The debate over Humanae Vitae reminds one strongly of the controversy—now much less pronounced than it was—over the nature of the ethic of Jesus. I want to suggest how an answer which emerged in that controversy may have a bearing on the present discussion among Catholics.

The Sermon on the Mount has been interpreted in three main ways—as an utterly transcendental ethic, as an interim-ethic, and as an ethic realizable in terms of this present world. Broadly speaking, the first and third of these alternatives received most support and they have their counterparts in the present debate. The transcendental view commanded great respect; the ethic of Jesus was absolute, it promulgated a new sort of law demanding a superhuman obedience. The opposite view argued that the ethic could not be attained, and we had much better wrest significance from such principles of justice, fair play, equality, etc., as we had and attempt a progressive improvement of humanity with these. In practice, this often corresponded with the third view about the nature of Christ’s teaching: Christian morality was about a human ideal, a vision of a better world after which we must all strive.

The most lucid critic of these positions was Reinhold Niebuhr, in a long line of books, notably Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and An Interpretation of Christian Ethics in 1936. Niebuhr holds that the great mistake of most of the usual interpretations of the ethic of Jesus is their failure to realize the ‘true dialectic of the spiritual life’.