The Shape of Theological Humanism
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human life” does not really help. It begs the question of what one means by God or the arena of human life. We have already specified the logical demands on right thinking about God, according to Christian humanism. We have also briefly indicated the supreme good: the harmony of holiness and hap-
piness. What remains, then, is some claim about human existence that holds together these other convictions.it has been developed by Christian and Renaissance humanists and will be Actually, it was St. Augustine who first expressed the basic insight, even if
developed still further by theological humanism. The insight is deceptively simple. In his And I think there cannot now be any doubt, that the only cause of any good Enchiridion, Augustine writes:
that we enjoy is the goodness of God and that the only cause of evil is the falling first in the case of an angel and afterwards in the case of man.away from the unchangeable good of a being made good but 21 changeable
The insight is that human beings are created for a relation to the goodness of God, but human beings are also a necessary or permanent relation to the highest good. This idea, as we saw in previous chapters, was exploited by thinkers like Pico to say that human changeable. No person or community has
beings have no essential nature and can therefore become whatever they desire to be. For the Christian humanist, neither the goodness of finite being nor the basic changeability of human existence can ever be overcome, despite what Pico and others might think. Humans are fallible beings who can turn
and fall away from their highest good. This claim about being human – that we are oriented towards the highest good but are changeable, fickle, and fal-lible creatures – links together the other elements of the logic of Christian humanism.
important implications that helped to shape the legacy of Christian human-ism. It means, first, that one struggle of human existence is to form habits, virtues, and the bonds of conviction sufficient to keep human life steadfast The conviction that human beings are created good but changeable has
in its commitment to what is right and good. This is why, for instance, edu-cation is important in the history of Christian humanism as seen in the idea of the philosophy and aims to form human life around convictions about what is true and good school of Christ. In a comprehensive sense, education
and thereby to provide some consistency and stability to life.Luther put it well. God is, he insisted, righteousness and holiness, truth and goodness. Anyone who seeks these things seeks God. In fact, Luther insisted A deeper insight is, second, about the human relation to the divine. Martin