The Shape of Theological Humanism
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history to human ideals, values, and concerns, at least with respect to their content and meanings.values and ideals because, as already shown, the idea of the integrity of life provides some orientation to life and the logic of perfection enables one to (^18) That fact does not entail an invidious relativism of
sort through legitimate from false claimants to human devotion.of ultimate importance in our global age and the human future? Can it withstand the test of its claim to perfection?The idea of the integrity of life names that perception and intuition for^19 What is
an age in which every form of life is endangered by forces of overhumaniza-tion and hypertheism. It does so, more pointedly, because it conceives of perfection in terms of the use of power – human or divine – not in the service of power itself, but in the service of life against forces of disintegra-
tion and death. The idea expresses the meaning of perfection as the unity of power and life, and in this way, we believe, names a central intuition and even spiritual longing of our age. Can this meet the logical test of perfection?Consider it in this way. Is the idea of power, disconnected from the demand
to respect and enhance the integrity of life, an unsurpassable idea? It cannot be, because power is always the power of something and therefore it must affirm the reality of its condition as maximal. Is the idea of life devoid of the capacity to create, respond to, or shape reality – that is, power – an unsurpass-
able idea? No, because life the diminishing of power to nil is also the destruction of life. The idea of the integrity of life, in other words, captures the intuition that the capacity to respond to, create, and shape reality, a power found in living beings, must per definition entails that capacity and, therefore,
respect and enhance the right integration of its condition, that is, life. Further, any life so dedicated must be good in an unsurpassable way; it must also, as we have already shown, struggle to bind together happiness and virtue. In this respect, it is proper to say that “God” names the integrity of life even if
“God” is not the sole causal agent in reality. And yet under the Anselmic principle, the idea of the integrity of life counters the forces of hypertheism. No belief, revelation, dogma, authority, or community can claim divine sanction or inspiration which in thought or word or deed violates the
unsurpassable good of together both the logic of perfection and conception of the highest good, or so we believe.What then of the last element in the logic, the claim about the human the integrity of life. In this way the idea bundles
capacity for the divine? For Christian humanists, the human capacity for the divine was not a causal relation between self-knowledge or love or feeling and the divine reality. An individual who comes to know herself or himself as a moral and spiritual creature does not somehow cause its relation to God.