Word: niebuhrs
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...Reinhold Niebuhr's new orthodoxy is the oldtime religion put through the intellectual wringer. It is a re-examination of orthodoxy for an age dominated by such trends as rationalism, liberalism, Marxism, fascism, idealism and the idea of progress...
...customary to say that Niebuhr's books are hard reading. But any person of average patience can find out what he is saying in The Nature and Destiny...
...Niebuhr's overarching theme is the paradox of faith-in St. Paul's words: "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." But Christian faith is a paradox which is the sum of paradoxes. Its passion mounts, like a surge of music, insubstantial and sustaining, between two great cries of the spirit-the paradoxic sadness of "Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief," and the paradoxic triumph of Tertullian's "Credo quia impossibile" (I believe because it is impossible...
...Singular Animal. But basic to Niebuhr's doctrine is another paradox-the lever of his cosmic argument and that part of his teaching which is most arresting and ruffling to liberal Protestantism's cozy conscience. It is the paradox of sin. Sin arises from man's precarious position in the creation...
...says Dr. Niebuhr, has always been his own greatest problem child-the creature who continually asks: "What am I?" Sometimes he puts the question modestly: "Am I a child of nature who should not pretend to be different from the other brutes?" But if man asks this question sincerely, he quickly realizes that, were he like the other brutes, he would not ask the question...