The Task of Theological Humanism
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shape any person’s or community’s actual life. This is the work of freedom and responsibility under the dictates of the cosmopolitan conscience, as argued in chapter 7. As a theological humanist, one freely decides to inhabit openly and critically the social and religious forces that have shaped one’s life
for the sake of respecting and enhancing the integrity of life. One cultivates the goods of life in oneself and in others, works to educate conscience, and also undertakes reflection on how meaningfully to orient existence, personal and social. A theological humanist undertakes that way of life
within an complexity and in dedication to life with and for others. disciplines involved in a theological humanistic way of life and the spiritual It would take another treatise to enumerate the specific practices and abiding commitment to the imperative of responsibility with its
struggle it requires. What is more, these practices and disciplines would change depending on the religious tradition one inhabits. For example, a Roman Catholic theological humanism might find in the practice of the Eucharist a pattern for cultivating a principled love for the human garden
rooted in Christ’s actions of feeding and healing that in the power of the Spirit has become the very life of the Church. A Protestant might look to the Eucharist, but also to the study of scripture and the proclamation of the Word as the school of Christ in which conscience is formed and reflection
developed in order to see all existence as the theatre of God’s glory in the integrity of life. A Buddhist or a Muslim or a Hindu theological humanist would undertake different practices and disciplines as part of their way of inhabiting freely a religious outlook. Some would not want to use the word
“God.” It is not the task of this essay to explore these disciplines, especially those that arise within religious traditions we do not actually inhabit. We hope that others will do that work as well.More important for the conclusion of this book are the reasons for adopt-
ing theological humanism as an outlook and stance within religious life. Providing those reasons transforms our essay into a manifesto. What are the reasons?One basic reason to adopt theological humanism is a matter of sensibility
which we have tried to communicate throughout this book. It is captured most generally in the idea that human beings are “things in between.” But human beings are not simply a composite of animal and angel. The com-plexity of existence is greater, deeper. We have isolated at several levels the
sensibility consistent with the idea. From the perspective of theological humanism drawn from Christian and Western sources, human beings exist in between basic feelings or senses that arise within and through the levels