Nations, ethnic groups, religious associations, etc., Reinhold believed, by their very nature, would always exponentially replicate and project on a much larger scale, the selfishness and aggressiveness residing in the hearts of sinful individuals. From the vantage point of what his critics deemed his fatalistic and his defender s his realistic view of the world, Reinhold believed that, although individuals could be redeemed, the groups, especially the nations comprising those individuals, could not. Pure disinterestedness is an ideal which even individuals cannot fully achieve, and human groups are bound always to express themselves in lower ethical forms than individuals. It follows that no nation can ever be good enough to save another nation purely by the power of love. The relation of nations and economic groups can never be brought into terms of pure love.
Justice is probably the highest ideal toward which human groups can aspire.
It followed, then, for Reinhold that in practical, specific and contemporary terms, this means that we must try to dissuade Japan from her military venture, but must use coercion to a minimum and prevent it from issuing in violence, must engage in constant self-analysis in order to reduce the moral conceit of Japan s critics and judges to a minimum, and must try in every social situation to maximize the ethical forces and yet not sacrifice the possibility of achieving an ethical goal because we are afraid to use any but purely ethical means. The following week, April 6, H. Richard Niebuhr, in a short rejoinder to his brother entitled The Only Way into the Kingdom of God , sought to identify just what was at stake in their ongoing debate. He identified it as their differing perspectives on human history. The establishment of this kingdom, he maintained, depends on our recognition of its presence and our acceptance of the only kind of life which will enable us to enter it, the life of repentance and forgiveness. The society of love is an impossible human ideal, H. Richard concluded, as the fellowship of the organism is an impossible ideal for the cell.