Christian Humanism is the belief that human
freedom and individualism are intrinsic (natural) parts of, or are
at least compatible with,
Christian
doctrine and practice. It is a
philosophical union of Christian and
humanist principles.
Origins
Christian humanism may have begun as early as the 2nd century, with
the writings of
St. Justin Martyr,
an early theologian-apologist of the
Catholic Church. While far from radical,
Justin suggested a value in the achievements of Classical culture
in his
Apology
Influential letters by Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa
confirmed the commitment to using pre-Christian knowledge,
particularly as it touched the material world and not metaphysical
beliefs. Already the formal aspects of Greek philosophy, namely
syllogistic reasoning, arose in both the
Byzantine Empire and Western
European circles in the eleventh century to inform the process of
theology. However, the Byzantine hierarchy during the reign of
Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118)
convicted several thinkers of applying "human" logic to "divine"
matters.
Peter Abelard's work
encountered similar ecclesiastical resistance in the West in the
same period.
Petrarch (1304-1374) is also
considered a father of humanism. The traditional teaching that
humans are made in the image of God, or in Latin the
Imago Dei, also supports individual worth and
personal dignity.
Background
Humanists were involved with
studia
humanitatis and placed great importance on studying ancient
languages, namely Greek and Latin, eloquence, classical authors,
and rhetoric. All were important for educational curriculum.
Christian humanists also cared about scriptural and patristic
writings, Hebrew, ecclesiastical reform, clerical education, and
preaching.
In the Renaissance
Christian humanism saw an explosion in the
Renaissance, emanating from an increased faith
in the capabilities of Man, married with a still-firm devotion to
Christianity. Plain Humanism might value earthly existence as
something worthy in itself, whereas
Christian humanism
would value such existence, so long as it were combined with the
Christian faith.One of the first texts regarding Christian humanism
was
Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola's
Oration on the Dignity of
Man, in which he stressed that Men had the free will to
travel up and down a moral scale, with
God and
angels being at the top, and
Satan being at the bottom.
The country of Pico's
nativity, Italy
, leaned
heavily toward Civic humanism, while
the firmer Christian principles took effect in places other than
Italy, during what is now called the Northern Renaissance.
Italian
universities and academia stressed Classical mythology and writings
as a source of knowledge, whereas universities in the Holy Roman Empire and France
based their
teachings on the Church Fathers.
Sparks of Christian Humanism
After the fall of the
Roman Empire and
the civilization of barbarians, there were thoughts of a more
Christianized humanity for society. Western Christian clerics
controlled education, since only the monasteries remained as seats
of learning.
Charlemagne requested for
scholars to set up places of learning that would become
universities in the twelfth century. Eastern Christians meanwhile
continued the late Antique practice of studying in the homes of
secular masters, studying the same curriculum of "classical" Greek
authors as their predecessors in the Roman period: Homer's Iliad,
Plato's dialogues, Aristotle's Categories, Demosthenes' speeches,
Galen, Dioscurides, Strabo and others. Christian education in the
East largely was relegated to learning to read the Bible at the
knees of one's parents and the rudiments of grammar in the letters
of Basil or the homilies of Gregory Nazianzus. Western universities
including Padua and Bologna, Paris and Oxford resulted from the
so-called
Gregorian Reform, which
encouraged a new kind of cleric clustered around cathedrals, the
secular canon. The cathedral schools
meant to train clerics for the growing clerical bureaucracy soon
served as training grounds for talented young men to train in
medicine, law, and the liberal arts of the
quadrivium and
trivium, in addition to Christian
theology. Classical Latin texts and translations of Greek texts
served as the basis of non-theological education. A primitive
humanism actually started when the papacy began protecting the
Northern Cluniacs and
Cistercians and
the Church formed a unifying bond. Monks and friars went on
crusades and St. Bernard counseled kings. Priests were frequently
Lord Chancellors in England and in France.Christian views became
present in all aspects of society. There was a stressed importance
that one must serve God and others. Furthermore, there was a view
of human nature that was both hopeful and Christian. All offices,
civil, and academic works had religious elements. For example,
during the Middle Ages, guilds or livery companies resembled
modern-day trade unions. In addition, religion influenced medicine
with the Good Samaritan of the Gospels and St. Luke. The idea of
free people under God came from this time and spread from the West
to other areas of the world.
Current Use
As there are no notable organizations of Christian humanists,
claimants of the title are not easily generalized: prominent web
pages include both
The Christian Humanist: Religion, Politics, and Ethics for
the 21st Century, which claims that it is possible to be a
Christian without a belief in God, and
Teaching Christian Humanism, First
Things, which ignores the current use of the term
"humanism" in favor of
humanities
studies. The term is also used sometimes to indicate
Renaissance humanists that supported
the Catholic church, such as
Thomas
More,
Johann Reuchlin,
John Colet, and
Desiderius Erasmus, as opposed to those
known primarily for their pagan or political contributions to
Renaissance philosophy, like
Giordano
Bruno or
Francis Bacon.
Literary criticism
Christian humanism finally blossomed out of the Renaissance and was
brought by devoted Christians to the study of the philological
sources of the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Bible. The confluence
of moveable type, new inks and widespread paper-making put
potentially the whole of human knowledge at the hands of the
scholarly community in a new way, beginning with the publication of
critical editions of the Bible and Church Fathers and later
encompassing other disciplines. This project was undertaken at the
time of the Reformation in the work of
Erasmus of Rotterdam (who remained a Catholic),
Martin Luther (who was an Augustinian
priest and led the Reformation, translating the Scriptures into his
native German), and
John Calvin (who was
a student of law and theology at the Sorbonne where he became
acquainted with the Reformation, and began studying Scripture in
the original languages, eventually writing a text-based commentary
upon the entire Christian
Old
Testament and
New Testament except
the
Book of Revelation). John
Calvin was the most prominent of the many figures associated with
Reformed Churches that proliferated in Switzerland, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands, and portions of Germany, Hungary,
Lithuania, and Poland. Each of the candidates for ordained ministry
in these churches had to study the Christian Old Testament in
Hebrew and the New in Greek in order to qualify. This continued the
tradition of Christian humanism.
Armed with new technologies, Christians from the time of Justin
Martyr onwards continued to the present to engage the historical
and cultural bases of Christian belief, leading to a spectrum of
philosophical and religious stances on the nature of human
knowledge and divine revelation. The
Enlightenment of the mid-eighteenth
century in Europe brought a separation of religious and secular
institutions that exemplified a growing rift between Christianity
and humanism. Decreasing dependence of philosophers upon religious
fundamentalism have led to experiments in various political and
social arrangements of the past few centuries around the world,
including
Internationalist
Communism,
National
Socialism,
Fascism,
Anarchism,
Theocracy,
Caesaropapism and various utopian
communities. Christians have participated in all of these movements
to varying degrees as individuals and institutionally, as have a
variety of Deists and Materialists. The broader tradition extends
the zone of usage of the term "Christian humanism" and continues to
be used widely to describe the vocations of Christians such as
Dorothy Sayers,
Charles Williams,
G. K.
Chesterton,
Flannery O'Connor,
Henri-Irénée Marrou,
Dostoevsky,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Prominent Christian humanists
Notes
- Christian World. San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1970, p. 42.
- Christian Humanism
References
- Arnold, Jonathan. “John Colet — Preaching and Reform at St.
Paul’s Cathedral, 1505–1519.” Reformation and Renaissance Review:
Journal of the Society for Reformation Studies 5, no. 2 (2003):
204–9.
- D’Arcy, Martin C. Humanism and Christianity. New York: The
World Publishing Company, 1969
- Lemerle, Paul. Byzantine humanism: the first phase: notes and
remarks on education and culture in Byzantium from its origins to
the 10th century trans. Helen Lindsay and Ann Moffatt. Canberra,
1986.
See also
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