Reinhold Niebuhr’s An Interpretation of Christian Ethics is both an introduction to the discipline and a presentation of the author’s distinctive approach. That approach focuses on a realistic (rather than moralistic) understanding of the challenges facing human individuals and institutions, and a call for justice—imperfect though it might be—as what love looks like in a fallen world. The book’s most distinctive aspect is the author’s insistence that perfect love and justice are unattainable in this world, yet they remain our most important goals.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971) was an ethicist, theologian, and political philosopher who taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City from 1928 to 1960. Before that, for thirteen years, he was minister of Detroit’s Bethel Evangelical Church.
