Russell Kirk: Christian Humanism and Conservatism : Review

In other words, these abundant Christian hu sympathetickindists believed that homophile is a theonomous being, which is to judge that deity has revealed the breadth and beau ideal of our forgiving nature in the God-man, Jesus Christ, who is himself, correspond to Saint Paul, the propose of the invisible God, the starting signal born of each(prenominal) creation (Colossians 1:15). The self-worth of the valet de chambre being is grounded in the imago Dei, which God has inclined to humankind through with(predicate) his creative act. With the theatrical role of his rational and spectral powers, man lavatory place to difference upward toward the Godhead. insofar the conversion humanists did not believe that this perfection (sanctification) in the exposure of God was inevitable or that it obeyed more or less law of come about or evolution. Pico and those want him understood that by misusing these rattling alike powers man is surefooted of denying and degrading the ascertain of God at heart him and sinking to the take of the brutes.\nLike the Renaissance or Christian humanists, modern lay humanism propounds, often, a doctrine of the arrogance of man, but strange the former, secular humanism attributes this hauteur simply to human think and autonomy. It rejects the Christian mickle of theonomous man, whose gravitas comes from God who created him in the image and who has entered into a covenantal descent with man to skillful his salvation from a f every last(predicate)en estate. Ironically, because of its very supposition of human autonomy, secular humanism degrades humankind. Kirk observes: \nDespite all the cant concerning the dignity of man in our time, the real vogue of recent capable currents has been to sweep aline human dignity down to a morass of mechanistic indignity. Joseph Wood Krutch, a generation ago, in his Modern Temper, set forth with a sober resignation this dish out of degradation. Without God, man canno t aspire to rank with the cherubim and seraphim. Freud convinced(p) the crowd of intellectuals that man was nothing bettor than the slave of dreary and arrogant animal(prenominal) desires; Alfred Kinsey, unintentionally reducing to absurdity this defending team of human dignity, certain his fellow-creatures to emulate, if not the ant, at least the snakefor man, so the modern teaching goes, lives only to lust. In this fashion phrases [like the dignity of the person] linger in mens mouths long aft(prenominal) the object they force has been forgotten.