J. Maritain
and N. Berdyaev on the Meaning of History
Head of the
Department of the History and Theory of Culture
Tver State
University
Engaged in a
prolific philosophical dialogue, both Jacques Maritain and Nicolas Berdyaev
made a significant contribution to the formation of the twentieth century
religious vision of history. Despite differences in the philosophical
background of their doctrines and differences regarding various metaphysical
issues, there is a striking similarity in their understanding of the meaning of
history. No less interesting is the coincidence of their interpretation of
particular phenomena of modernity and contemporary world. A nonbiased analyst
of their doctrines may find an evidence of mutual influence in their treatment
of different stages of history as well as in their analysis of the significance
of contemporary political and cultural events. The affinity between their
visions of history should be considered not only as a result of their mutual
involvement in a common cultural and political situation, but also of their
desire to find a new philosophical approach to the meaning of history without
leaving the platform of religious belief.
Raised in a non-similar cultural and social
milieu, Berdyaev and Maritain met at ecumenical discussions in Paris in 1925.
After his expulsion from Russia, Berdyaev became quite popular in Europe and
had a growing influence in the circles of Christian intellectuals permitting
him to create contacts with a number of important Catholic and Protestant thinkers.
Berdyaev thought that the inter-confessional discussions in the Boulevard
Montparnasse organized by the Russian diaspora provided an opportunity for both
Catholics and Protestants to get together and debate significant philosophical
issues, creating the climate of mutual respect and recognition. This was a step
forward, he believed, to the formation of a Christian philosophical milieu in
the “non-religious desert” of early twentieth century Europe (Berdyaev
1991: 232). Despite confessional and
philosophical discord regarding some issues, Berdyaev and Maritain felt certain
sympathy to each other and found common approaches to some problems of mutual
concern.
At the time they met, Maritain was an
evident leader in the neo-Thomist movement. Although he pretended to be an
orthodox follower of Aquinas, “a paleo-Thomist”, Berdyaev suspected him to be
“a modernist under the guise of Thomism”. The Russian philosopher rightly
remarked that Maritain was deeply interested in Aristotle and Aquinas, but at
the same time his understanding of the world was deeply colored by a mystical
gift. This mystical feeling was in reality at the origin of Maritain’s
existential interpretation of Thomism and his decision to carry over from
Bergson an emphasis on the role of intuition in human knowledge which was
otherwise foreign to the Thomist project. It finally made possible a
rapprochement between Berdyaev and Maritain.
Their contacts were also facilitated by the mutual interest in the
current cultural and social situation demanding new philosophical approaches to
a variety of issues. Berdyaev thought that Maritain was very sensitive to “the
new trends” in the area of cultural and social change. Among his main
achievements was an ability to “adjust new problems to Thomism and Thomism to
new problems” (Berdyaev 1991:237).
Among the philosophical issues that attracted attention of both thinkers
was the problem of man’s cultural creativity in history. This common ground
was, of course, an essential premise of their prolific cooperation and
philosophical dialogue paving the way to a certain common vision of a number of
cultural, social, and political problems. Their collaboration in L’Esprit published by Emmanuel Mounier
looks symptomatic in this respect.
Despite his positive evaluation of
Maritain’s personality and his ability to grasp the meaning and value of
historical, cultural, and political phenomena, Berdyaev considered it necessary
to give a critical appraisal of his Catholic colleague’s understanding of
modern philosophical thought and --sometimes unjustifiably-- accused him of
completely misunderstanding of Immanuel Kant and German philosophy. He believed
that the message of modernity and of contemporary philosophy was totally alien
to the spirit of Maritain’s doctrine. On the contrary, the origin of his own world
outlook, as Berdyaev confessed, should be traced back to the tradition of
German philosophy and, in particular, Kant’s doctrine. His conclusion was:
“Maritain is a scholastic philosopher, I’m an existential philosopher”
(Berdyaev 1991:236). In this case, the label “scholastic” meant something
totally opposed to the existential pattern of philosophizing. Berdyaev’s
understanding of the nature of Maritain’s philosophy looks incomplete, sketchy,
and sometimes even superficial. He never tried to seriously cope with the
problem of the existential interpretation of Aquinas offered by the Catholic
author. Trying to philosophize in the spirit of Thomism, Maritain did not deny
“true intuitions” present in modern philosophy and, in particular, German
classical idealism. His existential reading of Aquinas was provoked to a great
extent by contemporary versions of existentialism. Therefore, even in terms of
general philosophical views, despite their evident differences, there is a
certain common existential ground creating a resemblance of thought of both
philosophers.
Berdyaev’s own existential philosophy was
born within the tradition of Russian religious and secular thought. Describing
the factors of his philosophical formation, he wrote: “I’m inheriting the
tradition of Slavonophiles and Westernizers, Chaadaev and Khomyakov, Hertzen
and Belinsky, even Bakunin and Chernishevsky (irrespective of the differences
in their world outlooks), and first and foremost Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, V.
Soloviev and N. Fedorov. I am a Russian thinker and writer” (Berdyaev 1991:7).
At the same time, Berdyaev’s philosophy of freedom was nourished by J. Bohme,
German classical philosophy, Romanticism, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and other
Western trends of thought.
The existential nucleus inherent in
Maritain’s and Berdyaev’s metaphysical views reveals itself profoundly in their
understanding of history and politics. In their search for the meaning of
history, both philosophers were trying to understand it in its significance for
the destiny of man. History is understood not only in the eschatological, but
also in its human dimension, and the flux of its events becomes a unified whole
having significance for horizons of man’s personal development. Sharing this
approach to history, Maritain and Berdyaev expressed it theoretically in a
different way.
Philosophy of history attracted Maritain’s
attention when he tried to justify his vision of mankind’s future in Integral Humanism (1936). The panoramic
view of history was for him a necessary prerequisite for developing his ideal
of integral humanism that was gradually completed and remodeled in accord with
the change of cultural and political situation in the world. However, when he
wrote this book, Maritain was not too much concerned with the problem of
epistemological foundations of history and the place of the philosophy of
history in the totality of man’s knowledge. The significance of this task
became apparent only later when he was working on another book On the Philosophy of History (1957),
which shows the influence of hermeneutical interpretations of the nature of
historical knowledge. Dealing with unique events, Maritain claimed, history
should never pretend to uncover the universal dimension of social reality. A
historian should understand that his job is quite different from that of a
scientist, and at the same time he should keep in mind the special role played
in his art by the richness of human experience, as well as by questions of
principles and values and philosophical issues. Maritain’s own vision of the
historian’s art was thus very close to that of H.-I. Marrou. In this respect,
like Berdyaev, he openly confirmed that historical knowledge can be understood
only with reference to the engagement of the historian in the flux of time
(Maritain 1957: 6-7). At the same time, unlike Berdyaev, he tried in the spirit
of Aquinas thought to include history in the totality of degrees of knowledge
and to subordinate it to a philosophy of history nourished by moral philosophy
and metaphysics.
Berdyaev’s treatment of the nature of
historical knowledge was evidently inspired by life philosophy and resulted in
his own non-systematic version of hermeneutics that was nourished by his
mystical understanding of the destiny of man in the universe. “By his inner
nature each man is something like a great world - microcosm that reflects and
contains in itself all real world and all great historical epochs...” (Berdyaev
1990: 19). Philosophical and historical knowledge of the past are alike
subjected to this condition. Berdyaev developed this epistemological strategy
throughout his philosophical career in such major works as Philosophy of Freedom (1911), The
Meaning of Creativity (1916), The
Meaning of History (1922), Existential
Dialectics of the Divine and the Human (1947) etc.
The
Meaning of History and the Destiny of Man
The traditional Christian understanding of
the meaning of history is based on the ideas of creation, personalism, divine
providence, the tense coexistence of “the city of God” and “the city of man”,
eschatology etc. These ideas found their expression in the Old and the New
Testament and were differently interpreted in the past by St. Augustine and St.
Thomas Aquinas who coined two most important paradigms of the Christian vision
of history. These traditional foundations of the Christian vision of history
continue to nourish contemporary a religious thought which has been confronted
with new challenges. Facing the tragic problems of the twentieth century,
Christian thinkers developed new approaches to understanding world history and
tried to introduce an approach to its interpretation which emphasizes the human
significance of recent events. Thus, the destiny of man in the universe of
history becomes their central preoccupation.
Both Maritain and Berdyaev were very
sensitive to the crisis of humanistic culture and got into a fruitful dialogue
with contemporary thought trying to prove the significance of the Christian
approach to the analysis of currently existing situation and its roots. Their
vision of history was colored by the experience of two world wars, the coming
into being of mass culture, the bloody Bolshevik revolution, the totalitarian
practice of communist and fascist regimes etc. The humanistic culture born in
the Renaissance produced many fruitful results, they believed, but at the same
time it brought with itself a loss of the sense of eternal values that appeared
to be fatal for the European tradition. The “death of God” proclaimed by F. Nietzsche,
the “decline of the West” and the coming “revolt of the masses” predicted by O.
Spengler and J. Ortega y Gasset, as well as many other gloomy visions of the
future of humanity demanded a sound response on the part of Christian
philosophy. Taking into account problems raised by the secular and religious
philosophy of their time, Maritain and Berdyaev tried to develop their versions
of Christian philosophy of history based on the assumption of the necessity of
a synthesis of humanism and Christianity. Introducing new theoretical
approaches to the understanding of human significance of history, both thinkers
were striving to readjust Christian philosophy to the spirit of the time.
Like Berdyaev, Maritain believed that the
sacred and profane dimensions of history were bound together, and their close
ties were revealed in the cooperative and sometimes controversial relations of
the “city of God” and the “secular city”. However, in opposition to modernist
views, he spoke of the separate existence of the sacred and profane dimensions
of history and the two cities. In this respect, his philosophy of history is
different from that of Berdyaev or Mounier.
Maritain is in complete agreement with
Berdyaev that man’s creative ability constitutes the origin of the human
meaning of history. In his understanding of man’s cultural creativity, Maritain
is, of course, making an important contribution to the body of ideas that
constitute traditional Thomism. Culture is understood by Maritain as an area of
man’s self-development. As a spirit animating body, man is endowed with
“progressive nature”. Human nature in Maritain’s interpretation is constantly
perfected by the efforts of man’s will and reason, resulting in the cultivation
virtue (Maritain 1975:555).
Culture and civilization, Maritain
believes, should be treated as equal categories describing man’s desire to have
as a basis of his earthly existence eternal definitions of God -
transcendentals of Good, Truth, and Beauty. “Culture or civilization is the
enrichment of the human life itself that envisages not only material
development, which is necessary and sufficient for adequate existence in the
world, but above all moral perfection and the development of speculative and
practical (artistic and ethical) capacities” (Maritain 1975:558-559). In
history, one can see the evolution of the “objective spirit” embodied in a
number of cultural forms. Every individual may find spiritual nutrition in the
realm of these cultural forms.
Human society, according to Maritain, should
be understood as composed of a multiplicity of persons, and simultaneously it
should be conceived as a person itself. “Society in the proper sense of the
word, he concluded, is a unity of personalities; since a social unity deserves
this name, it is a city of human personalities. A social unity is a person”
(Maritain 1979:296-297). Seeking Good, a human person makes his or her life
meaningful, and following this line of argument, Maritain believes, one should
conclude that Common Good is the final end that human society must reach.
Following the line of this providential and
eschatological vision of history, Maritain, some commentators of his ideas
believe, introduced a new understanding of the relations between the “city of
God” and the “secular city”, between sacred and profane history. Specifically,
according to J.- H. Nicolas, Maritain highlighted in a fundamentally new way
the relationship between human activity and the immanent goals existing in the
history of mankind. “If man is willing to comprehend and possess the world,” he
agrees with Maritain, “he needs it for his self-realization. Through the
variety of civilizations he creates, the destruction of which he allows or
stimulates himself, through his never-ending activity and struggle he makes and
expresses himself. If there is a unifying goal of history, it is nothing other
as man himself, man on the way of his self-realization (Nicolas 1981: 373).”
Nicolas thinks that Maritain’s main achievement lies in the ability to create a
vision of the unity of sacred and profane history with the central emphasis on
the mission of Christ as its center and final.
Maritain spoke about three major components
of the profane meaning of history, “natural goals” that exist in the cultural
activity of man. The first major goal is “the conquest of nature and gaining
the autonomy for mankind” (Maritain 1966:65-66). The second goal is revealed
through the progress of knowledge, art, and primarily morality. Finally, the
third goal is “the manifestation of all possibilities of human nature”
(Maritain 1966: 67). The profane meaning of history in Maritain’s
interpretation coexists with the transhistorical one that is incommensurable
with it and never completely comprehended by man. The coming of Christ
constitutes the center and final of history, and the task of grasping its total
meaning is superhuman.
Maritain’s vision of history is based on a
certain balance between the poles of its providential and eschatological
interpretation and its inner human meaning. World history is evaluated by him
in the perspective of the significance of its events for the destiny of man. In
this respect, he is close to Berdyaev. Like Berdyaev, Maritain focuses on the
unity of the Christian and humanistic foundations of history.
The history of European culture, Maritain
believed, should be subdivided into certain periods according to the evolution
of humanistic consciousness. He is convinced that already Antiquity revealed
“the transcendental foundations” of the European humanism, the relations of man
to the divine Being, but only the Christian humanism of the mediaeval period
created the basis for the self-development of man and cultivation of his
multiple capacities. In full accord with Berdyaev’s theoretical interpretation,
he claims that at the origin of the post-Renaissance crisis of humanism was a
tragic discord between the human creative ability and Christian values.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
became, according to Maritain, the first stage of the crisis of humanistic
culture characterized by a rivalry between science and religion and the growth
of influence of atheism. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in his
interpretation, represent the second stage of this crisis, characterized by a
dangerous alliance between science and technology on the one hand and the race
for profit on the other hand, on the part of a society which had become
oblivious to Christian values. The culmination of this crisis came in the
twentieth century, which was marked by the triumph of a civilization devoid of
spiritual roots, “the death of God” phenomenon (Maritain 1968: 42-43).
Maritain’s analysis of the contemporary political situation and his ideal of
integral humanism were entirely based on this vision of history.
In his book On the Philosophy of History, Maritain tried to summarize this
vision of universal history working on the assumption that the course of events
is rooted in human activity and thus unexplainable and rationally non-deducible
on the basis of necessary laws. Any sort of determinism was unacceptable for
him, and this platform served as a basis of sharp criticism of Hegel, Marx, and
Toynbee. However, he believed that it is possible to work out a set of ideal
types that should be used in the interpretation of history, something which
will lead to the discovery of regularities and even “laws,” without appealing
to the category of necessity (Maritain 1957:32). Maritain is trying to balance
theoretically between the poles of a speculative and a critical philosophy of
history.
One such set of regularities he called
axiomatic formulas, or functional laws, should interpreted as an attempt to
apply moral philosophy to the understanding of history. As a result, Maritain
coined a number of general statements: the Good in history is always related to
God and contradicts evil that is related to matter; the activity of the
Catholic Church in history is aimed at promoting Good; in the long run, the
Good always triumphs over evil; there are events that create history, global
changes in mankind’s life; there is a certain progress in public consciousness
related to the understanding of Good; non-violent actions in the realization of
the ideal of Good are preferable and more effective than violent ones.
Another set of typological formulas, which
he called vector laws, was aimed at describing general tendencies in the course
of the universal history. These included the law of the transition from magic
to the reason, something which he believed pointed to the necessity of the
peaceful coexistence of religion, science, and art in the context of
contemporary culture. The development of an ever more adequate understanding of
natural law was also among the major trends in human history. Maritain believed
that the transition from the sacral to the lay civilization should be also
listed among the main vector laws. This “law of the coming of age of the
people” pointed to the necessity of a new type of Christianity of the sort he put
forward in Integral Humanism. In the
final instance, his attempt to reformulate previously reached theoretical
conclusions in terms of a systematically developed philosophy of history sounds
like a strategy for justifying of his ideal of integral humanism.
Like Maritain, Berdyaev was also trying to
understand the meaning of history in a humanistic perspective. At the same
time, his philosophical approach to history was based on a conviction that
sacred and profane history, the “city of God” and the “secular city” were
interpenetrating realities. This idea had already found expression in his works
written in Russia. The problem of the Holy Trinity problem and the task of
overcoming evil within the framework of world history were the focus of
Berdyaev’s attention when he tried to develop his own understanding of the
meaning of history. He believed that with the coming of the era of the Holy
Spirit, or the Third Testament, the profound sense of the unity of God and
mankind in the course of universal history revealed by the coming of Christ
should find its utmost expression in the idea of Godmanhood. “Mankind,
according to Vladimir. Soloviev’s expression, is an absolute in the process of
evolution, and this is the religious meaning of history and the religious task
of culture” (Berdyaev 1989: 180). The truth of religion and humanism should
come together in the Third Testament period. This idea was the driving force
behind his philosophical reflection when he wrote “The Meaning of History”.
Antiquity, Berdyaev believed, brought with
itself an understanding of the cosmic whole as eternal and uncreated. Ancient
China and India cultivated the idea of the eternity and divine presence in the
spiritual world of man, and they were, like Antiquity, insensitive to the
temporal flux of history. With the Bible and the consciousness of messianic
mission of the Jewish people to follow and disseminate the word of God in the
world, history was brought into the forefront of metaphysical debate. However,
Berdyaev thought that its central metaphysical significance was fully
comprehended only in the light of Christian message. God revealed himself in
time, and the coming of Christ should be understood as giving meaning to the
totality of world history.
“The exclusive historicity and dynamic
character” of Christianity, Berdyaev thought, are related to its ability to
reveal to the world the foundations of man’s spiritual freedom in a way that
was unknown to Antiquity and even to Judaism (Berdyaev 1990: 85). The European culture of the Middle Ages,
according to this interpretation, was inspired by the idea of creating the
Kingdom of God on earth, but finally failed, despite the evident cultural
achievements of Mediaeval Europe, to bring about its triumph. This failure
provoked an outburst of the suppressed human creative subjectivity, a rebellion
against all forms of accepted life regulation that resulted in the Renaissance
and humanism (Berdyaev 1990: 98-99).
Humanism, Berdyaev believed, was a
legitimate reaction against the culture of the Middle Ages gravitating around
the orbit of religious values. However, becoming free from the mediaeval
cultural bonds, man was seduced into relying only on his own creative forces
and forgetting eternal values. Secular humanism was, in Berdyaev’s
interpretation, self-destructive and drained man’s inner resources, leading him
into the void of a spiritual desert. He came to the conclusion that “the
self-affirmation of man is leading to man’s self-annihilation, the uncovering
of the free play of man’s forces unanchored to the highest goal, is going to
exhaust the creative forces” (Berdyaev 1990: 110). With the disappearance of
the spiritual center of culture, its spheres became divorced and lost the
driving impulse leading them to a certain unity. “This process of
differentiation and acquiring autonomy is something that is called the secularization
of human culture” (Berdyaev 1990: 102).
Like many leading thinkers of the last century, Berdyaev tried to
analyze the consequences of this process and interpreted it in the religious
key.
The Protestant Reformation, according to Berdyaev,
affirmed and at the same time denied human freedom with the doctrine of
predestination revealing not only its humanistic, but also its anti-humanistic
aspects. He also criticized Protestantism for its desire to combat the spirit
of Antiquity that was assimilated by mediaeval Christianity. The Enlightenment,
Berdyaev thought, brought with it a cult of reason devoid of any impulse to
comprehend the supernatural. This stage of history prepared the French
Revolution and paved the way for the nineteenth century when mechanistic
principles were established as prevailing not only in the sphere of technology,
but also in social life and culture. Berdyaev deeply felt the inner
contradictions of mass society and culture and described them in terms of
Spengler’s philosophy. Unlike Maritain, he spoke of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries as a time of the triumph of civilization over culture.
Anti-humanism as ideology and practice became the final fruit of humanism.
Frederick Nietzsche and Karl Marx, Berdyaev claimed, were the two thinkers who
expressed “the death of man” and the coming of the era of the masses in the
profoundest way. Like Maritain, Berdyaev understood communism and fascism as
the main anti-humanist forces of his time. His analysis of Russian communism
was important for Maritain’s interpretation of the main dangers and tendencies
of twentieth century history. On the whole, despite theoretical differences,
the affinity between Maritain’s and Berdyaev’s understandings of the humanistic
meaning of history testifies in favor of the existence of their mutual
influence. Paradoxically enough, the divergence in their metaphysical views
became very important when they tried to create the ideals of the future on the
basis of their vision of the humanistic meaning of history.
History
and Ideals of the Future
Maritain’s ideal of integral humanism was
based on his vision of humanistic meaning of history and certain ontological
principles of Aquinas’s doctrine. The Catholic thinker always openly expressed
his criticism of the liberal capitalism, and at the same time was in opposition
to fascist and communist ideology and practice. He called his vision of the
future a “concrete historical ideal” which attempted to find a solution for
contemporary problems on the basis of the principles of personalism, pluralism,
communitarianism, and a theistic orientation. On the whole, his ideal may be
characterized as “liberal Christian” taking into account the combination of
religious and secular principles that were supposed to provide its foundation
(Amato 1975: 158). Maritain thought that it should be based on the acceptance
of the value of the human persona, with his or her liberties and rights, of the
Common Good as the goal of society, pluralism in economics, politics, spiritual
life, and the final religious orientation of the social body.
Regarding the economic sphere, Maritain
spoke of the necessity of its corporal reordering, envisaging the transference
of enterprises and the means of production to associations of workers, intellectuals,
and shareholders. This kind of capitalism for the people should make milder, he
believed, the inner contradictions of society, diminishing the level of class
confrontation and the revolutionary violent actions against the existing
political and social order. Maritain approved Proudhon’s understanding of the
value of small property (Maritain 1968: 191). He accentuated the role of small
and middle size property for the change envisaged by his ideal.
This kind of economic change should become
the preliminary condition for the creation of a pluralist system of social
organizations unifying people of different social status and confession. On
this very social basis, Maritain believed, a personalist democracy providing
for the full development of the personal, civil, and political rights of people
should appear.
In the final instance, the ideal of
integral humanism was aimed at the global change in the spiritual life of
contemporary world, its value foundations. The necessity of return to the
absolute values of Good, Truth, and Beauty was understood as the basic
condition of cultural and social renewal of society on the platform of a unity
of humanism and religion.
Maritain’s ideal of integral humanism
became widely accepted in the period of Catholic aggiornamento, but despite its influence in Europe and Latin
America, it was never fully implemented in real life. Its popularity gradually
diminished with the rise of K. Rahner’s existential theology and some other
doctrines that were opposed to the idea of creating concrete historical ideals.
In a way, Berdyaev’s views sound more in accord with this
tendency to avoid putting forward concrete global ideals for the future. His
commitment to the idea of the absolute value of man’s existentially grounded
freedom motivated his rejection of the concrete historical ideals. As a result,
he thought that the synthesis of humanism and Christianity should never be
reduced to a rigidly defined doctrine or system. The very idea of an ideal
vision of the future seemed to him to fraught with danger. The “fanatic
follower” is always “an idealist”, and this means that for him that “the idea”
is higher than man, than any living creature, and he is ready to engage in
violence, to harass, to torture, and kill in the name of the “idea”, no matter
whether it should be the “idea” of God and theocracy or the idea justice and
communist rule. Fanaticism is a kind of madness born by the inability to see
the fullness of truth (Berdyaev 1993).
Existential freedom and creativity,
Berdyaev believed, were the eternal goals man should pursue in his social and
cultural life without making absolute any concrete form of their realization.
Combating fanatic consciousness, Berdyaev
was quite critical of both capitalism and communism. “Capitalism” and
“communism”, he wrote, taken as symbols, because in the concrete reality of
society life they are never given in a refined form, equally deny the value of
the human person (Berdyaev 1993: 187). Thus, “social individualism” and “social
communism” are equally unacceptable for Berdyaev due to their instrumental
vision of personality. In this respect, he shares the platform of personalist movement.
In opposition to communist dictatorship, Berdyaev thought that democracy with
all its possible demerits was, perhaps, a social form “most suitable to man’s
sinful nature” (Berdyaev 1993: 195). At the same time, he believed, like
Maritain, who possibly followed his line of argument, in the “certain truth of
communism” regarding the nature of unrestricted love of profit of the big
capitalist industry leaders and spoke in favor of a certain socialist policy
limiting their economic ambitions. He argued that small and middle size
property may serve as a condition of spiritual renewal of contemporary world
(Berdyaev 1993: 201). Establishing strong ties between humanism and
Christianity is a permanent task of all those who really care about the sane
social order permitting man’s creativity to flourish.
Both Maritain and Berdyaev contributed to
building of a new Christian vision of history adequate to the spirit of the
twentieth century. Despite their philosophical differences, they were engaged
in a prolific dialogue that permitted them to create an understanding of the
meaning of history in the perspective of Christian humanism. Their approaches
to philosophy of history and reflections on the contemporary social, political,
and cultural situation considerably influenced the mainstream of twentieth
century Christian thought thus leading to the formation of the currently dominant
religious interpretation of the meaning of history and mankind’s future.
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