At the Christianity and National Security Conference, Colin Dueck spoke about Reinhold Niebuhr’s understanding of human nature influenced his Christian realism, and how this perspective differs from other types of realism. The following is a transcript of the lecture. 

For Dueck’s article on the topic, click here.

Thanks, Mark. Nice to be here. I’m going to talk about Reinhold Niebuhr, his Christian realism, the moment it comes together most fully during World War II, how it’s grounded in his conception of human nature, and some post-war implications. I should offer a disclaimer: I’m not a theologian, nor do I play one on TV. I’m a scholar of international politics fascinated by Niebuhr for 30 years and have researched and written about him. I see him in the context of the classical realists of the 1940s, but he has particular qualities I find interesting, most notably that he’s a Protestant theologian. It’s also personal for me because both my grandfathers were conscientious objectors during World War II. I was brought up in a peace church tradition, and even as a child, I reflected on this and wrestled with it. Maybe on one level, it was temperamental, realizing that pacifism wasn’t a great fit for me. I also thought intellectually and morally, there was a strong case for resisting Hitler during World War II, and studying Niebuhr was a way to tackle that problem.

The case for realism in U.S. foreign policy is often associated today with arguments for offshore detachment and non-intervention along with impatience regarding ethical considerations, but the classical realist of the 1940s possessed views richer than this. The political thought of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr is an excellent example of that richness. Described by George Cannon as the father of us all, Niebuhr could hardly ignore moral considerations in foreign policy, nor was he against unmasking moralistic pretensions on international matters. Yet Niebuhr’s consistent recognition of the limits of American power and self-awareness did not lead him to advocate appeasement or disengagement. Rather, beginning in 1940, he made the case for a sober, realistic, and morally grounded U.S. involvement overseas out of the central admission that, whatever America’s own faults, strict detachment from world affairs might result in the triumph of greater injustice. This was Niebuhr’s Christian realism.

It was the issue of creeping U.S. involvement in the war against Nazi Germany during 1940 and 41 that catalyzed and defined his approach to international relations. Originally a pacifist, Niebuhr had always possessed doubts as to whether the main strength of the pacifist stand was its moral validity per se or simply in the post-World War I feelings of nausea regarding violence, particularly in a country comfortable with the status quo. By 1934, he abandoned his dedication to absolute non-resistance for the same reason he had abandoned much of his earlier idealism. He no longer viewed pacifism as a universal, viable strategy in the struggle against justice.

While this position was originally reached on domestic matters in defense of organized labor’s right to strike, the implications for foreign policy would be drawn out in the face of expanding tyranny and disorder overseas. Worried by Japanese expansion in China, appalled by the mistreatment of Jews in Hitler’s Reich, and sensitive to the shift in power represented by the 1938 Munich Agreement, Niebuhr became a leading advocate for U.S. entry into World War II. With books, articles, sermons, lectures, and public hearings, he argued for aid to the United Kingdom, for convoys, for lend lease, for repeal of the neutrality acts, and for economic sanctions against Japan. During 1940-41 he launched the new journal Christianity and Crisis, wrote the book Christianity and Power Politics, helped found the Union for Democratic Action, and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, all in the hope of mobilizing public opinion for intervention. Above all, he worked to convince mainstream liberal Protestants that they had not only a right but an obligation to aid Britain against Nazi Germany.

The debate over aid to the UK revealed a deep division within American Protestant churches between a liberal pacifist ethic and an Augustinian or Christian Realist one. Unlike many realists, Niebuhr never denied the validity of what he called religious or witness pacifism, such as that practiced by Quakers or Mennonites. These conscientious objectors made no claim to easy solutions; instead, they reminded their contemporaries of the truth that every use of force, every proximate political achievement, however well intended, stood under a higher judgment. For many modern pacifists, however, non-resistance was supposed to be a practical political strategy promising an easy victory over conflict and injustice. In Niebuhr’s view, this political pacifism was a distortion of the Christian ethic and failed, like liberalism, to recognize tragic elements in social life, namely the persistence of power and self-interest, the imperfectability of human institutions, and the tenuous, reversible nature of moral and material progress. 

Pacifists insisted that war and violence were the greatest imaginable evils in communal life, but how would they secure relative justice in cases where peaceful methods had failed? In effect, their answer was to abdicate responsibility and surrender to oppression and injustice, bowing out of social obligations. As Niebuhr put it, “no matter how they twist and turn, the protagonists of a political rather than a religious pacifism end with the acceptance of, justification of, and connivance with tyranny. They proclaim that slavery is better than war. I beg leave to doubt it and to challenge the whole system of sentimentalized Christianity which prompts good men to arrive at this perverse conclusion.”

For Niebuhr, the pacifism prevalent in America’s mainstream liberal Protestant churches represented a moralistic version of Christianity, a new heresy with potentially devastating consequences. By seeking to stay out of war at any cost, pacifists unwittingly aided Nazi Germany and condoned what Niebuhr called “a tyranny, which has destroyed freedom, is seeking to extinguish the Christian religion, debases its own subjects to robots, threatens the Jews of Europe with complete annihilation, and all the nations of Europe with subordination under a master race.” The mistake pacifists made was to think they could live in history without sin or guilt, but no such possibility existed.

Our duty in social conflict, Niebuhr suggested, was not fastidious non-participation but a conscientious choice of what might necessarily be the lesser evil. As he put it, “whatever may be wrong with the British empire, it’s still obvious that these nations preserve certain values of civilization, and that the terror sweeping over Europe is not civilization. A moralism which dulls the conscience against this kind of evil is perverse.” A lofty sense of compassion, a horror of war, needed to be complemented and bolstered, he thought, by the intermediary social virtue of justice. Justice sometimes required the use of force to balance competing interests and prevent abuses of power, whether abroad or at home.

By 1940-41, as he gave his Gifford lectures at Edinburgh to the sound of Luftwaffe bombing raids, Niebuhr had arrived at a Christian realist political perspective, a view he would maintain for the rest of his life. After a number of twists and turns, his ideological journey from youthful liberal idealism to a grounded political realism was largely complete. Reflecting on the disorders of his age and drawing on a wide range of Christian thinkers—Kierkegaard, Calvin, Luther, above all Augustine—Niebuhr joined the ranks of neo-orthodox theologians determined to throw a classical biblical understanding of sin and transcendence back in the face of modern pretensions. The events of his time had refuted all utopian illusions—liberal, Marxist, secular, or religious—based on an over-optimistic faith in human nature and political progress.

The heated debate over pacifism and intervention had given his thoughts on international relations their mature and developed form. It remained to reconstruct a more realistic Christian political ethic from the ground up. With such a reorientation, he thought U.S. foreign policy could be guided through the twin rocks of naive idealism and self-defeating cynicism. Niebuhr viewed an accurate and explicit portrait of human nature as the crucial foundation for any theory of international relations. By the way, this would be considered unacceptable today. In this sense, he was what Kenneth Waltz would have called a first image rather than a second or third image thinker. Niebuhr’s starting point was neither the role of domestic structure, central to progressive thought, nor international anarchy, emphasized by academic realists, but human nature itself. Niebuhr was an unusual foil to idealists in that his anthropology, pessimistic by liberal standards, was far from Machiavellian. Instead, Niebuhr offered a distinctly Christian understanding of human beings, most notably in his 1940s master work *The Nature and Destiny of Man.*

Radically limited in power and knowledge but inclined to self-reflection, he argued, we are capable of both altruistic and brutally selfish acts, aware of the transcendent yet somehow unable to capture it. For Niebuhr, this compound of spirit and nature, not our reason or virtue as such, is what makes us human. The paradox of this condition—radical freedom alongside radical corruption—is not captured by modern social science. It is, he suggested, better captured in the dramatic philosophical and historical legends of the Judeo-Christian tradition, legends that should be taken seriously. According to that tradition, we are capable of self-transcendence and of demonstrating the compassion toward others that is the hallmark of our best and truest self, yet we constantly fall back into self-regard. Our situation at the juncture of freedom and necessity is therefore the source of our human dignity and also our unique human misery.

To acknowledge both our limits and our responsibility in the faith that there is a purpose behind the ambiguity of this condition would seem to be the healthiest possible response, but such faith is rare. More often, our response is one of restlessness. This restlessness, Niebuhr argued, is the source of our greatest creative efforts. It’s also the source of our greatest sins. When we deny our limitations, we fall into pride. Pride is the abuse of freedom, the raising of one’s particular interest to unconditional significance. Niebuhr identified three kinds of pride: pride of power, pride of knowledge, and pride of virtue.

Pride of power is the attempt to achieve self-sufficiency and security through domination over others. Because human beings can anticipate dangers in advance, pride of power is insatiable—an unending competition for security, status, and influence at every political level, including the international. As Niebuhr noted, there is no level of greatness and power in which the lash of fear is not one strand in the whip of ambition. The result of this drive for power is injustice to others, and such injustice is usually accompanied by ideological pretense and self-satisfaction: pride of knowledge and pride of virtue, respectively.

We show intellectual pride when we deny the limits of our knowledge and hide our ignorance by pretending that our fragmentary perceptions of the truth have absolute validity for all times and places. Even Karl Marx, who in Niebuhr’s view was effective in unmasking the self-serving or ideological taint of all culture, ended in what Niebuhr called a pitiful display of the same sin.

We show moral pride when we deny the limitations of our virtue and make unconditional self-righteous claims on behalf of our particular ideological systems. Such pride, and the restless condition from which it results, is more or less the condition of every human being. There is no division of humanity into the saved and the damned, no elite of elect souls by whom the rest of us can be rescued. An ambiguous mixture of matter and spirit, with uncertain but limited freedom and prone to the sin of fleeing from our true nature, is for Niebuhr the perennial human condition, not any particular social, economic, or political structure, as the ultimate cause of conflict and war. 

To say that such sins will be committed is not to say they should be, but inevitably human restlessness leads to pride, and pride leads to conflict. We are sinners, and this is the crucial difference between a Christian view and a liberal one—not because we are ignorant of reason but because of an inbuilt propensity to misdirect our will. It is will, not reason, that motivates us. We are therefore capable of rational and moral action while being self-centered to the core. It follows that no amount of modern education, exhortation, social or material advancement will necessarily eradicate the aggrandizing self-interest of our nature.

Given Niebuhr’s anthropology, there can be no final escape by any society or individual from original sin. This has profound implications for the modern liberal view of international relations because it denies the inevitability of temporal progress. The advance of reason and science worldwide does not necessarily promote global selflessness and peace. As Niebuhr put it in an interpretation of Christian ethics, the possibilities of evil grow with the possibilities of good. The Christian end—love of neighbor and love of God—reverberates in history, but it is an end fully realized only outside of history.” Niebuhr therefore refutes all utopian theories of international politics that deny the cyclical nature of progress and decay in human affairs.

If human beings are not essentially harmless and reasonable, neither are they, as Machiavelli suggested, entirely ungrateful, fickle, false, cowards. Instead, they are potentially, residually, just, loving creatures caught in a condition of anxiety, corrupted not only by their own base impulses but by the unintended consequences of their noblest aspirations. Niebuhr did not deny the possibility of grace in human relations, but because he viewed liberals as having underestimated the sheer power of cantankerous self-regard, his work focused on sin—the stubborn, universal persistence of human self-centeredness. The image of original sin is the basement in the edifice of his Christian realist theory of international relations.

During World War II, Niebuhr then takes this approach and uses it to justify forceful U.S. intervention against the Axis powers and to put it within a moral context. He talks about what he called the “children of light” versus the “children of darkness.” By that, he does not mean that human beings are divided into the entirely good and the entirely evil. He meant that Americans needed to avoid the error of either being overly naive, as the children of light are, or overly cynical, as the children of darkness are. He thought the fascist powers were the closest to pure cynicism and that American liberals were the closest to naive idealism. 

Looking toward post-war engagements, he was initially hopeful that a concert of powers might be possible with the Soviet Union and others, but he was quickly disabused of this, and he then came to the conclusion, as he had in 1940, that it was legitimate to resist tyranny. His personal understanding of Marxism was useful in this; having gone through a Marxist phase himself, he understood Marxism well, and he joined with Truman Democrats, center-left Democrats, in the late 40s to form what was known as the vital center against progressives and figures like Henry Wallace. He supported the creation of Cold War commitments under a framework of containment, hoping for creative possibilities through the use of what we would call soft power but also ultimately relying on hard power against the likes of Stalin. But he became disturbed by a pattern of U.S. foreign policy, beginning with the Korean War and even more so in Vietnam, which he saw as examples of American over-extension, Americans forgetting the limitations on American knowledge, American virtue, and American power.

So, he became a critic of what he considered Cold War excess insofar as it represented a denial of limitations. And that’s consistent with his image of human nature as hammered out by the 1940s—Americans aren’t perfect, no nation is, Americans are human, and they make mistakes. This applies to foreign policy as well. It’s that Niebuhr who’s most remembered by isolationists today, but remember that Niebuhr himself was not one of them. He believed in a measured, realistic foreign policy approach, neither burying our head in the sand nor overextending American capabilities. His basis was a clear understanding of human nature: we are all limited, but at the same time, he said that the very fact of original sin requires us to be realistic about what will and will not work in international relations. He actually joked that original sin was the one aspect of his approach that could be empirically proven daily and yet seemed most controversial with his progressive friends.

Yes, selfless Christian compassion is a virtue relevant in international relations, but when it comes to the political arena, the operative virtue he recommended is justice, and given human nature, given original sin, justice can sometimes only be maintained through a balance of power, whether domestic or international. When we face circumstances that involve relative injustice, we are justified, he thought, whatever our known moral limitations, in resisting injustice, and in the end, there are circumstances when this can only be done by force. Thank you.

Q&A

Question: My name’s Alex. I’ve been tasked with reading a book on Niebuhr and Christian ethics this semester. My question lies at the intersection of Matthew 28:18-20, where Jesus instructs his disciples to go to the nations, make disciples, baptize, and teach them to obey. After reading Niebuhr, I wonder: what are some characteristics of Niebuhr or others who were once pacifists but then encountered ideas that led them away from pacifism while staying true to the Bible?

Answer: Thank you. This is one of the things I’ve found most interesting about Niebuhr. He was brought up to value peace, and then as he tackled international politics, it took him decades to reach his position. First, domestically, while working in Detroit as a pastor, he had parishioners working in car factories—Henry Ford’s shops. Niebuhr went through a Marxist phase because he rejected a strictly peaceful approach to domestic politics. Over the 1930s, he applied this perspective to international politics and concluded that a strictly peaceful approach simply wasn’t practical or moral. He believed the only way to preserve moral goods internationally was by abandoning strict pacifism. Having understood both pacifism and Marxism before rejecting them, he ended with conclusions that had more weight, more substance, and were very personal, which forced him to think through these issues thoroughly, giving his final worldview a solid foundation. Thank you.

Question: My name is Emily. I graduated from Wheaton College. I was interested in your three categorizations of pride: pride of power, knowledge, and morality. When you spoke of pride of power, I thought of the United States as a global hegemon, militarily or economically. Do you think the United States is guilty of the pride of power? If so, does the United States have a responsibility to maintain peace through this balance of power?

Answer: Great question. Niebuhr would say absolutely. The United States, because it is made up of human beings, is prone to the sin of pride, including pride of power. Even while fighting the Axis, which many consider the ultimate good cause, he warned against pride of power, pride of virtue, pride of knowledge. So yes, we are certainly prone to that. Pride of power means there’s a check, a voice on your shoulder warning, “Show humility, show self-awareness.” At the same time, Niebuhr’s essence was about striking a balance, not thinking the answer is to flee, go into a cave, stay pure, and stay out of worldly affairs, because that would leave the outside world to the “bad guys.” 

That’s international politics—some regimes, whether Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or others today, are aggressive, authoritarian, and tyrannical. Niebuhr consistently argued that leaving the field to them, in the name of moral purity, is neither moral nor practical; it leaves millions of victims to these regimes. The balance you’re asking about is Niebuhr’s core thought: we must constantly think about and work toward that balance. We must avoid overestimating ourselves, be aware of our limitations, avoid pride of power or any pride, and still resist tyranny when necessary. Final question. Yes.

Question: Brett Brown from Wheaton College. You began to touch on this. How does academic realism today, which often does not center on original sin, limit what can be gleaned from that perspective?

Answer: Now you’re speaking my language. During Niebuhr’s lifetime, even secular realists were comfortable discussing human nature. Hans Morgenthau, not a Christian realist, wrote the standard textbook for students in international politics in the 1950s-60s, and he discussed human nature, arguing that a realistic understanding of human nature is essential to understanding world politics. Since the 1960s, however, there’s been a trend against recognizing any concept of human nature, with social sciences and humanities denying its existence, treating it as socially constructed. 

Academic realists followed this trend; they might sound hard-nosed, but they stopped viewing human beings as flawed creatures. Academic realists from the 1970s and 80s embraced “structural realism” or “neo-realism,” emphasizing that international systems are anarchic, with no overarching power to maintain peace. 

This insight is valuable, but there’s no mention of human nature. As Madison put it—I’m likely mangling the phrase—if men were angels, no government would be necessary. Similarly, if humans were angelic, anarchy wouldn’t be a problem. But because of who we are, anarchy is an issue. Kenneth Waltz, who pioneered this approach, focused on anarchy and moved away from discussing human nature. Some today, drawing from evolutionary psychology, discuss human nature, though they aren’t necessarily Christian. For the most part, however, it’s disappeared, and I think that’s unrealistic for the reasons we’ve discussed.