Bernd Wannenwetsch

But to Do Right… Why the Language of ‘Rights’ Does Not Do Justice to Justice

The essay critically engages Woltertorff’s account of justice by challenging the political status of its archaeological defence of rights language, its prioritizing of ‘primary’ and therefore ‘procedural’ justice, its suggestion to think of rights as ‘social bonds’ and the validity of subjecting God and world under one and the same concept of ‘worth’.

Sin as Forgetting: Negotiating Divine Presence

The article examines sin through the lens of forgetfulness, as both are phenomena situated between passivity and activity, and intricately linked in the biblical tradition. It shows how the propensity to forget God is rooted in a particular form of presence that is characteristic of YHWH. The narrative of the making of the golden calf is analysed for its potential to highlight the ‘predicament’ peculiar to the Jewish and Christian faiths: to seek a more palpable divine presence than that in the word alone. The article explores this theme further by way of theologically juxtaposing the calf with the Agnus Dei and offering considerations on conscience, confession and the opacity of the Christian life.

Ein Laib – ein Leib? Eucharistische Zugänge zur Leiblichkeit des Menschen

Uber das Leibverstandnis im Christentum liese sich Vieles sagen. Vor allem ware das profunde Missverstandnis der gelaufigen Rede von der „Leibfeindlichkeit“ zu korrigieren. Das Gegenteil trifft zu: Das Christentum ist die Religion der Hochschatzung des Leibes als einer dem Geistigen ebenburtigen Dimension geschopflicher Existenz. In diesem Sinn hat der Kirchenvater Augustinus in Abwehr dualistischer Konzeptionen griechischer Provenienz darauf bestanden, dass im Sinne der christlichen Schopfungstheologie von einer Gleichursprunglichkeit von Form und Materie zu sprechen ist: „simul utrumque Deus fecerit”. Im 18. Jahrhundert brachte der evangelische Mystiker Friedrich Christoph Oetinger dieselbe Uberzeugung auf die Formel: „Leiblichkeit ist das Ende der Werke Gottes, wie aus der Stadt Gottes klar erhellet […]“

From Ars Moriendi to Assisted Suicide: Bonhoefferian Explorations into Cultures of Death and Dying

The essay is intended to shed light on the back-stage of contemporary debates about death and the dying, and more specifically on newer trends that emphasise the importance of ‘dying well’ and the moral viability of a ‘good death’. It raises the question as to whether there is a hidden conceptual link between the high medieval tradition of ars moriendi and the modern trend towards embracing (assisted) suicide as a final expression of human autonomy and suggests that this link becomes visible only when death is theologically understood in a twofold way: according to its spiritual side on the one hand, and according to its physical on the other. Drawing inspiration from Bonhoeffer’s exposition of the biblical myth of the Fall and his insights into the link between thanatos and techne, the essay suggests that the compulsive fashion in which modern societies tend to shy away from any contact with the dying that is not mediated by technology or bureaucracy is owed to their refusal to acknowledge the dual character of death, as it is open to theological analysis.

Book Review: Natural Law and Human Dignity: Universal Ethics in an Historical World

133 Eberhard Schockenhoff, Natural Law and Human Dignity: Universal Ethics in an Historical World, trans. Brian McNeil (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003). xi + 30 pp.

Communication as Transformation: Worship and the Media:

44.95 (hb), ISBN 0–8132–1339–8;

Plurale Sinnlichkeit. Glaubenswahrnehmung im Zeitalter der virtual reality

24.95 (pb), ISBN 0–8132–1340–1. Originally published as Naturrecht und Menschenwürde: Universale Ethik in einer geschichtlichen Welt (Mainz: Grünewald Verlag, 1996). 330 pp. €24.50 (hb), ISBN 3–7867–1899–7.

Gerechtigkeit und Urteil

Isn’t it strange: The new media are booming, but not media ethics? This becomes obvious if we compare the shelves in bookshops and libraries dedicated to media ethics with those of another rather recent development such as medical ethics. We may be surprised about this disproportion as we live in societies which define themselves as post-industrial ’information and communication societies’. And globalisation in economics and politics is a result of the worldwide expansion of communications technology, not vice versa. The global village is, so to speak, originally at home in Silicon Valley. As far as the German Catholic and Evangelical Churches are concerned, they have obviously recognised the importance of media ethics as we can conclude from their recently published ’Common Declaration’1 and from the 1985 EKD paper, ’The New Technologies of Information and Communication’.2 Interestingly, the new paper shows that the Churches are well aware of a special difficulty: Ethics is generally a rather critical enterprise. But in this case it has to do with a subject that is generally conceived of positively. While phenomena like genetic technologies or even politics are charged with ambivalent emotions, communication the object of the media can, it seems, only be welcomed wherever possibilities for it arise. Though the Churches have some criticisms, they obviously do not want to take on the old role as a moralising spoilsport in this game. Thus, they present their considerations under the balanced title ’Chances and Risks of the Media Society’.

Book Reviews : The Decalogue and a Human Future: the meaning of the commandments for making and keeping human life human, by Paul L. Lehmann. Grand Rapids, Mich., Eerdmans, 1995. 232pp. pb. £17.99

The essay explores how the perception of faith is bound up with the alertness of the senses. Modern and postmodern schematisation of sensual perception - the » greedy eye of modernity« with its tendency to put anything that is perceived under one unifying aspect or the postmodern turn to the »immersive media « which deliver data to every single sense independently - must be challenged by a theological analysis of the perichoresis of the senses when they are awakened by the healing touch of Christ. From an analysis of Augustines reworking of the Origenist doctrine of the »spiritual senses « it becomes clear that faith as sensitivity for the hidden activity of God in the world is centred in the heart as the horizon of perception, which gives orientation to the activity of the senses and must at the same time itself be understood sensually as a heart that is able to hear, see, etc. Taken seriously, this plural sensibility must shed a critical light on every theological and non-theological claim about the representation of human perception in one » sense over the senses «, be it conceived as a sensus historicus, a religious sense for transcendence or the inevitabe human quest for meaning.

Book Review : Marriage in the Western Church : the Christianisation of marriageduring the patristic and early medieval periods, by Philip Lydon Reynolds. Leiden, Brill, 1994. xxx + 436pp. hb. £71.95

Political judgment is given a privileged place in the New Testament over other aspects of political authority which are accounted for by the role of Christ. It is understood as performative, and may be defined as an act which pronounces upon a preceding act so as to establish a new public context for future action. As such political judgment is both a pronouncement and a creative act, although, unlike the word of God itself, it may need the support of force for its implementation. It must correspond to reality, which means that it must conform to the judgments of God. These judgments are not read simply from the Cross, which is decisive (i. e. condemning and acquitting) not prescriptive, but from the gift of new life in the resurrection of Christ, the Second Adam. The judgment of the Paschal Victory is most nearly reflected in the life of the church, although political judgment may reflect it at second remove. While formally acts of condemnation, such acts may be performed in consciousness of, and may point to, the living hope of the Gospel message.