to Niebuhr, evil does not originate supernaturally; it originates repeatedly in human actions, small and large. Yet there is something inevitable about its regular re-occurrence that suggests an origin outside history, which is represented in the mythical narrative of the Fall; and the problems that this recurring evil pose require a transcendent resolution, represented in the myth of an ideal divine ruler, a messiah, who suffers a humiliating death for the world he would redeem.
Niebuhr locates the origin of human evil in the problematic character of human nature. ‘Man is a problem to himself’: his longest and most ambitious book, The Nature and Destiny of Man’, begins with this remark and proceeds with a lengthy exposition of it. The problem with human nature is that it is divided between two incompatible tendencies that lead in opposite directions. On the one hand, through our imaginations we are capable of infinitely transcending whatever situation we find ourselves in; on the other, we are mere creatures of nature, finite both in our intellectual and physical capacities. The conflict of these tendencies within us causes a deep anxiety. Our efforts to overcome this anxious state results in excessive behavior (hubris): uncontrolled sensuality or, what is worse, excessive pride in our ambitions; we become predators, revolutionary zealots, fanatical reformers, megalomaniacal tyrants infatuated by grand schemes of their world historical importance, greedy entrepreneurs. When evil of this sort occurs, it must be resolutely opposed. But Niebuhr did not think simplistically. Conceptually, good and evil may differ sharply, but practically, the effect on our actions given our divided nature, is to make all that we do morally ambiguous, not altogether good or evil, but a mixture of both. Our choice of what seems the best action never fully measures up to the ideal of justice. Accordingly, Niebuhr’s preferred attitude towards human ambitions and achievement is ironic, on the border of the cynical, but carefully controlled by principle. It requires a kind of genius to hold these conflicting motivations together; Niebuhr had it abundantly.
Another source of Niebuhr’s thinking is American Pragmatism, represented in the writings of William James. What he seems to have taken from Pragmatism is the belief that whatever be our considered opinions or judgments, whether theoretical, moral, or political, we should never suppose them to be final or definitive, for the horizons of absolute truth and justice are always beyond all that we can possibly do in any situation; all we can do is to aim in their direction; at the same time, we should be willing to act upon our best judgments with modest determination.
Niebuhr did not merely espouse these opinions. He turned them into a powerful and insightful instrument for social criticism; employing them with clarity, wit, and insight, he became one of the most profound interpreters of human events of his or any time. Here is an example from a brief essay, published in January 1938. It is about the failure of powerful and wealthy democratic nations, Great Britain, France, and the United States, to resist the aggression of Germany, Italy, and Japan; a failure that, Niebuhr was sure would tragically lead to another catastrophic war. “Why are the democratic nations so tragically committed to this dance of death? One answer is that the democratic nations are also the great capitalistic nations. Their economic power, which alone would be sufficient, if artfully applied, to stop the fascist ventures, is not wholly on the side of democracy, or even wholly on the side of the imperial interests of these nations. A social war happens to cross the international conflict.” The social war Niebuhr was referring to was between capitalism and socialism. In the end it was American industrial might, an alliance of capital and labor, spurred on by a patriotic spirit, that won the war. The ambiguities in this victory were not lost on Niebuhr.
As I read his writings once again and recall the man, I find that the power of his insight into human affairs remains undiminished; and, though I no longer find his theology persuasive, I recognize how well he used it. I am fortunate to have been his student. It is my opinion that Niebuhr was the greatest American political theologian since Lincoln; like Lincoln he was practical and pragmatic, not deeply speculative or not at all pious; his theological outlook gave him profound insight into the meaning of human events comparable to those expressed in Lincoln’s second inaugural, and of that high quality. It is a happy thought that the President of the United States might want to situate himself in the same tradition.
Victor Nuovo
Middlebury, VT
December 2009.
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