6 - Equality before God in the thought of H. Richard Niebuhr

Summary

THEOLOGICAL ACCOUNTS OF EQUALITY

It has already been shown that disparate moral frameworks and narratives differ in the construction of moral equality. Notably they entail distinct responses to the question, “Equality of what?” This point suggests that it is not promising to ask whether contemporary Christian moral accounts are or are not egalitarian – for equality functions in them all. Rather, the fitting and potentially fruitful inquiry would examine how particular theologies are egalitarian.

This chapter and the next one examine the ways in which equality operates within Reformed and liberation theologies, and, specifically, in the thought of two representative, seminal thinkers, H. Richard Niebuhr and Gustavo Gutiérrez. Of course, there are central dimensions of theological accounts that are not present in the philosophical accounts of moral equality discussed in chapter 2. Most clearly, the “equality among persons” is above all else a theological claim about persons' moral status not only in relation to one another, but principally in relation to God. From distinct religious and social positions, both Niebuhr and Gutiérrez would concur with William Temple's assertion: “Apart from faith in God, there is really nothing to be said for the notion of equality.” Stated in more positive terms, their accounts of moral equality become comprehensible in the context of God's relation to humanity.

Within the theologies of Gutiérrez and Niebuhr, the regulative idea of human equality bears directly and dynamically on political and socioeconomic relations – in individual actions as well as in wider social structures.