Christian Humanism: Reclaiming a Tradition; Affirming an Identity
In seeking to retrieve Christian humanism as an identity that stands in contrast to the religious fundamentalism and secularism that are destroying the foundations of human well-being, the insights and legacy of Barth and Bonhoeffer are important.
By John W. de Gruchy
About the Author: For more than thirty years Professor de Gruchy taught at the University of Cape Town while also serving as an associate minister of the Rondebosch United Church. During his career he has become internationally known for his contribution to the study of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology, the history of the church and public theology in South Africa, and, more recently, theology and art. In 1990, he gave the Warfield Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary, published as Liberating Reformed Theology, and in 2000 he received the Karl Barth Prize from the Evangelical Church in Germany for his work on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. De Gruchy now lives at the Volmoed Christian Conference Centre in South Africa, where he writes, makes furniture, and conducts theological workshops. He is also a senior research associate at the University of Cape Town and an honorary professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He has received honorary doctorates from Chicago Theological Seminary and Rhodes University.
My topic reflects a stage in my theological journey begun almost fifty years. It began with an adolescent evangelical conversion, wove its way through a traditional Protestant theological education of the nineteen-fifties, and then was profoundly shaped by a growing encounter with the theologies of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the years of the church struggle against apartheid. During those years, which straddle the central period of my life as a pastor and academic theologian, I developed my identity as a confessing Reformed theologian in dialogue with various forms of ecumenical and liberation theology within the South African context, shadowed all the time by Bonhoeffer’s legacy and a developing engagement with the human and social sciences.
As the transition to democracy began to transform South Africa, so my focus shifted from themes of confessing Christ in the struggle for liberation, to the relationship between Christian faith and democratic transformation, reconciliation and the restoration of justice, and then to the relationship between faith and art as allies in the renewal of society and the church. All of this coincided towards the end of my formal academic career with a shift into the Graduate School of Humanities where I was constantly engaged with those disciplines that trace their genealogy back to classical culture and the Renaissance. Within that context, and more broadly within a context where African intellectuals are engaged in a project dubbed the “African Renaissance,” it was natural to begin thinking about the Christian humanist tradition that was so much part of the European Renaissance.
The aim of Renaissance Humanism was the transformation of a moribund Medieval scholastic culture and the renewal of the church through the retrieval of ancient textual resources and classical culture.1 The details of this diverse movement varied according to context, evolving differently depending on circumstances and personality.2 During the centuries that followed, the history of humanism likewise indicates some diversity as historical contexts changed.3 Yet, despite variations, humanism came to stand for the affirmation of human dignity, equality, potential and freedom, and those associated values and virtues that provide a counter force to the powers that denigrate humanity.
By no means were all Renaissance humanists Christian by conviction. Peter Gay refers to the four centuries prior to the European Enlightenment as the “era of pagan Christianity” a time “when there was nothing incongruous about the sight of a Christian Humanist, a Christian Stoic, a Christian Platonist, or even a Christian skeptic.”4 But there was one Renaissance humanist who has become the paradigmatic Christian humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. An ordained priest, committed Christian, peace-maker and cosmopolitan scholar, Erasmus was remarkably influential in many directions whether theological, political or more broadly in the humanities. He was not only an important link between the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, but also between people of different nationalities and a variety of humanist interests. But Erasmus’ influence waned as religious dogmatism and conflict waxed more strongly. Those who espoused the Christian humanist project were confined within the boundaries of whatever confessional and institutional framework they found themselves. There was no place for a non-doctrinal, non-confessional Christianity within the new climate of Reformation and post-Reformation struggles.
The term “Christian humanism” was recovered during the mid-decades of the twentieth century within the Roman Catholic church, notably in the writings of French moral philosophers such as Jacques Maritain, but also in the work of two very different but remarkable Jesuits, the palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin, and the martyr Alfred Delp. For Maritain Christian humanism provided an alternative to the dehumanising totalitarian ideologies of his day; for Teilhard, it expressed his conviction that the advances of evolutionary science and cosmology needed to be integrated into Christian faith, and for Delp it provided the starting point for a new movement within the church that took human beings rather than religion as its starting point.5
But can the term be meaningfully retrieved today whether within our global or any particular local context? Indeed, is there any reason for doing so? Given the history of humanism in general is it not too confusing, misleading, and generally unhelpful even with the Christian prefix? For historians it is mired in past controversy; for secularists it is an oxymoron; for religious fundamentalists it is a betrayal of the gospel; and for many of us “isms” hold little attraction. So to speak of “Christian humanism” today begs many questions, not least for those nurtured on the theology of Karl Barth. Should we not rather affirm a Christian identity and forget about all suffixes, whether humanist or any other as Barth would advise?
One immediate retort to such bothers would be to say that it is no more problematic than other terms, such as “radical orthodoxy,” each of which requires extensive explanation. But a more reflective response has to do with the dehumanizing global historical context within which we now live. On the one hand, there has been a powerful upsurge of religious fundamentalism, which, in its Christian form is invariably aligned with right-wing political and nationalist agendas. Christian humanists stand together with secular humanists in decrying and opposing such forces that so often result in policies that dehumanize people and degrade the environment in which human life is able to flourish. On the other hand, secular humanism, which pervades much of the academy and liberal establishment, despite its pedigree of concern for human rights and its affirmation of human freedom, does not have the spiritual resources to address the deepest of human needs, and lacks the hope that generates transformation.
Secular or Neo-Humanism
Martin Luther’s historic and traumatic move from being a monk, that is “religious,” to becoming a Reformer living fully in the world (i.e. “secular”) provided a personal paradigm for what many rightly feared would become a social avalanche and lead to the demise of Christendom. Technically, “secularization” meant that church property now came under secular control, whether the state or some noble family. But the sources and outcomes of the process of secularization were far more complex. Intellectually, the process was rooted in the eighteenth century European Enlightenment and the rise of modern science; politically, was a result of the French Revolution; and economically it developed alongside the Industrial Revolution. In the process, humanism increasingly lost its Christian character, preparing the way for the secular humanism of the twentieth century with its neo-Marxist and Existentialist variants.6
Atheist in character, secular humanism emerged as the defender of humanity against religious dogmatism, ecclesiastical triumphalism, and popular superstition. It became the defender of reason, culture, humanity, tolerance and freedom, all values cherished by Renaissance humanism, but which had become in Bonhoeffer’s words, “battle slogans against the Church, against Christianity, against Jesus Christ himself….”7 Co-operation between secular humanism and the church had become virtually unthinkable.
There is, however, a distinct difference between secular humanism as the defender of humanity, and secularism and scientism, two related ideologies that emerged in the process. While all three are premised on atheism, secularism has replaced God with the self and its own interests, and scientism has replaced God with technology unchecked by moral constraint. They are secular forms of fundamentalism, and potentially as dehumanizing in their effect.
Secularism is rampant in contemporary Western society. Driven by individual self-interest, it promotes a life-style that has lost any sense of moral value; an individualism that rides rough shod over the global common good and the interests of others, and a cynicism that has no concern for future generations. Whereas religious fundamentalism seeks to impose a particular set of religious, moral absolutes and political convictions on others, secularism is a-moral, fostering greed and corruption whether in the private or public sphere. The self-centred hedonism of such secular “fundamentalist atheism,” is as off-putting as the self-righteousness of many pseudo-pious people. So too is arrogant “scientism,” its partner in crimes against humanity.
The fact that scientific achievement has discredited certain religious worldviews and set us free to be responsible, does not mean that the world has, as a result, become a better place morally-speaking, or that modern scientific achievement has all been good. Scientism reflects a failure to recognise the limitations of science and draws conclusions from science that does not logically follow. By contrast most great scientists recognise its limits, just as genuine secular humanists decry secularism. They know that science, like all intellectual endeavour, requires imagination and inspiration and, with that, a great deal of humility. Despite the enormous advances of science and technology, and the huge improvements these have made to the quality of life, they have often been misused to transgress boundaries and, in doing so, provided the tools of death and destruction. Science is a wonderful servant in our quest for full humanity, but it is a terrifying master.
William Schweiker uses the term “overhumanization” to describe the combined effect of secularism and scientism, associating them with unbridled freedom and massive destructive power. “Overhumanization” is not “a celebration of human creativity or technological power, but, rather, an ideology and social condition in which maximizing power becomes a good in itself.”8 One response to this unchecked exercise of human freedom and power is to regard human beings as the problem, and therefore to reject human claims to have distinctive worth and responsibility within the total scheme of things. Another is the response of contemporary forms of neo-humanism which, while still secular and anthropocentric in orientation, stress human responsibility for the world and for others.9
In contrast to both secularism and scientism, secular or neo-humanism today is more agnostic than atheist, and wary of any absolutes whether religious, political or otherwise. Secular humanists, already evident in Julian Huxley the eminent evolutionary biologist, increasingly recognize the need to move beyond the polemics of the past and co-operate with all people of goodwill and moral concern, whether secular or religious. But above all, in contrast to secularism, secular humanists today are people who are concerned about the common good and who seek to promote values and virtues essential to democratic society, and human well-being across the planet. As such, secular humanism is an attractive option for people who have become disillusioned with the church and disenchanted with the teachings of Christianity.
I would rather be associated with the secular humanists I know than with many Christians who are judgmental of them in a self-righteous and arrogant way. But as one of my former Christian friends turned secular humanist once said to me: “you are a believer and I am not.” This is undoubtedly so, for Christian humanists do believe in God whereas secular humanists do not. This is obviously a fundamental line of division, but what does it mean? After all, faith in God and the doubt that keeps secular humanists agnostic are not polar opposites; they co-exist in all of us who are not fundamentalists, whether religious or secular. There is but a thin dividing line between those who honestly struggle to believe, but can do no other (believers) and those who have seriously considered the claims of faith, but cannot believe (agnostics).
There is sometimes more uniting such believers and non-believers, than there is uniting believers with some kinds of religious people, or secular humanists with self-centred secularists. We share and recognise a common humanity that binds us together despite differences, and we are concerned about justice and the future of the world. I think, too, that we also try, though we often fail, to live in depth rather than on the surface. The best secular humanists I know sense the need for something more transcendent than the mundane, something that gives more meaning to life than science can give, something we now generally call “spirituality.” Maybe they have a sense that humanism is not sufficient on its own, and that secularization has run aground on the litter created by its unruly libertine stepchildren.
But while neo-humanists might have some sense of the transcendence in affirming the “other” as distinct from the self, such transcendence remains humanly contingent. It does not provide resources from beyond both self and other that can check the abuse of freedom and power. Indeed, faith in God, as affirmed by theological and Christian humanists, signals the recognition that we cannot live unsupported by a grace that comes from beyond ourselves. Anything less denies our full humanity and puts our common humanity and its concerns at risk. We need a source of value that we cannot finally control, for without acknowledging that, we will destroy the earth. But the question can be asked, as Karl Barth posed it, as to whether the term “Christian humanism” is a useful tool in expressing these theological convictions, or is it, as Barth insisted, simply “flawed steel?”
Flawed Steel or Useful Tool? Barth & Humanism
As a first step in the process of critically retrieving and clarifying what “Christian humanism” might, and might not mean today, we need to recall Barth’s post-war critique of humanism. It is interesting to note, given his popular reputation, that he was one of only two theologians (the other being a Catholic Fr. Maydieu) to be invited to participate in a conference that was held near Geneva, Switzerland, in 1949, on the theme “A New Humanism.” The rest of the participants, secular neo-humanists, represented a broad cross-section of eminent European intellectuals, philosophers, historians, orientalists and natural scientists, who shared a common concern for the future of Europe and who, so it seemed, shared a common basis in the humanist tradition though they could not all agree on what this was.
Although Barth’s approach to humanism, as expressed in his paper,10 was predictable, his later reflections on the conference provide a useful point of departure in providing a theological perspective on both “humanism” in general and “Christian humanism” in particular. For Barth the best11 thing about the conference was the genuine encounter between those who gathered to discuss the subject openly with each other. The worst thing was the growing awareness “that even the concept of humanism and its definition were surrounded by the deepest obscurity and contradiction.”12
According to Barth’s account, two dominant polar positions emerged in the course of the discussion. The first was the re-affirmation of “classical humanism” with its roots in ancient Greece and Rome and fresh expression in the European Renaissance. Conference participants who affirmed this position sought to develop it by integrating the achievements of natural science, together with the humanism of the orient in a “planetary humanism,” one that also avoided the elitism associated with the humanist tradition. The second position that emerged was an understanding of humanism as the absence of “exclusive dogmas” and an advocacy of human freedom. This assumed that the world was intelligible and humans perfectible, though it ended up rather less optimistic about humanity’s ability to achieve rational goals.13 One variant on this approach was that taken by the Marxists with their understanding of humanity as the subject of history overcoming alienation in the struggle for a new world. Another was “the voice of German philosophy,” and more specifically the existentialism of those who like Karl Jaspers affirmed life and human freedom in relation to transcendent being.14
But what of Barth’s own position? First of all he expressed reservations about the phrase “Christian humanism” chiefly because of his antipathy towards all “isms” as implying a set of principles or a system that is more akin to moral philosophy than to the gospel. Indeed, he referred to “Christian humanism” as “an awkward tool” (or “flawed steel”)16 something that “has been revealed in every attempt to use it.”17 Secondly, for Barth, while the gospel was about humanity, its concern for men and women “begins where different humanisms leave off; or it leaves off where they begin.”18 In short, true humanism was to be found in Jesus Christ, the true human being, to whom the biblical tradition bore witness, rather than in the humanist tradition as such.
We may pause here for a moment to reflect on this last comment. In doing so we recall that one of the most significant, if not the most significant contributions of Renaissance humanism to the Protestant Reformation was its critical-historical study of the biblical text, freeing it from the control of both scholastic philosophy and ecclesiastical authority. Whatever we may think of Barth’s biblical exegesis or hermeneutics, his contribution to the revolution in twentieth century theology was likewise undoubtedly grounded in his study of scripture. This provided the platform from which he launched his attack on liberal theology, the basis for his critique of Catholic theology, and his opposition to the Nazification of the Evangelical church. And, of course, the authority of the Bible was behind his Christological critique of humanism at the Genevan conference.
Naturally, others at the conference regarded Barth’s categorical position as “absolutist,” some might have said “Biblicist,” and in that respect somewhat akin to the Marxist position, charges Barth strongly countered. However, what struck Barth most forcibly in putting forward his theological position and in reflecting on that of the other participants was the pessimism, lack of hope, and agnosticism that characterised most other approaches, and led to a certain stagnation in the conference. All of which brought Barth back to his own confession of the Incarnation as the basis for a true humanism, the “humanism of God” which he had set forth in his own presentation to the conference. Such a humanism, Barth argued, defends “the truth of socialism” against the ravages of individualism, and “the truth of personalism” against the ravages of totalitarianism. “It recognizes and acknowledges,” he declared, “human dignity, duty and rights” but only in the context of the realization that true human existence means existence together with one’s fellowmen.19
There is no evidence that Barth’s participation in the Geneva conference directly led to his subsequent lecture in 1956 on “The Humanity of God,” which marked a corrective turning point in his thought. But I suspect that it reflects ongoing reflection on the subject. “The allegation that we were teaching that God is everything and man nothing,” Barth there declared, “was bad.”20 He even had kind things to say about Erasmus. The truth is, God can only be understood in “God’s togetherness with humanity,”21 and unlike the God of Schleiermacher, “stands up for humanity.”22 Not even the Fall takes away this humanity, nor should we speak ill of what is, after all, God’s gift.
Barth’s reflections are helpful in highlighting some of the issues and setting some of the parameters for my attempt to reclaim the Christian humanist tradition today. If it is to be retrieved meaningfully as Christian, it cannot be a humanist Christianity in which secular humanism calls the shots with Christianity a veneer; it has to be a humanism that is defined by the gospel, rooted in the biblical tradition -- a theological humanism that affirms a genuine transcendence. If this is kept in the foreground, we may yet find it a “useful tool” rather than one of “flawed steel.” But it may, in fact, be more than a useful tool given the global scenario that now faces us as Christians, a scenario in which the old struggle for the soul of Christianity has taken a new twist. I refer to the way in which fundamentalist forms of Christianity, and religion more generally, have set their destructive sights on humanist concerns, often in tandem with right-wing political agendas.
Some years ago, Eberhard Bethge, the friend, biographer and interpreter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spent a semester at Lynchburg College in Virginia, at a time when the “Moral Majority” movement was at its height. A Sunday visit to Jerry Falwell’s church deeply disturbed Bethge. “As we entered the foyer,” he later wrote, “an usher stepped forward and gave me two badges to fasten to my lapel: the one on the left said, `Jesus First,’ and on the right, one with an American flag… I could not help but think myself in Germany in 1933…”
Of course, Christ, but a German Christ; of course, “Jesus First,” but an American Jesus! And so to the long history of faith and its executors another chapter is being added of a mixed image of Christ, of another syncretism on the American model, undisturbed by any knowledge of that centuries-long and sad history.
In his analysis of what he experienced, Bethge wrote:
The disturbing fact is this new element, the battle for a “Christian nation” against humanism. The flag has always been in the churches, but now it has come to represent the new threat of binding the political structure to an ideology, which models a whole new educational system, and a new kind of representation in Washington, and a newly interpreted Constitution.23
Bethge did not define precisely what he meant by “humanism,” nor did he qualify it with the word “Christian.” Humanism, for Bethge, meant that tradition in German history that had long sought to provide an alternative vision and set of values to those of the uncritical nationalism that led to National Socialism with its rabid anti-Semitism and denial of human rights. Christians had an obligation to take a stand with secular humanists in defence of the values for which they both stood, even if on different grounds. Keeping in mind that the formative influence in Bethge’s own formation (Bildung) were Lutheran piety and Prussian nationalism, how was it that he had come to this position? The clue lies, of course, in the influence of Bonhoeffer coupled with his own experience during the Nazi and post-war periods.
Humanist Trajectories in Bonhoeffer’s Legacy
In his Foreword to the first British edition of Bonhoeffer’s classic Discipleship, published in 1948, Gerhard Leibholz, the husband of Bonhoeffer’s twin sister Sabine, remarked that “Bonhoeffer stood for what is called Christian Humanism today.”24 But would Bonhoeffer have recognised himself as such? After all, he had expressed reservations about Jacques Maritain’s attempt to develop Christian humanism on the basis of Thomist philosophy.25 Yet there are, as I have argued elsewhere, sufficient indicators in Bonhoeffer’s legacy to suggest that the title is an appropriate one.26 Let me briefly try to bring some of these threads together.
The young Dietrich was nurtured and educated within the classical humanist tradition wedded to a sense of German nationalism.27 Its aim was the formation or Bildung of character,28 which in turn was the foundation of civil society or Burgertum. But the First World War, and especially the defeat of Germany, created a profound crisis for those who took this patriotic, humanist and Christian ethos for granted. As a theological student in the nineteen-twenties, Bonhoeffer sought a more adequate Christian basis for humanism. After reading Dostoevsky he was, at first, attracted to the Russian ideal of a “supranational panhumanism … necessarily and emphatically linked to Christianity.” This, Bonhoeffer suggested, re-established “the genuine Catholicism of original Christianity…” Such a Christian humanism was an attractive alternative to the psuedo-Christian nationalism that was becoming rampant throughout Germany.
Early on in his vicariate in Barcelona (1928-9), Bonhoeffer made a note in his diary that his theology was becoming humanistic.29 However, as an enthusiastic disciple of Barth this turn of events appeared to take him by surprise, and caused him to ponder what it might mean. As he emphatically rejected humanism’s euphoria about human achievements and its confidence to reach God unaided,30 what could he have meant? Two clues are evident in his writings at the time. The first was his conviction that rather than robbing “humanity of its highest possession” in its opposition to secular humanism, Christian faith restores human values and renews culture. Though it does so only “in its perfectly limited, relative right” and not as an absolute.31 The second clue suggests an emerging critique of Barth’s theology, not on dogmatic grounds, but on the basis of cultural experience. This is the probable significance of his query whether Barth had ever travelled beyond the “sphere of German culture.”32 By this stage the young Bonhoeffer had already travelled through Italy, visited North Africa, and lived in Spain, all of which made him more open to influences other than German, contributing to what he would later describe as a turning “from phraseology to reality.”33 It also led him to a profound recognition of the sociality of humanity and of the church as the embodiment of the “new humanity” – the subject of his doctoral dissertation that he wrote after his early travels.
i) The Sociality of Humanity
Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the Christian concept of personhood stands in contrast to the Aristotelian metaphysical model, the Stoic individualistic concept of the ethical person, Epicurean utilitarianism, and the Cartesian epistemological concept of the person. It is an inter-personalist model. The “I” derives its identity from being in relationship to the “You.” But what is of critical importance for Bonhoeffer is that this relationship is ethical in character, for the “person exists always and only in ethical responsibility, and it is dynamic, for the person is re-created again and again in the perpetual flux of life.”34 Everything, then, that “can be said about the Christian concept of person can be grasped directly by the person who is facing responsibility.”35 Why is this so? The answer provided is theological. The “other,” the “You” is “an image of the divine You,” the one through whom God encounters me. The claim of the “other” upon me is always God’s claim, but at the same time it is always also the claim of the “other.”36
From this perspective Bonhoeffer argues there is a “net of sociality” which is “prior to any human will to community.”37 This does not mean that the individual loses personal identity, any more than it means the priority of the social over the personal. It means, rather, that the discovery of genuine personal identity is only possible in community, that is, through “the other.”
God does not desire a history of individual human beings, but the history of the human community. However, God does not want a community that absorbs the individual into itself, but a community of human beings.38
Human community is, however, fallen community, community in which relationships have been broken, in which the “I” dominates the “You.” The overcoming of this requires the church, the “new humanity,” humanity pardoned in Jesus Christ.39 This “community of love” expresses its true nature through “being for others” in “vicarious action (Stellvertretung).”
Bonhoeffer’s Christological-ecclesiological-ethical understanding of “vicarious action” binds his theology together as it develops over the rest of his life. It not only provides the basis for his “ethics of free responsibility”40 but also for his own deed of “free responsibility,” and thus the sub-text to his involvement in the conspiracy against Hitler. It also laid the foundation for Bonhoeffer’s earlier involvement in the ecumenical peace movement that sought to prevent the rearmament of Europe and the outbreak of yet another world war. But it was Bonhoeffer’s encounter with the Sermon on the Mount under the influence of French pastor and pacifist Jean Lasserre, fellow student at Union Theological Seminary in 1930-1 that triggered his passion for peace.
ii) For the sake of peace & human rights
Bonhoeffer’s “discovery” of the Bible in a new way, and especially his existential encounter with the Sermon on the Mount, coupled with his growing antipathy towards nationalism, led him, on his return from Union Seminary, to ecumenical engagement in the interests of peace. Whether he ever was a thorough-going pacifist is a matter of some debate, but there is no denying that he was deeply committed to peace-making, and that he regarded this as fundamental to Christian discipleship. This is clear both from his energetic involvement in the ecumenical peace-movement of his day, and in his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount in his book Discipleship which he began writing during his sojourn in London (1933-5) where, we must note, he discussed his thoughts with his close friend Franz Hildebrandt.41
Committed Lutheran as he was, Hildebrandt respected Erasmus, and recognised “the decisive part” which humanism played in Lutheran tradition.42 He also had respect for the humanist convictions of sectarians and enthusiasts on matters of “war and peace, violence and liberty, persecution and tolerance” despite what he called their “thoroughly questionable theology.”43 In his doctoral dissertation Gospel and Humanitarianism submitted to Cambridge in 1941, Hildebrandt went so far as to say that these Christian sectarians knew the gospel better than the Reformers. Many years later, at the Seattle conference in 1984 celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the celebration of the Barmen Declaration, Hildebrandt returned to this question. “The church” he wrote, “is called to make common cause with the humanists for the sake of peace and of the rights of man.”44
Bonhoeffer would surely have fully agreed with his friend about the need for such an alliance in opposing state terror and the idolatry that led to the dehumanizing of “the other.” After all, and this is the heart of the matter, their opponents in the Kirchenkampf were not secular humanists but Christians, German Christians, orthodox Lutherans, and liberal Protestants. These were the targets of their confession of Christ, the ones to whom they refused to show tolerance in the fight for the truth. And the reason was clear. The confession of Christ and the struggle for the “true church” was not for the sake of theological correctness and ecclesial purity, but for the sake of the world. To surrender the truth of the gospel, to deny Christ, meant denying humanity, denying the victims of Nazism, and denying all that was good and great in German culture. To affirm the truth of the gospel, by contrast, meant affirming humanity, expressing solidarity with the victims of injustice, and affirming the good and great in culture.
iii) Solidarity with secular humanists in resisting tyranny
The contrast between Christianity and secular or liberal Christian humanism was most strongly expressed by Bonhoeffer during his year at Union Theological Seminary, 1930-1, when he was also at his most outspoken in defense of Barth’s theology. And soon he had to return to Germany and face the darkening cloud of Nazi terror. It was a time to batten down the dogmatic hatches and follow Barth into combat for truth against error. Yet it was within this inauspicious context that a most surprising turn of events took place that caused Bonhoeffer to make common cause with secular humanists on the basis of his own unqualified confession of Christ as Lord.
There is surely an irony in the fact that it took the Kirchenkampf, with its strident Nein! to false gospels, to make rapprochement possible between confessing Christians and those secular humanists whom Bonhoeffer later described as “the few remaining just, truthful and human men” who put Christians to shame.45 These secular humanists of the Resistance stood, at best, on the periphery of the church, and their defense of human values was not consciously Christian in orientation. But in defending reason, culture, humanity, freedom, tolerance and human rights, against tyranny there was, to quote Bonhoeffer, “a kind of alliance and comradeship between the defenders of these endangered values and the Christians.”46 The slogans that had previously been used against Christianity “had now, suddenly and surprisingly, come very near indeed to the Christian standpoint.”47 As Paul Tillich later observed, it was “a consciousness of the Christian humanist values which underlie even the antireligious forms of this society” (i.e. Germany) that “made it possible to resist the inhuman systems of the twentieth century.”48
The surprising factor in this development, similar to our own experience in the church struggle against apartheid, was that this rapprochement, as Bonhoeffer stressed, was not at the expense of Christian conviction, for it
took place at a time when everything Christian was more closely hemmed in than ever before and when the cardinal principles of Christian belief were displayed in their hardest and most uncompromising form, in a form which could give greatest offence to all reason, culture, humanity and tolerance.49
Indeed, the Christians who began to co-operate with the secular humanists were not liberal Protestants but those most committed to the Confessing Church with its categorical rejection of culture as another source of revelation. The status confessionis recognised by Barth and Bonhoeffer paralleled that of Luther’s Reformation; it was not Erasmian in temperament showing tolerance for those Christians who disagreed, but categorical in its rejection of all who were not for “the Christ” of the Barmen Declaration and the “true church” of Dahlem. In fact, as Bonhoeffer noted, the alliance grew in inverse proportion to the degree in which the Confessing Church narrowed its field of action.50 How was this possible? How was it that the Barmen Declaration centered on the “one Word of God” over against any other source of revelation, could later be spoken of positively in relation to humanism? This question is particularly pertinent when we recall that Barmen did not respond directly to the plight of Nazi victims. Indeed, the failure of the Confessing Church to address the “Jewish Question” contributed to Bonhoeffer’s loss of confidence in its ability to confront Nazi tyranny, and thus to throw in his lot with those who were committed to human rights, truth, justice and freedom.
Nonetheless, Barmen was, as Bethge reminded us at the Seattle Conference on Barmen in 1984, far more than “a verbal happening, it was linked with the cries and actions of and for dehumanised groups of men” in such a way that “dogmatics and humanism were bound together,”51 involving both confessors and their compatriots in great personal risk and cost in a common struggle to rid Germany of tyranny, to defend its victims, and to restore justice. Yet, for Bonhoeffer, this was not simply a pragmatic relationship forced upon the historically alienated by historical circumstances. On the contrary, there was a profoundly theological basis for making common cause with secular humanists engaged in the Resistance already present in his book Discipleship and developed more fully in the essays that comprise his Ethics.
iv) The reality of the reconciliation of God and the world
If the gospel of costly grace demanded engagement in the struggle for peace against militaristic nationalism, and solidarity with secular humanists in opposing tyranny, it was the Incarnation that provided the theological basis for doing so. Already in his earliest essay in the Ethics, on “Christ, Reality, and the Good,” which marks a transition in the Christology of Discipleship to that of the Ethics,52 the Incarnation means that in Christ God and the world are reconciled. The consequences are far-reaching, for no longer is it possible to think in terms of “two spheres,” the sacred and the secular.53
Yet, for Bonhoeffer, the Incarnation can never be affirmed in isolation from the cross of Christ. Christ, he always insists, “is both the Incarnate and the Crucified, and he demands to be recognised as both of these alike.”54 As he put it in his essay on “Inheritance and Decay”:
Wherever the incarnation of Christ, his becoming human, is more intensely in the foreground of Christian consciousness, there one will seek for the reconciliation of antiquity with Christianity. And wherever the cross of Christ dominates the Christian message, there the breach between Christ and antiquity will be very greatly emphasized.55
Just as there is no easy reconciliation between classical antiquity and Christianity, so the crucifixion continually reminds us that from a Christian perspective there can be no easy, Romantic or Idealistic humanism indifferent to the sinful and tragic dimensions of life, and incapable of opposing evil and the abuse of power. The Christology that made common cause with secular humanists possible was “the concrete suffering of injustice, of the organized lie, of hostility to humanity and of violence, it was the persecution of lawfulness, truth, humanity and freedom.”56 This struggle for humanity, to assert humanist values “impelled those who held such values dear to seek the protection of Christ and therefore to become subject to his claim.”57
But Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism does not remain bound by suffering and death. It is, Bonhoeffer tells us “from beyond death that death has been vanquished.” So if it is the Incarnation that provides the basis for Christian humanism by overcoming the dualism between the sacred and secular, reconciling God and humanity and asserting human dignity, and the Cross that roots such humanism in the reality of a suffering world and the struggle for justice against dehumanizing power, it is through the Resurrection that the power of the death is broken, human hope fulfilled, and the new humanity made possible. If the cross is God’s judgment on the dehumanization of humanity through the abuse of freedom and power, the resurrection is God’s affirmation of humanity, of life, of the world as good.
v) “Mature worldliness” and the affirmation of life
From the early nineteen-thirties Bonhoeffer was engaged in an ongoing debate with Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity as weak and hostile to life.58 He recognized the extent to which Nietzsche’s espousal of classical Greek culture was a legitimate reaction to the rejection of the natural in German Lutheranism.59 This led Bonhoeffer in his reflections in prison to a strong affirmation of the body and the earth, his celebration of human freedom, and life, and his desire to recover Kierkegaard’s notion of “aesthetic existence” within the life of the church.60 Such themes burst forth passionately in the Letters and Papers from Prison, and give substance to what it means to be a Christian in a “world come of age.” Being a Christian was not being religious but being truly human, a Mensch, in the same way as Jesus was a human being. This did not “mean the shallow and banal this-worldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.”61
Such “a mature worldliness” required more than an elitist retrieval of classical antiquity as in the Renaissance; it required a return to the biblical understanding of human wholeness, and a much broader perspective of the world that comes through an appreciation and appropriation of its rich cultural diversity. Unlike the “worldliness” of the Renaissance or of the later European Enlightenment, the “mature worldliness” of the Middle Ages was not “emancipated” but Christian.62 Again, unlike that of the Renaissance this “mature worldliness,” was biblical because it did not separate human nature into “inner” and “outer” spheres, “mind” or “spirit” and “body,” but instead regarded human beings in their wholeness (anthropos teleios). This was important for Bonhoeffer because he wanted to speak of God “not on the boundaries but at the centre, not in weakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in mans’ life and goodness.”63
This brief account of humanist trajectories in Bonhoeffer’s legacy, building on Barth but going beyond him, provides us with resources for retrieving Christian humanism today. It is a humanism deeply rooted in the sociality of humanity, the struggle for peace and solidarity with social victims and with other humanists engaged in resisting tyranny, a Christianity that affirms hope against despair, and life against death. It is, a critical humanism because, in Frits de Lange’s words, it is “a humanism which discloses rather than legitimizes power, a humanism in which one person fails to inherit humanity when another does not, a humanism of the other....”64 It is a humanism in which the claim of the “other” is the claim not of an “inner transcendence” (Nussbaum), but the claim of the God of Jesus Christ.
Christian Humanism Contextually Retrieved
As previously intimated, my theological journey has been profoundly influenced by Barth and more so by Bonhoeffer. In seeking to retrieve Christian humanism as an identity that stands in contrast to the religious fundamentalism and secularism that are destroying the foundations of human well-being, their insights and legacy remain important. But, of course, I live in a very different historical context to both of them, and I have been influenced in my thinking about Christian humanism by other strands of theological endeavour and, more especially Christian praxis. For Christian humanism is not primarily a theory but something that became embodied in people engaged in the struggle for human flourishing in South Africa.
In advocating Christian humanism, it should be clear, then, that I am not suggesting that we return to the Renaissance or Erasmus, though there are continuities between what he stood for and what we as Christian humanists need to affirm. Amongst these are: reaffirming the importance of the Bible as the primary liberating text for Christian faith, but a critical not a fundamentalist affirmation; the need to affirm Christian catholicity and eschew all forms of Christian nationalism; and the need to work for global peace. It should also be clear that I am not positing a liberal reduction of Christian faith, or any romantic or idealist notion of Christianity that exalts human nature as though it was wholly good, or progress as thought it were inevitable. I am also fully aware of the dangers of the term if our vision remains unchastened and redefined by the demands of gender justice, or so anthropocentric that we fail to see the connection between humanization, animal rights and the renewal of the environment.
Despite possible objections to the term, I suggest that there are several good reasons, then, for preferring it to other possibilities. First of all, the term Christian humanist reminds us that Christians are human beings first, in common with all others, and only Christian by choice. This has considerable significance in the light of historical experience. Constructed identities, amongst them being Christian or being a citizen of a particular country, are important, and some are more important than others. But when such identities become more important than our primary identity as human beings, then something fundamental has gone wrong. The question is whether being Christian enhances our capacity for recognizing our common humanity and living accordingly, and whether or not it enhances or diminishes our own lives as human beings. The biggest threat to the world derives from a refusal by so many, including so many Christians, to honour this common humanity. A refusal demonstrated in every sphere of life from global economic and environmental policies to gender relationships, from international affairs to the way we relate to the disabled. Until we truly recognize our common humanity and live accordingly, and recognize that it binds us also to the earth and its well-being, there is little chance that we will achieve justice and peace, or truly understand what it means to be a Christian.
Secondly, Christian humanism challenges the church to be the sign of the “new humanity,” that is, to live and act in ways that contribute to human well-being in all its dimensions, countering the dehumanizing tendencies of bad religion, secularism and scientism. The designation Christian humanist helps me to identify myself as Christian but not fundamentalist, ecumenical rather than narrowly denominational, and fully engaged with others, not least secular humanists, in making the world more humane, just and compassionate. People of other faith traditions, Jewish or Muslim for example, might also find some resonance with this position in terms of their own commitments.
Thirdly, in affirming humanity in this way, Christian humanists affirm, along with humanists of every era, human potential, capacity, hope and especially rationality. Bad religion, whether Christian or some other, whether fundamentalist or not, inevitably keeps people in bondage, whether that is to superstition, a low sense of self-esteem, subservience to tyrants, or to a worldview and metaphysic that has long been undermined by scientific achievement. Christian humanism, recognizing the power of evil and sin, also recognizes the potential and capacity of human beings to solve problems and make the world a better place. Christian humanism likewise shuns pessimism in favour, not so much of optimism, but of hope. That is, the human capacity to transcend present reality and to live and work in expectation of change for the better. Without this, humanity surrenders its ability to make the world a better place and withdraws either into an unworldly piety or a selfish secularism that has no concern for future generations.
And, finally, the term Christian humanist affirms contextual responsibilities within a global rather than a nationalist framework. Already in 1966 Kenneth Kaunda, then President of Zambia, in a book entitled A Humanist in Africa, spoke of a humanist revolution spreading across Africa which aimed at restoring the dignity and national pride of the peoples of the continent who, for so long, had been dehumanized by the forces of slavery and colonialism.65 Kaunda wrote as an African, deeply rooted in its culture and tradition; he also wrote as a Christian, the product of a missionary education. The humanism of which he spoke was not the secular humanism of the West; it was Christian, not one based on a Christianity that contributed to the misery and enslavement of African people but to the renewal of the continent. Christian humanism, it seems to me, is a description that helps define those Christians who are committed to the African renaissance as Christians, by way of contrast with those Christians whose mission in Africa and elsewhere is once again identified with Western hegemony and interests.
Endnotes
1. See, for example, Ronald G. Witt, “The Humanist Movement,” in Handbook of European History, 1400-1600, ed. Heiko Oberman, Thomas A. Brady Jr., James D. Tracy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 93-4; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xxiii-v.
2. A useful account of the development of Humanism during this period is Witt, “The Humanist Movement.”; Konrad Hecker, “Humanism,” in Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, ed. Karl Rahner (London: Burns & Oates, 1975), 665-70.
3. See also Salvatore Puledda, On Being Human: Interpretations of Humanism from the Renaissance to the Present, (San Diego, CA: Latitude Press, 1997)
4. Peter Gay, “The Rise of Modern Paganism,” The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 1 (London: Wildwood House, 1973), 256-7.
5. Alfred Delp, Prison Writings (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2004), 94.
6. On the history of the relationship, see Timothy G. McCarthy, Christianity and Humanism: from their Biblical Foundations into the Third Millennium, (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1996)
7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 382 pp, 55.
8. Schweiker William, Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 202.
9. Ibid, 202.
10.”The Christian Proclamation Here and Now” in Karl Barth, God Here and Now (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 1-10.
11. See the chapter entitled 'Humanism’ in Barth, God Here and Now.
12. Ibid, 95.
13. Ibid, 97.
14. Ibid, 100.
15. Ibid, 101.
16. As in Busch Eberhard, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1976), 366.
17. Barth, God Here and Now, 101.
18. Ibid, 101.
19. Ibid, 6-7.
20. Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (London: Collins, 1960), 44.
21. Ibid, 45.
22. Ibid, 53.
23. Eberhard Bethge, Preface written in September 1985 for a book by Michael Ryan. The book was apparently never published.
24. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1959), 18.
25. Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism (1938); see Bonhoeffer’s reference to Maritain’s book on Humanism in his American Diary, 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Illegale Theologenausbildung: Sammelvikariate 1937-1940, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 15 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1998), 234. Bonhoeffer was also familiar with Maritain’s book Die Zukunft der Christenheit, see for example, footnote references in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethik, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 6 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1992), 75, 134f.
26. See my paper “Bonhoeffer as Christian Humanist,” presented at the International Bonhoeffer Congress, Rome, June 2004.
27. Peter Gay, “The Rise of Modern Paganism,” The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 1 (London: Wildwood House, 1973), 256-7.
28. The German Bildung and the English ‘formation’ do not mean precisely the same thing. `Formation’ does not convey the ambiguity of Bildung, which can mean both copy (Nachbild) and model (Vorbild), see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 12.
29. Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928-1931, 27.
30. Ibid, 319.
31. Ibid, 319.
32. Ibid, 27.
33. Letter to Eberhard Bethge, 22 April 1944 Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 275.
34. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 48.
35. Ibid, 52.
36. Ibid, 55.
37. Ibid, 79.
38. Ibid, 80.
39. Ibid, 153.
40. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 382 pp, 224ff.
41. See the editors Introduction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 25.
42. See Hildebrandt, “The Interpretation of Luther at the Present Time,” 137.
43. Hildebrandt, “The Gospel and Humanitarianism,” 4.
44. Franz Hildebrandt, “Barmen: What to Learn and What not to Learn,” in The Barmen Confession: Papers from the Seattle Assembly, ed. Hubert G. Locke (Lewiston/Quuenston, Canada: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 300.
45. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 61.
46. Ibid, 55.
47. Ibid, 55.
48. Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1967), 23.
49. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 55.
50. Ibid, 55.
51. Eberhard Bethge, “Self-Interpretation and Uncertain Reception in the Chrch Struggle,” in The German Church Struggle and the Holocaust, ed. Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974), 183.
52. On this transition see Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 305-6.
53. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 196ff.
54. Ibid, 91.
55. Ibid, 91.
56. Ibid, 58.
57. Ibid, 59.
58. Already in his reflections on ethics while a vicar in Barcelona (1928) Bonhoeffer engages Nietzsche. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, Amerika 1928-1931, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, 10 (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1991), 327, 331.
59. Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, p. 91.
60. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 193.
61. Ibid, 369.
62. Ibid, 229-30.
63. Ibid, 282.
64. de Lange, “A Particular Europe, a Universal Faith,” 93.
65. Kenneth D. Kaunda Kauda, A Humanist in Africa: Letters to Collin M. Morris (London: Longmans, 1966).
