More From Niebuhr: On Sin & Morality

One further significant fact remains to be recorded in regard to the temple and the ark. The ark was placed in the temple. The symbol of the god of battles found a resting place in the temple dedicated to the God of peace who condemned David's shedding of blood. The god of the ark who both transcended and sanctified the highest sanctities of Israel was subordinated to the God of the temple, but not wholly excluded from its worship. The prophets were more rigorous than that. For the prophets the gods of particular nations were demons. The eternal God stood against these gods. But in the temple the ark found a resting place. The difference is one between priestly and prophetic religion. Prophetic religion is more rigorous than priestly religion. It speaks an eternal "no" to all human pretensions. Priestly religion, on the other hand, appreciates what points to the eternal in all human values. The priest is the poet who comprehends the meaning of human activities in the light of the eternal purpose. For him they do not deny but partially fulfil the will of God. The priest does not say, "whoso loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me." Rather he gives family life a sacramental character. He sees the love which is achieved between members of the family as a sign and token of a more perfect love. In that sense Jesus was priest as well as prophet when he said, "If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him." That is, the imperfect human achievement is a symbol and sacrament of the eternal. The priest does not condemn a man's love for his country, though there is always the possibility that the nation will usurp the place of God and make itself the center and source of all meaning. The priest sees in men's devotion to a cause greater than themselves the possibility of faith and devotion to the God who is greater than the causes which are greater than man.

There is no way of arriving at a perfect compromise between the priest and the prophet, between the faith which incorporates the ark into the temple and that which regards the god of the ark as the devil. The ambiguous character of all human spirituality makes this impossible. On the whole the religion of the priest is more dangerous than that of the prophet. He places the ark in the temple and tempts men to regard the god of the ark as the eternal God. They will be the more inclined to do this, as the ark is in the temple, and the aura of the temple and its vast dimensions seem to enhance the proportions of the ark. Thus the Christian church, despite its ostensible devotion to the eternal God, is most frequently a temple with an ark. The national flags which hang in the sanctuary are symbols of this fact. But even if the symbol be lacking, the ark is there in reality. Many a church is more devoted to the characteristic ideals of its national life than to the Kingdom of God in the light of which these ideals are seen in their pettiness and sinfulness. For this reason the word of the prophet must always be heard. The prophet is an iconoclast who throws all symbols of human goodness out of the temple. Only the word of the eternal God must be heard in the temple, a word of judgment upon human sin and of mercy for sinners.
But the unambiguous word of the prophet may do injustice to the ambiguity of the human enterprise. That ambiguity may be the source of dishonesty and pretension. But it is also the source of all genuine creativity in human history. The god of the ark is never purely the devil. Human goodness is never merely pretension. Its reaching beyond itself is at once the root of its sin and the proof of man's destiny as a child of God. Man stands under and in eternity. His imagination is quickened by the vision of an eternal good. Following that vision, he is constantly involved both in the sin of giving a spurious sanctity to his imperfect good and in the genuine creativity of seeking a higher good than he possesses.

Whatever the prophets may say therefore, there will always be King Davids. Nor could history exist without them. They are actually the authors of all human enterprise. Many of them do not have David's uneasy conscience. Their religion never transcends devotion to the ark. But even those who hear the word of the Eternal and in moments of high insight confess "we are but sojourners and strangers — we are as a shadow that declineth" cannot for that reason cease from performing the tasks of today and tomorrow.
It is significant that America, for all of its simple religion of the ark, had at least one statesman, Abraham Lincoln, who understood exactly what David experienced. Lincoln was devoted both to the Union and to the cause of the abolition of slavery, though he subordinated the latter to the former. Speaking of the divergent ideals of the north and south he said, "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. The prayers of both could not be answered." Here is the recognition of the will of God which transcends the northern and the southern idealism. Stephen Vincent Benet puts this insight of Lincoln in the memorable words:
"They come to me and talk about God's will
In righteous deputations and platoons,
Day after day, laymen and ministers.
They write me Prayers From Twenty Million Souls
Defining me God's will and Horace Greeley's.
God's will is General This and Senator That,
God',s will is those poor coloured fellows' will,
It is the will of the Chicago churches,
It is this man's and his worst enemy's.
But all of them are sure they know God's will.
I am the only man who does not know it."
"And, yet, if it is probable that God
Should, and so very dearly, state his will
To others, on a point of my own duty,
It might be thought He would reveal it me
Directly, more especially as I
So earnestly desire to know His will."¹ Yet this religious insight into the inscrutability of the divine does not deter Lincoln from making moral judgments according to his best insight. He continues in his Second Inaugural: "It may seem strange that men should ask the assistance of a just God in wringing their bread from other men's toil." That is a purely moral judgment and a necessary one. That is devotion to the highest moral ideal we know, which in this case was the ideal of freedom for all men. But Lincoln returns immediately to the other level: "But let us judge not that we be not judged." One could scarcely find a better example of a consummate interweaving of moral idealism and a religious recognition of the imperfection of all human ideals. It is out of such a moral and religious life that the moving generosity is born which Lincoln expressed in the words, "With malice toward none, with charity toward all, let us strive to finish the work we are in." This is a religion in which the ark has not been removed from the temple, but in which the temple is more than the ark. Unfortunately the Christian Church manages only occasionally to relate the ark to the temple as perfectly as that. But the example of Lincoln, as well as of David, reveals the possibility.