Autor: McCarthy, Michael

Buch: Workshop Rome 2001

Titel: Theological Reflection and Christian Renewal

Stichwort: Hauptkomponenten von upper u. lower blade; Tripolarität chr. Anthropologie (Trinität)

Kurzinhalt: Isolierter upper blade: keine Rezepte (Gaudium et Spes) - lower blade: status quo wird zur Norm, Mangel an Prinzipien; Dialektik: Schöpfung, Sünde - Erlösung, Gnade

Textausschnitt: There are three major components of theological reflection's upper blade: the Trinitarian theology of God; the intentional analysis of human subjectivity; a normative ethics of Christian principles and precepts (both transcendental and categorial). The key component of the lower blade is critical, factual analysis of the institutional, cultural and historical settings to which the principles and precepts of ethics apply.
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The weakness of the upper blade taken in isolation is its lack of effective specificity. It can tell us, as Gaudium et Spes did, what is unjust and unchristian in the way we live as individual persons and historically organized communities. However, it is characteristically unable to identify appropriate and effective remedies
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The weakness of the lower blade taken in isolation is its lack of principled normativity. Proponents of the lower blade tend to take the factual status quo for granted and, in the name of supposedly hard-headed realism, characteristically reduce normative measuring principles to the level of existing practice.
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The anthropology of Christian realism is also Trinitarian. All human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. God's created image within us is distorted and darkened through our crippling entanglement in sin. We nevertheless remain open to redemptive healing and creative renewal through the grace of God poured out for us in Christ. With its tri-polar dialectic of created nature, disruptive sin, and redemptive grace, theological reflection takes full account of both the greatness and wretchedness of human existence without losing the disciplined energy and tenacious convictions of Christian hope.