Within the
context of special revelation, Niebuhr turned to two distinctive
biblical teachings about man, man as creature and image of God, and used these two doctrines to clarify and substantiate his
original assumption about man's paradoxical environment of nature and spirit, and to refute the competing anthropologies of modern culture.
The literal / inerrant view was born out of ignorance — ignorance of the
biblical texts in their
original language and of their metaphorical
context and ignorance / misunderstanding of scientific discoveries and theories.