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The Irony of American History

#56: Oct. - Nov. 2008 (Non-Fiction)
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DWill

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The Irony of American History

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Bacevich tells us that in his book that he is virtually "channeling" the American social critic and theologian Reinhold Neibuhr. Bacevich also spearheaded the effort to release writings of Neibuhr on foreign policy under the title The Irony of Americn History. He wrote the introduction to the book, in which he calls it "the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy."

I had some misgivings about a book whose subject is, as Neibuhr writes, "the position of our nation in the present world situation, as interpreted from the standpoint of the Christian faith." However, though Neibuhr does speak of the importance in our history of a Christian "worldview," there is virtually no theologizing in the book, and I think that most readers would be surprised to see how a leftist leaning and his Christian worldview combine. This is light years away from the kind of public religious discourse we've been exposed to in the last couple of decades. Neibuhr excoriates the religious basis of American exceptionalism, the notion that the U.S. was destined by God to be a second Israel, establishing a bastion of purity and righteousness in contrast to the corruption of Europe. These messianic roots spelled trouble from the start, though it took three centuries for these elements to produce the illusion that America had the mandate to manage history by asserting its way of life in the world, for the sake of the world.

The book takes a Christian perspective in its insistence on the limitations of human beings to be as in control as we often like to think we are. In this case, we are prone to thinking we can control history, but even the greatest world powers are "caught in a web of history in which many desires, hopes, wills, and ambitions, other than their own, are operative."

There is not space to explain the central thesis: how Amercian history is characterized by irony. Neibuhr presents an almost literary or dramatic model of history, contrasting the ironic with the comic, pathetic, and tragic. It is impressively sophisticated and offers a coherent and powerful means of viewing our past and present.

The book is clear in its style, though not contemporary in its diction and formality.
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Thanks DWill. Niebuhr is a leading American representative of the scholarly tradition of reformed protestantism, in dialogue with the high intellect of German Christian thought represented by such titans as Barth, Bultmann, Bonhoeffer and Brunner - the big Bs. These are sophisticated philosophical thinkers, a world away from the ignorant fundamentalism that characterises much Christianity. They aim to articulate a prophetic messianic vision for human life, centred on the person of Jesus Christ. The problem of what is true prophecy and what is false prophecy is a live issue, as is the dialogue with modern thought. The way Christianity has become a propaganda tool seems to have bruised Bacevich into a deep skepticism about its merits, but he sees that Niebuhr, drinking from the well of the Bible, articulates a clear-eyed prophetic voice. Re-engaging with this mid-century intellectual ferment is a good way to analyse debates around American identity.

I've just dug through my old book collection and found my copy of Niebuhr's Faith and History, published in 1949. Niebuhr wiki is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Niebuhr
A Time Magazine review at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 80,00.html says
the "unanticipated disaster" of modern times, says Niebuhr, was that man, forgetting that his power for evil was as great as his power for good, began to identify his own creative activity with the will of God.

The remedy, according to Niebuhr: let mankind return to the Christian concept that history is a drama "of God's contest with all men, who are all inclined to defy God because they all tend to make their own life into the center of history's meaning . . .'
...
But, he says, such teachers as Martin Luther are in error, when they "exclude the possibility of redemption and a new life in man's social existence, and confine redemption to individual life." The structures of society cannot be perfected, but they can be improved. And this the Christian must try to do as part of his responsibility for his neighbor.
...
Niebuhr finds still further possibility of Christian redemption on an international level. The most powerful groups within nations and the most powerful nations in the world can, he thinks, behave enough like individuals to earn themselves rebirth. This can happen when their power and pride are challenged by new social forces.
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The remedy, according to Niebuhr: let mankind return to the Christian concept that history is a drama "of God's contest with all men, who are all inclined to defy God because they all tend to make their own life into the center of history's meaning . . .'
Thank you, Robert, for finding this information. You are right about these men being sophisticated philosophical thinkers. Though I'm not a Christian, my attitude is that the thought of the Greek "high pagans," the Jews, and the Christians forms our worldview today, inescapably, and that it represents a valuable inheritance. It is so highly unlikely that all of this was an impediment to human progress. Christian concepts have validity outside of their theological context, demonstrating universality. I like, for example, Neibuhr's statement to the effect that original sin is the one Christian dogma that has been verified empirically. I also think that there may be something of real use and even necessity in the concept of a judge over everything.
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Hi DWill, some further points in response.
DWill wrote: the thought of the Greek "high pagans," the Jews, and the Christians forms our worldview today, inescapably, and ...represents a valuable inheritance.
Yet our 'worldview' today is also informed by non-Western traditions as well as other Western inheritance such as from Egypt.
It is so highly unlikely that all of this was an impediment to human progress.
The linear model of progress as continual improvement contrasts to both the Judeo-Christian model of fall and redemption and the Osirian model of cyclic return. My worry is that we are on a linear path to extinction, and we need to take account of some non-linear ideas in order to secure ongoing human life on this planet.
Christian concepts have validity outside of their theological context, demonstrating universality. I like, for example, Neibuhr's statement to the effect that original sin is the one Christian dogma that has been verified empirically.
I disagree here. 'Original sin' is an idea from Saint Augustine, to the effect that our father's semen transmits sin by magic, and that Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, was the only human being without sin, by virtue of his immaculate conception without semen. This farcical idea is so far from the truth that it has to be junked completely. It is incompatible with Saint Paul's comment in Romans 1:3 that Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh, and more importantly, with the Sermon on the Mount which indicates that humanity can be one with the creator in original blessing, an idea picked up by Matthew Fox in his book of that title. Original sin is an importation of Manichean dualism of good and evil cosmic powers into Christianity, and clashes with the Christian idea that the creation is fundamentally good, while evil is a perversion of an original good nature. I see where Niebuhr is coming from in his empirical comment, but calling sin 'original' suggests we are on a path to damnation and lack resources for salvation.
I also think that there may be something of real use and even necessity in the concept of a judge over everything.
I agree, but see the judge as evolutionary adaptivity rather than a supernatural God entity. If we adapt to our planet we will be okay with the 'judge over everything' but if we don't then we will go extinct.
Robert
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Robert Tulip wrote: The linear model of progress as continual improvement contrasts to both the Judeo-Christian model of fall and redemption and the Osirian model of cyclic return. My worry is that we are on a linear path to extinction, and we need to take account of some non-linear ideas in order to secure ongoing human life on this planet.
I had thought that the Graeco-Judeo-Christian influence was key to our concept of linear progress, probably because that influence is key to the development of science--which determined our view of progress. Regarding extinction, I think I'm more concerned for the diversity of life around us than for us! We are well able to survive, somehow, even with the world a much "diminished thing."
I disagree here. 'Original sin' is an idea from Saint Augustine, to the effect that our father's semen transmits sin by magic, and that Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, was the only human being without sin, by virtue of his immaculate conception without semen.

Yes, that's repulsive, and it's why I specified "out of their theological context." It seems obvious on its face that the Garden of Eden story was created to embody the truth that humans by their nature are prone to grandiose notions of wisdom and power.
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I am now reading Niebuhr's Faith and History, and it is fascinating how he provides a theoretical framework that Bacevich partly builds on and partly ignores. John Carroll, an Australian academic, has written on the contrast between the religious and the scientific in terms of linearity in a way I find helpful. My worry about modern linear thinking is mainly that piling CO2 into the air - 'cause that's what we've always done - is like loading a bomb until it reaches critical explosion mass. It is hard for me to take a concept of sin out of a theological context, so it is important if we wish to use this concept to revise the theology. Robert
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I really do see a ready applicability of the concept of sin to our lives, divorced from theology. This is not just a Christian concept, either, I think.

One interesting point Neibuhr makes concerns communist regimes, and what their sins are. Neibuhr, though a man of the left, never for a moment flirted with communism as it developed in the Sovient Union, unlike many others on the left. He saw it as demonic, in fact. But he scoffs at the notion that atheism produced such a brutal regime. The cause was, instead, the success of an elite group of intellecutals in foisting their own vision of history on the people. That vision held that property was the single cause of inequality among humans; abolishing private property would usher in the golden age. Ironically, the forced installation of this philosophy produced the most unequal distribution of political power yet seen.

Looking at the U.S., Neibuhr sees absolutely nothing to its advantage that it called itself a Christian country. Indeed, a mistaken notion of religion contributed to its sense that it was exceptional and had a mission to fulfill, which later led to its own attempt to manage history by spreading copies of itself over the world. In the case of the U.S., though, there was never a cabal or priesthood that could bring things to an extremity comparable to that in the Soviet Union.
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I do hope this divorce between the concept of sin and theology can be reconciled! Niebuhr provides quite a deep theoretical framework to counsel on this marriage. One comment from him that I found particularly valid is that 'an outer limit is set for human defiance of the divine will by the fact that God's power, revealed in the structure of existence, leads to the ultimate self-destruction of forms of life which make themselves into their own end by either isolation or dominion.' (Faith and History p31)

This could be an epigraph for The Limits of Power, as this self-destruction of the USA through isolated dominion is Bacevich's primary concern.

The sense of a divine power in history provides an absolute against which the concept of sin can be defined. Without such an absolute, there is no reference point against which it becomes meaningful to describe actions as sinful. The complexity, and Niebuhr fully recognises this too, includes the depth of mercy within and above wrath in our sense of the absolute. He comments that 'the New Testament faith anticipates that man's defiance of God will reach the highest proportions at the end of history', and observes that 'the Christian truth was frequently made completely unavailable to modern men by a theological obscurantism which identifies the perennially valid depth of Christian symbols with the pre-scientific form in which they were expressed.'

So, the ideas of sin and God have been hidden by the contorted forms in which they have been portrayed by Christian fundamentalism, which Niebuhr sees as a sinful historical movement, with its bibliolatry indicating a rebellion against God. Fundamentalism has given people a false view of the meaning of sin and God, resulting in the reasonable desire for what you describe as divorce. But a divorce that happened due to fraudulent information often results in the couple getting back together with greater love.

In giving a paper on faith and science last year, hearers commented to me that they thought it was great, but Christianity is so derided in the whole university world that I would be better off chopping out the Christian ideas if I want to get a hearing. Sad but unsurprising, this situation is in accord with the problem Niebuhr diagnosed 60 years ago.
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Robert Tulip wrote: One comment from him that I found particularly valid is that 'an outer limit is set for human defiance of the divine will by the fact that God's power, revealed in the structure of existence, leads to the ultimate self-destruction of forms of life which make themselves into their own end by either isolation or dominion.' (FARp31)
This is a powerful religious statement that depends on little doctrine, though obviously it is theistic. However, can we have this idea about "the nature of existence" without a God? I think maybe we can.
This could be an epigraph for The Limits of Power, as this self-destruction of the USA through isolated dominion is Bacevich's primary concern.
Nice point.
The sense of a divine power in history provides an absolute against which the concept of sin can be defined. Without such an absolute, there is no reference point against which it becomes meaningful to describe actions as sinful.
In The Irony of American History, this idea is there as well, but not quite explicit. The sin Neibuhr talks about--and the one that concerns me--is the one you reference above, humans "making themselves their own end." The sin of grandiosity is what he sees as the central one. He is not concerned with labeling individual behaviors as sinful, nor am I. Just as there is a golden rule that economically guides us to moral behavior, there could be its reverse in grndiosity leading us to cause harm. Neither of these, though, appear to need God in order to be avaialble to us.
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DWill wrote:One interesting point Neibuhr makes concerns communist regimes, and what their sins are. Neibuhr, though a man of the left, never for a moment flirted with communism as it developed in the Soviet Union, unlike many others on the left. He saw it as demonic, in fact. But he scoffs at the notion that atheism produced such a brutal regime. The cause was, instead, the success of an elite group of intellectuals in foisting their own vision of history on the people. That vision held that property was the single cause of inequality among humans; abolishing private property would usher in the golden age. Ironically, the forced installation of this philosophy produced the most unequal distribution of political power yet seen. Looking at the U.S., Neibuhr sees absolutely nothing to its advantage that it called itself a Christian country. Indeed, a mistaken notion of religion contributed to its sense that it was exceptional and had a mission to fulfill, which later led to its own attempt to manage history by spreading copies of itself over the world. In the case of the U.S., though, there was never a cabal or priesthood that could bring things to an extremity comparable to that in the Soviet Union.
I hope Dissident Heart reads this, given the debate I have had with him about Noam Chomsky's critique of property. Solzhenitsyn's Lenin In Zurich provides a tragic explanation of how the Germans inflicted a botulistic tumour on the world by sending Lenin from Zurich in a sealed train to the Finland Station in 1916, a grenade that inflicted more collateral damage than they expected. Property is a basis for freedom, constraining the zeal of wild-eyed fanatics. However, I disagree with you on the role of atheism in Russia. Like the abolition of property, communist atheism enabled a rationalist dogma that justified the destruction of Christian heritage and diversity.
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