Word: niebuhrs
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...this strange age it has been left to the American Unitarian Association to descend to a level of theological discussion never reached in our knowledge by the most obscurantist fundamentalist sect. . . ." Reinhold Niebuhr was counterattacking in force...
...this week's issue of his intellectual quarterly Christianity & Society, neo-orthodoxy's Reinhold Niebuhr uncorked a reply that minced no words. "The animus of the [Unitarian] attack," he charged, "is primarily directed against the classical tradition of Christianity in any of its forms." Then he went on to a flat refutation of the Unitarian authors' two main theses-which, he said, revealed "the stupidity and the malice of the pamphlet...
Realism & Calvinism. "The one thesis," wrote Niebuhr, "is directed against the Christian doctrine of the sinfulness of man. The argument runs roughly as follows: To believe in the sinfulness of man is to believe in total depravity. To believe in total depravity is to accustom men to evil. Every step in this logic is false...
...Unitarians' second thesis, according to Niebuhr, ran as follows: "Modern orthodoxy is a revival of Calvinism. Calvinism is deterministic. It does not believe in doing anything about anything but in waiting upon God to save the world...
...Every step in this logical process is also false," wrote Niebuhr, and proceeded to an example: the Unitarians had accused both Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen and Niebuhr of being "futilitarian gadflies." Said Niebuhr of himself and Sheen: "There is not only practically nothing in common between their thoughts, but both of them are very active in political causes, though the causes are more or less diametrically opposed...