Neo-Orthodoxy: Round Two

"In 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.

In a pamphlet, What Is This Neo-Orthodoxy? (TIME, May 6), eleven Unitarian disbelievers (in the deity of Christ and the sinfulness of man) had lambasted Protestantism's growing neo-orthodox movement with everything in the book. The Unitarian polemicists concentrated their attack on neo-orthodoxy's belief in the Doctrine of Original Sin, indulging themselves in such five-fingered epithets as "totalitarian religion," " 'Mother fixation' upon an idealized past."

In 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. . . .

"[One of the Unitarian writers] thinks that a realistic view of human nature easily 'excuses personal and individual inaction as well as acquiescence in the idea of dictatorship.' . . . Most of the continental resistance churches were informed by a dialectical theology. . . . It is stupid and malicious to deny the moral and religious heroism of continental Christianity in fighting the evils of Nazism. . . ."

The 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. . . ."

Finally, "it would hardly seem possible to misinterpret the thought of opponents quite as grossly as this out of mere stupidity. Here we might turn to Calvin for an explanation and learn from him that most forms of human sinfulness are something more than stupidity and something less than malice."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.