Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)
1968-06-01 / 2. szám
HCP Vol XX Special Number 1968 No 2 (07666) ca -II TIE CHURCH AND IKE SOCIALIST' SOCIETX l) Today*s Christian Teaching About the State While investigating the Church’s responsibility for social problems, special attention is to be given to the Christian teaching about the State* Society is a larger theme than the State, yet the theological views concerning the State always reflect the Church’s view of society* The State is the concrete embodiment of the leading forces of sooiety and the sum-total of those structures in which the ordered life of the human community proceeds, and so the "final form of the legal shaping of public life"»^' The Christian teaching about the State had a special significance in the period of the history of theology when the social conduct of the Christian was determined in terms of the ethics of the individual, Troeltsch writes« "Prom the beginning and in its totality, the social teaching of Christianity has boon also a teaching about the State and society".31) Before the large-scale enfolding of the theology of society, that is, the theological ethics of society, the ethics of the State was the place in which the social teachings of Christianity also had their locus? It was "die Staatsethik als eine Theorie des Politischen, die gerade in der Staatlichkeit des Politischen die dauerhafte Grundlage einer nicht ans Individuum sich wendende Ethik sieht"*32) The clarification of the problem of the State has become today a vital issue of those churches which live in a new type of society and in a new state order. The ministry of the Christian Church to be discharged in a wholly new state order has forced the theologians to review the traditional theses of Christian theology about society and the State« This task, however, is becoming progressively urgent in those societies also in which the revolutionary transformation of the social conditions is in progress or is about to begin# The ecumenical dialogue about social problems cannot forgo the task of thoroughly investigating and re-thinking the theological teaching about the State* a) The State in Ecumenical Theology The ecumenical discussion concerning the essence of the State is not without its historical antecedents. In order to find the right approach to the problem, the findings of the ecumenical research into this question must be reviewed, We shall attempt to sum up these findings in the following points:
