Christian Humanism

Spiritual Life, Fall 2004 by Merton, Thomas

The Christian Vision

It is man, in Christ, who has the mission of not only making himself human but of becoming divine by the gift of the Spirit of love. This is not an abstract or contemplative operation only. Love is measured by its activity and its transforming power. Christianity does not teach man to attain an inner ideal of divine tranquility and stoic quiet by abstracting himself from material things. It teaches him to give himself to his brother and to his world in a service of love in which God will manifest his creative power through men on earth. This perennial language of Christianity is not bound to any limited historical world view. It is timeless and points beyond history. Therefore, it has inexhaustible reserves of creative and transforming energy which can vivify and redirect modern philosophies as it once transformed and elevated the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. We have some idea of this, for example, in the genial thought of Père Teilhard de Chardin in our own day.

Man is in the midst of the greatest revolution his world has ever seen. This revolution is not merely political but scientific, technological, economic, demographic, cultural, spiritual. It affects every aspect of human life. This revolution in its broadest aspects is something that cannot be stopped. The great question is whether it can truly be directed to ends that are fully compatible with the authentic dignity and destiny of man. Science alone, politics alone, economics alone cannot do this. Still less can the aim be achieved by the power of nuclear weapons or by the guerilla bands of social revolutionaries. There must be a full and conscious collaboration of all man's resources of knowledge, technique and power. But the one hope of their successful coordination remains the deepest and most unifying insight that has been granted to man; the Christian revelation of the unity of all men in the love of God as his one Son, Jesus Christ.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), writer and Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. His writings include The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.