Humanist

The term is used in two different senses depending on the historical period in mind.

1) Used in the context of 15-16th Cent European history, humanists refer to those men (and a few women) who believed that the hope of and way towards social, cultural and intellectual renewal was to be found in a knowledge of the classical languages and literature. The term, though coined only in the 19th Cent and used retrospectively, refers to the endeavour characteristic of the humanists to excel in all the qualities that distinguish humans from animals. Characteristic of this humanism is an optimism in the human ability to do what is good and right.

Though often spoken of in derogatory tones, there was nothing in these humanists that made them antagonistic towards religion. In fact many of them, such as Erasmus, Thomas More, and John Calvin, were deeply pious men who read as deeply of the Church Fathers as they did of the ancient pagan writers. One of the greatest fruit the Christian Church has benefitted from the labours of the humanists is the rediscovery of the Hebrew and Greek Bibles which laid the necessary foundation for the Reformers' call to return to the Scriptures as the sole authority for life and belief. In this Erasmus's edition of the Greek Testament was particularly significant. Erasmus saw in the human ability to do good as the way forward in the reformation of the Church; here he clashed with Martin Luther who, in the theological footsteps of Augustine, saw the human will as in bondage to sin, and only God can bring about the necessary changes, beginning with the spiritual renewal of the individual.

2) Used in the modern context—late 19th Cent onwards—the term came to apply to those persons who held the idea that it was the human responsibility to live and to make of him/herself without recourse to any higher authority. Probably the most pretentious of these may be seen in "The Ten Voluntary Initiatives" (aping the Ten Commandments) from the stable of Ted Turner, the owner of CNN.