HUMANISM ETHICS

        The ancient Greeks were probably the first humanists.  Protagoras wrote, “The human is the measure of all things.”  Sophocies expounded on that notion by saying, “Of all the many wonders of the world, there is none so wonderful as the human.”

          Today, humanism is an orientation and an approach with applications in virtually all professional disciplines, including education, counseling, law, and medicine.  Elizabeth Campbell, a past executive director of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP), wrote that, “Humanistic psychology holds a hopeful view of people and their ability to be self-determining, self-actualizing, and capable of making choices.”  In addition, she listed the likely results of humanism:

1.      Promotes human growth and transformation;

2.      Provides priority to human needs;

3.      Holistically insists on looking at all-encompassing systems;

4.      Honors the subjective and the intuitive in the study of humans; and,

5.      Supports self-disclosure, trust, and openness as ways of being in the world.

       Campbell’s description fits closely with assertions made in the Humanist Manifesto, a collaborative effort written in 1933.  The writings declare that the purposes and practice of humanism is to:

1.      Affirm life, rather than deny it;

2.      Seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from it; and,

3.      Endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely the few.

This philosophy of life asserts that human beings are responsible for their own destinies.

       From the Humanist’s perspective, principles are chosen where their ultimate value is not determined, nor is the value-determination possible.  Such ethical philosophy usually equates satisfaction in life with prudence, power, or pleasure but it is basically derived from belief in the ethical doctrine of natural human fulfillment as the ultimate good.  Those lacking motivation to exercise preferences, may be resigned to accepting all customs and, therefore, develop a philosophy of prudence.  They live in conformity with a mix of ethical standards, popular with society at the time.  Where power is considered the highest attainment for man, competition is identified as the motivating force of achievement.  Because each victory tends to raise the level of competition, the logical end of such a philosophy is unlimited or absolute power, which of course, is not possible.  Power seekers may not accept customary ethical rules but may conform to other rules that can help them become successful.  They will seek to persuade others that they are moral in the accepted sense of the term, in order to mask their power motives and gain the ordinary rewards of morality.

       Kenneth W. Phifer, a Harvard University educated Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, affirms his humanistic philosophy of life by articulating, “I have faith in that part of humanism, which sees the human being as the highest form of life; an end, not a means; the creator of moral values; the maker of history.”  Odd, that a Harvard educated, Massachusetts citizen would hold counter-cultural views!

The contrast of Minister Phifer’s humanistic philosophy can be no more striking, than when it is compared with the Apostle Paul’s writing in the book of Galatians:  “When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear:  sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissention, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these.”  Gal. 5:19-21 (NLT).

 

 

CHRISTIAN ETHICS

The fundamental question of ethics is, who makes the rules – God or man?  The theistic answer is that God makes them.  The humanistic answer is that man makes them.  God’s prescription for mans’ behavior in this life has remained timeless and unchanged.  Mans’ many philosophies of what is “Good” are continually evolving.  That fact, in and of itself, provides a testament to mans’ failure to offer a steady moral compass for society.  This distinction between theism and humanism is the basis of division in moral theory and conduct.

The ethical systems of the classical age (490–510 B.C.) were applied to the aristocracy, particularly in Greece.  The same standards were not extended to non-Greeks, and the term for them, “Barbarians” acquired derogatory connotations.  As for slaves, the attitude toward them can be summed up in Aristotle’s characterization of a slave as a “Living tool.”  Partly for these reasons, as the pagan religions decayed, the contemporary philosophies did not gain any popular following, and much of the appeal of Christianity was its extension of moral citizenship to all, even to slaves.

The birth of Jesus Christ marked a revolution in ethics, for He proclaimed, and lived by example, what is good.  In the Christian view, a person is totally dependent upon God and cannot achieve goodness by means of deeds or intelligence, but only with the help of God’s grace.  The primary Christian ethical belief is stated in the golden rule, in the injunctions to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to love one’s enemies, to give to the government what is the government’s, and give to God what is God’s.  Jesus taught that the essential meaning of Jewish Law is in the commandment to love the Lord with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind; and, your neighbor as yourself.

Christianity emphasizes as virtues, asceticism, martyrdom, faith, mercy, forgiveness, and unconditional love – few of which had been considered important by the philosophers of classical Greece and Rome.

Saint Augustine (354–430 A.D). regarded as the founder of Christian theology, advanced the concept of goodness as an attribute of God and sin as Adam’s fall, from which a person’s guilt is redeemed by God’s mercy.  He believed in mans’ basic sinful nature.  The 13^th century Christian theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, supported Augustinian concepts of original sin and redemption through divine grace.

The Protestant Reformation, lead by Martin Luther (1483–1546 A.D), effected a widespread following of basic moral principles within the Christian tradition.  He believed that goodness of spirit is the essence of Christian piety.  Moral conduct, or good works, is required of the Christian, but justification, or salvation, comes by faith alone.  Additionally, the French Protestant theologian and religious reformer John Calvin (1509–1564 A.D.), accepted the theological doctrine that justification is by faith alone, and so upheld the doctrine of “Original sin.”

It is the divine ownership of man, which grounds ethical obligation.  Call it divine lordship or divine sovereignty, the fact is that God has made man and therefore owns man.  Man is God’s creature.  It is the position of divine possession, which is the deepest meaning of the Creator/creature relationship.  Neither divine power, nor divine goodness may be divorced from this relationship, but ethical obligation for man arises, first and most essentially, from the fact that man is God’s possession.  This is the explanation for ethical reality, as man knows it.  Divine ownership grounds mans’ sense of an objective, external, and absolute claim upon his obedience.

It is evident that Christian epistemology both harmonizes and transcends the precepts of non-Christian ethics.  Accordingly, omniscience is necessary if any ethical thinking is to be confident.  Certainly, man is not and cannot be omniscient; if man professed omniscience, despair would surely be his result.

The fact of divine revelation, however, provides the Christian with the necessary omniscience without the necessity of locating that deity in man.  Since God is omniscient, he can provide man with the necessary knowledge to make ethical decisions without making man omniscient.  Confidence, rather than despair, may thus mark the Christian approach to ethical decision.

In God's created reality, [He] has designed a world in which all particulars (a separate part of a whole, such as a fact detail, or circumstance), reflect certain universal principles (all-encompassing directives), while not being absorbed by or dissolved into those universal principles.  God’s created universals and particulars do not contradict one another.  The application of this system and epistemology to ethics provides this important insight.  The moral law of God is composed of both universals, as written in (Matt. 22:37-40) and particulars as directed in (Exodus 20).  The universals never negate or override the particulars.  The particulars always reflect the universals.  Hence, all the particular laws of God always reflect love for God and man.  There is never any conflict between universals and particulars in God’s law.  Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity and the Christian epistemology it suggests, immediately illustrates the inadequacy of situationism (to act in accordance with the situation), and other forms of one-norm absolutism (one “particular” fits all), conflicting absolutism (a “particular” that does not fit is due to a lack of knowledge), and graded absolutism (there is a hierarchy of “particulars”, where one will fit different situations).  This is so because each of these systems posits conflict between universals and particulars within God’s law, or particulars are subordinated to the universals in some way.

So, who do you think makes the rules? – God or man?  To be continued…

Topics:

Humanism

Hedonism

Existentialism

Relativism

Self-Realization