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December 2009 VOICE OF SHALOM |
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LAST JUDGEMENT AND JUSTICE OF GOD In the modern era, the idea of the Last Judgement has faded into the background: Christian faith has been individualized and primarily oriented towards the salvation of the believer's own soul, while reflection on world history is largely dominated by the idea of progress. The fundamental content of awaiting a final Judgement, however, has not disappeared: it has simply taken on a totally different form. The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is - in its origins and aims - a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, a cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world's suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violantions of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. to be continued . . .
Pope Benedict XVI
Spe Salvi(#42) |
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