The Shape of Theological Humanism
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social well-being, Todorov structures his account around longstanding humanistic themes, like individuality, love, a humane morality. Humanism is for him the wager that while human happiness is always in doubt, that suspense enables one the chance to live in truth.
orienting human life involves a vision of human existence, a definition of the “human.” We acknowledge the difficulty and appeal to the idea of human being as “beings in between,” the unfinished animal constantly Other examples could be cited. The point is that any account for rightly
striving to disclose and to become what it truly is. How, then, does this vision of the human enter into a theological ref lection? This brings us to the last set of ideas we want to introduce in this chapter, ideas that build on what has already been noted.
“Theological humanism” is a paradoxical name for a stance and orientation in life that combines humanistic aspirations with a genuine theological out-Religious Humanism and Theological Humanism
look. We need, then, to distinguish how theological humanism relates to religious humanism.ways of combining humanism with religion. Members of both forms believe that genuine human flourishing comes from learning, cultivating, and enact- (^17) There are two basic forms of religious humanism – two
ing basic human qualities. They are different, however, in the way they relate to the historical religions.been those people who hold that human dignity and happiness are fore-The first form is the humanism of organized religions. There have always
most among the benefits of right conviction and practice within their own religion. Under this conception, religious humanism appears only in the specific guise of Jewish humanism, Christian humanism, Islamic human-ism, Buddhist humanism, and so on; there is no generic version of religious
humanism. The convictions of one’s religion are viewed as the necessary and sufficient conditions for being truly humanistic. For these folks, the aim of religion is to bring people close to God or the divine – to know or love what is unsurpassably important and real – so that humans may
f lourish in their own lives. Pleasing the gods at the expense of human happiness, or seeking redemption from this worldly vale of tears in an other-worldly heaven, nirvana, or place of eternal bliss are not the primary goals of religion for this kind of religious humanist.
and Western Christianity when theologians speak of the “humanity of For example, one finds this form of religious humanism within Eastern