On the Integrity of Life
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namely, the means to speak of the human capacity for the divine and also the logic of perfection as the rule for proper discourse about the divine. What, if anything, does the integrity of life have to do with these ideas in the logic of Two ideas in the logic of Christian humanism remain to be addressed,
Christian humanism? How might it provide the means to check the possi-bility of hypertheism as the inner-distortion of theistic religious and spiritual convictions? And how then to move from Christian humanism to theological humanism itself?
whatever status it might have as a proof for the existence of God, it could be interpreted as a test of unsurpassable perfection for any claim about the real-ity of the divine. What we did not mention in that previous discussion (it was When we explored the Anselmic principle before, it became clear that
not germane) was that Anselm’s argument relied upon a specific conception of perfection. The most perfect being, he reasoned, both and otherwise than it is. The unity of necessity and being, he seemed to think, is necessarily is, that is, it cannot logically, ontologically, or temporally be is – it has being –
what one means by “perfection.” To be perfect is to exist and to exist neces-sarily. Anselm further held that one cannot conceive of anything, in idea or in reality, that could surpass that unity of necessity and being; it must, there-fore, name “God.” His argument, it could be said, fell to the modern critique
of metaphysics (see chapter 3). It is instructive, however, to turn the argu-ment against itself in order to show how it points to the integrity of life.surpasses the unity of necessity and being? And, further, does the idea of the Is it true that we cannot conceive of anything, in idea or in reality, which
integrity of life name it? This is complicated since on the logic of Christian humanism the entire point of saying that humans are created good but changeable was to claim that the highest human good, the would have to be good and unchangeable, that is, perfect, just in the way summum bonum,
Anselm conceived of God. God is then truly the highest good for humans and the struggle of human existence is to become united with the divine by grace and human effort. In Christian humanism there is a tight connection between the rules for right thinking about God and the idea of the highest good. The
human good is to become godlike: good and real and unchangeable. Can that connection pertain to the idea of the integrity of life?viduals and communities have about what is unsurpassably important to Ideas of perfection draw their force from perceptions and intuitions indi-
them, what is of ultimate significance and concern. These perceptions shift in the course of history. What was maximally important in ancient China is not the same as modern Europe or what had highest significance within the birth of Christianity or Islam or the wandering people of Israel. There is a