In my mind, Christian humanism is about trying to balance, as in the Cross, the vertical and the horizontal axes of our existence; it’s an attempt to balance the human and the divine. The model for Christian humanism is the incarnation, in which a totally perfect balance between the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Jesus is achieved. I feel that the Christian life and Christian culture and institutions go wrong when they tend to emphasize one at the expense of the other. So in other words, the corollary of that initial definition is that if you emphasize the divine axis, the vertical axis over the horizontal, you get what I call the “conservative problem,” which is a legalistic kind of law and order mentality and an awareness of sinfulness and awareness of divine sovereignty and justice dominating over more empathetic, human issues. But if you emphasize that horizontal axis and fall into the “liberal problem,” you lose that moral, ethical backbone that conservatism tends to have as one of its strongest points.
— Greg Wolfe in Oldspeak (March 17, 2003)
