A secular translation of Christian theistic beliefs

The Archbishop of Canterbury proposed the following: (from Jim’s post)

He proposed five principles for economic changes, but also addressed the contribution that Christians could make to help reshape world economics:
Our faith depends on the action of a God who is to be trusted; God keeps promises. There could hardly be a more central theme in Jewish and Christian scripture, and the notion is present in slightly different form in Islam as well. Thus, to live in proper harmony with God, human beings need to be promise-keepers in all areas of their lives, not least in financial dealings.

The perspective of faith understands human beings as part of creation – not wholly in control, though gifted with capacities that allow real and significant powers over the environment, bound to material identity and unable to escape material need. Living in faith is living in awareness of this created and limited identity without resentment or fantasy.

Living as part of creation brings with it a sense of the common destiny and common predicament of humanity. But more specifically, the scriptural understanding of our calling, especially as set out in the letters of St. Paul, sees the ideal human community as one in which the welfare and giftedness of each and the welfare of all are inseparable. What is good in God’s eyes for human beings is not something that is altered by differences in culture or income; we can’t say that what is unwelcome or evil for us is tolerable for others.

Faith and commitment to the common good are the great contributions the church can bring to moments like this in history.

Jim,

I’d like to translate the above quote from your post into a secularist perspective (or at least one possible translation) to show that there can be/may be lots secularists and Christians can agree on. Now, some of what will come will be harsh from an orthodox Christian viewpoint, but in these post-modern times pluralism is the by-word, is it not? There are many paths to the truths of beneficence and benevolence and here we speak, perhaps, of two diametrically opposed approaches that can converge on a common reality.

From a secular perspective there is no covenant with a transcendent God who is to be trusted or who keeps his promises. In the secularist self-understanding there is only Spinoza’s determinism…to a point, which I shall return to…that is, there is in the scientific worldview there are only causes and effects. Accordingly, there is no theistic God who answers prayers, who cares for this insignificant planet, one among billions: there are just the inexorable “laws” of material determination. Thus, it makes no sense to see ourselves as promise keepers because there is no counterparty that/who? Listens to our entreaties.

Yet, a post-modern, secular perspective can easily hold to the Bishop’s statements that “we are a part of creation” and that we are beings who can transcend our material natures to seek the denial of our material determinations—witness the uncountable number of self-effacing, self-denying acts of parents and others who love their children or humankind. That is, the materialist, if not predominant, reduction of all behavior to material antecedents—be it in the marketplace or evolution, or the family or in social actions—can be denied. Yet, in my view, a materialist self-understanding cannot deny this other-regarding behavior because it is so patent that only a blind ideologue could gainsay it.

In his third paragraph the Bishop refers to love within the creation as our common predicament as interpreted by St. Paul’s universalism in which the welfare of one is entangled with the welfare of all This Christian Community argument I would claim is mirrored in some secularists, if not many, who live in a Secular Community grounded in a secular consciousness of love in which the dignity of each is of the fabric of the dignity of all.

It could be that the common denominator of the theistic and a-theistic, i.e., secularist point of view maybe, to yet again quote St. Augustine: love and do what you will, for there need not be any chasm between secular and sacral love.