The High Calling of Christian Humanism
Develop Joyously Every Faculty That God Has Given You
“Everything in the Pagan world that was valiantly done, brilliantly said, ingeniously thought, diligently transmitted, had been prepared by Christ for his society!”1
Desiderius Erasmus’s humanist mantra is set in the mouth of Jacob Batt, a character in The Antibarbarians who serves as a secretary of the town council in the city of Bergen. Through the speeches and dialogues of the characters in his seminal work—all based loosely on his real-life friends and colleagues—the “prince of humanists” lays out significant aspects of Christian humanism.
A fuller excerpt of Batt’s speech expounds on one of the key tenets of Christian humanism, suggesting with St. Augustine that there are spoils possessed by the Egyptians that were prepared by God in advance for the benefit and welfare of God’s people. Proverbs 13:22: …the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous.
Batt (Erasmus) says,
Everything in the Pagan world that was valiantly done, brilliantly said, ingeniously thought, diligently transmitted, had been prepared by Christ for his society! He it was who supplied the intellect, who added the zest for inquiry, and it was through him alone that they found what they sought. Their age produced this harvest of creative work, not so much for them as for us; just as every region cannot supply every commodity, nor (as Virgil says) does every land grow everything, so it seems to me that every century is allotted its own gifts. Many of the philosophers wore out their lives and their brains in seeking the highest good; but the real highest good, the perfect gift, was reserved by Christ for his own time. However he did not intend all the rest to be useless and done to no purpose. We see with our own eyes how in material things nature takes care that no portion of time shall slip away uselessly. Look at the trees (the sight of them suggests this example to me):
Batt goes on the illustrate his point by highlighting the seasonal changes of an apple tree. Spring supplies the sap and the budding flowers. Summer produces the pulp of the fruit and autumn the ripe apples which fall and produce new shoots from its seeds. Even winter, in its interval of quiet, plays the part of reestablishing the cycle. The manner of the planets and all of nature work the same way, he argues. The great discord of nature is actually working toward “the completest concord.”
So it is in the generations that proceeded Christ. His time was, of course, “the recognition of the highest good,” but the virtuous pagans had their own special privilege in the scheme of history too, striving to reach the things nearest to the highest good. Christ is the ripe fruit, but their generations were the sap and the bud that prepared the way. Similarly, the generations following will play their own special part in the work of bringing about the completest concord—the spread of the gospel and the discipling of the nations.
This manner of thinking about the reformation of humanity is a fundamental key to understanding Christian Humanism. It’s ancestor to Abraham Kuyper’s famous claim that, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!”2
Notwithstanding, when we speak of Christian Humanism today, the expression can be off-putting to readers. For many, these two words don’t belong together. They ring something of an oxymoron, like “sweet sorrow,” “cruel kindness,” or “military intelligence.”
This is because, on the one hand, widespread conceptions of evangelical Christianity tend toward notions of anti-intellectual fundamentalism. On the other hand, the common understanding of humanists are that of “enlightened,” anti-religious priests of secularism. In popular lore, these visions of life are mutually exclusive and fundamentally at odds with one another.
Yet, this popular assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. As I explain in my Very Short Explanation of Christian Humanism,
Christian Humanism predates secular, atheistic humanism which has borrowed the term and some of its effects, cut-flower. Further, Christian humanism is not man-centered; it’s incarnationally centered. That is, the Incarnation affirms the dignity of humanity and God’s lovingkindness toward him. Finally, Christian humanism acknowledges that Christ is the ideal human, and in him, we recover the fullness of our humanity. Therefore, Christian humanism seeks to recover and restore a vision of human flourishing under the lordship of Christ, integrating faith, reason, and the moral imagination.
Christian humanism is rooted in the tradition of men like St. Augustine, Boethius, Dante, Erasmus, and Milton—thinkers who saw that truth, goodness, and beauty are coherent in Christ and accessible through a disciplined and grace-informed intellect.
Perhaps J. Gresham Machen captures the concept best in his classic work, Christianity and Liberalism, where he writes,
The trouble with the paganism of ancient Greece, as with the paganism of modern times, was not in the superstructure, which was glorious, but in the foundation, which was rotten. There was always something to be covered up; the enthusiasm of the architect was maintained only by ignoring the disturbing fact of sin. In Christianity, on the other hand, nothing needs to be covered up. The fact of sin is faced squarely once for all, and is dealt with by the grace of God. But then, after sin has been removed by the grace of God, the Christian can proceed to develop joyously every faculty that God has given him. Such is the higher Christian humanism - a humanism founded not upon human pride but upon divine grace.3
When humanists think that they can promote and cultivate an educated class of flourishing human beings by erasing religion and setting man up as the measure of all things, his project will crumble because it’s rotten at the foundation. Humanity is fallen; men and women are sinners. On the flip-side, when Christians think pious religion is the continual beating of the breast and crying, “Woe is me!” and “man will never be anything more than a worm,” they fall into the other ditch, something Machen calls “the religion of the broken hearted.”
Christian humanism affirms the efficacy of the gospel. And the gospel’s transformative power has, in large part, been the impetus for Christian thinkers, writers, and educators from John the Evangelist and the Apostle Paul to Flannery O’Connor and C. S. Lewis.
The written testimonies of those who witnessed the Incarnation claim Christianity is the ultimate (and arguably first) humanism because while Christianity is chiefly interested in the glory of God and transcendent matters of the human soul, it is also deeply concerned with texts, human flourishing, and society’s common good. These focal points of Christianity are not bifurcations of priorities. They are interdependent and consistent with Jesus’s mission. As the Church Father Irenaeus made abundantly clear in his work Against Heresies, “the glory of God is a living man.”4
Christian humanists believe everything that is good, true, and beautiful belongs to and comes from God. Even the good works of Pagan and pre-Christian cultures were inspired by the Holy Spirit for his own purposes. That includes literature, philosophy, art, poetry, rhetoric, politics, etc.). It’s up to Christians to harvest the pollen from their flowers and make good honey. Such is the high calling of Christian Humanism.
The reason I publish BOOKS AND LETTERS is to promote Christian humanism and provide humane reflections on literature, culture, and education in an age dominated by fleeting trends and digital noise.
Because authentic humanism can only flourish under the lordship of Christ, my first book, Beloved of God and Called to be Saints, is an exposition of St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome, where he offers his longest and most sustained theological explanation of the gospel.
This is where he unpacks the gospel’s power to save the unrighteous and establish a flourishing humanity in the new age of Spirit-led liberty, a humanity that is united in and by Jesus Christ for the glory of God the Father.
If you’re interested in exploring Christian humanism, let me invite you to become a free subscriber to BOOKS AND LETTERS.
Then grab my 378-page book with 267 daily reflections (i.e., theological crumbs) on Paul’s letter to the Romans. It’s not a sentimental devotional; it’s a humble invitation to those who want to see more clearly.
Erasmus, The Antibarbarians, 60.
From Abraham Kuyper’s 1880 inaugural address at the dedication of the Free University of Amsterdam. Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Eerdmans, 1998), 488.
J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, (Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2009), 57.
By “living” he means a redeemed and flourishing man. 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.
While I read your article John Piper's "Christian Hedonism" came to mind several times. Perhaps Christian Humanism and Christian Hedonism are like the two rails of a train track?