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Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian realist pendulum

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Paipais_2020_JIPT_ReinholdNiebuhr_CC.pdf (145.8Kb)
Date
10/12/2020
Author
Paipais, Vassilios
Keywords
Butterfield
Christian realism
Elshtain
Niebuhr
Pacifism
Wight
BR Christianity
JC Political theory
T-NDAS
Metadata
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Abstract
Reinhold Niebuhr is widely acknowledged as the father of Christian realism and a staunch critic of pacifism. In a famous exchange with his brother H. Richard in The Christian Century, Niebuhr defended the necessity of entering the fray of battle to combat evil as opposed to opting for non-violent detachment that ultimately usurps God’s authority to decide on final matters. Niebuhr, however, never endorsed an aggressive Just War doctrine. Striving to reconcile the Christian command of love with the harsh realities of power resulting from universal sinfulness, Niebuhr emphasised the necessity of negotiating the distance between the two extremes of a pendulum swinging from Christian pacifism to the endorsement of interventionist policies. Rather than this being an expression of the ambiguity of his moral convictions, this paper argues that it is a product of his sensitivity to applying contextual moral and political judgement as an exercise of theological responsibility.
Citation
Paipais , V 2020 , ' Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian realist pendulum ' , Journal of International Political Theory , vol. 17 , no. 2 . https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979001
Publication
Journal of International Political Theory
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979001
ISSN
1755-0882
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access article. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/21159

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