Humanism, Christian?
The
view that individuals and their culture have value in the Christian life.
Justin Martyr appears to have been the first to offer a formulation of
Christianity that included an acceptance of classical achievements as he stated
in the Apology (1.46) that Christ the Word had put culture under his control.
Such an approach, he believed, would restrain believers from leading vulgar
lives while at the same time keeping them from attaching more importance to
human culture than to the truths of the faith.
During the Middle Ages little attention was
paid to humanism, but with the beginning of the Renaissance there was a revival
of that perspective. Renaissance humanism was both an outlook and a method. It
has been described as "man's discovery of himself and the world." The
worth of earthly existence for its own sake was accepted, and the
otherworldliness of medieval Christianity was disparaged. Humanists believed
that the pursuit of secular life was not only proper but even meritorious (thus defying the words of Jesus Christ Matthew Chapters 5,6 and 7 just to name a
few). Closely allied to the new view of
worldly life was a devotion to nature and its beauty as part of a broadened
religious outlook.
Many Christians, including Savonarola and
Zwingli, reacted against the more secular approach of humanism. It has been pointed out that even John
Calvin reveals the influence of humanism. (This is not surprising to me!)