Word: sin
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...than the United Nations Assembly or any investigation by the Senate. For decades large segments of the Christian churches shied away from theology; God was "a lurking luminosity, a cozy thought." Against the current of his day, Niebuhr pursues a quest into the nature of God, of man, of sin. What Niebuhr thinks has a profound connection with the business of establishing and maintaining a democratic civilization. Niebuhr is not easy to understand (TIME'S editors, at least, do not find him easy); but it is TIME'S job to make Niebuhr's thought clear to those...
...Logic of Paradox. Orthodox Protestantism by & large subscribes to a body of beliefs among which are: that man is by nature inevitably evil, partaking of the original sin of Adam; that salvation is by faith alone, that good works are meritorious but not essential; that grace is God's gratuitous benevolence; that the Atonement is the redeeming power of Christ's incarnation, suffering and death; that the end of history will be the Last Judgment...
...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...
...world is not evil, for God, who is good, created the world. Man is not evil, because God created man. Why, then, does man sin...
...Anxiety," says Reinhold Niebuhr, "is the internal precondition of sin"-the inevitable spiritual state of man, in the paradox of his freedom and his finiteness. Anxiety is not sin because there is always the ideal possibility that faith might purge anxiety of the tendency toward sin. The ideal possibility is that faith in God's love would overcome all immediate insecurities of nature and history. Hence Christian orthodoxy has consistently defined unbelief as the root of sin. Anxiety is the state of temptation-that anxiety which Kierkegaard called "the dizziness of freedom...