Prof. Franz Josef Stegmann Bethlehem Social ... - Ordo Socialis

Stegmann
According to biblical revelation, God created the human being and the universe. For
Christians, therefore, ethical norms and moral laws which our human intellect infers from the
nature of human beings and society are ultimately based on God, their creator, and not only
on human beings and society.
On the other hand, the new quality results from the revelation that God in Jesus Christ
devoted himself to the world and all human beings, accepted them in love and redeemed
them. God became man in Jesus of Nazaret and said "a full yes" to human beings and their
world.
Finally, the new quality of ethical rules follows, from God's promise that every human
activity and the world as such will be completed and fulfilled in God. With regard to this
eschatological perspective, the Bible mentions “new heavens and a new earth" (2 Petr 3,13).
There we shall find again the results of human works and efforts - the Pastoral Constitution of
the Second Vatican Council states - "the values of human dignity, brotherhood, and freedom
and indeed all the good fruits of our nature and enterprise ... freed of stain, burnished and
transfigured". 25
The firm belief that God created man and universe, that in Jesus Christ he accepted all human
beings and their world, and that every human activity and its results will be completed in
God's fulfilment, "free from stain, burnished and transfigured" - this conviction does not give
immediately more ethical insights or more moral laws. It does, however, demand a qualitative
change of Christian thinking and action in the sense of a more determined commitment to
moral laws and a stronger obligation to shaping a human social order, because this obligation
is based on God. Each moral decision made by Christians includes their relationship to God,
and therefore more strongly demands of them truly human behaviour. Thus, biblical
revelation - and, because of that, Christian understanding of the human being - give ethical
rules a "new quality".
4. SOCIAL PRINCIPLES: SOLIDARITY AND SUBSIDIARITY
As outlined up to now, Christian Social Teaching understands the human being in view of
biblical revelation. From this understanding it deduces the principles of solidarity and
subsidiarity as “laws of building a society" 26 - an expression coined by the above-mentioned
social scientist Oswald von Nell-Breuning, who seventy years ago worked out the draft of the
Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
4.1 The principle of solidarity
The principle of solidarity implies that the human person by his/her very nature depends on
fellow human beings, on the community and, on the other hand, that the community is based
on this social nature of the person. The existence of the community is therefore not dependent
on the arbitrariness of the individuals. Individuals always influence the community - whether
they do something or not, whether they intend to influence or not - and vice versa. This fact of
mutual dependence and influence is not pure chance; it is based on the nature of human
beings as God created them. It is a principle of existence", a "principle of being", a principium
essendi according to the Latin expression. 1 merely refer to human abilities such as the ability
to talk and to love - abilities that are "thinkable" and that can exist only in the community of
human beings.
25 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution (1965), Art. 39,5 (see note 6)
26 Oswald von Nell‐Breuning, Baugesetze der Gesellschaft. Solidarität und Subsidiarität, Freiburg 1990.
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