136 - Faith and Ethics; The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr

Faith and Ethics; The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr
Edited by Paul Ramsey
356 pp. New York, Harper 8c Brothers, 1957. $5.00.

Theology for H. Richard Niebuhr (one learns quickly from this volume) is a never-ending and many-sided series of dialogues. One might say that the main theme of Mr. Niebuhr's part of the dialogue, the "radical monotheism" that is often referred to in these pages, is taken right up into theological method and style itself. It radically counters any inclination to proceed in such a way as to imply that theological reflection is ever complete, that some men have faith and others do not, or that a theology should be one of the gods we worship in our polytheism; it implies a "relativism" that shows forth even in the act of theological reflection itself.

What Hans Frei says of Mr. Niebuhr's book The Meaning of Revelation-that he keeps the reader in an actual intellectual motion reduplicating that of the book-could be said of his whole work, most especially including his teaching. lie is therefore not only the theologian's theologian but the teacher's teacher, able uniquely not just to describe or demonstrate, but to induce the student to engage in, something of theological reflection in which he himself is engaging. Some of the students don't stop.

This Festschrift, in its variety and its tone, reflects in part this genius of the man it honors. After a pleasantly anecdotal appreciation of Dr. Niebuhr by Dean Liston Pope, the book proceeds to nine diverse pieces of theological and ethical writing-some directly concerned with Dr. Niebuhr, some written in his spirit-that carry on the various dialogues.

Some of the essays plainly work within a framework provided by Dr. Niebuhr. Waldo Beach of Duke, applying Niebuhr's theological ethics to race relations while maintaining also a dialogue with sociology, may not achieve the "unique, effortless interweaving of theological and sociological analyses" that Hans Frei notes as one of Dr. Niebuhr's characteristics, but he does carry through discussion of this one area of social ethics with a new theological thoroughness, especially interesting in its comment on the relative emphasis placed on will and environment in shaping and changing racial patterns. Robert Michaelson of Iowa writes a constructive statement of American church history drawn from Niebuhr's theme of the Kingdom of God in America, bringing it down to the present situation and the future task. James Gustafson draws upon the critical ethical spirit of Dr. Niebuhr to suggest lines forward toward a nonlegalistic, contextual Christian social ethic.

Other essays go off more independently in other directions. Julian

137 - Faith and Ethics; The Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr

Hartt of Yale engages in a thorough-going ontological analysis of the situation of the believer, to show that the individual has an essential reality not exhaustively constituted by his relations. Carl Michalson of Drew contributes a lively and evocative essay explaining the importance of the hiddenness of God (He is ex officio hidden).

Dr. Niebuhr, as editor Paul Ramsey of Princeton University says in the Foreword, rejoices in the otherness of the other viewpoint; perhaps, in that sense, the volume does not give him too much chance to rejoice. But Mr. Ramsey himself, and George Schrader of Yale, do disagree with him directly on points in his ethical theory. Mr. Ramsey, after a helpful and succinct summary of the interrelated themes of Niebuhr's conversionist ethics, then argues that that ethic need not imply "relativism" that Niebuhr sometimes endorses. Mr. Schrader's essay, a vigorous philosophical examination of the relational theory of value, finds Dr. Niebuhr too much inclined to regard all value as instrumental.

The most important chapters in the book are the two by Hans Frei of Yale, which together constitute more than a third of the volume. The first, after an illuminating identification of Niebuhr's theological interests and characteristics-methodological, confessional, existential-proceeds to a remarkable summary of one of the two main strands in his background, the nineteenth century, largely German, "academic tradition in Protestant theology," and brings the problems there raised to Niebuhr's doorstep by a summary of the relevant work of the two great teachers Niebuhr thanks in the introduction to The Meaning of Revelation, Karl Barth and Ernst Troeltsch. In the chapter on Niebuhr's theology which follows the largest part necessarily is devoted to Niebuhr's concern with theological method, but Mr. Frei finds adumbrations of the further development of systematic theological content that he suggests may now be forthcoming from his subject. Together Mr. Frei's chapters constitute a notable summary of nineteenth and twentieth century theology.

Mr. Frei rightly suggests that Dr. Niebuhr's appeal to the larger culture may be all the greater because, being confessional rather than apologetic, he can deal with it irenically, without defensiveness. But the evidence of that wider appeal is largely missing from this book, which comes from and addresses itself to a rather narrow circle. No doubt the writers in it would join in saying that it is to be hoped that in the years just ahead the circle of the dialogues will become much wider. This book will be an important contribution to that widening discussion of Richard Niebuhr's work.

William Lee Miller
Princeton, New Jersey