The literal meaning of the word Renaissance in French is “rebirth.” The time period following the MIddle Ages and ushering in the Age of Enlightenment re-framed religious questions. Instead of understanding the world through tradition, story or dogma, the age of rebirth focused the understanding of the world back on to the senses, the intellect, on the human capacity for reason and knowledge. In the pursuit of religious truth, the Renaissance said we must use everything at our disposal – social sciences, hard sciences, medicine, literature, poetry. We must use all we have to discover who we really are.
The specific religious questions asked are often products of their time. They relate to current interests, politics, trends, particular problems and potential opportunities. The genius of the Renaissance is it dared to ask one of the most fundamental and dangerous religious questions there is. It’s not a question about dogma or belief. It’s not a question that simply questions religious tradition or religious authority in the usual sense. No, the question is much more expansive than that. The question that was raised is still the question we are left to answer today.
It’s a question that seems to have endless varieties of answers, and yet none of these answers have seemed to ever satisfactorily answer this question. The question asked in many different ways, though many different time periods since the Renaissance is this: What does it mean to be fully human?
Michael Servetus took this question seriously, so seriously that he steadily gained enough enemies connected to John Calvin to burn him at the stake for heresy. He was a physician, and he believed you could discover the nature of God through the body, through the senses. He studied the body closely and is best remembered in modern medicine as the first physician in Europe to accurately describe pulmonary circulation – that the blood flowed from the heart to the lungs, instead of the other way around as had been taught. He learned this by paying attention to the color of the blood, and the size of ventricles. The pulmonary ventricle was one of the largest, so he deduced that the blood was carried from the heart.
He probably wouldn’t have been killed if he just stuck to medicine, but he didn’t.
He was concerned about ultimate questions, and he wrote theology that questioned common beliefs and practices, like the Trinity and Infant baptism. He thought that a person should be able to use the whole of their sense experience to deduce religion, and that the intellect was a gift from God to be fully utilized to its full capacity. In short, you didn’t need to live in ignorance to be a religious person. You can welcome new information rather than fear it. You can be open to new experiences without filtering them through stories that may or may not make space for them.
One thing his religious persecutors got right is that they accurately understood the nature of his questioning. Today, the question “What does it mean to be fully human?” could be thought by some to be a philosophical question, or a question for biologists who can study our human ancestors, or for historians to study the patterns and tendencies of our species. But Servetus was not asking an academic or scientific or philosophical question
His critics were correct – he was asking a religious question. The nature of a religious question is that it includes all the disciplines, all the sciences, but then it goes a step further and makes space for wonder, for imagination, for hope.
Servetus took that extra help. He was not merely trying to answer practical questions of the body, he remained curious about the nature of the spirit, and what this spirit had to do with being a human body, having a human mind, having a heart which directly fed the other parts of ourselves. He thought these things must work together somehow, even if we don’t currently know how. He wondered if perhaps to be fully human was the path to realizing the the divinity talked about by the Bible and the Church. Through the sciences, through our own investigation and reasoning, through our intuition we could put flesh on the bones of traditional religion. And it wouldn’t be just any flesh – it would be our own. We would know it for ourselves.
Today, we are still seeking answers to the fundamental religious question – What does it mean to be fully human?
There are lots of facts and alternative facts about this. I hear people who answer this question by appealing to the lowest common denominator – we seem to be selfish creatures lustful for power, and the world seems to be for the survival of the fittest. Perhaps our basic nature is not goodness but survival, and we seem to be willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish this. We are a competitive species, driven by advances in technology to become even more competitive, fighting each other for resources and power in a global market. We seem committed to making similar mistakes to our ancestors, and really wonder how much progress is possible.
There are many people who follow this line of reasoning. Perhaps you’re one of them. And then the question emerges – Is this what it means to be fully human?
On the other side of things you have the human potential movement, which believes that through affirmation, meditation, and certain therapies we can evolve as a species. That the next evolution is not physical, but an evolution of consciousness.
They interpret current events as an awakening of consciousness, an awakening that is at first painful but eventually leading to liberation. Perhaps this is what you believe.
Most people, I think, are in the third camp. They simply don’t know. They don’t know what it may mean to be fully human, or even if it’s a helpful question. They don’t know if there is any inherent meaning in the times we are living in, or if there’s any hope. They just don’t know.
I think Servetus showed us as religious liberals a fourth way. The fourth way is a combination of all three. We can understand the limitations inherent in being human through science and tracking patterns of behavior. We can utilize spiritual practices like meditation, prayer, and affirmation to expand our sense of reality. And we make room for a good amount of not knowing.
Fundamentally a religious question is less about what we think about life, but more about a feeling for living, a way of approaching life. It makes room for both our beliefs and uncertainties, and gives us a frame for feeling our way through the times we are living in.
It gives us the capacity for joy and dignity even in crisis. When Servetus found out he was found guilty of heresy and he was to be burned at the stake, he was recorded as saying “I will burn but this is a mere event. We shall continue our discussion in eternity.”
In these short phrases is a formula for newfound questioning. We are finite creatures able to imagine the infinite. We live in our limitations able to see life that predates us, and that goes beyond us. We are bound in flesh and in patterns of mind and behavior, and there is an inherent freedom within us that allows us to hold these limitations. What does it mean for you to be fully human, given your limitations? No authority can answer that question for you. No one. You won’t be able to answer it alone either, because the truth is you are never truly alone. To be fully human is to be yourself, and practice seeing beyond yourself. To be free, is to give yourself fully to your limitations. We can use all that we have within our limitations to discover who we are, and what our life could be about. And then we can go beyond that. When we dare to go beyond authority, even our own authority, we discover the ultimate authority – joy, simple, everyday joy.
