Christianity: The True Humanism

Some years ago the French existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote an essay to prove that his philosophy is the only true humanism. It is the one interpretation of man, he claimed, that gives the individual his full freedom, for “there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after his thrust toward existence.… Man is nothing else but what he makes himself” (Existentialism). Such thinking, new and radical when he wrote these words, has in our day become quite common. The autonomy of man and his self-creating power and ability are both fundamental principles of the contemporary point of view; even a good many Christians are prepared to adopt them, with some modifications.

The term humanism goes back to the fourteenth century, when it was used to describe the thinking of persons interested in the study of Greek and Latin classics. Since these ancient writings did not deal with theological or supernatural matters, they received the title of litterae humaniores, human letters, and those who studied and expounded them came to be known as humanists, since they dealt with writings about man, by man, and for man.

The humanists thought the classical authors had reached almost the top rung of human achievement in the literary and intellectual fields. Consequently Homer, Plato, Pythagoras, Virgil, Cicero, and others became their models for writing and for thinking. Moreover, since these writers had achieved this eminence without knowing anything of the Christian God, the humanists felt that men who would use their innate abilities could reach the same heights in every field of human endeavor. Even their study of Augustine and the other early church fathers did not materially modify their views.

One of the clearest expositions of this humanist point of view was set forth by Pico della Mirandola in the late fifteenth century in his “Oration on the Glory of Man.” In this manifesto he declared that man, by the proper use of his reason, could rise to be almost divine. The application of this philosophy to politics was made by Niccolo Machiavelli when in The Prince he laid down guidelines to show how a ruler could become absolute through a completely amoral, wholly rational approach to government. He had only to use his reason without any ethical restraints to be able to control his subjects. Others such as Bruni, Castiglione, Cellini, and Aretino wrote in the same vein. Then at the beginning of the seventeenth century Renaissance humanism was given philosophical form by René Descartes, with his insistence upon the autonomy and ultimate authority of man’s reason. His view of man and his capabilities underlay the rationalism of the eighteenth century, exemplified in Voltaire, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and ultimately the French Revolution.

In the nineteenth century, the humanistic trend became materialistic in the writings of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. To them, man is simply a part of nature governed by economic desires or a lust for power that his reason enables him to fulfill. This type of thinking received support in the field of biology by the work and writings of Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, and others who favored views of purely materialistic biological evolution. Sigmund Freud in his psychiatric doctrines accepted the implications of biological evolution for the understanding of man’s psychic nature, with sex as the mainspring of its positive drives. The end of the line seems to have been reached with Sartre’s statement that “man makes himself. He is not ready made at the start. In choosing his ethics, he makes himself.…”

In all the thinking since the days of the Renaissance, the humanist has claimed, and still asserts, that his views alone truly recognize the proper place of man in reality and provide adequate scope for man’s potentialities. The autonomy of man in both his willing and his knowing is stressed. What man wants is and should be determined only by himself. What he knows, he must find out for himself and must interpret as he thinks best, for he has the creative ability to understand the facts of existence and put them together in their proper relationships. For this reason man is under obligation to no one except himself. God, if he exists (and some deny that he does), forms part of the process of history and so has no ultimate authority. Every man should seek to “do his own thing,” without interfering with others, but at the same time seek to help humanity as a whole. Man is the sovereign lord of his own fate.

The fundamental character of this humanism is its atheism. The humanist may, of course, deny that he is an atheist, but in actual practice God is simply left out of his picture. Usually the humanist ignores the idea of any supernatural existence or being, going his own way according to his own particular determination. If he does think about God at all, he adopts the position that he is either irrelevant or dead. As the French scientist LaPlace said when Napoleon asked why he had ignored the deity in his scientific theories: “I have no need for such an hypothesis.” Others such as Jean Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, and many of lesser fame simply deny God’s existence. Some do it with regret because man has then no hope, but they call upon man to recognize the resulting “anguish” or “despair” as the keynote of his life.

Without God, the humanist has to turn to other sources to understand his own origins and purpose. Where did he come from and why does he exist? The only answer left is that of materialism. Although the humanist cannot explain man’s great accomplishments in art, music, literature, philosophy, and even religion on this basis, he still prefers to make the leap of faith to insensate matter as the source of human existence, rather than to divine wisdom and purpose. By a purely irrational evolution man has risen from a chance chemical compound to become a rational, sentient being who can comprehend his own hopelessness. This faith is the source of the humanist’s claims to self-determination.

In all of this, however, the humanist must acknowledge that in fact he is but an animal. No longer is it “Jennie O’Grady and the colonel’s lady” who are sisters under the skin; the humanist and the mosquito are now in that position. It is simply a case of every man for himself. True, Sartre says, “When we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.” But from what does this responsibility arise? Since man is nothing more than the product of random forces, why should he have any sense of responsibility? Machiavelli and Nietzsche showed much more logic in their thinking when they talked in terms of “the will to power.” So did Freud when he concluded that, like the animals, man is really motivated by the desire to satisfy his sex drives. Consequently not human rationality but simply blind forces dominate man. This point of view is well reflected in modern literary works such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, or Carlos Baker’s life of Hemingway. Conceivably, then, war, genocide, persecution, sexual perversion, and the like could be considered normal and acceptable forms of conduct.

What has happened is that humanism has destroyed itself. Although it began in the fifteenth century by stressing man’s uniqueness and talking of the possibility of his becoming almost divine, it has now come to deny all such aspirations. Man is no longer something set apart. He is only a species of animal, and although he still likes to call himself homo sapiens, this means nothing. Rather he is “the Naked Ape.” Now that he is tied with unbreakable bonds to the lower orders of physical existence, his uniqueness has disappeared. He has dehumanized himself. From this outlook stem many of our present problems.

In contrast to such false humanism, Christianity stands as the religion that gives man his rightful place in the universe. Instead of teaching that man is merely an improved animal, it speaks of him as just a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8). It does not look to the classics of pagan Greece and Rome for verification of its point of view, nor does it believe that man’s humanity consists in his autonomy and independence. On the contrary, the Christian’s understanding of man derives from what he believes to be divine revelation.

In Christian thought, man holds a very special position in the universe, for he was originally created in the image of God. Although his body may be related in some ways to those of the vertebrate animals, his spirit is the result of the special creative inworking of the Spirit of God. God breathed into man and man became a living soul (Gen. 1:26). Man is the product not of blind, irrational physical forces but of divine planning and purpose. Furthermore, man received a special commission from his Maker to fill the earth, to subdue it, and to rule over it. This mandate to develop a culture was given to no other creature.

Despite his high position, however, man, who had the freedom of choice between the service of God and the service of himself, wished to be autonomous. He desired a humanism that denied his divine origin and set his own glorification as his goal. This was rebellion. Man turned his back on his Creator to worship the creature, to accept a lie as the truth (Rom. 1:19 ff.). The outcome was disaster, for the Creator let him go his own way to worship himself, with the consequence that man repeatedly finds that there is, in Sartre’s words, “no exit,” because he has lost his true bearings in life. Despite his ethical perversion he still remains man, but with the divine image sadly tattered, torn, and at times almost invisible.

His continuance as man, on the other hand, does not result from his own ability, nor even his desire for self-preservation. As modern atheistic thinkers such as Freud and Sartre frequently point out, man has a tendency toward self-destruction. The only thing that prevents him from going this far is that God in his grace restrains him. God so mitigates the effects of man’s sin both individually and socially that man continues as man. In spite of himself he carries out the original cultural commission, though in so doing he soils everything he touches.

God restrains this perversity for “the elect’s sake,” so that they will come to him through his provided way of redemption in Jesus Christ. These he will restore to their original position as his creatures, made in his image with true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. For this reason the Christian does not look to man to pull himself up out of the mire but looks to God, who in his saving grace will make man like his son, Jesus Christ (cf. John 10:27 ff.; Heb. 2:9 ff.; 1 John 3:2).

Christianity sees man as unique in the whole of temporal creation, and believes that although he is now under the curse of his own false humanism, he is yet redeemable. Over and over again this has come through very clearly in the history of the Church. One only has to think of Christians’ work in social reform (the abolition of the slave trade and slavery itself, factory reform, the improvement of the position of women and children in society) to realize that down through the past two thousand years, Christians have given leadership in the effort to overcome the effects of sin and its degradation in society. But at the same time they have also insisted that ultimately the individual himself must be brought back into his proper relationship to the sovereign God. For this reason social action and evangelism have gone hand in hand, since only by the grace of God can man be restored to his true human position.

Only Christianity gives man his true place in the scheme of things. It sees him as unique in nature, in responsibility, and in purpose. His work is to lead creation in the praise, understanding, and manifestation of the glory of God. And he alone can do this. The professed “humanist” sees man merely as an animal who in some mysterious way has climbed a little higher than his fellows. The whole significance of Christ’s redeeming work is thus lost to the humanist.

Christians can see the illogicality and folly of so-called humanist thinking. At the same time, they see man as redeemed by the grace of God, brought into the fellowship of his household of faith, and made “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” This is the restoration of humanity to man, true humanism in its fullest sense.

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