CHRISTIANITY AND MODERII H U L' A IT I S Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Divinity Donald Houston Sterwart April 3, 1939 X£G§D\ Chapel Hill, north Carolina Table of Contents Preface i-iii Chapter One OUR CONFUSED VvDELD 1 A. Anarchy - The Battle of Counterfeit Values B. The Uncertain Quest for Certainty C. Hope - God and Man Chapter Two THE BACKGROUND OF HUMANISM 15 A. The Arrival of a Word B. Christian and lion-Christian Humanism C. The Christian Doctrine of Man a. The Religious Deliverance of Man from. Nature b. The Christian Distinction Between Man and God D. The Spirit of I'edieval Christendom E. The Secularization of Man a. Instability of the Spiritual Enterprise b. Other Sources of Secularism F. Our Contemporary Perdition Chapter Three THE MANIFESTO OF HUMANISM - IRVING BABBITT 52-78 A. Two Laws Discrete E. The Naturalistic Fallacy a. Utilitarian Naturalism - Bacon Table of Contents b. Sentimental Naturalism - Rousseau i. Neo-Classic Formalism ii. Romantic Spontaneity c. The Naturalistic Disintegration C. The Declaration of Humanism a. The Need for a Law of lleasure b. Humanistic Method - Critical Positivism c. Humanistic Doctrine - The 'Higher ¥ill' d. Humanistic Salvation D. Conclusion Chapter Four THE MANIFESTO OF HUMANISM 79-105 JOHN DEWET A. The Background - Pragmatism a. Individualism and American Culture b. Josiah Royce - Loyalty c. liiilliam James - Radical Empiricism 3. Dewey's Naturalistic Metaphysics a. Empirical Philosophy b. Instrumentalism C. Instrumentalism and Religion a. The 'Religious' displaces 'Religion' b. Instrumental Emancipation Table of Contents Chapter Five CHRISTIAITITY A1TD HU1ZA1TISH 106-157 A. The Service of Humanism B. The Basic Issue - Revelation a. Babbitt and Devvey essentially secularists b. The Role of Pseudo-Categories C. General Weaknesses of Humanism a. The Inadequacy of Babbitt»s *New Humanism1 i« The relation of Humanism and Religion ii. Ends for action and the End of life iii. The Negative and Aristocratic Temper b. Fallacies in Dewey's Instrumentalism i« Begging the Question and the Use of Straw I "en ii. Rationalistic Illusions regarding Social Change D« Humanism and the Despiritualization of Plan Chapter Six CHRIST IAITITY - ITS MESSAGE AM) TASK 158-201; A. The Significance of the Modern Mood B. The Ground of the Christian Tiessage a. The Witness to the Concrete b. Spiritual Man and Revelation C. The Dogmas of Faith a. Creation - Man's Origin b. Image of God - LIan*s 'Likeness 1 Table of Contents c. Sin and the Fall - Tragedy d. The Cross and Forgiveness - Salvation D. The Church and the Eternal 'Word'. Bibliography PREFACE Christianity has always founded itself upon a gospel of Revelation. It lias, therefore, always had to contend with any humanistic philosophy vrhich seeks to domesticate man in either a rationalism or a naturalism, and to preserve Christian values without embracing the Christian world of transcendent realities. At the present time this is particularly true. The thesis of these pages seeks to show that a humanism which does not acknowledge man's communion with, and kinship to a transcendental world of spiritual reality is inadequate and unstable on the one hand, and is on the other a misreading of the nature of the person as spirit. This paper therefore contends that a Christian humanism is the only humanism that is adequate to the facts of the whole man, and that all other humanism, if considered as exhaustive, is a reduction of man's dignity and his mystery. For purposes of clarity and space it has been necessary to limit the humanism with which we shall be particularly concerned, to current humanism. While the term 'modern' might seem to suggest a scope of several centuries it is in this thesis employed to signify the contemporary form of humanism with which Christianity is confronted. In order to achieve some perspective of the roots of modern humanism it has been necessary to make a brief survey of its antecedents in order to appreciate its place in contemporary thought and the signifi­ cance of the Christian contention as to the insufficiency of humanism. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first is a brief statement of the confusion and impotency in our tines due to the loss of standards, ilote is also taken that within this confusion signs are evident ii that many minds are witnessing to a more realistic appraisal of man and his life, and the significance for philosophy and theology of his spiritual reality. Chapter two is an attempt to set forth the background of modern humanism. There are, we have had to notice, -two humanisms, a Christian and a non-Christian, which emerged out of the Renaissance. The attempt to evaluate the true significance of the latter has involved the necessity of stating the Christian doctrine of man, held by the church, and from which the neo-classical form was a departure. The rest of the chapter is con­ cerned with an examination of those forces which contributed to the dissolution of the medieval culture and the religious source of its unity and promise, and aided the rise of both those naturalistic philosophies and the 'higher* naturalisms of rationalistic humanism. Chapters three and four seek to present respectively the manifesto of humanism as contained in the writings of the two representative leaders of two different humanisms of our time, Irving Babbitt and John Dewey. "While many would not acknowledge Dewey as a humanist, this ex­ clusion can only be maintained by holding that the words 'humanist' and 'humanism1 have reference solely to the purely classical interpretation of their meaning as Babbitt holds. Christianity however contends against a humanism more widely interpreted than that would permit. From the Christian point of view Dewey's philosophy is humanistic in that it maintains man's ability successfully to pursue the fulfilments and en­ richment of his life, and to achieve the maximum of meaning and purpose without recourse to the world of transhuman and theological reality such as^ Christianity affirms. Ill The inadvisability of a too extended paper has been partly responsible for the omission of a separate study of Dr. Paul E. Llore. The deciding factor lay however in the observation that he no longer represents the humanists, having passed over into the Anglican communion. His importance for us now lies in the fact that his spiritual journey is illustrative of the Christian judgment as to the incompleteness of humanism and its finally unstable character apart from revelation. In chapters five and six we have attempted to state the essential Christian criticism of the philosophy of humanism in general, and of these two spokesmen in particular. Reference is here made to the pilgrimage of Dr. Paul Elmer LTore. This section is an endeavor also to suggest, in out­ line only, the constructive Christian position together with the bases from which the Christian faith arises. Our aim has not been a treatise on theology, but rather to envision what, it is suggested, is both the central ground of the Christian message, and the foremost task confronting the church in a time where order must somehow be achieved within a disordered world, the eternal somehow be acknowledged within the temporal, and, where for that end the Christian cannot but feel that his faith must have some significant word to say, and some influential pressure it can bring to bear. Chapter One OUR CONFUSED WORLD A. Anarchy — The Battle of Counterfeit Values B. The Uncertain Quest for Certainty C. Hope — God and Man Chapter One OUR CONFUSED WORLD A. Anarchy—the battle of counterfeit values. Man lives within history, but it is history itself that has pronounced the failure of man and his culture. The events of our time furnish us with the picture of man feverishly attempting to perpetuate an impossible form of existence. Its tempo and intensity are already the indication of man's dim foreknowledge of its doom to frustration. Man reads the handwriting on the walls of contemporary history. But he does not believe it. In fact the spectre of impotent confusion and defiant self- sufficiency is one of the marks of our modern world. Man dimly discerns that he has lost the knowledge of himself, and he seeks to regain it in counterfeit knowledge of his being. Modern man is no longer a 'spiritual 1 creature; he has become an abstraction. The spiritual source of man's life, the conviction that he is related to an eternal world which bestows meaning and order to his temporal existence—this conviction is seriously discounted, and indeed impossible, so many feel. Bereft of the traditional source of his significance by the gradual dissolution of the spiritual interpretation of his life, man has been forced to erect a substitute, be it counterfeit and fragmentary, nevertheless some alternative, some other 'worthful' and 'holy' reality in the name of which he proposes to organize his existence. Like the nature of vtfiich he is a part man abhors a vacuum. In the loss of God he has suffered the perdition of his own being, and the disintegration of the world of relations in -which he lives. But a disintegrating and disorganized world is obviously self destructive. Its anarchic tendencies in all spheres of life make imperative the necessity that man invoke some new centre as the 'sacred' reality around which he may attempt to reform and reorder his existence. The centrifugal tendency can be preserved from the immediate destruction of everything only by the presence of some centripetal power. Thus even secularism itself involves the acceptance of some 'sacred' reality'.