7
The Cultural Context for Re-Envisioning
Christian Humanism
Jens Zimmermann
TrueChristian Humanismis, however, still an unfinished project in a
world hitherto called Christian. It is a debt which the Christian Church
owes to the world to this day.
(Emil Brunner, 1947)^1CULTURAL CONTEXTAfter the cataclysmic moral failure of World War II, manifested most dread-
fully by the holocaust in German concentration camps, the spiritual and moral
foundations of Western cultures became of vital concern to European politi-
cians and intellectuals. Thus, when the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner
(1889–1966) contended in his Gifford Lectures of 1947–8 that Christian
anthropology had been a crucial force in shaping Western understandings of
human dignity and rights, he spoke for many others who shared the same
view. These included not only explicitly theological voices, such as Albert
Schweitzer, Jacques Maritain, Henri de Lubac, T. S. Eliot, Karl Rahner, and
Helmut Thielicke, but also politicians, economists, and legal experts (many
from the German resistance and adherents to Christianity) who had already
worked out plans for a post-war society, whose intentionally secular political,
legal, and economic structures were framed by Christian values.^2 The key
(^1) Emil Brunner,Christianity and Civilization,vol.1:Foundations(New York: Scribner,
1948), 88.
(^2) Helmut Thielicke and Freiburger Bonhoeffer-Kreis,In Der Stunde Null: Die Denkschrift des
Freiburger‘Bonhoeffer-Kreises’zur Politische Gemeinschaftsordnung: Ein Versuch zur Selbstbe-
sinnung des christlichen Gewissens in den politischen Nöten unserer Zeit(Tübingen: Mohr, 1979).