Niebuhr’s Anthropologies Through the Lens of Genesis

I post the following in honor of my new nephew, Noah William Edward Ashley, born 9/24/10, in the hope that he can become that sort of Rainbow Warrior who will carry forward the legacy of a relational and responsible care for all living beings . . .

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all generations:  I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  When the bow is in the clouds, I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”  God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”  Genesis 9:12-17 (NRSV).

In The Responsible Self, H. Richard Niebuhr describes and critiques the images of “man-the-citizen” and “man-the-maker” as classical Christianity’s two most prominent moral anthropologies.  He then offers his own conception of a third, more adequate image, which he terms “man-the-answerer,” as the responsible self.  In Niebuhr’s view, Jesus Christ provides the paradigm for this third image.  In this essay, I will summarize, at times with language more abstract than Niebuhr’s, the deontological and teleological frames that yield the “citizen” and “maker” images, Niebuhr’s critique of these, and his conception of the “man-the-answerer” frame.  I will then argue that the Book of Genesis’ Chapters 1 and 2 communicate first two anthropologies so as to place each of these within Niebuhr’s “universal community.” Finally, I will argue that Genesis’ Chapter 6 image of Noah serves as a second, and certainly a more plainly delineated, paradigm of the responsible self.

Of Sister Innocentia, Georgia-Pacific, and Me

Since childhood, I have kept a small plaque depicting two apple-cheeked children who stand on a mountain path and gaze at the crucified Christ within a rustic shrine.  My plaque represents one of a great many images produced by German artist Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel in the 1920s-1930s, and successfully marketed, as prints and figurines, ever since.  In these images, tow-headed children ramble joyfully amidst wildflowers and pine trees, occasionally regarding their fellow small creatures—deer, toads—with simple wonder.  My family is Alps-Catholic, a culture that first entered the American imagination via the singing von Trapps.  And as an Alps-Catholic, I resonate with the small-scale and domesticated kind of nature celebrated by Sr. Innocentia.  This is nature as family farm, or backyard garden.  In the summer, young children and goats can safely meander its mountains, and in the winter, it will send a Saint Bernard to find you underneath the snow.  It calls the human to a humble sort of industry, much like that modeled by the trademark Hummel bee.

My actual childhood environment, however, was Baileyville Township, a Georgia-Pacific pulp-and-paper mill town in Maine’s north woods.  Growing up, I encountered my own small-scale wonders—chickadees in the snow, kittens in the crawlspace, and apple blossom time.  The Hummel vision did not aid us in interpreting, however, the yellow suds that choked our St. Croix River, or the sulfur smell in our air and that of “stinkin’” Lincoln, the next milltown down the road.