Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2007, Side 48

destiny and that redemption, but they can never lose the “alien dignity” that
their creation and redemption bestows on them.
Humans find themselves in a paradoxical predicament. Created and re-
deemed by God, they are exalted individuals. They have a capacity for free-
dom, love and justice. Yet they use their freedom to fasten to lesser things, cre-
ating a hell for themselves, their fellow human beings and the world around
them. They are a paradox of good and evil, manufacturing idols of the good
things they are given. And they cannot solve this predicament on our own.
Thus, the paradox ofhuman nature creates the paradox of human history.
“History cumulates, rather than solves, the essential problems of human his-
tory,” wrote Niebuhr.* 11 The fulfillment and perfection of history are not ours
to grasp; we cannot be gods in history. Indeed, as we have mentioned, great
evil is done by those who try to complete history by their own powers.
Rather, it is up to God to bring history to an end (its finis) and to fulfill its
purpose (its telos). God has given us an anticipation of the kingdom in Christ
and will bring it to fullness in his own time and by his will. We are in an in-
terim time of struggle between Christ’s first coming and the second.
Given that scenario, we are freed from trying to manage history according
to great schemes. Rather, we must strive for relative gains and wait on God.
We must work for reform without cynicism’s paralysis or idealism’s false hope.
Thus, the paradoxical vision leads to a non-utopian view of history that yet is
not cynical. It expects neither too much of history nor too little.
The “Lutheran attitude” reflected in these four main themes provides a
wholesome nudge to an American Christianity that is all-too prone to iden-
tify promising human achievements as the salvation of God, to make the
church into anything but the proclaimer of the Gospel, to apply directly the
“Gospel ethic” to the power struggles of the world, and to hope for the in-
tractabilities of individual and corporate human sin to be overcome by some
sanctified human effort.
11 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny ofMan Vol. 1 &II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), Vol.
II, p. 318.
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