Gordon Clark: Review of The Responsible Self, by H. Richard Niebuhr (The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate)

1964. Review of The Responsible Self, by H. Richard Niebuhr. The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate. May. pg. 8

The Responsible Self by H. Richard Niebuhr, 183 pages; Harper & Row, 1963, $3.50.

The author claims (1) to be a Christian, (2) writing on Christian morality. As for the first claim he admits following Christ at a great distance. "To be a Christian is simply a part of my fate, as it is the fate of another to be a Muslim or a Jew (p. 43).

As for the second claim, we also express doubts because in chapter five he rejects the definition of sin as transgression of the Law, and discards the ideas of punishment, repentance, justification, and obedience as leading to paradoxes. The statements of his substitute position are either so broad and vague or so trivially true, that one has difficulty maintaining interest.

The argument in general, beginning in chapter one, is that teleological and deontological ethics have both failed. Neither good nor right are the correct categories for ethics. They should be replaced by the category of the fitting.

But Niebuhr hardly distinguished the fitting from the good or the right, and nowhere indicates how to identify a fitting action.

Niebuhr asserts that his theory fits the Bible better than the other views because Isaiah and the prophets did not preach obedience to the Law but called attention to what was happening. Not believing in proof texts, Niebuhr does not quote Isa. 1:12, 19, 20, "Who hath required this at your hand? ... If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

The ethics of the good and the ethics of the right are too individualistic. A self cannot arise outside social experience (therefore God could not have created Adam before Eve?). In the Church we are responsible to our fellow-members, but also to a common cause represented by the prophets and apostles. Even Christ points beyond himself to the cause in which he is faithful to his companions; and God is faithful to the world.

Hence, if it is doubtful that his theory is theistic, it is clear that it is not Christian.

Gordon H. Clark