The New Man and Immoral Society -- By: Robert A. Pyne

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 154:615 (Jul 1997)
Article: The New Man and Immoral Society
Author: Robert A. Pyne


The New Man and Immoral Society

Robert A. Pyne

[Robert A. Pyne is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Ongoing social debates in America have rarely heard a distinctive voice from the church. From abolition and prohibition to the civil rights movement and abortion, conservative Christians have differed over policies, debated strategies, and demonstrated a wide range of intensity in their involvement. Most importantly, evangelicals have differed in their expectations regarding the nature and possibility of societal change.

Ironically some of the most profound differences between evangelicals concern their understanding of human nature and the relationship of the church to society. One might not have expected conservatives to be divided over issues that had earlier separated liberals and neoconservatives, but the political hopes of some evangelicals demonstrate an optimism that seems not to have learned the lessons of the twentieth century. This article reviews some of those lessons by considering the contribution of Reinhold Niebuhr, whose responses to liberalism in his day remain relevant to evangelicalism today.

Martin Marty called Reinhold Niebuhr this century’s “most influential native-born American theologian” because of the wide-ranging impact of his Christian realism.1 Formulated as a

response to modern liberalism’s optimistic outlook on human nature and societal change, Niebuhr’s emphasis on sin as individual and collective pride has provided a starting point for Christian social ethics for over sixty years.2

Though Niebuhr identified himself in one of his earliest books as a “tamed cynic,”3 and in spite of statements by former students that he was a “pessimistic optimist” (as opposed to an optimistic pessimist), Niebuhr has long been accused of being overly cynical in his expectations for society. He was probably very much on target, but his disdain for orthodox theology and his neglect of ecclesiology caused him to understate the uniqueness of the church and its place as a new community. He was largely correct in his understanding of group pride, but the New Testament often calls the church to be distinctive on precisely this point. This article explores that distinctiveness through the Pauline concept of the church as “the new humanity,” speaking especially to the relationship between different ethnic groups in the body of Christ and comparing the realities of society with biblical expectations for the church.

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