https://doi.org/10.25167/sth.6272
This article addresses a central problem in contemporary Christian theology: the growing crisis of plausibility surrounding the doctrine of salvation in a world that continues to be marked by suffering, injustice and violence. How can Catholics speak of salvation with intellectual integrity in a world that appears to be unredeemed? Pope Benedict XVI’s book on Jesus will be examined in relation to these central questions, the clarification of which is of great significance for the future viability of Christianity. The aim of this article is to identify the essential outlines of the Pope’s soteriological conception, to explore its internal connections and, at the same time, to critically examine its viability in today’s context. Central to this is the question of whether, and to what extent, Benedict’s approach is suited to restoring the plausibility of the belief in salvation under conditions of religious indifference and individualistic conceptions of humanity. The structure of this paper is divided into three main stages: first, an overview sets out the basic soteriological framework of Pope Benedict XVI. In the second stage, key motifs of this doctrine of salvation are analyzed in depth, including servant love, self-sacrifice, divine sonship, the ‘drawing in’ of human beings into the sonship of Christ, and the concepts of vicarious atonement and expiation. The paper concludes with a critical assessment which examines the extent to which the approach can be applied to contemporary ways of thinking and living, and highlights areas where further clarification is required.
Download files
Citation rules
Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
English
Język Polski