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PARTISAN REVIEW
as rigid as any promulgated by Marx or the more dogmatic theorists
of the Enlightenment. Niebuhr constantly speaks of "the perennial
and persistent character of human egotism in any possible society,"
"the vast forces of historical destiny," "inexorable historical develop–
ments," and of social conflict as an "inevitability in human history,"
in a way that leaves him open to all the arguments so powerfully
deployed by Isaiah Berlin in his essay,
Historical Inevitability.
It is true that Niebuhr often shows a fondness for citing historical
evidence in support of his conclusions; he says, for example, that the
doctrine of original sin "emphasizes a fact which every page of
human history attests." But such evidence as he does offer is surely
not enough to establish the thunderous statement that man
cannot
conquer his selfish interests to the p.oint of establishing a planned
society. His dark view of man's estate is, in his own mind, a corollary
of his doctrine of original sin and that is a view of man which, as
he says in his
Nature and Destiny of Man,
transcends the canons of
rationality.
If
history should fail to support his view, or if it should
at any moment appear to go against it, Niebuhr's attitude toward
his own doctrine would not be seriously affected, since his own con–
viction rests on faith. In this respect it resembles all of the inter–
pretations of history, like Augustine's and Hegel's, which are de–
molished in Berlin's essay. But the matter should stand differently
with those of Niebuhr's admirers who have not yet been persuaded
of the theology underlying Niebuhr's reflections on history. How
can those who are sober historians and who reject the pretensions of
inevitability and necessity that they find in Toynbee or Marx, react
to the block historical universe that Niebuhr portrays when he speaks
of inexorable historical developments, vast forces of historical destiny,
and inevitability in human history?
5.
From Kierkegaard to Hegel.
I have said little about the
details of Niebuhr's theology, except to point out that it rests on
faith and that it implies the inevitability of sinfulness in history. And
although there is hardly space for dealing with the labyrinth of
Niebuhr's theology, it is desirable to say something, however brief,
about the inevitability of sin in Niebuhr's view, if only to remind
some of his more agnostic admirers once again of what he says in
h~
rrwrt;
theolo~ical
writing-s.
It
is to Niebuhr's cr(:Qit thi).t he
reco~-
