Niebuhr Traces Effects Of Christianity on West

The Western world's "hazardous affirmations" that history has meaning and that individual men lead meaningful existences both result from the influence of Christianity, Reinhold Niebuhr, visiting professor of Theology, said yesterday at the Divinity School's Convocation Service.

Niebuhr also argued that the Christian Religion has colored Western man's entire view of nature and the temporal world. Because of the Christian influence, he said, men in Western cultures refrain from viewing nature as either divine or illusory, and instead approach a rationally.

These effects he listed as the chief contributions to the West from the "long encounter" with Christianity. Speaking before about 900 people in Memorial Church, Niebuhr considered at length these effects and the "present heritage" resulting from them.

Some Corrupted Values

Not all the heritage has been beneficial, Niebuhr pointed out. The same affirmation--that history has meaning--which gave rise to the West's "historical dynamism" also brought on, for example, the corrupted scheme of values in which every event is related to divine will.

Puritanism degenerated into "Yankeeism because of this corruption, Niebuhr asserted. The Puritans were so extreme that they "regarded every storm as a revelation of God's wrath." If events went well, the Puritans slipped into "the complacent identification of virtue with success."

A second corruption Niebuhr discussed was "fanaticism"--regarding as true for all time theories which have only a limited application. The only cure for his, he felt, was to open all facets of society to criticism from its members.

Individual Status

The second major contribution of Christianity, "the affirmation of the existential status of the individual," Niebuhr traced to Biblical insights into the nature of man. For example, men today must make allowance in the way they organize society for each other's self-love. Niebuhr compared this fact to the emphasis on forgiveness in Biblical thought.

Turning to the present, Niebuhr made two observations on the "scientific age, thrusting into nature." His first point was that modern technology has given as the potentiality of uniting into a "world community." He said men now have the opportunity to "purge themselves of European Parochialism," and "implement Christian universalism."

Niebuhr's second point concerned the problem of preserving enough "spirtual vitality" to overcome a "technical barbarism." He maintained that ascetic poverty was not the answer, saying only that "we must approach the problem not with Christian arrogance, but with spiritual humility."