ABSTRACT
Modern humanism stresses the importance of human achievements, with people making their own choices, rather than relying solely on the will of God to fix their status and the pattern of their lives. In the period of the Renaissance, the word humanism denoted a very different intellectual approach. The Renaissance perception was that God had given mankind the potential to achieve a good life, and thus it was the duty of each person to use those talents to the full. Nowadays, the word is often applied to ideas which are purely secular, or non-Christian, so that people who share some of the ideas of humanism, but are Christians, find it necessary to call themselves ‘Christian humanists’.
