President's Messages
Hans Kung Award |
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Contemporary Catholic Belief and Action
Christian Humanism
John A. Dick, Ph.D., S.T.D
The Path to the Divine, at the heart of Reality,
is through Christian Humanism.
Erasmus of Rotterdam (c1466 - 1536) explored it already when he wrote in his Enchiridion Militis Christiani (1503) that God is simply the life of the human soul. Much earlier, Augustine the Bishop of Hippo (354-430) could write to God in his Confessions "When I recognize myself, I recognize you!" For Augustine, God is the inner illumination of the mind, which propels the self beyond itself into the Divine. God is the light of the world reflected in the human soul.
Augustine of course was echoing the Apostle Paul: "The God who made the world and everything in it is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands....From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for God and find God -though indeed God is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:24-28)
Christian humanism affirms that at the core of authentic human existence there is some revelation and experience of the authentically Divine.
Here then, for reflection and discussion, are ten affirmations about Christian Humanism:
1. Human beings possess capacities to sense, understand, and respond to events of transcendence manifest in everyday existence.
2. The sense of the transcendent, or what one could call 'an instinct for the Divine,' responds to real disclosures within the natural, historical, and lived experiences of Reality.
3. "God" names what is actually present in the power, depth, scope, intensity, and claim of life.
4. These disclosures of divinity within the natural and historical lives of peoples need to be read and interpreted like one reads a text. Sometimes one needs to learn the necessary language....
5. Human beings can gain real intimations of the Divine via signs of sacredness in the world around them. Some people are vision impaired......
6. A Christian humanist freely decides to sense, attend to, and reflect on those intimations of Divine presence in human lived experence.
7. Critical thinking remains a necessary moment in the interpretation of Divine disclosures.
8. Christian humanism demands that we develop a conscience that is self-critical. And to become people of conscience we adopt spiritual and religious practices that actualize our capacities to be aware of and open to the fullness of life.
9. Christian humanism aims at inculcating a vigilant faith, a resolute hope, and an abundant love as modes of openness to the Divine.
10. Christian humanism fosters attitudes and feelings of heartfelt gratitude, steadfast humility, and demanding compassion.
Disciplined attention to Christian humanism discloses that in spite of sorrow, pain, and agony, human life is nevertheless saturated with worth and that responsible human action is to draw together that goodness into a complete vision of life with others and for oneself.
That my friends is our big challenge.
Jack
Jack Dick of Catholic University of Leuven and University of Ghent is Vice-Presidemt/Treasurer of ARCC
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