The Shape of Theological Humanism
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also the light of the world who has come into the world (cf. John 1:1ff.). The Church as the body of Christ in the world is the existence is to be trained and disciplined. The must be cultivated to flower in the love of God. The gardenschool is the human soul that theatre in which Christian of the world is
much more the theatre of God’s glory wherein God’s goodness as the light of the world, not just human beings, appears under many “masks,” hidden, as it were, on the world’s stage. In a similar way the basic humanistic aim and ideal of human flourishing is transformed in the hands of Christian human-
ists, often in paradoxical ways.humanists and the relations among them. Our aim is constructive and not just historical. Under what ideas or rules or norms could Christians use and If our concern was purely historical, we would explore specific Christian
yet transform the humanistic legacy, thus connecting religion with critique? Our tactic will be to specify what we judge to be the necessary inner Christian humanism and to illustrate it with reference to important histori-cal figures. (^2) This tactic is especially helpful because it will enable us to show logic of
in the following chapter how the idea of the integrity of life is an appropri-ate bridge concept in the move from Christian humanism in an exclusive sense to theological humanism and our contemporary situation threatened by overhumanism and hypertheism.
claim about the intimate relation between human existence and the divine; a standard for correct thinking about the divine; and, finally, an understand-ing of how the divine-human relation sustains the highest good. These are, This logic of Christian humanism on our understanding has three parts: a
as we will see, closely bound together in the thought of most Christian humanists; they will be held together in theological humanism around the idea of the below, forms its own distinctive perspective on human life. Granting that integrity of life. Even the whole constellation of ideas, as shown
claim for now, it will help if we consider the elements in turn.A Capacity for the Divine
In the classical Christian formulation, the human capacity for a relation to the divine is conceived in terms of a connection between true self- and the love of God. The idea finds its philosophical roots in Plato, but con-tinues through history. St. Augustine, in his Confessions but also in knowledge On the
TrinityGod, in the self. Further, he insisted that, “When I recognize myself, I recog-nize you!” In his treatise , found a trace of the Trinity, the distinctly Christian conception of On True Religion, he wrote, “Go not outside of