Abstract
Recent debates about human dignity and the role of religion within democratic, constitutional societies in Europe and North America demonstrate a deterioration of secularism and the need to retrieve the religious, Christian humanist roots of our culture. After demonstrating the necessity to recover a metaphysical framework for answering the question of our humanity and society’s ultimate purpose, and for regaining a synthesis of reason and faith, this chapter offers a reconstruction of Christian humanism for the renewal of Western culture based on patristic, medieval and Renaissance roots, modern theology (both Protestant and Catholic), and hermeneutic philosophy. While non-Christians share intrinsically in this ideal as those created in God’s image, the chapter concludes, that renewal of a humanistic ethos depends first of all on Christians’ living out the belief that God became flesh to make us truly human.
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Notes
- 1.
Theologians such as Kardinal Walter Kasper, who are concerned about cultural developments, share this verdict. In his Stuttgarter Rede Zu Europa, Kasper concludes that “Multikulti, that is the co-existence of parallel societies has failed Europe-wide” (Kasper 2007, 24).
- 2.
The German philosopher Hans Jürgen Habermas employs this term to indicate “agnostic positions that strictly distinguish between belief and knowledge, without claiming the validity of one particular religion (as in modern apologetics) or to deny religious traditions any possible cognitive content (as does scientism).” Acceptable for public discourse, however, are only religious truths that can convince those outside a particular religious community (Habermas 2009b, 384).
- 3.
A Secular Age. Taylor also summarizes his criticism of the Enlightenment mythos in a more recent dialogue with Habermas (See, Taylor 2011, 34–59, 53).
- 4.
Taylor believes, on the contrary, that religion plays an important part in democratic societies (Taylor 2009b).
- 5.
“‘wissenschaftsgläubiger Naturalismus’ und postmoderne ‘Zuspitzung der Dialektik’ der Aufklärung sind Zeichen dieses Defätismus”.
- 6.
Habermas is sensitive enough to insist that this demand for translation should not give the religious citizen the impression that his religion is relegated to the private sphere (Habermas 2001, 34).
- 7.
On this point, Charles Taylor remarks correctly that Habermas’s distinction between a public political and a religiously motivated morality “would be more credible, if one had a watertight secular argument for rights. And this explains probably the difference between Habermas and myself on this point. He finds a secure foundation in a discourse ethic which I, unfortunately, consider fairly unconvincing” (Taylor 2011, 54).
- 8.
Habermas argues that “secular reasons belong to a context of assumptions – in this case to a philosophical approach, which is distinguished from any kind of religious tradition by the fact that it doesn’t require membership in a community of believers.” For Habermas, religious reasoning depends on sharing in a specific religious tradition and community, while secular reason does not depend on tradition or faith (Taylor and Habermas 2011, 61).
- 9.
Cicero adopted from the Greek Stoa the teaching that “men are born for the sake of men, that they may be able mutually to help one another” (Cicero 1913, 22 [1.vii]).
- 10.
(See also, Nauert 2006, 12).
- 11.
For Cicero, “the cultivation of the soul is the nourishment of ‘humanitas’: cultus animi humanitatis cibus” (Cicero 1913, 156–157 [1.xliv]).
- 12.
See also Augustine’s related statement that our salvation depends more on the incarnation of God than on the mighty deeds wrought by him while on this earth: “Instead, we should rejoice and be in wonder that our Lord Jesus Christ was made man, rather than that he, as God, performed divine deeds among men. Our salvation, after all, depends more on what he was made on our behalf, than on what he did among us” (Augustine 1990, 305).
- 13.
The German terms are “vermenschet” and “vergottet” respectively. Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesasmtausgabe, 58 volumes Weimar, 1883, 20:229,30. Cited as a 1526 sermon in: (Marquart 2000, 185).
- 14.
David Sedley has shown convincingly for modern readers what was common knowledge among ancient readers of Plato (including his Christian interpreters), namely that the goal of Plato’s philosophy is “homoiōsis theōi kata to dunaton”, to become like God as far as possible (See, Sedley 1999, 316ff). For the use and adaptation of this Greek ideal in the New Testament see: (Kooten 2008, 93–219).
- 15.
By recognizing the intrinsic rather than merely sacramental value of nature, scholastic humanism of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, despite different metaphysical presuppositions, laid the groundwork for the scientific developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (See, Southern 1995, 21).
- 16.
For example, Trinkaus shows that the Italian humanist Marcilio Ficino (1433–99) “wished to combat secularism as such, and he also was opposed to the separation of the study of philosophy in the universities’ arts faculties from the exposition of revelation based on faith.”
- 17.
Commentary on Genesis as qtd. in: (Trinkaus 1995, 517).
- 18.
It was one of Heidegger’s cardinal mistakes not to have recognized this concern for understanding being through language and poetry in Renaissance humanism, a concern so congenial to his own philosophical project (Grassi 1983, 41).
- 19.
Stated in his homily during mass at the airfield Freiburg in Breisgau, Sunday, September 25, 2011.
- 20.
Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism is essentially an interpretive faith. Christian faith is not a static construct, and does not propagate timeless ethical principles that have to be “aped” without understanding application (Bonhoeffer 2010, 86). Rather, the central concern of the Christian faith is that Christ takes shape in church and society, so that the human ideal embodied in Him can manifest itself in concrete social and political practices through responsible action (Bonhoeffer 2010, 89).
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Zimmermann, J. (2015). Being Human, Becoming Human: Christian Humanism as a Foundation of Western Culture. In: Melé, D., Schlag, M. (eds) Humanism in Economics and Business. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9704-7_4
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