The Task of Theological Humanism
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ing the actual religions according to the idea and norm of the integrity of life. Just as the integrity of life transcends mere life, so does true holiness transcend any particular expression or revelation. This does not mean that a How can we produce this third-way thinking? By measuring and reform-
vague spirituality or synchronism is possible. The holiness that Christians experience does indeed appear on or with the person of Jesus Christ. The fact of this one appearance, however, does not place a limit on other possible appearances of the holy, which other religions can experience in other places.
The holy is not understandable outside actual religions. Christians – and all other religious people – should contemplate the transcendent being of God, revealed in the integrity of life. They should glorify God by rejecting an idolatry of their own symbols, that is, a reduction of God’s being to the
medium in which they receive it. Christians also should measure themselves by an experience which tends to be lacking in Christian exclusionism. This requires the independent capacity to consider the nature of spiritual experi-ence as one basis for solidarity, but not unity, with other religions. The same is
true of any other historical religion. In this way a cosmopolitan commitment is actually lived.should measure themselves by the integrity of life. Secular humanists rightly Similarly, secular humanism in general, and new atheism in particular,
point to the limits of scientific reason in knowing the world, and they pledge not to violate them. However, life is not exhausted by the natural, material objects of scientific inquiry, as scientism holds. As one example, self- consciousness is not and in principle cannot be an object of scientific inquiry,
as we saw in the previous chapter. The very core of human identity and thinking is an irrefutable reality that systematically eludes materialist expla-nation. So, too, does the without an understanding of being as such, we could not imagine ourselves whole of being transcend scientific investigation. Yet,
as inhabiting a what it cannot know, namely, the awareness in human consciousness of an ultimate horizon of meaning and reality, secular humanism can legiti-mately develop its own powers of spiritual life.uni-verse. By respecting the human capacity to understand (^30) Secular humanism contra-
dicts itself when it claims, on one hand, that human reason emerges from a blind process of natural selection in biological evolution, and, on the other hand, that human confidence is rightly placed in reason alone. As Leon Wieseltier wrote, “The power of reason is owed to the independence of
reason, and to nothing else ... Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.”that its attack on religion is only an attack on a crude form of supernaturali-stic theism. In that way the full scope of human transcendence is grasped. (^31) Secular humanism should also understand