H. Richard Niebuhr

Life

Niebuhr was born in 1894 in Wright City, Missouri, the youngest child of Gustav Niebuhr, a German immigrant pastor. His older brother, Reinhold Niebuhr, was also a noted theologian. He graduated from Elmhurst College (1912) and Eden Theological Seminary (1915). In 1916 he was ordained in the Evangelical Synod of North America, a German-American denomination that later merged with the Reformed Church in the United States, which also had German roots. He earned a master's degree from Washington University and, in 1923, a Bachelor of Divinity from Yale University. In 1924 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the philosophy of religion of the German theologian Ernst Troeltsch.

From 1924 to 1927 he served as president of his alma mater, Elmhurst College. From 1927 to 1931 he was the first academic dean of Eden Theological Seminary. He began teaching at Yale University in 1931 and held a Sterling Professorship from 1954. He died in Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1962.

Ministry and Contributions

Niebuhr is known for his work in Christian ethics. He is also known for his analysis of the social factors behind the division of American Christianity into many denominations and for his interpretation of American religious history. He is commonly classified as a scholar within the neo-orthodox movement. His major works include The Kingdom of God in America (1937), The Meaning of Revelation (1941), Christ and Culture (1951), and Radical Monotheism and Western Culture. The Responsible Self (1963) was published posthumously. His critique of American liberal theology—to the effect that it offered "a God without wrath, a Christ without a cross, men without sin, and a kingdom without judgment"—is also widely quoted.

Christ and Culture classifies the relationship between loyalty to Christ and the culture to which Christians belong into five types, illustrating each with figures from church history.

• Christ against Culture: Culture is regarded as hostile to Christ. Tertullian and Tolstoy are cited as examples.
• The Christ of Culture: Christ and culture are regarded as fundamentally continuous.
• Christ above Culture: Both are affirmed, but Christ is placed above culture. Clement of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas are cited as examples.
• Christ and Culture in Paradox: The tension between the two is regarded as unresolvable. Paul, Luther, and Kierkegaard are cited as examples.
• Christ the Transformer of Culture: Culture is regarded as capable of renewal under the sovereignty of God. Niebuhr himself is generally read as leaning most toward this type.

His students included Hans Frei and Thomas Oden, among others.

Influence on the Korean Church

Christ and Culture is reported to have been published in Korean by the Christian Literature Society of Korea in a translation by Park Young-ho. In 2007 IVP issued a new translation by Hong Byung-ryong, which received an award of excellence in the theology category of the 2008 Korea Christian Publishing Culture Awards. The five types have become a widely used framework in the Korean church for discussing the relationship between Christianity and culture. In particular, the "transformation of culture" type has often been presented in connection with calls to renew culture through a Christian worldview.

Assessment

Supporters regard the five types as a useful introductory framework for organizing the various ways Christians relate to culture. The Christian ethicist James Gustafson is a prominent representative of this view.

The work has also drawn criticism. The Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, in an essay written in 1958, argued that the book's understanding of Christ was flawed; the essay was formally published in book form in 1996. Yoder also contended that Niebuhr misrepresented the Anabaptist tradition by treating certain groups, such as the Amish, as though they represented the tradition as a whole. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, as well as the church historian George Marsden, took up Yoder's critique. Hauerwas and Willimon argued that Niebuhr's notion of "culture" is so broad that it cannot serve as a standard for discerning what is good and what is evil within culture.