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On the face of it, Niebuhr might seem to hold something like the kind of Augustinian position that Wolterstorff admits to holding; i.e., he might seem to be saying that, given the standpoint of Christian faith, one proceeds to understand and interpret -- not interpret—not only, or even primarily, the content of faith itself, but also, and first of all, all other things, any other thing, from that faith standpoint.

My guess, however, is that this is not what Niebuhr means to say. On the contrary, his position is more likely close to his brother's in "Life Is Worth Living." That is, he wants to say that the answers to "the most profound questions of life," including the question of "belief," or of the meaning of life, as well as the questions of "knowledge" and "conduct," are not given by reason but by faith -- the faith—the proper business of reason being to move faith, as the other Niebuhr says, from a relatively uncritical faith to a relatively critical one. Thus "the faith in meaning" is moved by reason "from the childlike faith which has been attacked [sc. by experience of life itself] to a critical yet firmer faith which knows that all the objects of devotion -- homedevotion—home, country, and great causes --are causes—are insufficient of and in themselves" (4).

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