Christian Humanism

The second Vatican Council clearly recognized the revolutionary character of the modern world in which we are entering into a "new age of human history. New ways are open therefore for the perfection and further extension of culture. These ways have been prepared by the enormous growth of natural, human and social sciences, and by technical progress" (Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, n. 54). More and more men, the Council continued, become conscious of their great role as "authors and artisans of their community," and it concludes: "Thus we are witnesses of the birth of a new humanism, one in which man is defined first of all by this responsibility to his brothers and to history" (n. 55). It is evident that Christian humanism itself now takes on a new aspect, and any Christian who appeals to the old medieval forms of Christian humanism as if they were opposed to the new, cannot help but make the message of the Council sound confused and ambiguous. Nothing must obscure the obligation of the Christian "to work with all men in the building of a more human world" (n. 57). Such is the explicit teaching of the Catholic church today.

Culture and Christianity

It is therefore extremely important to get rid of a profound confusion that identifies the Christian culture and world view of western society from the fall of Rome to the French revolution with "Christianity" pure and simple. This world view, which as we have seen was in its own way profoundly humanistic, was nevertheless hemmed in by certain limitations. It tended to regard man and the universe as static and definitively given realities which do not change in any important sense: realities which simply have to be understood and accepted in their unchanging natures. The dynamism of historic development was underestimated, and all profound social change was regarded with suspicion if not with implacable hostility.

A certain theology of providence was developed in this milieu, and today we must perhaps re-examine this theology, distinguishing in it those elements which simply reflected the culture and society of the time from those which are truly revealed by God. For instance, must one assume that all man's historic development simply conforms to a rigidly predetermined plan that has already been worked out in all its details? Must we consider that the only function of man's freedom is to discover and accept what has already been imposed upon him by God without any consideration for his own creative possibilities? Does this predetermined plan simply crush all initiative, so that, in fact, new and creative ideas are to be regarded as rebellious and erroneous by the very fact that they are new?

Anyone who has read the prophets and the New Testament with any attention recognizes that one of the most essential facts about Christianity is that, being a religion of love, it is also at the same time a religion of dynamic change.

If we consider the true meaning of the first word in the Christian message of salvation, metanoiete, "repent," we see that it is a summons to a complete change of life both for the individual and for society. This change did not simply take place once for all two thousand years ago. The summons to change, to man's creative self-realization and development in the spirit, as a child of God whom the truth shall make free, is a summons to permanent newness of life. The true concept of Christian order is then something much more dynamic and modern than the classical hierarchic pyramid with God at the top, man half way down, and prime matter at the bottom-an order in which each one has a fixed place determined for him eternally before he was born. In such a context, the call to repent is simply a call to assume one's proper place in the cosmic order-a rather minor adjustment which in many cases amounts to nothing more than accepting what one already has, and not protesting or asking for more. One of the historic paradoxes that resulted from this fixation of the Christian world view in one static concept is that the dynamic aspect of Christianity was left to be rediscovered and emphasized by thinkers who stood outside Christian institutions and were highly critical of them.