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Niebuhr expressly recognizes that (1) "there are structures on every level _\[sc._ _of reality, or of the world\]"; and (2) scientists analyze such structures "empirically," even as philosophers analyze them (or the "superstructures" besides them) "metaphysically"_ _(Justice and Mercy:_ _135_ _f.)._ _Conspicuously missing from his discussion, however, is anything like the clear HeideggerianBultmannianHeideggerian-Bultmannian recognition that, even at the level of history (of the self, the personal, freedom, and so on) there are also structures, which philosophers also have the task of_ _analy~zinganalyzing-if_ _neither exactly "empirically" nor exactly "metaphysically," then by way of "existentialist analysis."_

Significantly, Niebuhr uses "structure'~ss a quasi-technical term distinct both from "mystery" (as, e.g., in the statements, "\[T\]he world by its wisdom knows all the structures of reality, but it cannot penetrate to the ultimate mystery" \[135\]; and "The world has all kinds of structures, relationships, coherences, sequences, and systems which can be analyzed by the intellect, but beyond which there is mystery" \[128\]) and "meaning" (as, e.g., in the statement, "the Christian faith is not just a reaction to mystery. For in the Christian faith, ... it is presumed and affirmed that there is meaning in the mystery, and that the meaning is disclosed by a whole series of disclosures which culminated in Christ" \[128\], or when he speaks of "incandescent points in history, where the mystery is revealed as meaning, in modern parlance, existentially" \[129\]). To this not inconsiderable extent, then, Niebuhr's thought clearly converges with my own. To be human is not only to experience "the world of intelligibility" whose _structures_ _science and philosophy, in their different ways, properly subject to analysis, but also to have_ _1/_{_}a sense of mystery," whose_ _meaning_ _is disclosed or revealed in Christian faith as well as, presumably, other logically _comparable forms of faith._