by Fr. Laurence Wells
The word “humanism” usually does not
sound good in Christian conversation. When
preachers describe someone as a “humanist” it is probably not to pay a
compliment. These
terms have unfortunately been kidnapped or surrendered to an atheistic point of
view which claims that man is the measure of all things. Human
history is mostly the out-working of the serpent’s false promise, “ye shall be
as gods, knowing [i.e. determining] good and evil.” The net result
of that deceit is man’s vain-glorious ambition displayed at the tower of Babel
Ascension Day
offers us a clear and hopeful alternative to the humanism which led Adam and
Eve into spiritual exile in a harsh and cruel world of toil and sweat, or the
frustration and confusion of the Tower
of Babel
When our dear Lord was “taken up” He did not cease to be
human. The central truth of our precious faith is summed up in the
word Incarnation: in Jesus Christ God truly became man,
taking not only our nature but submitting to our condition also, our frailty
and our mortality. But this was no brief or temporary episode. He
not only became man at Bethlehem or
lived as a man at Nazareth or Capernaum He died
as a man at Calvary and was Raised as a man on
the “third day.” At his Ascension He carried our human nature into
heaven, taking our true flesh and blood into the very presence of His Father.
In His Ascension we see at last a humanism worthy of the name.
On Ascension Day
we have an answer to the question of Psalm 8:4, “What is man that thou art mindful
of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?” As the Lord Jesus
was taken up, the God incarnate, Man divine, was truly crowned with glory and
honour.”
In the Ascension of Jesus Christ we
celebrate not only His exaltation but our own final destiny. As He
was raised, so we shall be raised from the dead. As He was taken up,
we too will be exalted in the presence of His Father.
He
promised, “I go to prepare a place for you....In my father’s house there are
many mansions.” The Proper Preface for Ascensiontide declares, “That where
He is, thither we might also ascend, and reign with Him
in glory.” Here is a genuine humanism worthy of the
name.
There
is no hymn in our hymnal more audacious than Bishop Wordsworth great hymn,
"See the conqueror mounts in triumph" with its bold line, "man
with God is on the throne." No modern secular humanist ever went so
far.
Thanks to Fr. Wells for this spirited defence of 'humanism'! I have often been astonished at how readily the term is surrendered to its hijackers or wordnappers: 'But (I think) what of Christian humanism?'
ReplyDeleteC.S. Lewis, notably in the "Introduction" to his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, devotes considerable attention to the complexities (including the darker aspects)of Renaissance 'humanism' and humanists (nearly all of whom he identifies as Christian: "'Humanists' in the modern sense hardly existed").
He says "we are their endless debtors" in thst they "recovered, edited, and expounded a great many ancient texts in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew", noting "we owe nearly all our Greeks, and many of our Latins, to the humanists: also, a prodigious advance in philology and textual criticism."
'Humanism'in this sense has, at its best, in the course of the past 500 years, been of great service to our intelligent service of God truly become man.
Semi-Hookerian