Humanism is Christian
Long before there was Secular Humanism there was Christian Humanism
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. . . . Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. (Luke 4:18–19, 21)
Secular humanism is very popular with so called "academics" and social activists today and there is a reason that the word secular is there. It is to distinguish from the root movement known as Christian Humanism. The first Humanists were Christians. It is revisionist history to deny the impact of Christianity on today's morality and codes of law. It is absurd not to acknowledge the legacy of Christian thought on our culture in the West but it is widely done today. Humanism actually has its roots firmly based in Christianity and it's beginning can be traced back as early as the second century. Taking faith out of the equation and claiming it for its own American and European (non-believing) academics have in fact been perpetuating lies or at best half truths. Christian humanism may have begun as early as the 2nd century. Jesus himself used Greek thinking and logic in his approach to teaching. Ironically Christianity is responsible for the way much of mainstream academia today looks at the world.
It should be noted here that after the conquest by Alexander the Great in the third century BC, Greek culture and language made increasing inroads in Palestine. The Palestinian Judaism of Jesus' day was known as Hellenistic Judaism. Some new Greek cities were founded in Palestine during this period as well. Greek culture and language affected Jews, especially in Jerusalem where about 16,000 people spoke Greek. The Judaism of Jesus had been already deeply changed by its contact with the Greek and Roman world.
The contemporary academics who teach secular humanism as the only way and as being superior intellectually to Christianity are wrong. It is not more just or legitimate than Christian morality is, in fact people who do this are disregarding their own social history and culture and are perpetuating half truths or even blatant lies. Their patronizing and smug criticisms are a violation of the very reasoning they claim to advocate. There is a conscious effort in many academic circles to demonize and marginalize spirituality and faith today. Some would even have Christianity marginalized to the point that all practicing Christians be ridiculed and dismissed as superstitious and backward.
It cannot be disputed world cultures have always blended and changed over time. All religions and movments have borrowed from others. Greek culture and thought was spreading rapidly to the far reaches of the Roman Empire at the time of Christ. The land of Jesus was in fact multicultural at the time Jesus was teaching and the world Jesus knew was evolving rapidly. It has only been since the 70s that universities in the US began removing Christian Civilization from their required studies. The loss of the knowledge of our culture's Christian history has proved disastrous. It should be noted here that even though Christianity was deeply influenced by its Greco-Roman and Germanic environment, there is no doubt that it adopted a number of important philosophical ideas and ethical concepts that were uniquely Jewish and that had no real precedent in pagan European religions. The idea of history as a linear process of progress toward a specific end goal came from Judaic elements influencing mainstream thought. It sometimes seems that our modern historians are trying to wipe out centuries of history to advance their pet theory that there is no God and that Christianity is inherently evil or superstitious at best. Apparently they feel threatened by the teaching of the humble carpenter. Ironically this mirrors what the Soviets did in Eastern Europe and Russia after the dissolution of Czarist Russia. My question is, If you are free thinking why would you fear and suppress religion and Christian influence in modern society? Our forefathers here in America spelled out that there should be freedom to practice one's religion without persecution. It was not their intention to stifle or ban religion from the public realm or drive it underground.The thinly veiled hate of Christians in the West by the far left truly is frightening to me. The fact is progressives and liberals are increasingly advocating that Christians be persecuted in the name of "Reason". The whole idea of progressive history is Christian! How very unreasonable!
I used to consider myself liberal and truly believed the progressive liberal impulses in our society were noble and that they were moving us in the right direction but the attacks on all religion by a very large portion of the left has left me no choice but to chart a new course. I am not going to join the conservatives but I do not belong in circles where religion is portrayed as backwards and no longer relevant or righteous. My faith in God has been my rudder and Christ is the center of my universe. I believe I am a good person for being faithful to the faith my parents imparted to me and that the teachings of Jesus have served as the best guide possible to living a good life allowing me to contribute very positively to society and giving me great satisfaction and joy in the process. Perhaps this is my confession of faith. If we ban God from mainstream culture it does not mean He does not exist. What then shall they replace God with I have to ask? Materialism has already brought the West to it's knees.
The hatred of all religion is the new religion. It's zealots are as angry and hate filled as the Grand Inquisitor. It's practitioners think they are in fact saving humanity. The world has never needed the Prince of Peace so much, methinks.
PAX
-Beth Maxwell Boyle
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
-Edmund Burke
"Christian humanism began 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. 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. 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."
He who loses money, loses much;
He who loses a friend, loses more;
He who loses faith, loses all.
The Scapegoat
by
William Holman Hunt (1827-1910)
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
LINKS
by David C. Lindberg , Ronald L. Numbers
by Ostergard, Philip L.
Religion Politics and Ethics for the 21st Century
by John R. Sach
1830-1865
By John R. McKivigan
by Deanna Proach
"The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life becomes." -Carl Jung
Gum beannaicheadh an Tighearna thu, agus gun gleidheadh e thu:
Gun tugadh an Tighearna air a aghaidh dealrachadh ort, agus biodh e gràsmhor dhut:
Gun togadh an Tighearna suas a ghnùis ort, agus gun tugadh e sìth dhut.
May the Lord bless you and keep/protect you,
May the Lord reveal His face unto you and have mercy.
May the Lord turn His Face unto and give you peace.
"Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful."
- Colossians 3:14-15