The Task of Theological Humanism
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or instrumental, which perfects ever more efficient and profitable means to achieve the bottom-line goals of corporations or nations. Humanistic learn-ing, as theorists ranging from Said to Sen and Todorov note, is desperately needed to counteract the predominance of technical and economic pursuits
in thinking. Humanistic criticism aims at liberation from the spell and power of words and slogans. Learning foreign languages, studying history, and reflecting on the nature of human understanding free one from the bondage that comes from too closely identifying well-known signs or names within
one’s native language with the meanings they signify. And from the traditions of critique, theological humanism draws on the emphasis on intellectual rigor, open and unrestricted inquiry, and a willingness to challenge and criti-cize authority for the sake of the truth, wherever it leads. From within the
legacy of Western humanism, theological humanism is a kind of counter-memory, to borrow Said’s term. It witnesses to the transcendent reach of the human spirit to counter the forces of overhumanization. But it also opens human existence to a depth and reach denied by too many contem-
porary neohumanists and their limitation of transcendence to intrahuman, lateral relations.sented it calls on the history of ideas and images of God as “that than which Drawn from Christian sources, theological humanism as we have pre-
none greater can be conceived.” The idea of God thereby designates the reach of human transcendence to include but exceed later transcendence. The idea is about a transcendence that cannot successfully be reified into the idea of a supreme being. The idea of God surpasses expressions (signs) of
God, which attempt to convey it. That self-surpassing element in the idea of God opens the mind to what is truly mysterious in the integrity of life. Idolatry is precisely the identification of the transcendent God with the signs or symbols adopted in history to signify the divine life. By the same token,
the human spirit reaches beyond the confines of communities and traditions into a freedom of genuine spiritual transcendence.being and thinking are intrinsically open to transcendent otherness and a The idea of God is crucial to the integrity of humanity, because human
force of mystery. The importance of theology to humanism is thereby clear: although we begin from the human in its ambiguity, human being is not self-sufficient and not self-grounding. The human quest for integrity is always also a quest for what lies beyond human power and striving. Human
being, as a being “between” the complexity of goods that saturate modes of life, and human thinking, as a mediating between perceiving, conceiv-ing, and transcendence.interpreting, are rooted on the earth within an open horizon of