St. Francis was becoming more like Christ, and not merely more like Buddha, when he considered the lilies of the field or the fowls of the air; and St. Thomas was becoming more of a Christian, and not merely more of an Aristotelian, when he insisted that God and the image of God had come in contact through matter with a material world. These saints were, in the most exact sense of the term, Humanists; because they were insisting on the immense importance of the human being in the theological scheme of things. But they were not Humanists marching along a path of progress that leads to Modernism and general scepticism; for in their very Humanism they were affirming a dogma now often regarded as the most superstitious Superhumanism. They were strengthening that staggering doctrine of Incarnation, which sceptics find it hardest to believe.
-G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 16-17
In Humanism man becomes as God. Man is innately good and can solve his own problems through reason. In Christian Humanism, God becomes man; Reason (Logos) takes on flesh in order to set man straight.
Humanism emphasizes progression, as if man were getting better through his own powers. Christian Humanism emphasizes incarnation and condescension; that God must stoop down low in order to lift us up: that he must become dirt in order to lift us to the heavens, thus bringing heaven and earth together – Jacob’s Ladder in the flesh.
