In Defense of Humanism: An Answer to Paris Reidhead

"Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh

O'er him who learns the truth by half!

Beware; for God will not endure

For men to make their hope more pure

Than His good promise..."

--Coventry Patmore--

Reactionism is never right, even if it is often excusable. Those who freeze themselves in ice to counter pyromaniacs are not only mad but also futile since their extremism only provides defense for the extremism of their enemies. One has only to follow politics to know what I mean. I believe that the Church should take warning from the world in this matter and learn to live a little better. There is within modern Christianity (in America, I mean) a great of worldliness--there are many people who simply want to put a Christian label on their otherwise unChristian lives and then move on--many people who want to live a basic human life with religion as simply an additional “add-on.” That is wrong and I don't see how anyone who understands what Christianity is could think otherwise. But in reaction to this life, there is a growing tendency within Evangelicalism to teach a contrary doctrine, a doctrine which denigrates human existence, which offers religion as a competitor for human life, which portrays the two things as being intrinsically opposed. This doctrine may have its roots in many different philosophical and theological soils, but its fruit is essentially similar. We may call this doctrine “anti-humanism” and it stands in opposition not just to secular humanism but also to Christian humanism, and I submit that in so doing it stands in opposition to Biblical orthodoxy.

Secular humanism teaches that human life, human existence is an end in and of itself--that man should order his life for the sake of the life of man, either the individual or the collective society. Anti-humanism teaches that human life is ultimately irrelevant and meaningless, either because there is no God and so no meaning in anything or, for the Christian, because there is a God and so all meaning lies in God--in escaping from our humanity and coming to God. Christian humanism teaches that human life has a meaning because it was made by God and that we serve and glorify God, not by escaping our humanity, but through the redemption of our humanity. Duane Litfin summarized it very well by saying: “The goal of every Christian is to be as completely human as possible.” (17)

For some time, I have been aware of the controversy within the church (and even with the Holiness Church) between anti-humanism and Christian humanism. And just recently, someone put into my hands the sermon “Ten Shekels and a Shirt” by Paris Reidhead, and so I am writing this article as a counter. Though Reidhead does not carry his anti-humanism as far as other Christians, I am addressing my article to his work for two reasons: (1) The fact that people are passing this sermon around the modern Holiness Movement under the impression that this is Biblical orthodoxy or healthy or even Wesleyan proves just how far this problem has gone; (2) The fact that this is a sermon written in black and white (which anyone can look up if they want) makes it easier to counter than the mass of passing comments and assumptions which permeate the church. Many other people may think the same thing as Reidhead, but I'm not aware of anyone else who has said it so forcefully and so succinctly.

That said, I must make a couple of qualifiers. Though I disagree with Reidhead's theology, that does not change the respect that is due to him for his character and the great work he did. Nor should we miss the main truth he presents--the fact that far too many people, in his own analogy, want to drive their life and have God fill up the tank, rather than having God in the driver's seat. Reidhead ends his sermon with a powerful illustration about two Moravian missionaries who were so dedicated to sharing the gospel that they were willing to sell themselves into a life of slavery in order to do it. That is the kind of dedication God requires of us, even if for most of us it would not work out in quite that way. The last qualifier is that I can never quite understand how much of Reidhead's sermon is meant to be taken seriously and in how much he is merely “blowing off steam”--not without sincerity but not intending to be carefully analyzed. It may be that in his reactionism, he went not only beyond what is right but even beyond what he himself meant. It is easy when one is passionate to overstate their point. (Though it is a sin I have never, in any case, and under any circumstance, been guilty.)

One of Reidhead's main contentions throughout the sermon is that there is no spiritual value in taking an action for one's own sake and, especially, for the sake of Heaven or Hell. This is no different, he says, than the Levite in Judges 17 who served Micah for ten shekels and a shirt. Early in his sermon, he parodies the gospel some people preach in the words: “Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven! You don't want to go to that old, filthy, nasty, burning hell when there is a beautiful heaven up there! Now come to Jesus so you can go to heaven!" This appeal, he says, “could be as much to selfishness as a couple of men sitting in a coffee shop deciding they are going to rob a bank to get something for nothing!” He puts the matter in stronger terms a little later on, saying that “If the only reason [a sinner] repents is so that he'll go to heaven, it's nothing but trying to make a deal or a bargain with God.” Speaking of the sinners that fell under conviction under the preaching of George Whitfield, he asks why they were convicted: “Because they were in danger of Hell? No! But because they were MONSTERS OF INIQUITY... You see the difference? The difference is, here's somebody trembling because he is going to be hurt in Hell... He's only trembling because his skin is about to be singed. He's afraid.” And finally, his strongest words: "If I were to say to you, 'Come to be saved so you can go to heaven, come to the cross so that you can have joy and victory, come for the fullness of the Spirit so that you can be satisfied,' I would be falling into the trap of humanism. I'm going to say to you, dear friend, if you're out here without Christ, you come to Jesus Christ and serve Him as long as you live, whether you go to hell at the end of the way, BECAUSE HE IS WORTHY!"

If Reidhead is right, then it is wrong to call sinners to salvation or Christians to diligence out of either fear of Hell or hope of Heaven, or any other personal hope or fear. Now, I am more than willing to agree that a good deal of harm has been done by preaching about Heaven and Hell in isolation. (We never could have gotten the once-saved-always-saved doctrine if people had any idea what being saved means.) Certainly, as he says, there is a problem if you separate the idea of Hell from the idea of sin--if you make people fear Hell without realizing that they deserve it. I agree that a religion that involves only a fear of Hell seems incomplete and that there is a fear even with eternal rewards and punishments that religion will, in Lewis Carroll's words, “become a sort of commercial transaction.” (Chapter 19)

But for all that there is one brutal, embarrassing fact we must face, and that fact is Mark 9:43-48, in which Jesus Himself in a rhetorical masterpiece urges his disciples to carefulness and singleness because of the danger of Hell, a danger which is presented in very “carnal” terms: “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” And so on and so forth. If it is wrong to call people to follow God out of a fear of Hell, then Jesus was misguided in His direction. It is true that Reidhead admits that “ fear is good office work in preparing us for grace” (though it's hard to see, under his assumptions, what good it could do), but Jesus is here not addressing sinners but the Twelve. (Though their spiritual state at this point could be argued.) The fear of Hell may be only part of the fear of the Lord which is only the beginning of wisdom--and yet it must have some legitimate place or Jesus simply wrong.

And what makes the matter even more baffling is the other side. In one of the quotations above, Reidhead mocks the idea of offering the filling of the Spirit in order to find satisfaction. What then are we to make of John 7:37-38 in which Jesus cries out: “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water”? This is figurative, of course. Jesus isn't talking about H2O. But the pictureis clear--that there is a thirst in man which He could fill, that our desires could be satisfied. Or, take a look at Matthew 11:28: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Once again, this is an appeal to our human desires--if you will, our selfish desires--a desire for rest and satisfaction and, ultimately, happiness/joy. And that's not even touching the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) in which Christ offers the following lavish promises: receiving the Kingdom of God, being comforted, inheriting the earth, being filled, obtaining mercy, seeing God, being called the children of God, and, finally, having a great reward in Heaven. And if we turn from the Gospels to rest of the New Testament, we find James encouraging Christians to stand against temptation in order to “receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.” (James 1:12. c.p., Revelation 2:10.)

Throughout the New Testament, Christ and His followers saw no incongruity in appealing to man's fears, hopes, and desires in order to urge men to repent or persevere after repentance. I am not saying these are the only motives to which the New Testament appeals. Peter's sermon at Pentecost seems to have focused on the objective guilt which the Jews had accrued by crucifying Jesus. (Acts 2:36) There are exhortations to do right in order to glorify God before men (Matthew 5:16, Titus 2:10), to avoid bringing reproach to God's name (1Timothy 6:1), and simply to please God (Colossians 3:20). The problem is the two kinds of exhortations exist together without any idea in the minds of the apostles that there is any incongruity between them. Lewis Carroll (speaking through the character of Arthur Forester) made an argument similar to Reidhead's--an argument that to appeal to rewards and punishments (even eternal ones)  is selfish and unChristian. He argued that such appeals only appear in Scripture as an introductory principle, suited to those who are (mentally or spiritually) children. (Chapter 19) But if that's so, we should see a shift in emphasis throughout Scripture. We should find careful and clear clarifications on the subject, as there are NT passages (especially in the Sermon on the Mount) which, though they do not contradict, do correct and expand upon some of the cloudy parts of the Mosaic Law. Instead, we have nothing of the kind. John's Revelation represents the end of the canon and is, one would assume, the most mature Christian book and which is, moreover, a book which emphasizes the glory and intrinsic worthiness of God--and yet it also has the clear and stern threats and promises given to the seven churches. There is simply nothing in the New Testament which supports Reidhead's contentions. The only thing which comes close is Romans 9:3 in which Paul says he could wish himself “accursed from Christ.” But even if this means damned (about which the commentators are by no means agreed), this doesn't provide a real support for Reidhead's philosophy, because this is stated in the subjunctive and a personal subjunctive at that. Paul doesn't say that he did wish this, much less that all Christians should wish it--he certainly doesn't say that a man who serves God to avoid being damned has a sub-Christian experience. (The verse also fails to help Reidhead when you consider why Paul said he could wish this--it was out of a sense of compassion for the lost which, as we will see later, is a meaningless thing in Reidhead's philosophy.)

The point is this. Reidhead claims that serving God out either personal fear or personal hope is “humanism.” If it is, then humanism cannot be unChristian, since the Bible repeatedly appeals to the fears and hopes of man in order to call for their service. Reidhead says, “there's only one reason, one reason, for a sinner to repent... Not because he'll go to heaven. If the only reason you repented, dear friend, was to keep out of Hell, then all you are is JUST A LEVITE SERVING FOR TEN SHEKELS AND A SHIRT! THAT'S ALL!” I submit to you that this, while forceful and suggestive, is wrong--that serving God out of hope or fear is not the same as serving God for money. (Indeed, the word “hope” is important, for it is one of the NT virtues and it is hard to see how, in Reidhead's universe, hope would be a virtue at all or, for the matter of that, why God would have revealed the existence of Heaven to us instead of keeping it for a surprise.) C. S. Lewis pointed out that many modern thinkers glorified unselfishness, implying that is bad thing “to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it”--and this, he pointed out, is not Christian, specifically for the reason I pointed out above--the promises in the New Testament which, though they do involve self-denial and self-sacrifice, in the end are “an appeal to desire.” (3)

I realize that to many people it may seem that I have spent far too long in proving a very simple point. But the point is vitally important. One of the essential attributes of human nature is “self-love.” Adam Clarke defines this as “a disposition essential to our nature, and inseparable from our being, by which we desire to be happy, by which we seek the happiness we have not, and rejoice in it when we possess it. In a word, it is a uniform wish of the soul to avoid all evil, and to enjoy all good.” (Matthew 19:19) Reidhead, speaking for anti-humanism, claims that such desires are sub-Christian and must have no place in the Christian life. But Christian humanism (and the New Testament) affirm that this basic human desire is not wrong--that serving God for the sake of our own happiness is not opposed to serving Him because He is worthy or in order for Him to receive glory. (It is also worth noting in passing that self-love is commanded or at least assumed in Matthew 19:19)

At one point in his sermon, Reidhead tells Christians to “join [Christ] in union with His death and enter into all the meaning of death to self in order that He can have glory.” I do not know enough about the theology of A. B. Simpson and his children to know what that phrase--“death to self”--means in the mouth of one of them. But, within the Holiness Movement, the phrase is also common and has a clear meaning. The self we die to is not our human self (which would be meaningless, anyway), but the carnal self and the irony of that is that the carnal self is not really “self” at all, but a corruption of the self. God is the proper king of the soul and the self His proper regent--the carnal nature usurps authority from both.

The point is that salvation (and sanctification) does not lie in escaping from our humanity but in our humanity being redeemed. God calls us to present ourselves as a living sacrifice, not our non-selves as a dead one. Our sin does not lie in being human but in being sinful. Sin is a defect of human nature, not its essence. While people are born with a sinful nature, a bent to sinning, nonetheless “there persists a fundamental goodness to human nature that can be wrested from the claws of evil, cleansed and transformed into the very likeness of Christ Jesus... [W]hile honestly admitting the reality of sin, holiness theology forever celebrates the primary and potential grandeur of humankind.” (Reed, 37) It is not wrong to serve God out of a desire for happiness because God created us to be happy and took, out of His own good pleasure, the trouble to provide it for us. (Adam Clarke wrote: “Be happy, for it is the will of God that ye should be so.” 1 John 2:1)

Christian anti-humanism fails, then, because the Bible does, in fact, appeal without incongruity to our human desires. But there is a much larger problem with anti-humanism which looms in what is the central and most famous contention of Riedhead's sermon--which is his description of his spiritual awakening which happened after he went to Africa as a missionary. Before we get to the main point, we should note that Riedhead (while an admitted opponent of Christian humanism) frankly and honestly admits one of its most important points, which is the moral knowledge of all people. Reidhead explains that he went to Africa thinking the people were utterly ignorant of right and wrong. Instead, he found that “They were living in utter and total defiance of far more knowledge of God than I ever dreamed they had!” A little later, he says “And they're going to Hell, but not because they haven't heard the gospel. They're going to go to Hell because they are sinners.” Christian humanism affirms that all people have a knowledge of right and wrong (unless they deliberately reject the light they have) and this is is not different in principle (though it is in extent) from the revelation of right and wrong we receive from God. God does not give something “All-new, all-different,” but rather an expansion and enlightenment of what we already had--because what we already had come from God. This is, to some degree, a side note, but it is important because it connects to Reidhead's main point.

The central focal point of the sermon is this passage. Reidhead explains that when he went to Africa as a missionary, he was motivated by two things: a sense of justice and a sense of compassion. And this, he claims, is humanism. “I'd seen pictures of lepers, I'd seen pictures of ulcers, I'd seen pictures of native funerals, and I didn't want my fellow human beings to suffer in Hell eternally after such a miserable existence on earth. But it was there in Africa that God began to tear THROUGH THE OVERLAY OF THIS HUMANISM!” He goes onto to record what he felt was God's words to his heart: “I didn't send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen, I sent you to Africa for My sake. They deserved Hell! But I LOVE THEM! AND I ENDURED THE AGONIES OF HELL
FOR THEM! I DIDN'T SEND YOU OUT THERE FOR THEM! I SENT YOU OUT THERE FOR ME! DO I NOT DESERVE THE REWARD OF MY SUFFERING? DON'T I DESERVE THOSE FOR WHOM I DIED?" Reidhead then adds, in summary: “I was there not for the sake of the heathen... My eyes were opened. I was no longer working for Micah and ten shekels and a shirt, but I was serving a living God.”

The passage is very poignant and (in a good sense) provocative. We must never lose sight of God in doing God's work and if we do, we will end in frustration. There is a lesson here and if all we are interested in is lessons, that is enough for us. But Reidhead seemed to take this seriously as part of a larger philosophy and so do I. On one hand, we have compassion and justice, a desire for the happiness of man--specifically, other men. And on the other hand, we have the glory of God, the sake and worthiness of God. And Reidhead's case is that these things are separate and ne'er the twain shall meet. To seek to help people, out of compassion or justice, is humanism and is incompatible with the Christian principle, which is to work solely for the sake of God.

Justice and mercy are basic human virtues, praised (if not practiced) the world over. But in Reidhead's universe, not only are they insufficient, but they are diametrically opposed to Christianity. To help people out of compassion or justice is no different in principle than help people out of greed. We are told that the only proper Christian motive is the glory of God--not compassion or justice. In other words, there is an abrupt and complete discontinuity between human virtue (even in concept) and Christian virtue. Which becomes very puzzling in light of Reidhead's own admission about the existence of real moral knowledge among the heathen. The thing becomes even more problematic when we note that Reidhead admits that God has love--that love is the motive for which God acted in salvation. So is love the prerogative of God alone? Or is the love of God something utterly different in nature than human love? On Reidhead's principles, it must be, since the defining attribute of human love is that it desires happiness and well-being for the beloved, while according to Reidhead God does not especially care about the happiness and well-being of man, man's happiness being only “a byproduct and not a primary product” of God's plan.

This is not a minor distinction--this is a pivotal question. Reidhead's whole sermon revolves around a contrast, which he states clearly in these words: 'Christianity says, "The end of all being is the glory of God." Humanism says, "The end of all being is the happiness of man."' The problem is that you cannot debate that point until you know what “the glory of God” is. Obviously, Reidhead cannot mean the charismata (what Holiness people call “The Glory” or “Getting blessed”)--this is an experience (and a limited one) of God's glory, not its essence. And it is honestly a little hard, within Reidhead's universe, to see what the glory of God is or what it would mean for us to seek it.

We believe that God's glory is the manifestation of His character. J. Wesley Adcock expressed it by saying that if you wrote down all the attributes of God in a column and then added them together like a column of numbers, the sum would be: “God's glory.” We can never add more glory to God's glory because we can never make God more than what He already was. We can express God's glory, but not because God needs anyone to express it--God is not a vain man in pursuit of prestige. We do all things to the glory of God--we live all our life as Christians to incarnate and express the nature and attributes of God--not because God needs such expression (though they may help to bring others to know God), but because it is “good.” Because God is good, therefore His glory is good. We were created to share in God's glory, not because God needed anyone to share in His glory, but because God wanted us to be able to experience it. Olin Curtis, the great Methodist theologian, pointed out that God did not create man because He needed man (for God needs nothing) but because "out of the eternal fullness of a satisfied love, God wanted [men] to bring their little cups of finite possibility and fill them with everlasting joy out of his shoreless ocean." (Chapter 36) God's glory is good and so we are to live our lives in expressing and sharing it.

But we express and share God's glory by being like God. And if God has justice and compassion, then we express and share God's glory by being just and compassionate. Doing justly and loving mercy cannot, therefore, be in competition (much less be incompatible) with walking humbly with our God. That is why Reidhead's affirmation that we should do all things for God's glory falls so flat--because once you have denied the moral attributes of glory, you have nothing left of God's glory to do anything for. If we cannot act out of compassion or justice, then what on earth does it mean to act out of the glory of God? Of course, humans do reflect other attributes, other parts of the glory of God, besides the moral ones. All humans (Christian or not) are made by God and so, just like animals and inanimate objects, show the glory God has given them. There is in “human personality, human nature, human strength, and human energy” something of God's glory (present in both the saint and the sinner)--except that, according to Reidhead, all that “is under the sentence of death... And God will get no glory out of that!” So if by “glory” he does not mean an expression of the moral attributes or the other attributes of God, it is hard to see what he does mean.

To do what is right (to seek justice, to pursue compassion) cannot be wrong. The transcendence of God (which is low-key an integral part of Reidhead's sermon and arguably the better part) means that you cannot have authentic good floating around the world unrelated and unconnected to God. Of course, one part of the right may become isolated and corrupted. Reidhead spends part of his sermon dealing with Albert Schweitzer (who I would describe as an anti-humanist rather than a humanist, but let that pass). Schweitzer had a strong sense of compassion for all things, but without orthodoxy (and arguably, without justice), which led his compassion into strange paths. (According to Reidhead, Schweitzer was cautious about sanitation because he didn't want to kill any microbes.) I do not deny that there is such a danger--that is why Paul tells us to gird all our armor together with the belt of truth, which holds all things in place and gives them their meaning. But that does not change the essential point. God is good and all goodness comes from and points towards God. Reidhead's dilemma--shall we follow justice and mercy or shall we pursue the glory of God?--is not a meaningful dilemma if Christianity is true, because God's glory entails justice and mercy.

Seeking God's glory must not be conceived as a separate and 'wholly other' quantity that stands in opposition to everything in this world, but rather as a light which enters and transforms the world and humanity. And this answers another of the major positions of anti-humanism (though this point is not touched on in Reidhead's sermon and I cannot say exactly where he fell on the issue). I said at the beginning of this article, that to the anti-humanists, human life has no value or meaning. For those among them who are Christians, this means that our Christian life is something separate from and opposed to our human life. I recently heard a Holiness Preacher say that our “secular” work--the work we do for a living--is only an “occupation”, that is, what we do to “occupy” the time, just filling in the hours--and that God's work for us is something different and unconnected. Of course, God has more for us to do than our “occupation,” but to treat that as something irrelevant (or only relevant incidentally) to our religious life is to miss the entire thrust of the New Testament. The New Testament is not especially religious, that is, concerned with religious forms and actions--those things are there, but they are barely the main thing, certainly not the only thing. The whole attitude of the NT is perfectly captured in one passage of Paul which is like an explosion of light: after speaking of the ordinary, humdrum lives of men and women and how they should live in it, he adds the reason: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that... we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.” (Titus 2:11-12) Our life here has meaning, even our occupation because God's grace has appeared to us and we are living for Him, as one of His “peculiar people.”

Contra Reidhead and the anti-humanists, then, Christian humanism affirms that we seek the glory of God, not by escaping from human nature or human duty, but through those things. Our human desires, though corrupted and misguided, are not wrong--rather, they are the means God has appointed to lead us back to Himself and to fulfill which He created us in he first place. Our human responsibilities are the means by which we may serve God and partake in (and show forth) His glory. God is not the God of Inhumanity but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nor should we forget the fact which makes Christianity so unique--the fact that God Himself became a human being who, apart from three years of His life, seems to have lived a very ordinary, humdrum life, a common Man among common men. I submit, dearly beloved, that if anyone knew the proper relationship between God and Humanity, it might the One who possessed both natures, without mixture and without confusion. And if we turn to His words, we find over and over again, the appeal to human desires, human fears, and human duty.

The issue turns around this question which Reidhead asks throughout the course of his sermon--is the end of religion the happiness of man or the glory of God? I contend (as I said in another article) that, in reality, these are simply two different ways of saying the same thing. Man can only friend authentic happiness by experiencing the glory of God and it was the glory of God to provide happiness for man. We are blessed “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” (Ephesians 1:3-6)

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