Christian Philosophy

HUMANISM - Man as Master[1]

 

 

by Bob Sutton

 

"Humanism is the philosophy of the fallen human nature. It is not a development of the modern intellectual community, but rather a spiritual force reaching back into the ages before creation. The spirit of fallen man is often pictured as degraded humanity, revealing in debauchery and sin. A more accurate representation however, is man nobly reaching for his own fate and environment by his own determination.”

 

Things seem to have a habit of creeping up on people. Christmas, birthdays, their weight, editorial deadlines, the children's ages, workloads - all seem to grow and advance with startling swiftness when we are preoccupied with life.

Ø     Our eternal enemy Satan has a habit of "creeping up" on us at times, too. Before we know we are even in a battle, he has turned us every way but loose!

Ø     "If only he would just once come at me head on out in the open," we wish, "then I would not be taken by surprise." Fat chance! Satan was a master of guerrilla warfare long before the Marxists ever dreamed of it.

Ø     Christians, unfortunately, still think too much in terms of trench warfare with distinct lines between the good guys and the bad guys.

 

Recently there has been a growing awareness in the Body of Christ that the enemy has been "creeping up on us" right under our very noses through a philosophy known as secular humanism.

Ø     Our society and a large portion of the Church, it seems, have embraced or at least been strongly influenced by humanism in the last fifty years without even being aware of how deeply this philosophy has the world in its grasp.

 

WHAT IS HUMANISM?

 

Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines humanism as:

è“A doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values: esp: a philos­ophy that asserts the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self-realization through reason and that often rejects supernaturalism.” [2]

 

The foundations of humanist philos­ophy have been enumerated in two mani­festos, or declarations, which were set forth by leading humanists in 1933 and again in 1973.

Ø     These two manifestos are simply designated Humanist Manifesto I and Humanist Manifesto II.

Ø     Two statements set forth in the second manifesto are of particular interest to believers in understanding the foundation of humanist philosophy.

 

First, the humanist states:

“We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural;

it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of the survival and fulfillment of the human race.

As non theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity.

 

By calling themselves non-theists and not atheists, they are not denying the ex­istence of God, but simply stating that whether He exists or not, He is irrelevant to human experience.

Ø     The distinction may seem a minor one, but it is important because

Ø     it leaves room for the practice of religious humanism which believes in God but centers on man and his needs.

 

Second, the manifesto states:

“. . . traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species.”

 

The humanists are stating that there is no authority above man.

Ø     This amounts to a spiritual overthrow of the government of God.

Man and his needs are enthroned as the center of the universe, and everything else is forced to center in him. The issue, then, has become one of government.

 

SPIRIT OF HUMANISM

 

Humanism is the philosophy of the fallen human nature.

Ø  It is not a development­ of the modern intellectual community, but rather a spiritual force reaching back into the ages before creation.

Ø  The spirit of fallen man is often pictured as degraded humanity, reveling in debauchery and sin.

Ø  A more accurate representa­tion, however, is man nobly reaching for his own fate and environment by his own determination.

 

It is the same spirit that we see in Lucifer when he said:

 

I will ascend to heaven;

I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and

I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the recesses of the north.

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;

I will make myself like the Most High (Is. 14:13-14 NAS).

 

Humanism is satanic in origin. It is the spirit of self-exaltation and self-determination.

Ø     The temptation presented to Eve was the humanist cry, " You shall be like God. . . ."

-        The tendency of sin is not downward, but upward.

-        The spirit of humanism is man rising to a place of ruler­ship and authority;

-        it is man establishing his own government for himself and for creation.

The problem is that he does it in his own name and not as a representative of the Lord of the universe.

The declaration of the fallen nature is

"Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name. . . " (Gen. 11:4 NAS).

 

The great frustration to man in his noble endeavors, however, is that he never attains the goals he reaches for. His projects always end in frustration and ruin.

Ø     Satan reached for the throne of God and ended up with a mouth full of dust.

Ø     Adam and Eve reached for wisdom and knowledge, and they discovered their own nakedness.

Ø     The men at Babel reached for a great name, and they were scattered all over the earth - the very thing they sought to prevent.

 

Whenever man reaches up, he always encounters his own need and limitations.

Rather than acknowledging that his limitations are a result of his broken relationship with God, man tries to cover and correct his limitations himself.

Ø     When Adam and Eve discovered their nakedness, they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves - a poor substitute for the garments of animal skins which the Lord later provided for them.

 

Our society today is filled with such "fig leaf" substitutes. Welfare programs, educational endeavors, human rights movements, social legislation, socialism, and the like are all fig leaves attempting to cover the nakedness of man in his fallen condition.

Ø     Man is bent on patching up the old nature and trying to regain his place of authority and rulership in the earth. But to do it apart from the power and government of God is to end up with a bunch of withered fig leaves.

 

HISTORY OF HUMANISM

 

Humanism has its roots in the ancient pagan societies. Its expression was probably clearest in Greece and Rome and from there it has had a direct influence on the course of Western culture as it exists today.

Ø     Greek and Roman thought was based primarily on reason and man's own ability to control his fate and destiny. Their gods, especially in the later societies, were impersonal fates or personifications of natural forces - not beings with whom there was personal interaction and communion. The result was a man-centered society.

 

Ø     By the time of Christ, the Roman Empire was in a transition which was to ultimately end with the deification of the Roman state, in which the emperor himself was to be worshiped as a god.

This ultimate supremacy of the state in the Roman world was the coronation of man and his self-government as sovereign apart from God.

It was into this context that Jesus came preaching the Kingdom of God.

 

The Church broke into the Roman world with the radical confession, "Jesus is Lord."

Ø     The Romans of that day worshiped the state and by law had to sacrifice and make libation to the emperor. In doing so, they declared, "Caesar is Lord. "

Ø     The Romans had no problem with the Christians worshiping Jesus, but when they refused to confess that Caesar was Lord, they were considered subversives - enemies of the state.

 

The conflict was deeper than the political ideologies of the time.

Ø     The conflict between Caesar and Christ was a type of the spiritual war between the forces causing man to rebel against God and the Kingdom of God itself. Because Christians refused to confess the lordship of the state, they paid with their lives.

 

In 312 A.D., however, the persecutions ended with the coming of Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to embrace Christi­anity.

Ø     Under Constantine, Christianity became the state religion and as a result Western society was "christianized."

 

Around 1200 A.D., humanism began to re-emerge as the scholars of the Church began to revive and study the writings of classical Greece and Rome.

Ø     The seeds of this period of "classicism," as it was known, sprouted into the period known as the Renaissance. The Renaissance centered on this world, nature, and the exaltation of human life.

Ø     The men of the Renaissance did not remove Scripture and God's law from their lives;

Ø     they simply made their own thought, and especially that of the classical writers, equal with it.

Typical of men with this attitude was Michelangelo, who painted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and the heathen prophets at the Oracle of Delphi together on the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. By the end of the Renaissance, Christian and non­ Christian thinking were on an equal level.

 

The Reformation

Shortly after the beginning of the Renaissance, the Reformation in central and northern Europe infused Western culture with a new stream of life that centered in the Word of God and faith­fulness to His revealed will for man and society.

 

On the heels of the Reformation, however, humanism renewed its assault on the intellectual culture of Western man with a movement known as the Enlightenment.

Ø     During this period, about 1600-1800, the humanism of the Renaissance was secular­ized.

Ø     Leading intellectuals of this time may have believed in "God," but He was viewed as an impersonal being who created the universe and walked off:

 

God was a god of the natural, but there was nothing super­natural about Him. This led to the discounting of all supernaturalism, since God no longer was seen as a god who intervened in the affairs of men.

Ø     Hence miracles, acts of the Spirit of God, and faith were virtually laid to rest in the minds of the leading thinkers of that period.

Ø     These men were not atheists, but non-theists. God was no longer relevant.

 

At the zenith of the Enlightenment, however, man was again faced with his withered fig leaf.

Ø     Without a personal God who cared about man, man was left with fatalism and despair. Voltaire, who was called "Father of the Enlightenment," described man this way:

"Atoms tormented on this ball of clay, the sport of death, of hazard's strokes the prey... Groping in the darkness for a guiding light. "[3]

Ø     Regardless, the men of the Enlightenment laid direct foundations for modern humanism and paved the way for the materialistic and pragmatic thinking of the modern world which has excluded God from the picture and left man to bring order and healing to creation.

 

Today, then, we are left with a mixture of two streams of thought.

Ø     One has its origin in the New Testament and the revealed word of God to men. It comes to us through the Reformation, and today is the mainstream of what God is doing in the earth through His Church.

Ø     The second stream originates in classical Greece and flows through the Renaissance and Enlightenment to become the modern humanist or secularist philosophy.

 

Unfortunately, the division between the two is not as clear as it should be. Christian thought takes on many forms:

è conservative, fundamental, evangelical, charismatic, reformed and traditional.

Likewise, humanism is expressed in:

è religious humanism, communism, socialism, liberalism, scientific humanism, and democratic humanism.

 

The two streams mix and flow together at many points, and

Ø     the challenge for the Christian who desires to live by God's revealed word is to see and understand this mixture and rid himself of as much of the humanistic influence as possible.

To draw the lines as clearly as possible we need to contrast the humanist and the Christian world views and see how they differ on the essential matters of life.

 

CHRISTIANITY VS. HUMANISM

 

We want to contrast the teachings of humanism and Christianity in six basic areas.

 

1. World View

For the Christian, the universe centers on God and His will. God's government ex­isted before the creation, and His purpose in time has been to restore His government to right order in the universe.

Ø     The ministry of Jesus was to fulfill the will of the Father.

-        Jesus' primary purpose in coming to earth and dying on the cross was to fulfill the will of the Father, not to save a lost world. His focus was on the Father, not on man.

-        He now reigns with one purpose: to see the government of God established in the earth in order that the will of the Father might be done (1 Cor. 15:23-28).

 

Humanism centers life and its purpose on the needs of man. It is interesting that, the first thing Adam and Eve became aware of after they had broken their relationship with the Lord was that they were naked.

Ø     Any world view or theology that centers on meeting human needs is basical­ly humanistic, even if it is Christian in its terminology and application.

Ø     This does not mean that meeting human need should not be a part of the Christian's ministry. It simply means that

-        it must not be the center of his focus.

-        Our focus must always be on the will of the Father.

The main difference here is one of government: who will ultimately run the show? God or man?

 

2. Source of Truth

Truth for the Christian is revealed from a higher source than his own experience.

Ø     He lives by the objective revelation of the Word of God and the subjective guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Ø     For the Christian, truth is absolute. The truth we live by in the twentieth century is the same truth Paul lived by in the first. It is the same for American society or Japanese society, primitive man or cultured man. It is one truth for the man in the ghetto or the man in the penthouse.

Ø     It is one truth that is absolute because it comes from one God who is absolute and never changes.

 

Truth for the humanist is empirical and pragmatic. That is, only that which can be measured or experienced can be called truth.

Ø     This eliminates any place for faith as the Christian understands it.

 

Modern humanist man can accept the truth of Christ on one hand, and turn around and accept the truth of Krishna at the same time.

Ø  There is no contradiction for the humanist because anything that worked for him can be true, but there is not truth in an ultimate or absolute sense. This is where much of the Jesus Movement lost its way.

Ø  Young people accepted 'Jesus," but in reality, Jesus was just another "trip," no different from a drug experience or Eastern meditation. Even though many of their experiences in Christ were genuine, they were often void of any understanding of the truth in an absolute sense, i.e.,

that the truth of the gospel is real no matter what they ex­perienced.

Ø  Since their understanding of truth was based only on what they experienced rather than on the absolutes of the revealed word of God, when their experience faded, their faith disappeared.

 

3. Morals, Ethics and Law

Since truth about life for the Christian is revealed, so is truth about morals, ethics and law.

Ø     God has spoken plainly, "Thou shalt not. . . ." For the believer, that settles the issue.

Ø     God never gives statistics or reasons to back up His commands; neither does He say, "Do it because it is the best way." He says, "Do it because I am Lord."

Ø     For the believer an immoral act is wrong not because it destroys his own life or hurts someone else, but because it offends God.

For us morals and ethics are absolute.

 

Humanist Manifesto II states,

" . . . moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction" (italics theirs).

Ø     In other words, there is nothing outside of man by which one can judge an action or situation and say it is right or wrong.

Ø     The morality of a situation is derived from the need of the moment. Thus, adultery can be wrong if it hurts someone, but right if it helps a marriage.

This is "situation ethics."

 

This approach to ethics must ultimately affect the laws and legal system of a society. Since law is based on a moral code, the law will become situational if the moral code becomes situational.

Ø     Our society is finding that its laws no longer match up with what people understand as right and wrong, e.g., capital punishment, the marijuana laws, laws against sodomy, laws which define marital responsibility, and so on. Rousas J. Rushdoony states in his book The Institutes of Biblical Law:

The legal crisis is due to the fact that the law of Western civilization has been Christian Law, but its faith is increasingly humanism. The old law is therefore neither understood, nor obeyed, nor enforced. [4]

 

4. Man

The Scripture teaches us that man is in a fallen state and that his natural inclination is to do evil and rebel against the will of God.

Ø     Man's only answer to life lies in redemption through Jesus Christ and sanctification by the Holy Spirit.

Ø     Man apart from God is in a hopeless state.

 

Humanist philosophy sees man as a product of his environment.

Ø     Man, the humanist feels, will turn out all right if he is allowed to develop free of the social and traditional corruptions that have blocked his nobility.

Ø     The effect of this understanding has been the proliferation of social legislation that is, in reality, trying to perfect human defects by correcting his environment.

 

The criminal, therefore, becomes the victim of society since society created the environment that forced him into his criminal behavior.

Society, according to humanist thought, is obligated to rehabilitate him and correct the environmental defects for which it is responsible.

Ø     The "rights" movements are an offshoot of this type of thinking. Equality in society as it is being proclaimed today is a humanistic concept that in reality is saying,

"No man or woman can be above anyone else, since that would make him or her less of a person."

 

Rushdoony comments on this point:

Equalitarianism is a modern politico-religious concept: It did not exist in the Biblical world, and it cannot with any honesty be forced onto Biblical law.

Equalitarianism is a product of humanism, of the worship of a new idol, man, and a new image carved out of man's imagination. [5]

 

5. Education

Education for the Christian should be training in the ways of God. It is training in how to live life. "Bring a child up in the way he should go. . ." is the admonition.

Ø     Scripture clearly states there is the way a child should be brought up, and that is ac­cording to God's law.

Ø     Most people do not realize it, but state schools are for the most part thoroughly humanistic in their approach to education.

 

John Dewey, the "father of progressive education," who has been one of the most influential educators of this century, was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto I in 1933.

Ø     The issue in state schools to­day is not prayer, Bible reading, or sex education. Those are like headaches compared to cancer of the brain.

Ø     The issue is that children are being indoctrinated by humanism for more hours of their lives than they are being taught the Word of God.

 

In 1961 the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Torcaso vs. Watkins declared that secular humanism was a religion along with Buddhism, Taoism and others.

Ø     If secular humanism is the basic philosophy of our state schools, then there is little difference, when viewed from a Christian perspective, between the training they would receive in humanist­ dominated schools and ones that would be run under a pagan religion.

 

Modern education is sewing fig leaves together to cover the nakedness of man. Modern education wants a child to develop "naturally," free from the restraints of religious and traditional inhibitions.

Ø     Self­development rather than guidance and training is the humanist approach.

 

6. Government

"There is no authority except from God," declares Scripture, "and those which exist are established by God" (Rom. 13:1 NAS).

Ø     Government, according to the Christian world view, derives its authority from above: God has given governments the right to rule.

Ø     In light of that, rulers and governmental officials are answerable to God rather than to people for the way they rule.

Ø     The same is true in the Church and in the family. In the Church, the leaders are accountable to God for their actions, and in the family the husband must answer to God, not to his wife and children, for the way in which he leads.

 

Humanist government derives its authority from the people. The Romans had as one of their standards SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus - "The Senate and the Roman People." This was the basis from which the Roman government functioned - the people.

Ø     Today our government is run largely by consensus - whatever the people want. It is the rule of the 51%. Elected officials no longer look to the law of God for decisions, but to the opinion polls.

The rule of the 51% also extends into our private lives. If Masters and Johnson say most people are having premarital sex, then it must be right because most people are doing it.

Ø     The majority becomes the norm.

That means if Christians become the minority on any issue, they will no longer be viewed as merely "different" but they will be considered "abnormal."

 

The extreme of this is seen in Communist countries where Christians are often sent to mental hospitals because they do not agree with the "people" and have become "deviates."

Ø     The other alternative is imprisonment as a political subversive because the Christian cannot confess the lordship of the state, a situation not too different from that in ancient Rome.

Such are the dangers of a society ruled by the voice of the 51 %.

 

WHAT NEXT?

 

Traditional Christian society as we have known it is on its death bed.

Ø     Our society is not only secular in life-style and world view, but in thought and philosophy.

As society - and for that matter, the Church - ­is shedding the garments of longstanding tradition, two alternatives are now open.

1. One is to embrace and live under some form of humanism;
2. the other is to come under the mandates of the Kingdom of God.

 

Humanism offers three forms:

1. First, the optimistic. States the Manifesto II:

Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.

 

The optimistic humanist sees the dawning of a new age through technology and science. It will be the utopia of a new world.

Ø     Says B. F. Skinner in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, "We have not yet seen what man can make of man."[6] 

Op­timistic humanism sees man finally grasp­ing the prize of dominion; he has eaten the fruit and become wise; he has made a name for himself in creation and covered himself in his nakedness.

 

2.    The second form of humanism, however, is pessimistic.

Ø     It sees man as he really is. It understands that the fig leaves have withered, and man is again left naked. In The Dust of Death, Os Guinness, an evangelical writer, states,

“The striptease of humanism marks the twilight of Western thought which is exposed as a mass of tortuous, twisted tensions, contradictions, oscillations, polarizations - all stemming from the alienations of men who can explain neither themselves nor their universe.”[7]

 

Arthur Koestler summed up the pessimistic viewpoint quite well when he said,

Ø  "Nature has let us down, God seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out."[8] 

For pessimistic humanism, there is only the dark void of naked reality without God.

Ø  The answer? Drop out, do your own thing, turn on - eat, drink and be merry.

 

3. The third humanistic alternative is some form of religious humanism.

Ø     This runs from extreme liberalism and the social gospel to forms of "charismatic" humanism that center on man and God's obligation to meet his needs.

Ø     The greatest danger to the Church in our century is not atheistic humanism, but religious humanism that is filled with religious activity

but is void of content, sacrifice and power.

 

The only alternative to humanism is the reality of the Kingdom of God.

Ø     The challenge is laid before the Church today to be the visible demonstration of a viable reali­ty that centers in God, His law and His will.

Ø     Our message must be more than words and preaching because words have lost their potency in the modern world.

We must be able to say, "Come with me, and I will show you what it means to be a Christian. "

 

The blood of the martyrs in the twentieth century has been shed in the struggle against the forces of humanistic systems and ideologies.

Ø     The testing of the Church in Western society cannot be far off. God is shaking all that can be shaken; humanism is being exposed, and the fig leaf is withering.­

 

Our challenge is to stand clothed in robes of righteousness and be a demonstration of the reality of the gospel of the Kingdom.

"No deity will save us: we must save ourselves." Humanist Manifesto II

"The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will save us." Isaiah 33:22, NAS