A Sweeping Religious Humanity: Jens Zimmermann, Humanism and Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religious Studies Review, 2013
Perhaps it was unintentional. In 2011 the atheist Steven Pinker wrote a book (The Better Angels of Our Nature) about the history of violence, but contended our world was becoming less violent and so may obliquely offer various indications of God's ongoing presence in our world. Brad Gregory, a Catholic historian espousing a more somber awareness of the negative effects of the Reformation on modernity and promoting a renewal of theology in the university, writes in 2012 the present work that sees moral failure and aimlessness vainly grasping after panaceas (human rights), thereby sabotaging their own hope of re-establishing a purified Christianity or of establishing a shared moral foundation and commitment. How and why did things go so horribly wrong? Gregory contends that the 16 th century Reformation unintentionally contributed to our hyper-pluralist, obsessively consumer-oriented, and morally and politically fractured contemporary society. Such a society, Gregory laments, has removed any substantial public God-talk and marginalized or devalued the essential investigation of Life Questions (Why are we here? What is our purpose? Is there a higher, unifying Good or principle? Is there a God?).
Christianity in the Western Tradition
Universality and History: Foundations of Core, 2002
This paper examines the place of Christianity in the Western tradition. It is a dissent from the idea—found in a wide variety of mid-century works—of a great tradition of political and moral thought that begins in Athens and Jerusalem and is rejected by the founders of modernity. On this view, Ancient Greek and Biblical thought share the aspiration to ennoble human beings. Modernity, on the other, builds on low but presumably more solid foundations. In this paper I wish to put forward a different story. My claim is that, though modernity fundamentally rejects the tenets of Christianity, it borrows much from Christian thought and, especially, from Augustine to whose thought I will devote the greatest attention. I suggest in particular that the modern rejection of Plato and Aristotle is, in some important respects, derived from Christianity. In defense of this thesis I advance four claims. (1) The modern reliance on fear as one primary source of political unity has origins in the centrality of the fear of God in Biblical thought. (2) The egalitarianism of modern thought—the distinctively modern concern for the well-being of the common man—reflects the egalitarianism of Biblical religion, an egalitarianism that originally flourishes in the Hebrew Bible and that becomes more powerful once freed from the hierarchical tendencies Christianity learned from Ancient Greek thought. (3) The modern picture of human nature as motivated by unending desire is derived from the Christian notion of fallen man. (4) The ideological character of modern thought—the distinctively modern attempt to make philosophy practical in part by teaching the people certain truths of philosophy—is prefigured by the Christian emphasis on faith. My claim, then, is that the great tradition is a fable. Modernity can be seen, in part, as the derivative of Christian thought once the Christian focus on the next world is given up. But that, of course, is also to say that Christianity and modernity are decisively different. Christianity stands by itself and apart from both the Ancients and the Moderns. To understand the Western tradition as a whole, then, we must grasp the distinctive features of Christianity.
Christianity is a radical humanism
This essay is concerned with the justification of "Christianity as a radical humanism" asserted by the Vatican II's Constitution, The Church in the Modern World. This paper emphasises two concepts taken from Brueggeman and Bonhoeffer's account on Christian anthropology. It will involve a discussion to their respective contributions and how they help to provide justification to the claim. Also, I will examine their relation to the nature and goal of pastoral care.
A Christian social answer to globalisation
European View
This article discusses whether Christian social thinking is obsolete in the age of globalisation or whether it continues to provide answers to the challenges of the modern world. Some people believe that the heydays of a Christian social alternative to capitalism or to state socialism are over following its successes in the middle of the twentieth century. Social protection and the emancipation of the working class have been achieved, and the distribution of wealth and income has reached a fair level throughout Europe. This article rejects this view and argues that Christian social thinking and its translation into political positions do not belong exclusively to a specific socio-economic phase of history or to a specific socio-economic system. The article also provides Christian social remedies for five aspects of globalisation: financialisation, the distribution of the fruits of globalisation, automation, control mechanisms and environmental protection.
Book review: Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World
Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies
Miroslav Volf teaches at the Divinity School of Yale University. Originally from Croatia, he reviews his confessional biography in this book as starting out then in a Pentecostal congregation and moving to the Episcopal Church today. Volf characterizes his book as more a 'programmatic essay' (p. 3) than an academic monograph. Picking up on this lead, this review starts with the closing chapter. The deep ambiguity of religions that Volf is addressing is well illustrated by the opening paragraph of his 'Epigraph: God, Nihilism and Flourishing': while he was speaking about reconciliation at a prayer breakfast at the opening of a UN assembly on 9/11, the first aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center. His introduction is a corresponding personal reflection on the position from which he is doing theology and why reconciliation is at its centre. Volf starts with the memory of his upbringing in Croatia and the ambivalent role that religions played before and after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. A war started then in the region which was fuelled by confessional traditions, religions and ethnic identity politics which led to violence and destruction in the name of God. The fall of socialism as a worldwide economic and political alternative to the capitalist world was, however, a decisive point in the spread of the current dominating system defined as globalization as we know it. Thus Volf places his theological reflection in the history of modern globalization and the dynamics of religions, and defines the objective of his book as an attempt to help the world's religions exercise their influence to humanize globalization and to help human life flourish. This is pursued in the main body of the book. The chapters of the first part address 'Globalization and the Challenge of Religions' and 'Religions and the Challenge of Globalization'. The second part has three chapters titled 'Mindsets of Respect, Regimes of Respect', 'Religious Exclusivism and Political Pluralism' and 'Conflict, Violence, and Reconciliation'. Throughout, Volf takes a normative approach. He studies globalization and world religions as two forms of global movements. World religions have spread globally through their universal message, inviting potentially every individual on the globe and offering a vision of the unity of humankind. Thus globalization originated thousands of years ago in the religious imagination and influenced it before it became a political and economic project. The globalization of today brings people and societies worldwide into interdependent relations. His approach that religious movements started globalization with such a universal vision needs to be critically reviewed. It would be more adequate to understand such religious visions of a universal humanity as emerging out of the interaction of the religious systems with various cultural formations they were confronted with while spreading over the globe. Another critique is that Volf is not addressing any political structure or offering a concrete programme. It is also not clear which 837784T RN0010.1177/0265378819837784TransformationBook review book-review2019 Book review