Systematic Principles of Humanist Theology

Systematic Principles of Humanist Theology

by Cándido Pozo

Taken from InfoCaótica

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

The systematic framework of humanist theology can be reduced to three principles. Perhaps its exposition may, at first sight, result too abstract, We will look, however, at the extensive range of its vital consequences.

1. The starting point is formulated by stating that «God is not an object». Naturally, the phrase would be acceptable if what was intended to convey is that God is not a thing, but a personal being. But in the humanist theology milieu, «God is not an object» means that God cannot be the direct object of our acts because God is «the wholly other». It is interesting to note that the German translation of Robinson's «Honest to God» was titled «Gott is anders» (God is something different). This implies that, when we conceive God and think of Him, we actually construct an idol. Our intent to address God directly, upon presupposing the previous structuring of this «idol», entirely different from God, would lead us to a kind of idolatry. The topic of idolatry in this sense has been promoted extensively by humanist theologians. In this manner, however, they ignore the distinction between imperfect knowledge and false knowledge. Saint Paul has insisted on the possibility of knowing God from its creatures (Rom. 1, 20). Undoubtedly, this knowledge is imperfect, but not false. Let us not forget the doctrine of analogy: because my knowledge of God is analogical, God is always greater than my representation of Him. but such representation affirms something which is true. When I attain the face to face vision, my previous knowledge will be enhanced, but not in a manner radically discontinuous, but as a step which was necessary for my ascension.«Deus semper maior» is the title of a well-known work by Przywara; yes, God is always greater than what my knowledge tells me of Him, But let us not talk of God as the wholly other, since, if this assertion were to be taken seriously, it would lead us to relegate God to the realm of the unknown.

2. But, going back to the principles of Humanist theology, it is clear that, if human capacity's horizon is limited by what is human, and God lies beyond that horizon; only the incarnation gives us the possibility of loving God. The direct intent of loving Him had led us to love an idol. But in the incarnation, the first possibility is given us of loving God by loving a man, man Jesus, with human love — the only kind of love man is capable of giving — then we can start loving God, who has identified Himself to be in personal union with Him.

3. Since then, this human attitude before Christ — human love at bottom — is turned into the fundamental Christian act. Humanist love, human love of neighbor, would be the central attitude of Christianity.

Consequences of these principles

In these fundamental principles the essence of humanist theology can be synthesized, The consequences of the system are grave. We shall limit ourselves to enumerate them briefly.

1st. Logically, the specifically religious act, to the extent it is directed to God Himself, loses its primacy. Actually, its very possibility is blurred regarding a God which always lies beyond our categories and our efforts. Maybe this disappearance of the value of the specifically religious act has some relationship with the current tendency to replace formal prayer with a virtual one: to abandon prayer directed to God and substitute it with service of neighbor.

2nd. This first step having been taken, demystification becomes a program. Why continue cultivating a world of the sacred, when our intents will turn into something of an idolatry, that is, the cult of the idol which our categories construct? God would be wholly other and wholly different from that idol. One may wonder if there is not some relationship between this mentality and a certain anti-sacramentalism which has begun to invade us. The demystification postulate has become programmatically so radical, that it reaches liturgy itself, in which man starts to be of greater interest than the worship of God [...]

3rd, Upon God's disappearance from our horizon, a temporalist translation is made of Christianity. It is clear that the Christian who takes his faith seriously is conscious of a series of obligations in the social and political realms. But one thing is this, and quite another is to present these sociopolitical activities as if they held in Christianity the first plane or were specific to it. However, it is evident that, once the plane referring to God is placed in parenthesis and substituted by a humanist love of man and by procuring its human welfare, the sociopolitical comes first because it is so among merely human concerns. It can be understood in this perspective that a theologian of secularization such as Harvey Cox can get to utter the opinion that «theology is, before anything, political». Without getting to emulate Cox, among Catholic humanist theology theoreticians, it is an unswerving conviction to attribute the effort of building the earthly city a value of direct influence in the preparation of the kingdom of God, in spite of the New Testament´s insistence upon the idea of the rupture between the present and the future world. and the description in Apoc. 21, 1 ss. of the New Jerusalem as a gift of God which comes from above, and not as a reality prepared directly by the earthly accomplishments in a more humanized world.

4th, On becoming primary in Christianity the concern for the edification of the earthly city. the idea of priesthood enters in crisis. Why receive the holy orders if the fundamental mission of Christianity can be equally accomplished becoming ordained or not? I would say that it can be accomplished better without becoming ordained. The cleric who insists on working in the sociopolitical field can easily come in conflict with the hierarchical structures; without doubt, much more easily than the layman [...]

5th. On the other hand, the «God wholly other» would never be expressed by our categories. Our dogmatic formulas would thus become terribly relative. This relativity of the dogmatic formulas assumed and, being moreover human love the essence of Christianity according to humanist theology, to it the ecumenical problem is set forth in entirely novel terms. What sense would the inter-confessional differences of doctrine have? Its solution would be simple, let's unite in love and dispense with doctrine [...]

6th. But the logic of the System goes further. If the essence of Christianity is the authentic human love, wherever that love takes place, true Christianity is there. The theory of the anonymous Christians then arises. That theory does not deal with what is the common doctrine of the Catholic Church only. Certainly, no Catholic theologian questions that God may save the infidels of good will by ways unknown to us, leading them to that minimum of faith which is required to be saved. The way the matter is set up by humanist theology is different, it consists in assuming that any pagan who loves his neighbors in a humanistic way is for that fact an anonymous Christian. Pagans, massively considered, which means in their immense generality, would already be Christians without knowing it. It is not possible to convert them but from anonymous Christians into reflecting Christians. One may wonder whether, conceiving missions such a manner, it is worth making the effort of doing missionary work, with all the sacrifices it entails of abandoning family and homeland. Or is it intended to go on mission not to take there anything specifically Christian, but to work in the development of the peoples? Will then be there a hope that our mission should interest as such, and not for what it has in common with all of the humanitarian movements? That pagans of good will can be saved is one thing, but quite another is the fact that the fullness of the salvation means can only be found in the Catholic Church; both propositions need to be maintained for a right understanding of the concept of mission [...]

7th. If the good act does not touch God, neither will the evil act. The humanist theology will have to revise the concept of sin that way, which it can no longer conceive as an offense to God.

8th. But revising the concept of sin induces a reduction of the field of morals. Only what causes damage to someone else may be considered a sin. The amputation by this means of great sections of the field of morals can easily be perceived. It is interesting to recall in this context that the prophetic preaching in the Old Testament is directed very primarily to a sin which causes no damage to our neighbor: idolatry. even in the case where no scandal is caused on someone else.

I believe it is difficult to deny that most of these criteria are present in the current atmosphere and, by the way, widely disseminated. They are found frequently in persons who are entirely ignorant of the theoretical principles from which they derive. But this should not surprise us. The phenomenon is quite normal. How many Germans, even those who vibrated with the Nazi ideals, had read Nietzsche, whose works, however, were the philosophical support of National Socialism? How many Communists have read so voluminous a work as Karl Marx's Capital? In all of these cases, what in the theoretical works are abstract principles is disseminated by means of slogans. Likewise, many of the enumerated criteria, which are a consequence of the principles of a humanist theology, bear the structure and form of slogans. And the slogans have by themselves an efficacy much beyond the principles from which they proceed and in which they may be grounded; even on separating themselves from those principles, the criteria lose their nuance and become more rigid and radical.

Taken from

Teología humanista y crisis actual en la Iglesia (Humanist theology and the current crisis in the Church). In: Daniélou-Pozo, Iglesia y secularización (Church and secularization), 2ª ed., BAC, Madrid, 1973, pp. 61 y ss.