Niebuhr, Helmut Richard (1894–1962)

After early writings interpreting the social dimensions of US religious life from a Protestant point of view, Helmut Richard Niebuhr came increasingly to focus on theology, the interpretation of the Word and experience of God, and ethics, the attempt to live a responsible life grounded in the deepest values. More successfully than any contemporary, he brought into creative tension two major strands of modern Christian thought. From the liberal tradition, he came to stress the relativity of all statements about God and accented the situation of the believer who makes them. Niebuhr matched or countered this perspectival approach with an inheritance from ‘neo-orthodoxy’ which stressed the otherness of God, the distance between God and all human experiences, statements and perspectives. While preoccupied with witness to ‘God beyond the gods’, Niebuhr was also devoted to understanding the human in the light of the experience of God. He developed comprehensive views of the responsible self as the focus of ethics and emphasized the communal dimensions of human life.