Abstract

The task is to delineate Niebuhr's doctrine of providence and then to show the points of contact with Heidegger's phenomenology. The problem is focused by appropriating John Courtney Murray's structure of the problem of God, transfered to that of providence. Murray asks four questions, Where is God when I need him?, If he is here, what is he doing for us?, How do we know God?, and How do we name God? ;The result of Part 1, devoted to the first question, is that for Niebuhr, monotheistic faith expects providence in all of life, including its disappointments. From Edward Hobbs, I bring a three-part classification of disappointments as exposure, limitation, and need; one can then see how Niebuhr expects blessings in all three. His theology is seen to have a three part structure which he does not advertise; In Radical Monotheism, faith is confidence and loyalty; these correspond to need and limitation. Acknowledgement is added to the structure when The Meaning of Revelation argues that history is exposure. ;In Part 2, we see that Niebuhr agues there from a neo-Kantian epistemology, but I claim the history as exposure can be explained more readily from Heideggerian phenomenology; history is truth at work, effective historical consciousness. Niebuhr's theology looks to history as truth-at-work to bear grace. ;Part 3 shows that Niebuhr and Heidegger agree that the holiness of God is not to be compromised in order to simplify the epistemological status of God. ;Part 4 traces the changes in Heidegger's understanding of language, and shows the parallels in Niebuhr. The labor of faith is then one of spelling out what is happening in the believer's life; Heidegger explains the ability to spell out. Neibuhr's central claim here is that religious language ought to be confessional, rather than deductive or polemical. As confessional, it can respect the knowability in unknowability of God, and derivatively, of providence