Dall’enciclica “laudato si” all’enciclica “fratelli tutti”. Una prospettiva sulla spiritualità e l’etica sociale

From the Encyclical „Laudato si” to the Encyclical „Fratelli tutti”. A Perspective on Spirituality and Social Ethics. The essay begins by showing that it is essential for all Christian thinking - and thus also for a Christian social ethics - to refer to a deeper meaning passively received from God. Starting from this Logos, Christian social ethical thinking tries to convey how to build a civilisation or a society of integral and humane capitalism whose inner building principle is love. This reception of meaning and love in order to be enabled to love takes place practically in liturgiacal worship as the author argues with Romano Guardini; here the absolute love of God is first received and vouchsafed as an unclaimable and yet profoundly vital gift. Liturgy focuses, like a burning glass, the experience of a greater freedom of the human being to do good in the face of a greater love, in the face of absolute love, in the face of God. In this view, liturgy is liberated freedom for the good and for the better, for the beautiful. From there, all human activity not only has a technical-instrumental and efficiency-oriented side, but is deeply ordered towards the realisation of higher values, so that the author can say: Culture grows out of cult. From here, he shows how a culture of law and ethics unfolds from the mere nature of man to faith in a personal God. In this perspective, law and morality are formulations of the primordial sense placed by God in human natural reason - the logos - and serve to shape a world conducive to life and worthy of human beings. This highlights in particular the space of political action, which plays a prominent role especially in Pope Francis’ encyclicals „Laudato si” and „Fratelli tutti”. In these encyclicals, the author primarily criticises a „technocratic paradigm”, in which human action is only reduced to questions of technical possibilities and efficiency, but in which the deeper meaning of human action is obscured. Starting from the parable of the prodigal son and the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is particularly prominent in „Fratelli tutti”, the author then develops the extent to which one must first convert to the incarnate Logos Christ in order to be able to realise the Logos instilled in man and the world, also in political thought and action. This is where the author sees the proprium of Christian social ethics as ethics of institutions and as inclusive capitalism, as also developed in the encyclicals of Pope Francis: The orientation of state, society and economy towards the realisation of higher values, of the Logos placed in the world by God. Keywords: Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, Romano Guardini, Liturgy and Ethics, Social Ethics, Personalism, Integral Humanism, Critique on technocracy

Den kristna etikens dubbla utmaning

Christian social ethics has long endured a polarizing debate between a universal ethics based in creation, often framed in terms of reason or natural law, and an ecclesial ethics based in revelation. With no satisfactory conclusion to the debate in sight, and adding to it an exceedingly complex cultural situation in which to navigate, many seek to find new ways of framing the alternatives. The "twin challenge" of Christian social ethics in a pluralistic and post-secular setting is here identified as articulating a social ethics that acknowledges the tensions between the specificities of the Gospel and culture while simultaneously providing a framework and resources for building a common life across confessional borders. One way of addressing this challenge is to ground ethics in the Trinity. While creational ethics generally emphasize the first article of the creed, an ecclesial ethics tend to focus on the latter two. Grounding Christian ethics in the Trinity is an attempt at a holistic approach, tending to both particular and universal concerns. One such effort is found in Carl-Henric Grenholm's attempt at articulating a contemporary Lutheran social ethics grounded in a trinitarian framework. By way of identifying a number of tensions within Grenholm's proposal, this article offers some pointers on the requirements of a trinitarian ethics in a pluralistic and post-secular context. It argues for a more complex construal of secularity and the need for a robust Christology and eschatology to provide a critical lens on culture. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of on-going, complex negotiations beyond secular matrices and communities of virtuous actors capable of performing them.

Sociological Self-Knowledge, Critical Realism, and Christian Ethics

In his 2016 book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, Alasdair MacIntyre spends considerable time discussing how disputes between different moral theorists and different forms of practice might be adjudicated. A crucial addition to the tradition-constituted historical narrative approach of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is his introduction of what he calls ‘sociological self-knowledge’. The present article outlines what MacIntyre means by this and suggests that his approach here dovetails well with Christian ethicists who have advocated the use of critical realist sociology in Christian ethics. MacIntyre’s account stresses the importance of ‘a grasp of the nature of the roles and relationships in which one is involved’, a grasp helpfully conceptualized by critical realists. Daniel Finn also notes that the use of critical realism to analyze structures must be paired with a basic typology, and MacIntyre’s sociological self-knowledge, I argue, rests on precisely such a typology between two different types of moral practices. The article concludes by suggesting much more attention be paid to these ‘moral-social’ analyses when addressing apparently intractable disagreements in Christian social ethics.

Jurgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and the Task of Public Theology in Ghanaian Context

This article examines the relevance of theology in public life particularly from the Ghanaian (African) Christian experience in society. The idea of the public relevance of theology has been ably examined by Jurgen Moltmann in the perspectives of his Theology of Hope and the continuous reflections in the “Ethics of Hope”. The eschatological sacrifice of Christ’s story animates in Moltmann the understanding of what particular transformation one must experience when envisaging what the shape of Christianity is in modern society and the task it has to fulfill in the field of social ethics in the Ghanaian social and political history. Critical to the Ghanaian social- political life is to be encountered with is a sub-culture trend that the task for the socio-political and the economic development of the nation-state is the preserve of politics or political activists. The conversation on the rise to action of the Ghanaian Christian to social ethics is now due to the growing trends of poverty, violence, unemployment, corruption, dwindling social and moral order and failing institutions of state. Jurgen Moltmann develops his thoughts in the Ethics of Hope to deliberately project Christian social ethics that is focused on projecting the Bible as the gospel of hope for the people. This paper evaluates Moltmann’s understanding of modern realities of life and how Christians must relate with and what Christian character brings to bear on the positive change in the life of the people.