When faith in God diminishes the people God created, are we really exalting God?
In some Korean Protestant circles, “humanism” functions less as the name of a philosophical tradition than as a verdict meant to end an argument.
Emphasize human reason and experience, and the response may be “humanism.” Speak about human rights, democracy, or the common good, and the same label appears. Suggest that psychology or the social sciences might help the church understand people, or ask that we begin with actual human suffering, and once again the charge is “humanism.” Once the label has been applied, the argument itself can be dismissed without further examination.
“Theocentrism,” or God-centered faith, is then presented as the opposing alternative: not human thought but the Word of God, not human desire but the will of God, must stand at the center. This warning deserves to be heard. Christian faith cannot turn God into a means of satisfying our desires.
But that is where the more difficult question begins. When the language of putting God at the center is used to diminish human questions, conscience, and dignity, does it still point faithfully to God?
Who Actually Stands at the Center?
If theocentrism means what it says, God must be at its center.
A genuinely God-centered faith should therefore place every human institution and interpretation under God's judgment. The church is not God. Neither is a denomination, a pastor, a theological system, or a particular reading of Scripture. Christians may confess the Bible as God's written Word and the church's authoritative Scripture without confusing the biblical text, or our interpretation of it, with God himself. God is greater than the institutions to which we belong and greater than every religious vocabulary we have learned to use.
In practice, however, the language of theocentrism can end up protecting religious institutions and leaders more fiercely than it honors God. Questions are treated as disobedience. Disagreement with a pastor is interpreted as spiritual deficiency. The reputation of the church is defended before the pain of those it has harmed, while basic moral concerns are dismissed as concessions to secular values.
If God is truly at the center, the church should speak less grandly about itself and learn to lower itself. Rather than acting as though it possesses God, it should acknowledge how limited its interpretations, institutions, and desires remain before God.
Before God-centered faith challenges human pride in the world, it must challenge religion's own desire to speak in God's place.
Honoring Human Beings Does Not Diminish God
In the opening chapter of Scripture, human beings are created in the image of God. This does not mean human worth arises independently of God. It means that human dignity is grounded in God.
Honoring human beings and exalting God are therefore not competing projects. God does not become greater when people are made miserable, nor must God be pushed aside in order for human dignity to be protected.
Jesus did not separate love of God from love of neighbor. He received what was done for “the least of these” as something done for him. The New Testament likewise refuses to accept a professed love for the unseen God that coexists comfortably with hatred for a brother or sister standing before us.
At the heart of Christian faith is the confession of the Incarnation: God entered human flesh and human history. This does not mean that humanity became divine. It means that God did not regard human existence as beneath divine concern.
It is therefore strange, even by Christian standards, to dismiss every serious concern for human life, conscience, freedom, reason, suffering, and dignity as mere “humanism.”
Humanity Cannot Be the Measure of All Things
None of this means that everything done in the name of humanity should be affirmed.
Human freedom is precious, but it cannot become a right that erases responsibility for other people and for the communities we share. Reason is a gift, but reason that refuses to acknowledge its own limits and biases becomes another form of dogmatism. Science and technology have greatly improved human life, but greater power does not automatically produce wiser desires or better moral judgment.
Human beings bear God-given dignity, but we are also finite, fallible, and morally divided. We speak of justice while making exceptions for our own interests. We defend freedom while denying it to those with less power. We imagine our judgments to be rational even when they are being driven by desire, partisan loyalty, and prejudice.
This is an important question Christianity can put to humanism. Humanity is not sovereign over all things, and human desire does not become true simply because it is sincerely felt. We are accountable to God, to truths we did not create, to other people, to the natural world, and to generations not yet born.
Yet a theology of human limitation must never become an instrument of oppression. If the language of sin is used to deprive others of conscience and rights, or if divine authority is invoked to legitimate the rule of human leaders, theology has not restrained human pride. It has simply protected one person's pride from challenge.
Ask About the Fruit, Not Merely the Label
Before deciding whether a position is theocentric or humanistic, we should ask what kind of fruit it actually bears.
We may speak in God's name, but are the church, its leaders, or a political faction the ones actually gaining power?
Do we speak of humanity while using vulnerable people as means, or treating human desire as though it had no moral limits?
Does faith demand an end to thought, or does reason dismiss every religious question as superstition?
Does this faith or philosophy make people more honest, responsible, and compassionate, and our communities safer and more just?
Neither “theocentrism” nor “humanism” can answer these questions merely by naming itself. What matters is what becomes absolute, who is protected, and what kind of life is produced.
Neither Humanity Without God nor Religion Without Humanity
The third option Tertia Optio seeks is not a fifty-fifty mixture of theocentrism and humanism. Nor is it a mechanical compromise that simply chooses the midpoint between God and humanity.
What we must resist is the absolutizing of humanity without God and the absolutizing of religion without humanity.
A form of humanism that recognizes no moral horizon beyond human preference can lose the standards by which human desire and power must be judged. A form of theocentrism that disregards human beings can speak God's name while erasing the suffering and dignity of the very people God created and loves.
Christian faith is distinctive not because it removes either God or humanity from view, but because love of God and love of neighbor, transcendence and ordinary life, faith and responsibility are brought together without destroying one another.
The more deeply our faith is centered on God, the more deeply it should commit us to human dignity and to people who suffer. The more seriously we honor human beings, the more honestly we should speak about human limitation and responsibility.
What could be wrong with treating people as precious? The problem is not love for humanity. It begins when human beings imagine themselves to be masters of the world and forget their responsibility to other people, the natural world, and the future. Yet religion is not immune to the same temptation. It can claim to exalt God while despising people made in God's image and turning away from their pain.
A faith that claims certainty about God while needlessly wounding people may stand farther from the gospel than the quiet compassion of someone who makes no such claim but sits beside a person in pain. Jesus did not come to wage war against the word “humanism.” He came that people might have life, and he drew near to wounded lives.
Perhaps Korean Protestantism does not need another forceful slogan that makes humanity smaller. It may need to relinquish the religious desire to rule people in God's name and ask again, before God, where both the church and humanity properly stand.
God is not a threat to human dignity. Nor can human dignity be secured only by pushing God away.
We cannot trample people and call it the exaltation of God. Faith becomes credible when it refuses to pass casually by the neighbor directly in front of us. When faith turns toward God and, for that very reason, cares more deeply for people, we can move beyond the tired opposition between theocentrism and humanism.
Scripture for Further Reflection
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”
Matthew 25:40
Jesus sternly warned against causing “little ones” to stumble (Matthew 18:6) and named mutual love as a mark of his disciples (John 13:34-35). Read together, these passages establish a demanding test: the integrity of our faith in God is revealed in the way we treat those with the least power.
Editorial note: This essay neither endorses every form of humanism nor rejects theocentrism. It examines the way both terms are often reduced to a simple moral binary within Korean Protestantism and asks how faith in God can remain inseparable from responsibility for human dignity.