The Task of Theological Humanism
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There is an endless banalization of culture. Many postmodern churchly and post-theistic theologiathe aesthetic character of the Christian message or the religious dimen-sions of cultural life. (^11) In a word, the question of art is at the intersection ns look to the realm of art as a way to explore
of religion and cultural forces around the world.humanism, we will see that some forms of visual art can awaken us to the integrity of life in its depth, freedom, and beauty. Art is a reflective good, namely, a meaningful and true grasp of the integrity of life. We address it^12 True to theological
to show its connection to the larger debate about consciousness within the context of theological humanism.of consciousness in providing the account. Prior to these two steps we need How then to begin? Any account of consciousness presupposes the work
then to reflect on what it means to provide a model of consciousness or of art. The act of making a “model,” we think, is a reflective form of art itself.
Among other things, theological humanism is a mode of reflecting on the goods of life, including life’s reflective goods. But what happens when one On Modeling
reflects on reflection? One is then exercising reflecting on acts of reflection. Thought bends back on itself to adjust to new information and for the sake of gaining insight into, or even knowledge about, goods. Human self-consciousness is marked by this capacity for reflex-reflexive consciousness, which is
ivity, as we noted in chapter 6. This self-reflective capacity invites debate and disagreement about how to account for consciousness.conscOne way to think about the process of understanding and knowing iousness is by constructing and testing models. (^13) Modeling is the metho-
dological motor driving the quest for knowledge in the natural and social sciences. For example, the widely known model of the DNA molecule assists anyone to understand it better, and it has explanatory power in analyzing genetic differences. While humanists are less familiar with the language of
modeling than are scientists, they in fact construct models when they inter-pret, for example, the meaning of Tolstoy’s story by Jackson Pollock. Models are constructed for the purpose of explaining observable patterns within a domain – why the things we observe appear or Father Sergius, or a painting
behave as they do. Models can be made up of anything. They may be physical entities (plastic, wood, and the like), mathematical formulae, verbal descrip-tions, images, stories, or anything else. The model should clearly specify the