Living Theological Humanism
169
and its conferring the grace of ultimate meaningfulness onto human under-standing. Only with a schooled sense of the openness of human being to the integrity of life can humans resist the temptation to elevate and exalt their Theology is the language that testifies to the approach of this transcendence
own freedom into an ultimate position, which it does not deserve and which it cannot sustain.humanism draws on the crucial notions of religious experience and religious communities. Our ideas of transcendence and of human worth arise and are (^1) From the closely related religious traditions, theological
sustained within the myriad particular religious communities and so various and even conflicting ways of naming the divine. genuine human future, but it must be a religion tempered by the conver-Religion plays a crucial role for theological humanism in securing a
gence of both humanistic and theological sensibilities just outlined. Theol-ogical humanism affirms the interconnectedness and it expresses that in the ultimate affirmation that all our thoughts about God and all human aspirations must cohere with a due respect and enhance-of theology and humanism,
ment of the integrity of life. Such is the conceptual framework of theological humanism.How then to live theological humanism?
A theological humanist lives them. One undertakes the discipline of living freely A Way of Livingthrough the religions rather than apart from within a particular reli-
gion. The human future needs the contribution of the religions, but it needs only self-reforming religions that are dedicated to the integrity of life as the manifestation of divine life and the human good. Religious people should undertake the free and serious work of reform that will enable them to live
more fully, completely, and responsibly. Why, given all of the problems that currently afflict the religions and which so often set them against each other in spiteful antagonism, do we propose to work through and not against or apart from the religions?
religion, although it implies philosophical commitments and religious sensi-bilities. As mortal and time-bound creatures, human beings live, think, love, worship, and die in specific communities. Accordingly, to be a theological Theological humanism is not a specific philosophy or a new kind of
humanist cannot mean that somehow one must stop being a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a South African, an American, a German, or some com-bination. At issue is how one inhabits, lives through, the many identities that