Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HOP Vol XX Special Number

1968 No 2- 11 -(07653)

cess of production that human essence becomes the nature of man, The "true", the humane man - that is; the really social man — appears in communism; ob ratherj he returns to communism after the alienting periods of our class society-, "Man is not an abstract being, cowering somewhere outside the wcrlcU Man is the world of man, the state, the society" (Marx)« Under the conditions of the class societies, man who is identical with his world lives in the state of alienation - the exploiters as well as the exploited« Hence the way of humanization is the establishment of a world worthy of man, that of the classless society, by revolutionary practice, by the dass strife» Marxist humanism is, above all, a social and political practice0 The only way of humanizing the world — ar.d this is identical with the 1 "naturalizing" of man - is that the proletariat seizes power and changes the worlds 6)

According to Christian anthropology, man is God's creature; man is man in that he is homo Dei, in living with his Creator and neigbourss Alienation is the denial of this essence and destiny, as godlessness- inhumanity, disobedience and lovelessnessa This alienation is called sin in the Bible (Ephesians 4j18)0 The alienated man is unable to change his alienated state; he cannot redeem himselfe His redemption was brought about by the appearance cf God's love in Jesus Christ toward man« The humanitás of the homo_ is not anchored in. his natural participation in the divine principle - as this was

asserted by the humanism of antiquity and, to a certain degree, is taught 1 y

the Roman Catholic doctrine (analógia entis) - but he is crated anew' by the • fact that God himself took upon himself, at one time and once for all, human nature^ Christian humanism is rooted in this act of God, in His love toward

man, or, to use Ko Barth's expression, in the "humanism of God", - And the

way of humanising man, according to Christian conviction, can be nothing else but the "putting on" of the true, real, new man, that is, Jesus Christo This Jesus Cirrist, however, is the union of God and man, and hence, in Christian humanism, the worship and love of God is fused with the love of cur fellowmen0 And the fellowman consists of body and soul, the body of the soul and the soul cf the body, as Karl Barth puts it in his anthropology«7) The Humanity of the Christian who lives by the "humanism of God" is responsible communion with his f ellowmen« No one can be "human" alone, in isolation«. Humanism is a common mat ter» 8) v <

The exhibition of the differences between the various anthropologies and types of humanism is not a theoretical matter aid as such an end in itself, but «■« as we already stressed - a matter with important bearings on sccia.l ethiesa But it is exactly this awareness of the differences that is missing in the humanization concept of the so-called "theology cf revolution'^ The latter, therefore, creates the appearance as though the concept of "humanizing" meant, in every case, the same historical, political and cultural process, thus one disregards the fact that it is precisely the new "humanism of the ethical and depth psychological motivation" that wants to exclude Christianity from the task of humanizing man, because it considers religion as an ethically sterile posture with its search for ethical norms outside human natures9) - Words that