Five Goals For A New Christian Humanism
A Second Letter to the Prince of Humanists from Agapetos Mathetes
Dearest Mentor,
May the peace of Christ be upon you beloved prince of humanists.
Thank you, heartily, for your most gracious epistle. Receiving your reply to my previous letter was balm to my weary soul. In a fit of melancholy, I had nearly resigned myself to believing I would never hear from you again, either because of our geographical distance, some exorbitant demands on your time. I’m ecstatic to be wrong on both counts. Your words have, once again, elevated my soul and given me heart.
Thank you for your kind and candid thoughts on the 10 Pillars For A New Christian Humanism I sent to you in my last letter. I will ruminate on your critiques and consider their application to ambitious project.
At your request—and I assure you, I will be brief—I here present you with my Five Goals for A New Christian Humanism; or, stated more accurately, five goals for a fresh application of Christian Humanism in our post-Christian age.
Goal #1
Recover the actual idea of Christian Humanism, by revitalizing the very expression in our post-Christian culture, one that believes humanity can only flourish in the absence of religion, especially Christianity. In this age of secularism, faith has been divorced from reason. Epistemology serves as a buffer between what can be known by the public and what can be believed in one’s own private affairs. A Christian humanism must be recovered so that Christianity can, once again, receive the full consideration of its purchase on human flourishing, not only within the halls of our dysfunctional universities and schools, but also in the dissolute public square.
Goal #2
Foster dialogue toward reconciliation and unity (not uniformity) between the Christian traditions (i.e., Orthodox, Roman, and Protestant, etc.). This is an enormous task, but one that is an essential tenant of Christianity itself. Until there is unity within “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” the Church will not take its rightful place as stewards and arbiters of culture.
Unity is Jesus’s prayer:
And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. -John 17:11
And Paul exhorted the church to this end:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. -Ephesians 4:1–6
A recovery of Christian humanism in this age will naturally foster such a unity because Christian humanism transcends polemics and instead focuses on an irenic theology of human flourishing, which is the glory of God.1
The New Delhi Statement on Unity elegantly expresses what it will take to realize this unity in its third paragraph:
We are not yet of a common mind on the interpretation and the means of achieving the goal we have described. We are clear that unity does not imply simple uniformity of organization, rite or expression. We all confess that sinful self-will operates to keep us separated and that in our human ignorance we cannot discern clearly the lines of God’s design for the future. But it is our firm hope that through the Holy Spirit God’s will as it is witnessed to in Holy Scripture will be more and more disclosed to us and in us. The achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them. We believe that nothing less costly can finally suffice....
Goal #3
Promote a more extensive conversation on civic policies that transcend ideological frameworks that merely range from Marxism on one hand to Nationalisms on the other. Christian humanism would view successful civic policies as expressions of wisdom extending from Natural Law and existing in historical secularity—the liminal space between Secularism and various forms of Theocracy. The ultimate manifestation of gospel dominion (Matthew 28:18-20) is the work of the Holy Spirit, not the work of Christian actors employing Machiavellian or Nietzschean tactics in the political arenas. Goal #2 is harder work than waging culture wars, but must take priority over culture-warrior impulses.
Goal #4
Holistic Cultural Discernment. Humanists are interested in studying the artifacts humans create as symbols of the human experience and condition. Christian humanism considers the artifacts and experiential aspects of the humanities through the lens of Christianity, particularly through the lens of the Incarnation and eucharistic covenant renewal worship. This means Christian humanists will explore the human condition in a more integrated fashion, not the modern approach of segregating ideas into more specialized fields like literary humanities, medical humanities, or digital humanities, etc.
Goal #5
Culture making. A recovery of Christian humanism would attempt to nourish culture makers in Scripture, Church history, and the Great Conversation of the Western tradition so we all learn to ask the right questions and think Christianly about culture making. In other terms, Christian humanism seeks to cultivate the moral imagination of writers, teachers, artists, architects, engineers, musicians, financiers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and law enforcement officials, etc. so that more and more culture makers view the cosmos as God’s material creation for humanity that is inexorably tied to eternity.
Once again, I acknowledge my project may seem ambitious, but every journey must being with a series of first steps. I therefore humbly invite your insights and corrections. As I patiently await your reply, I will occupy myself with further reading and research so that I may have somewhat intelligent responses to your next volley of exacting critiques.
Yours, most respectfully,
Agapetos Mathetes
Irenaeus, Against Heresies (4.20.7) in Alexander Roberts et al., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325 (Edinburgh, Grand Rapids, Mich: T. & T Clark ; Eerdmans, 1989), 490.
Would you say that Nationalism has no place in Christian Humanism? If so, why not?