By Schubert Ogden
Wiki Markup |
---|
_# Niebuhr's "dialectical conception of time and eternity" (2:289) strikes me as problematic. For while it is certainly proper to spealspeak of "an eternity involved in, and yet transcending, the temporal (2:290), or of "an eternal ground of existence which is, nevertheless, involved in man's historical striving to the very point of suffering with and for him" (2:321), it seems to me rather more problematic to speak of "a consummation which will sublimate _\[_sic_:_ _sublate?\] rather than annul the whole historical process" (2:298). For the idea of "sublimation," like the notion that the "fulfillment" of things consists in_ _lithe_"the _fuller embodiment of their essential character" (287), appears to trade on the monism implicit in traditional Western philosophy generally, and in modern idealism in particular. Otherwise put, Niebuhr does not seem to allow _ sufficiently for "the infinitethose bounds, or, at times, perhaps, by "paradoxically" breaking out of them. But he never succeeds in really formulating the infinite qualitative difference in its own terms. Otherwise put, Niebuhr's eschatology is, after all, teleology--even if a "trans-historical" teleology; fulfillment, on his view, is, after all, a matter of subjective, rather than objective, realization--even if in an eternity which"stands at the end of time." Thus, ultimately,_qualitative_ _difference" between time and eternity; instead of being radically discontinuous, time and eternity, as he thinks and speaks of them, seem to lie on the same level or plane. His motives in this are transparent \-\- and sound: to take man's "historical responsibilities" or "historical obligations" seriously, and thus to insist that the individual has an "indirect" as well as a "direct" relation to eternity. But I question whether his way of doing this is adequate. Consider, e.g., his statement:_ _/I{_}{_} "A Christ is expected wherever history is thought of as a realm of fragmentary revelations of a purpose and power transcending history, pointing to a fuller disclosure of that purpose and power" (2:5). Note the quantitative language ("fuller disclosure," "fragmentary revelations"). To be sure, Niebuhr also says: "\[T\]here is no point in history, whatever the cumulations of wisdom and power, in which the finiteness of man is overcome so that he could complete his own life, or in which history as such does not retain the ambiguity of being rooted in nature-necessity on the one hand while pointing towards transcendent, 'eternal' and trans-historical ends on the other hand" (2:4). But the difficulty, it seems to me, is that Niebuhr never succeeds in integrating these two strands of thought, except by a "dialectical conception of time and eternity'" in which the second, ultimately, gives way to the first. Within the quantitative bounds of the monism underlying his thought, he may well stress the qualitative difference as much as it can be stressed \-\- within_ _it_ _is the office of "the power of God" "to overcome_ _\[_sic_\]_ _the ambiguity of man's finiteness and freedom" (2:297). "Overcome" here means, I fear, not the_ _objective_ _completion of our subjective incompleteness, but, somehow (never clearly explained\!), the transformation of our subjective incompleteness into a_ _subjective_ _completeness, the domestication of our_ _vita aliena_ _in and through God's love for us into a_ _vita domestica_ _of our own. Still otherwise put, Niebuhr makes essentially the same assumption that Hartshorne accuses Dewey of making \-\- namely, that "all ideals can be reduced _ to . . . potential human achievements" (_(Beyond Humanism_:_ _47). Thus Niebuhr can say that a "fuller disclosure" is necessary because "the potential meaningfulness of history is recognized as fragmentary and corrupted._ _It{_}{_}It must be completed and clarified"_ (_(NDM_ _2:5). But a more than "fragmentary" meaningfulness of history is not a "potentiality"_ _of{_}{_} history itself, but solely of God as the ultimate end of history, in the sense, not of "an end of duration," but of "an end of ultimate significance." No doubt, the one point where Niebuhr is led well beyoindbeyond such a position is in his stress on the divine_ _judgment_,_ _which implies, as he says, that "the eternal and divine is not regarded as the extension and fulfillment of the highest human possibilities," since "God's word is spoken_ _against_ _both his favoured nation and against all nations" (2:25). But, again, isn't the very notion of "impossible possibility" indicative of the problem?_# |