Leithart’s Challenge Round #3: Reinhold Niebuhr

See the original post to see what this is about.

Leithart says that the Bible speaks not only of spiritual things, but also hair, blood, sweat, entrails, menstruation, and genital emissions. Theologians on the other hand (except for perhaps Augustine) rarely make any mention of these. It’s a blanket statement intended to shock, of course, but is it true nonetheless? Are theologians from another planet? Let’s find out…

In this round: Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

According to Google Books, these words occur X number of times in his printed works:

  • hair – 7*
  • sweat – 10*
  • entrails – 1
  • menstruation – 0
  • genital emissions – 0

Niebuhr wrote quite a bit of theology and philosophy. His most frequent topic was “just war” theory. He doesn’t do well in our challenge though.

He has a few references to hair, but further examinations reveals these are all due to his frequent use of the phrase “hair’s breadth”, meaning “barely”. One time he mentions a hair shirt, but no real hair.

Sweat is the same story. Nearly all his uses of it are in direct quotes or references of either Genesis 3:19 (“By the sweat of his brow shall he eat bread…”) or Luke 22:44 (“His sweat was like drops of blood”).

He does use the word sweat to describe the effort the godless use to try and fix the problems in the world. This sounds to me like most modern socialism and the state of diplomacy in the middle east.

Thus the saints are tempted to continue in sin that grace may abound, while the sinners toil and sweat to make human relations a little ore tolerable and slightly more just.

-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, p.197

He does take a noble swipe at Platonism at one point, knocking some of the silly gnostic notions about what creation was like before the fall.

In common with Platonism and Hellenic Christianity, Boehme believes that bisexuality is a consequence of sin. Furthermore, he thinks that Adam’s perfection must heave meant that he had a body which was “without intestines and witout stomach,” a rather vivid symbol of the mystic aversion to the physical basis of life.

-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, p.91

There you go.