Expert: Austin Cline - 6/7/2004

Question
When I was a teenager I read a book by Erasmus, which I really enjoyed, and I learned that he was a Christian Humanist. What is the relation (if any) between present day secular humanism and Erasmus-style humanism? Can someone be both a secular and a Christian humanist?

Answer
That's a very complex question.

Last question first: No, you probably can't be a secular humanist and a Christian humanist. Secular humanism is necessarily non-religious (it need not be non-theistic... a theist can be a humanist for completely secular reason and, thus, be a secular humanist, but it's rare). Christian humanism, however, is an explicitly religious sort of humanism.

First question last: modern humanism, secular or religious, grew out of Renaissance humanism like what Erasmus advocated. He may have been a Christian humanist, but early humanism pushed for a world view that was more detached from church institutions and dogmas than the world views of most people during the Middle Ages. Early humanism focused on the human (human figures in art, human needs, etc.) rather than God or angels. Modern secular humanism is the long-term outgrowth of that perspective (which is itself an outgrowth of the humanism of ancient Greece and Rome).

From a yet-unpublished article on just this subject:

The most important thing to remember about Renaissance Humanism, however, is that its most important characteristics lie not in its content or its adherents, but in its spirit. To understand Humanism, it must be contrasted with the piety and scholasticism of the Middle Ages, against which Humanism was regarded as a free and open breath of fresh air. Indeed, Humanism was often critical of the stuffiness and repression of the Church over the centuries, arguing that humans needed more intellectual freedom in which they could develop their faculties.

Sometimes Humanism appeared quite close to ancient paganism, but this was usually more a consequence of the comparison to medieval Christianity than anything inherent in the beliefs of the Humanists. Nevertheless, the anti-clerical and anti-church inclinations of the humanists were a direct result of their reading ancient authors who didn't care about gods, didn't believe in any gods, or believed in gods who were far and remote from anything that the humanists were familiar with.

And:

Many humanists, like Erasmus, argued that the Christianity which people experienced was nothing at all like the Christianity experienced by the early Christians or taught by Jesus Christ. These scholars relied heavily upon information gathered directly from the Bible itself and even worked to produce improved editions of the Bible along with translations of the early Church Fathers, otherwise only available in Greek and Latin.

All of this, obviously enough, has very close parallels with the work done by Protestant reformers barely a century later. They, too, objected to how the structure of the Church tended towards repression. They, too, decided that they would have access to a more authentic and appropriate Christianity by paying more attention to the words in the Bible than the traditions handed to them by religious authorities. They, too, worked to create better editions of the Bible, translating it into vernacular languages so that everyone could have equal access to their own sacred scriptures.

This brings us to another important aspect of Humanism which was carried over into the Reformation: the principle that ideas and learning should be available to all people, not simply a few elite who might use their authority to restrict the learning of others. For humanists, this was a principle to be applied widely in that manuscripts of all types were translated and eventually printed cheaply on the presses, allowing almost anyone to have access to the wisdom and ideas of ancient Greeks and Romans.


I hope some of this helps....