The ten gifts” “

“The situation of ideas in Europe tends to become that of a market in which opinions and feelings are in free competition between each other. It tends to create a situation in which no religion is that of the ruling class or of the State, none benefits from the support of a legislative system or a political authority. This is a new stage in the history of humanity. I don’t know whether it is irreversible. I don’t even know whether it can survive in the long term, but I don’t think so”. These are the terms in which Remi Brague, French philosopher and historian, poses the question about ‘Europe and Christianity’ in the debate that appears in the second number of 2005 of Communio, international review of theology and culture. (communio@jakabook.it) RELIGION IN EUROPEAN CULTURE. It may be that the present moment in Europe is “an opportunity for religions themselves, which can now be appreciated especially as such, and no longer in their relations with other dimensions of human, political, juridical or moral experience”, argues Remi Brague. However, the historian points out two risks: a reduction of religion to an exclusively subjective dimension and a deliberately cultivated “ideological ignorance of the past”, that leaves the way clear for an “ideology of progress, a legacy of Enlightenment thought, which is inimical to Christianity, presupposing as it does that evil is always behind us, a legacy of the past, whereas modern man is allegedly always good, innocent and pure”. According to this ideology, adds Brague, “responsibility for all our ills must be sought in an entity of the past that is still present in our midst to be able to be judged: the Church is the one organization that responds to these characteristics”. The essay of Remi Brague is complemented by that of Paul Bolberitz, a Hungarian theologian who poses the question on the relevance of Christianity in European culture, starting out from the presupposition that “Christianity is present, in its traces, in an encrypted way, in contemporary Europe”. “But, – continues Bolberitz, – if we want to speak in a clear and unambiguous way of Christian spiritual values, we also need to know the most significant principles that Christianity has given to us”. The theologian then lists the ten gifts offered to Europe by Christianity: the integration of Greek, Roman and Jewish values; the careful guardianship of the world; human dignity, the creative love of culture and civilization; freedom understood as liberation from sin; dialogue between God and the world; the acceptance of the least of our fellowmen and those who are different; mission; a moral code based on justice and love; and coherence between word and action on which the credibility of Christianity itself is founded. CHRISTIANITY AS FORM OF EUROPEAN CULTURE. Of these gifts particular emphasis is placed on “the acceptance of those living in situations of disadvantage. Even today there are cultures and civilizations – notes Bolberitz – in which the oppression of ‘losers’ is taken for granted. But a wholly new phase of European culture appeared in opposition to this, according to which the person who is physically or psychologically in a condition of inferiority to others needs to be helped and not despised. This attitude is a wholly Christian virtue”. Lastly as the supreme virtue offered by Christianity to European culture, Bolberitz cites the overcoming of human justice, in the name of the justice of love. On the historical level Remi Brague, affirms that Christianity is not one of the contents of European culture, but constitutes its form, in its acceptance of good and rejection of evil. By giving it this form, it has raised European culture to the highest dignity of man. It has led to the acceptance of others: “the intellectual movement with which Europe has studied other civilizations, both those that have disappeared and those that are still present, such as Islam or China, can be seen as the prolongation of a fundamental attitude of Christianity: European scholars study Arabic or Sanskrit because they had previously studied Hebrew and Greek. Europe has thus extended to other cultures the way in which Christianity is related to the Old Covenant. It may be that Europe today, in its relations with other cultures, has every interest in unhesitatingly seeking inspiration from this Christian model”.