for Christian anthropology allows us to correct the often exaggerated contrast
between Christian theocentrism with pagan and later secular forms of
anthropocentrism. The simplistic opposition of human-centred world views
to a God-centred outlook may be effective for Christian apologetics, but this
rhetorical clarity obscures the divine focus on humanity established by God
himself. If the incarnation shows God’s own anthropocentrism, his love for
human beings to the point of becoming himself human, then one should
perhaps speak of a theo-anthropocentrism in Christian theology,^20 on the
basis of which Christians transformed Greekpaideiainto thepaideia tou
theou, the divine education that through union with God aimed at making
us truly human.^21 When Clement of Rome extols the‘paideiaof God’, and
Basil of Caesarea links divine education to the new social order of Christ’s
‘politeia’,^22 we see the Christian transformation of two crucial Greek concepts,
namely humanistic education and the city state as community. In their
Christian adaptation, education and civic responsibility become Christian
education for the sake of the new humanity existing in embryonic form in
the church, the assembly orekklesiaof the new unified race, marked, accord-
ing to the apostle Paul, by unity and peace. It was this Christian anthropology
of deification that transformed the culture of antiquity and inspired Western
ideals of higher education.^23
The incarnation at the heart of Christian anthropology also made possible
the correlation of faith and reason that gave birth to the universities and, more
generally, to an openness towards all sources of truth. From early on, many
Christian theologians believed in a universal divine pedagogy, whereby God
works through human cultures permitting their highest achievements to
become the genuine expression of divine truth. Thus, the best cultural achieve-
ments of other cultures were taken as God-given insights. The recurring trope
of Israel’s plundering the treasures of Egypt captures this basic humanist
attitude. Thus, to return to our citation by Justin Martyr, ideally (if not always
in practice), in the conviction that God is at work in everything true and noble,
Christian humanists have always drawn freely on every available learning in
their pursuit of humanflourishing.
Moreover, Christian humanism laid the groundwork for many modern
ideas we now take for granted. Humanistic ideals of a common humanity,
universal reason, freedom, personhood, human rights, human emancipation
and progress, and indeed the very notion of secularity (describing the present
(^20) Emil Brunner,Christianity and Civilization, vol. 1:Foundations(New York: C. Scribner’s
Sons, 1948), 90.
(^21) Jaeger,Early Christianity, 25.
(^22) Basil the Great,Letters 59– 185 , trans. Roy J. Deferrari, LCL, Basil 2 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1928), 361.
(^23) For a more detailed account of this development see Jens Zimmermann,Humanism and
Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
6 Jens Zimmermann