Christian Culture as Witness vs. Values & Moralism,

Henri de Lubac's "Tripartite Anthropology" traces the persistence of a distinctively Christian anthropology in the history of Christianity: from the Fathers of the Church (Irenaeus, Origen), through the Scholastics (including Aquinas!) and the Reformation (Luther's rejection of it in order to deny free will), to the modern age (Cartesian dualism and its discontents). What emerges from this survey is a persistent witness to the nobility and destiny of man. Man is structurally made for communion with God, and nothing less can satisfy it. The Face of the Infinite is Christ and His Church. Following this desire without stopping changed human beings and gave rise to a new hospitality, a deeper appreciation for the value of the individual human person, and values in every aspect of human life.

A couple of months ago, in the context of the Christopher West controversy, I mentioned Two Approaches: 1. transposition of values discovered within the Christian experience into the terms of the common mentality. This approach could be friendly discourse or combative legalism; 2. come and see. Looking back, I see that these are not two different methods, but that the second is a complete method, while the first short-circuits the Christian method. Instead of beginning with the depth of human need (quid animo satis?, the blues, Leopardi's dominant thought) which is answered in the person of Jesus Christ who generates a new humanity, this approach seeks to communicate Christian values at the level of values (and not as the living fruit of an encounter). This discourse is presented either through discursive persuasion or through legal force.

This is not to say that legal and cultural initiatives are not important. Jesus did not shrink from any question he ran into: should the temple tax be paid, should we stone this woman for adultery — but He always did so in a way which provoked people to recognize their human needs in their totality. Whose face is on the coin? Who is without sin?

Dialogue is more than discourse, as the following quote clarifies:

"What we have in common with the other is to be sought not so much in ideology as in the other's native structure, in those human needs, in those original criteria, in which he or she is human like ourselves. Openness to dialogue, therefore, means the ability to take as a starting point those problems to which the other's ideology or our Christianity proposes solutions, because what is common to different ideologies is the humanity of the men and women who carry those ideologies as banners of hope or as an answer" (p 132, The Journey to Truth is an Experience, Giussani).