The Task of Theological Humanism
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The “world” is not a politically relevant concept with respect to citizenship. Indeed, one of the problems in our current situation is the plight of “stateless persons” who, for various reasons, are denied the protection of actual citi-zenship. In the global age, it is important to insist that while we might indeed
understand the world as one, human existence is always situated in particular contexts and communities. This fact gives rise to the multiple identities that make up any one person’s or community’s existence.While that is the case, the point of theological humanism is to orient iden-
tity by an aim beyond itself, namely, the aim of what respects and enhances the integrity of life with and for others. It entails a cosmopolitan outlook where the scope of community, political or religious, to others and to the whole community of human community extends beyond the boundaries of any specific
life. The task of theological humanism, accordingly, is to help foster communi-ties in which conscience, the basic mode of moral and spiritual being in the world, can be educated and formed towards a cosmopolitan outlook. One inhabits a specific community, political or religious, from within this wider
perspective in ways in which freedom is infused with a sense of responsibility. The term for that stance in religious and political life is the sciencefor freedom and identity if social life is to have a future in the global age.. This form of conscience, we have been arguing, must be the touchstone cosmopolitan con-
this chapter. It names the way a theological humanist identities: political, ethnic, religious, cultural, gendered, economic. One has the responsibility in specific situations to make choices of priority about The cosmopolitan conscience is the answer to the orienting question of inhabits their social
one’s identity for the sake of the integrity of life from a cosmopolitan per-spective. This is not, we stress, a denial of any specific identity, but, rather, a project of integrating life with and for others. A person’s or a community’s form of life is oriented beyond itself in ways that respect and enhance the
integrity of life rather than contributing to the endangerment of life. The cosmopolitan conscience is an answer to hypertheism and overhumanism in the domain of social life. Neither human nor divine power alone orients and integrates existence. Rather, the complexity of identities backs choices meant
to fashion lives and communities that make possible the ongoing adventure of communal life and in doing so enliven the social good.