Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
A Christian Humanist Manifesto…Part 2

A Christian Humanist Manifesto…Part 2

Last updated on: November 15, 2012 at 1:31 pm by Roger E. Olson

A Christian Humanist Manifesto…Part 2 2012-11-15T13:31:43-05:00 Roger E. Olson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Picking up where the previous post left off:

So what’s the alternative? What is “Christian humanism?” Let me begin with Scripture. Psalm 8—the biblical charter of Christian humanism. Speaking to God the Psalmist cries

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

And crowned them with glory and honor.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under their feet…

Pond scum? Shit? A disease on the face of the earth? Totally depraved? Having no purpose in life except to glorify God to the exclusion of any sheer “joy of life” in creativity? Not according to this Psalm.

Sure, we can’t ignore another Psalm—14:

The Lord looks down from heaven on humankind

to see if there are any who are wise,

who seek after God.

They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse;

there is no one who does good,

no, not one.

Throughout history Christian thinkers have tended to emphasize one biblical truth about humanity or the other. Either we are essentially good or essentially evil; either noble or corrupt. Finding the right balance has always been difficult and rare. The current trend is to demean humanity by proclaiming an inflated doctrine of total depravity. I attended a service of worship at a church pastored by one of the leading gurus of the young, restless, Reformed movement. His sermon that morning began by extolling the worth and value of human beings. He told his congregation (and those listening to his sermon by podcast) that when they walk in the mall, every person they see has infinite worth and dignity, value and meaning by virtue of being created in God’s own image and likeness. After building up human persons for at least five, maybe ten minutes, the pastor waited during a pregnant pause, letting that sink in, then said “But they’re all dead.”

My point is not to contradict the Reformed pastor who has been such an inspiration to so many young people through his sermons and books; it is rather to say that he left unclear how we are to regard fellow human beings. And that is especially the case when we consider that he, like so many evangelicals today, believes and teaches that God only loves some of those walking dead people and intends to save only some of them unilaterally. In fact, Christ only died for some of them—and really not for any of them so much as for God. Christ, the pastor teaches, died only for the elect and even for them only secondarily. In God’s-God-centeredness, he says, he sent Christ to die to vindicate his own righteousness. God loves his own glory first and foremost and sinners (only some, mind you) only second.

On the other hand, some Christian pastors and thinkers come down at the other extreme, proposing that God is love without power or glory. In process theology, God’s own chief end is humanity’s well-being. Instead of “Man proposes but God disposes,” it’s “God proposes but man disposes.” God is at the mercy of humanity to either enrich him by achieving his aims or to impoverish him by rejecting them.

There we have two poles between which passionate Christians, many of them young and restless, dissatisfied with casual, non-thinking Christianity, divide. Many in the so-called “emerging church movement” gravitate toward the “kinder, gentler God” without glory or power and many in the Young, Restless, Reformed movement trend toward the God whose glory and power overwhelm human persons, turning them into instruments for his own glory. The first pole tends to elevate humans to godlike status, almost replacing God with humanity. The second pole tends to reduce humans to objects, instruments, pawns in God’s great game of self-glorification. The first pole takes Psalm 8 very seriously while ignoring Psalm 14; the second takes Psalm 14 ultimately seriously while ignoring Psalm 8.

One person who got it pretty much right was the French Catholic Christian thinker, mathematician, philosopher, defender of the faith Blaise Pascal who, in his Pensees, or “Thoughts,” said that “Man is a king sitting on a crumbling throne holding a broken scepter.” In other words, human beings are damaged goods. “Man,” Pascal wrote, “is neither angel nor brute.” And “Man is a reed, but a thinking reed.” (A “reed” is fragile and insignificant, blown and even broken by the wind.) All that is to say that human beings are damaged goods.

But my main message to you is that in spite of the damage, human beings are nevertheless good and valuable and capable of great things—including, by the grace of God, satisfying God.

Some Christian thinkers will call my message humanistic. I accept that, so long as “Christian” qualifies “humanistic.” I believe at the heart of the biblical message is a very humanistic truth—that God’s human creatures exist for something more than God’s glory; we exist for God’s satisfaction and enjoyment. While it is true that our greatest satisfaction is found in glorifying God, it is also true that God’s greatest satisfaction is found in glorifying us.

There are two very different perspectives on why God created the world and especially human beings, free creatures, created in his own image and likeness, in it. It’s helpful to get these two perspectives in focus by looking briefly at two theologians who stand at the source of modern evangelical Christianity—Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley—both born in 1703 and both highly regarded and often quoted by evangelical Christians. I think it safe to say they are the two godfathers of modern evangelical Christianity—at least in the English-speaking world.

Edwards’ greatest treatise was “On the End for Which God Created the World.” “End,” of course, means “purpose.” There the prince of Puritan preachers argued philosophically and theologically that God has one and only one supreme purpose in everything God does—to glorify himself. To put it bluntly, according to Edwards, God is the ultimate narcissist. But that’s okay for God because he’s God; it isn’t okay for us because we are finite and fallen creatures of God. We have no right or reason to be narcissistic given our wretchedness. Also, according to Edwards, creatures can offer nothing to God except glory and what glory we give God adds nothing to his bliss. Of course, this raises many questions and Edwards answers some of them. For example, if God created the world to glorify himself, does that imply he was not already fully glorified? In that case, doesn’t the world, even in its submissive glorifying of God add something to God’s life, at least enjoyment, that wasn’t already complete? Edwards’ answer is no. Then there is the issue of evil; does evil glorify God. There Edwards is bold; even sin and evil glorify God in his judging and conquering them.

Wesley did not write a treatise on the purpose for which God created the world, but we can quite easily detect what he thought about it. For Wesley, God created out of love. God loves the world and all creatures with the possible exception of Satan and his co-rebel angels. God especially loves all human beings in spite of their wretchedness because he created them in his own image and likeness and because his nature is to love. Creation, especially of noble humanity, was due to the overflowing love of the Trinity. Love does not imply need; true love, the best love, God-like love, creates value in the beloved. Like Pascal, Wesley was realistic about humanity, but he did not think we are totally depraved—at least not in the same sense as the Reformed tradition as represented by Edwards. He preferred to say we are deprived and that by our own decisions and actions, not due to any foreordaining plan of God. Is God glorious according to Wesley? Of course; God’s glory is his love and his love is his glory. “Glory” without love is morally empty. On the other hand, love without power is impotent and ineffectual.

Some in the Wesleyan tradition, notably adherents of process theology, have taken Wesley’s concept of God as unconditional love and goodness to an extreme and ended up denying God’s wrath against sin and even turned God into a kind of cosmic cheerleader and coach, emptying God of power and glory. Wesley did not go there—to that extreme.

In my estimation, Wesley, like Pascal before him, was right on target biblically, philosophically and theologically. Christian humanism can look to him, in his thoughts if not in his person, for a model. (Wesley as a person was not always particularly kind.)

Scripture tells us in 1 John 4:8 that “God is love.” Love is God’s essence; his very being. And God has invested in his human creatures capacity for that kind of love—love that creates value rather than seeks it. Scripture also tells us in 2 Peter 1:4 that God’s goal is to make us “partakers of the divine nature.” With Wesley, I interpret that to mean that God seeks to share his love with us in transforming ways. God’s grace seeks to glorify us. And God, being love, is most satisfied with us when we are being glorified by him, that is, by his grace.

There are two senses, then, in which human beings are glorious. First, in spite of our wretchedness due to sin, we are still and nevertheless God’s image and likeness. That image and likeness in us is damaged, broken, even shattered, but not destroyed by sin. James 3:9 warns against cursing fellow human beings because they are made in God’s own likeness. That isn’t specific to Christians; all people are made in God’s likeness and still possess special dignity and worth because of that status.

The second sense in which human beings are glorious is God’s desire and intention and effort to transform them into even more than just creatures possessing his image and likeness. God wants to elevate them, us, to participation in his own being as love. The apostle Paul talked in 2 Corinthians 3:18 about we, God’s people, presumably Christians, being transformed from one degree of glory to another—a progressive process of taking in, by God’s grace and power, with our cooperation of faith, God’s own being—love.

These two biblical truths form part of the foundation of Christian humanism. But they are too often neglected by those who love to insult and demean humanity thinking thereby they are giving God more glory—as if glory were a zero-sum game, a finite pie, there’s only so much to go around.

Christian humanism is the belief, then, that human beings are of unique dignity and worth and capable of cultural creativity because of God’s love and grace. I want to add that Christian humanism includes belief that humans, because of God’s love and grace, are able to satisfy God’s own creation desire by allowing God to transform them into loving beings. “God is most satisfied with us when we are being most glorified by him.”

To be continued: Part 3 will complete the series.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

November 14, 2012

A Christian Humanist Manifesto: God Is Most Satisfied with Us When We Are Most Glorified by Him (Part 1)

Next Post

November 16, 2012 A Christian Humanist Manifesto--Part 3 (Final)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Against Liberal Theology Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

In Revelation, what is the correct sequence of events in the End Times?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Dragon cast to earth, beast rises from sea, false prophet rises from earth, mark of the beast given False prophet rises, dragon cast to earth, beast rises from sea, mark of the beast given Mark of the beast given, dragon cast to earth, beast rises, false prophet rises Beast rises from sea, dragon cast to earth, mark of the beast given, false prophet rises