Western Culture Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues
Part II, 'Politics and Morality'. Please read the first half of Chapter 1, 'Political Visions and the Praxis of Politics', pp. 70 to 84.
In previous sessions we reviewed visions of history in Judaism (Old Testament) and XX century secularism (especially Marxism).
In both perspectives there were apocalyptic and messianic tones, but the former is transcendent, with hope placed in God and his action, whereas the second is immanent, limited to the material realm, deprived of God and the hope in the communist utopia.
Now Ratzinger leads us in the exploration of the Christian perspective (New Testament in continuity with the Old).
What emerges from those passages is a very modest vision of the state and what can be expected of politics. Politics is ‘the kingdom of man’, the realm of natural moral reason, the task of today to enable citizens to flourish.
Politics should not determine man’s ends, hinder his development as a zoon politikon (Aristotle, Politics, chapter 2) and even less step into God’s realm.
With Christianity, messianism is transformed: Jesus is not a revolutionary, he is a martyr on the Cross, highlighting there the limits of human power, of politics.
After him, his followers are called to live as model citizens in everything pertaining to ‘the polis’, to the temporal realm, as well as model children of God in the transcendent sphere, aware that their last destination, the future, is there.
The Christian vision, even the apocalyptic one, is never violent, revolutionary. When the power of the day exceeds its legitimate sphere, the Christian resists up to martyrdom as attested by so many saints throughout history up to this day. The martyr attests to a higher reality where political power has no say and can never reach.
Read Romans 13:1-6, 1 Peter 2:13-17, Mark 12:13-17, Titus 3:1, 2 Thessalonians 3:1-12, Isaiah 45, Jeremiah 29.
When power exceeds its competency, it becomes totalitarian, tries to assume God’s place and produces aberrations such as Nazism or Communism.
Current myths currently dominating our Western world that has depleted itself of God: progress, science, freedom and ‘the majority’.
How do you see these myths operating in society today?
What is ‘natural law’ for Christians (see Cathechism and Veritatis splendor definitions)?
Are Christians called to influence society and politics? How?