The Shape of Theological Humanism
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variously defined, that must be explored in order to understand the proper measure of human social life. Similarly, post-theism does not signify athe-ism, a stance that rejects all theology or discourse about God. Post-theism tries to affirm and reformulate religious sensibilities within contemporary
structures of thought and experience. It displays a humility of thinking which backs off the triumphalism of much theistic religion. As seen later in this essay, both anti-humanism and post-theism grasp insights that are important for theological humanism.
what do we mean by the “human”?In order to change the terms of debate we need to step back and ask, Defining the Human
It is important to remember the richness of the English word “humanity.” “The root-word is, quite literally, humble (earth or ground; hence Whatever else human beings are, we are earthly creatures. Many of the world’s homo, earth-being, and humilishumanus), from the Latin , earthly, human.”humus 12 ,
great religions speak of the creation of human beings from the dust of the earth; myths and stories tell that the deepest failure of human beings is the prideful assertion of power beyond our capacities. As Paul Ricoeur notes:The ancients called man a “mortal.” This “remembrance of death” indicated in
Awareness of mortality and bonds to the earth should foster humility among the very affirmation of man himself. When faced with the pretense of absolute know-ledge, humanism is therefore the indication of an “only:” we are name of man introduces the reference to a limit at the very heart of the only men.^13
mortals. Too often it does not. The clashes and collisions played out on the world scene, the distortions we call overhumanization and hypertheism, are testimony to human pride and presumption rather than a humble acknow-ledgment of our shared plight and spiritual longing for the integrity of life.
defined by aspiration, the drive and desire to become otherwise than our present state of life. Thinkers in the West have used a range of metaphors to make this point about human beings. As Laszlo Versényi puts it in his While we are earth creatures limited by mortality, “humanus” is also
study of Socratic humanism:Metaphorically speaking, [man] is only a symbol, a fragment, something fundamentally incomplete and unwhole which, aware of its incompleteness, is moved towards self-completion, strives for what would make it into that