The Shape of Theological Humanism
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religions. For example, Platonism or Hegelianism can be interpreted in humanistic terms to show how an understanding of the Form of the Good or the Absolute Idea may be intrinsic to the human spirit. These and other philosophies have religious roots on close examination, but they
purport to rise above them into rarified, speculative heights. Recently constructed philosophies related to existentialism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and even postmodernism are used to articulate the mean-ing of human being as open to and receptive of the divine in the fabric of
human life.humanists, etc.) undervalue important efforts outside their own traditions to understand the common shape of the human drive for meaning, value, Too readily, we judge, humanists within organized religions (Christian
and truth. They prefer to remain within the interpretive circles of particular narratives, symbols, and theological formulae; they do not seek to expand their traditions to a more cosmopolitan point of view. Likewise, spiritual-speculative humanists tend to underestimate the degree to which their
thinking, which aspires to universality, is nonetheless embedded within his-torical traditions of language, culture, and religion. No one is religious or even a human being in general. Human thought, precisely as human and thus limited, is situated within parti cular social and cultural legacies, like the
legacies of distinctive religions. The writings of any speculative humanist concerning universal human meanings can be localized within particular cultural trajectories. Even humanistic philosophers live within (loosely) organized historical communities.
the meaning of religious humanism. It entails living tradition; it denotes a way of freely inhabiting a religious outlook. Nevertheless, theological humanism also entails a Theological humanism changes the terms of the debate raging about criticalthrough relation to one’s a religious
religious community and its beliefs and practices. It tests the truth of reli-gious convictions, and, conjointly, the meaning of humanistic commit-ments must be probed to their theological depths. While a theological humanist always inhabits some religious tradition, he or she does so in
ways different than someone who believes his or her tradition’s are the necessary and sufficient condition of humanistic and theological commitments. A theological humanist believes that the resources of his or her religious community are distinctive among the many ways of being convictions
religious and human on this planet. Those utterly religious outlooks, criticized, revised, even rejected in the light of interac-tions with others who also seek integral existence.unique. One’s religious tradition can be compared with other resources are nevertheless not