The Logic of Christian Humanism
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unless God is the source and end of holiness and happiness? Taken together, the Anselmic principle, and the idea of the highest good as the harmony of virtue and happiness, formulate what one can and ought to say about God and also what ought to be the good that orients human life. They are the
logical demands for proper thinking and living in Christian humanism as a form of third-way thinking.
We have tried to pry apart a cluster of ideas that typify the logic of Christian humanism, ideas about the human capacity for a relation to God, a norm for Goodness and Fallibility
right thinking about the divine, and also the supreme good of human life. We have also noted that the distinctive feature of focus on the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the reality of God’s being with and for humanity. The core of Christian humanism is Christian humanism is the
“that the fullest realization of what it means to be human can be known through personal communion with Jesus Christ, the Word of God who entered the arena of human life to bring wholeness and freedom to every human being.” 19
by Christian humanisms whether Eastern or Western, whether Ortho-dox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant. The modern Russian school in Orthodox theology, for instance, focused on Despite differences in conception and emphasis, this core conviction is held bogocheloveschestvo, “Godmanhood” or the
“humanity of God.” Related, the Roman Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote about “integral humanism” even as liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, following the humanity is the “temple of God.” Karl language of Vatican II, thought that Barth, the Protestant theologian often
seen as a strident theocentrist, wrote late in his life: “Since God in His deity is human, [theological] culture must occupy itself neither with God in Himself nor with man in himself but with man-encountering God and God-encountering man and with their dialogue and history, in which their
communion takes place and comes to fulfillment.”drawn from Christian sources continues, but also revises, the core conviction of Christian humanism in order to respond to current realities.Before turning to how theological humanism draws from these ideas to^20 Theological humanism
present a kind of third-way thinking for the current age, one last comment needs to be made about the bundle of ideas itself. What holds it all together? To insist that the constellation of Christian humanist ideas is held together by the conviction that in Jesus Christ “the Word of God entered the arena of