BOO KS
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a sense of disappointment is inevitable that out of something new there
should come something so familiar.
Disappointing-and, in Niebuhr's own use of the term, ironic; for
the disproportion between the desires and the consummation of his
system of thought is not fortuitous, but derives from some fundamental
equivocations in his idea of "Christian realism" and especially in his
conception of meaning in history.
Concepts such as pathos, tragedy, and irony are dramatic, assume
that the plots to which they pertain have been meaningfully composed,
as is indeed the case in the theater. Without this assumption, it is
impossible to say what is really going on, that is, whether a sequel
of happenings is tragic, comic, ironic-or senseless. Is there meaning
in history? For a messianic rationalist like Marx, with his Hegelian
heritage of history as the unfolding of Absolute Spirit, the answer was
an easy affirmative. For a Christian, the reply is also necessarily
affirmative (a negative leads to Gnosticism and heresy), but it is far
from easy and takes two quite different forms: (a) the pious yea,
which asserts that God's will is demonstrably at work in the affairs
of men, and which "proves" it by an ingenious circular reasoning (e.g.,
Saint Augustine's
City
of God);
and (b) the desperate yes, which
claims that we tainted mortals cannot comprehend the meaning of
history, but it exists and will be revealed at the End of Days. This
second form is Niebuhr's, as it is that of almost all modern theologians.
It has the advantage of dispensing with sophistry and not flying in
the face of plain facts (for Augustine there were no
plain
facts, but
only facts supernaturally illuminated). But it has the disadvantage of
not really saying anything about history at all. Actually it is a private
statement, directed to the individual rather than to the world in
which he is entangled, consoling him as he is crushed beneath the
wheel of time, offering hope, explaining nothing. Which leaves him
to take his bearings, if he would act (and he must), by the shop–
worn compass of ordinary political thought-as Niebuhr himself does.
Whether he does better or worse than Niebuhr depends only on his
political imagination and not on his appreciation of the Christian
message.
This Christian message to the single person Niebuhr addresses to
the world, in a sermon that is primarily a literary essay, of little use
to those burdened with the perplexities of power, of little solace to
the powerless, but of more than moderate interest to his fellow men
