The Task of Theological Humanism
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happens can be traced back to divine activity, where “God” is caught up in a life-and-death struggle with Satan. Anything good that happens is the direct result of God’s intervening grace. Anything bad that happens is either because Satan is not finally defeated or because God is testing one through suffering.
sense of identity in belonging to a special community, a set of secure beliefs by which to live one’s life, and certainty of redemption from a fallen world in the promise of God’s heaven. The marks of salvation include unwavering This kind of hypertheism confers blessings on a true believer: a strong
trust in God, surrender of one’s life to Jesus Christ, removal of sin and doubt, and right behavior. These things satisfy human desires and sensibility, rang-ing from fear of damnation to forgiveness for guilt and also divine recogni-tion. They also unify basic, social, natural, and reflective goods through
conformity to a biblical responsibility for the world are sacrificed on the altar of hypertheism. The notion that only Christians (or Jews or Muslims or etc.) have access to The cost of these satisfactions is high, however. Genuine freedom and principle of obedience to Christ and his Church.
the absolute truth of God, and that all others are in error, is prideful to the extreme. The conviction that salvation is redemption for it, can cultivate a tolerance for injustice and environmental degradation, because this world is but a temporary testing-place of no intrinsic value. The from the world, and not
Church of true believers has become an end in itself, and other forms of life are means to that end. In the end, hypertheism distort the integrity of life in their denial of the goodness of finite existence, and they warp the conscience into a voice of a tribal creed. In this way, religion endangers
the human future.versions of exclusionism, while transforming the spiritual good around the norm of the integrity of life?Is there a way to preserve what is powerful and good in the hypertheistic
A second, competing response to the reality of religious diversity comes from the side of secular humanists. At a political and social level, secular humanism Secular Overhumanization
delivers a fearsome critique of religion: religion ought to have no part in American social and political life. Religion is, in this view, deeply entangled with superstitions, and religious belief is the root of evil. Secular humanism aims to liberate humanity from the tyranny of religious absurdity in order to
actualize goods that constitute true ideals for humanity. The target of animosity is theistic belief and practice, whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.