Reviews Of Books -- By: Anonymous
Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 05:2 (May 1943)
Article: Reviews Of Books
Author: Anonymous
WTJ 5:2 (May 1943) p. 197
Reviews Of Books
Reinhold Niebuhr: The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation. II — Human Destiny. Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1943. xiii, 329. $2.75.
As in the first volume of his Gifford Lectures Professor Niebuhr dealt primarily with human nature, so in the second he deals primarily with human destiny. The two together offer a comprehensive philosophy of history. This subject stands in the forefront of theological and philosophical discussion today. The mere mention of such works as The Interpretation of History by Paul Tillich, The Meaning of History by Nicolas Berdyaev, Time and Eternity in Christian Thought by F. H. Brabant and Philosophy & History, Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, is enough to indicate this fact. Generally speaking the recent works dealing with the philosophy of history presuppose a critical epistemology. Such is also the case with the work before us. More particularly it is Kierkegaard’s notion of the Individual, as having true particularity and true universality within itself, that has captivated Niebuhr’s mind. But Niebuhr is the slave of none. His work merits attention on its own account. In the American scene it presents a challenge to liberalism and orthodoxy alike.
Like so many modern works on the philosophy of history the present volume wants to make it very clear that it is anti-metaphysical. We are to have no truck with what Hegel called the alte Metaphysik. Once and for all we have done with the thing in itself. We simply deal with natural experience and its rational analysis (p. 96). There may, and even must, be that which is beyond human experience, but a beyond that is self-contained would be irrelevant to us. The only God we can allow for is one that stands in dialectical relationship to us. Applied to the general idea of history this means what Niebuhr says in such passages as the following: “The significance of the affirmation that God is revealed in Christ, and more particularly in his Cross, is that the love (agape) of God is conceived in terms which make the divine involvement in history a consequence of precisely the divine transcendence over the structures of history” (p. 71). It is only this sort of God that answers to the true idea of man. Each man is an individual. As such he is both involved in and transcendent over the
WTJ 5:2 (May 1943) p. 198
historical process (p. 36). “Man is, and yet is not, involved in the flux of nature and time. He is a creature, subject to nature’s necessities and limitations; but he is also a free spirit who knows of the brevity of his years and by this knowledge transcends the temporal by some capacity within himself” (p. 1). A God wholly above history, one not ...
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