“Because suffering is the exhibition of the presence in our existence of that which is not under our control, or of the intrusion into our self-legislating existence of an activity operating under another law than ours, it cannot be brought adequately within the spheres of teleological and deontological ethics, the ethics of man-the-maker, or man-the-citizen.”

Source: The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (1963), p. 61

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H. Richard Niebuhr 18
American theologian 1894–1962

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