to bring the question into clear focus, a good deal of Niebuhr's
work has necessarily involved a polemic against those views of man
and history, as well as distortions and dilutions of Christian faith,
which prevented the problem being seen with clarity and
wholeness.

Niebuhr is a Protestant theologian, and not the least of his
claims upon our gratitude is that he spoke again the Reformation
understanding with such insight and power to a generation of
Americans who had almost completely forgotten its peculiar per-
spective. Niebuhr's apprehension of the meaning of the Gospel is
in direct line with that of the Great Reformers. That is not to say
that the Reformation is, for Niebuhr, without defect. Its most
glaring defect is precisely at the point of his own passionate con-
cern, the relation between agape and the necessity, demand, and
conditions for securing social justice. Thus both the achievement
and the failure of the Reformation define the direction and char-
acter of Niebuhr's task. Indeed, nowhere has he more clearly out-
lined his own life work than in the following passage. "Reformation
insights", he says, "must be related to the whole range of human
experience more 'dialectically' than the Reformation succeeded in
doing. The 'yes' and 'no' of its dialectical affirmations: that the
Christian is 'justus et peccator,' 'both sinner and righteous'; that
history fulfills and negates the Kingdom of God; that grace is con-
tinuous with, and in contradiction to, nature; that Christ is what
we ought to be and also what we cannot be; that the power of God
is in us and that the power of God is against us in judgment and
mercy; that all these affirmations which are but varied forms of the
one central paradox of the relation of the Gospel to history must
be applied to the experiences of life from top to bottom." ¹

Nothing less than this is the task which Niebuhr has set himself,
and the degree to which he has succeeded is the measure of his
achievement. The whole work, however, serves the one concern--
to relate redemptively Christian faith and social responsibility,
agape and the struggle for social justice.

It is hoped that this present inquiry will do something to dispel

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