ABSTRACT
Karl Lowith begins "History and Christianity" by making some general observations about why modern man places so much significance on history as the defining mark of the human enterprise. Lowith notes that classical Christian theology never assumed that history was the decisive scene for determining questions of human existence and destiny. Reinhold Niebuhr's anthropology, in fact, becomes the occasion for a romp through history in the hopes of providing a new synthesis to save "our" civilization. Niebuhr's account of our sinfulness is a Protestant form of natural law that attempts to make intelligible, on grounds of general human knowledge, what can only be known in the light of the kingdom established in Jesus' cross and resurrection. Niebuhr, according to Lowith, finally tries to have it both ways; namely, he maintains that Christian love not only does not extend historical potentialities of the human project, but makes historical survival problematic.
