H. Richard Niebuhr: Quotes about Christ

H. Richard Niebuhr was American theologian. Explore interesting quotes on christ.
H. Richard Niebuhr: 36   quotes 0   likes

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: The Kingdom of God in America

Men , God , Christ

“The conservation, selection, and conversion of cultural achievements is not only a fact; it is also a morally inescapable requirement, which the exclusive Christian must meet because he is a Christian and a man. If he is to confess Jesus before men, he must do so by means of words and ideas derived from culture, though a change of meaning is also necessary. … If he is to say what "love" means he must choose among such words as "eros," "philanthropia" and "agape," or "charity," "loyalty" and "love"—seeking one that comes close to the meaning of Jesus Christ, and modifying it by use in context. These things he must do, not only that he may communicate, but also that he may himself know whom and what he believes. When he undertakes to fulfill the demands of Jesus Christ, he finds himself partly under the necessity of translating into the terms of his own culture what was commanded in the terms of another.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), pp. 70-71

Love , Men , Communication , Idea

“The counterpart of such devotion to the commands of Jesus Christ is a thoroughgoing opposition to the institutions of culture. To Tolstoy these seem to be founded on a complex foundation of errors, including the acceptance of the inevitability of evil in man's present life, the belief that life is governed by external laws so that men cannot attain blessedness by their own efforts, the fear of death, the identification of true life with personal existence, and, above all, the practice of and belief in violence. Even less than Tertullian does he think that human corruption is resident in human nature; the evil with which men contend is in their culture only.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 60

Life , Death , Men , Fear

“The relation of the authority of Jesus Christ to the authority of culture is such that every Christian must often feel himself claimed by the Lord to reject the word and its kingdoms with their pluralism and temporalism, their makeshift compromises of many interests, their hypnotic obsession by the love of life and the fear of death.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 68

Love , Life , Death , Fear

“Tolstoy … can center his attack on the conscious beliefs, the tangible institutions, and the specious customs of society. He is not content simply to withdraw from these himself and lead a semimonastic life; he becomes a crusader against culture under the banner of the law of Christ.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 60

Life , Law , Christ

“Tolstoy becomes intelligible when he is interpreted as a nineteenth century Russian who participates, in the depths of his unconscious soul as well as consciously, in the cultural movements of his time, and in the Russian mystic sense of community with men and nature. It is so with all the members of the radical Christian group. When they meet Christ they do so as heirs of a culture which they cannot reject because it is part of them.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 70

Men , Soul , Intelligence , Communication

“The movement of withdrawal and renunciation is a necessary element in every Christian life. … It is an inevitable answer; but it is also inadequate. … It is inadequate, for one thing, because it affirms in words what it denies in action; namely, the possibility of sole dependence on Jesus Christ to the exclusion of culture. Christ claims no man purely as a natural being, but always as one who has become human in a culture; who is not only in culture, but into whom culture has penetrated.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), pp. 68-69

Life , Nature , Christ , Dependency

“The monastic movement … was directed to the achievement of a Christian life, apart from civilization, in obedience to the laws of Christ, and in pursuit of a perfection wholly distinct from the aims that men seek in politics and economics, in sciences and arts.”

H. Richard Niebuhr

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 56

Life , Men , Law , Art