The Shape of Theological Humanism
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and knoto affirm, rather than deny, distinct human capacities for action and free rela-tions to others. Unlike strident forms of Christian faith, including significant portions of Augustine and Calvin, that verge on determinism in order to pre-wledge of God arise simultaneously, and they do so in such a way as
serve God’s sovereignty, this argument protects and promotes the distinctive-ness of human beings as moral agents with freedom and purpose. The fear that human freedom might usurp the priority of God’s action has driven some theologians into forms of hypertheism in which God and God alone is the
only “agent.” The long legacy of Christian humanism has always denied that claim and insisted, in the words of St. Athanasius, an ancient Church Father, that “God does not save us, without us.”creative interpretation of biblical and non-biblical thought is the insight that (^9) The possibility and the reality of this
the human capacity for a relation to the divine is found in the fact that we are beings defined by self-knowledge and the freedom to act with and for others.
A second element in the constellation of ideas that characterizes the logic of Christian humanism is a complex idea insofar as it has to do with how to God and the Logic of Perfection
think rightly about the human relation to the living God. It is a demand of critique or norm for proper thinking about God so that one does not imagine that God is just a projection of human needs and desires. In order to understand how within the religious relation to God. One must formulate a rule
Christian humanists solved the problem of critique one needs first to grasp an important distinction found within the legacy of the Christian tradition. It takes us back to the definition of religion offered in chapter 1: religions, with their myths, rituals, and community life, are about what is unsurpassably
important forms of classic Christian belief explained in the previous chapter, namely, God as heavenly deity and God as light of the world.In Christian thought, and other traditions too, the human relation to the and real. The grounds of critique also continue the two basic
divine has often been conceived in distinct ways. One typical way God is approached is through an encounter with an Other, a stranger. God is totally different and other than human existence and any relation to God is an unexpected, even accidental, encounter. Here we find God as heavenly deity.
God thunders the Law to Moses on Sinai; Christ appears to the disciples walking on the water; St. Paul is struck blind by the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus. God is essentially different, other, and non-reducible to human thought and desire. There is no necessary relation of God to