"The Church's Teaching Authority--Faith--Morals," Joseph Ratzinger

Increasing trend to view Christianity not primarily as "orthodoxy" but as "orthopraxy" (47)

• Liberation theology: truth is regarded as ploy of interest groups seeking to confirm their position; only praxis can decide the value or worthlessness of theories
• Orthodoxy as unfruitful if not positively harmful

At the opposite end from the view that would define and realize Christianity in terms of orthopraxy there is a position that affirms that there is no such thing as a specifically Christian morality and that Christianity must take its norms of conduct from the anthropological insights of its time. (49)

Where Christianity is interpreted as "orthopraxy," the basic issue is the question of truth, of what is reality. (51)

Regarding a non-specific Christian morality, the question is how what is specifically Christian can be defined vis-a-vis the changing historical forms it adopts. It also involves the problem of how faith communicates with reason, with universally human aspects. (51-52)

The originality of Christianity does not consist in the number of propositions for which no parallel can be found elsewhere (if there are such propositions, which is highly questionable). It is impossible to distill out what is specifically Christian by excluding everything that has come about through contact with other milieux. Christianity's originality consists rather in the new total form into which human searching and striving have been forged under the guidance of faith in the God of Abraham, the God of Jesus Christ. (53)

What is important is not that moral pronouncements can be found elsewhere, but the particular position they have or don't have in the spiritual edifice of  Christianity (form/structure, not matter) (53-54)

An often highly dramatic struggle took place between those elements of the surrounding legal and moral tradition that could be assimilated by Israel and those that Israel was bound to reject. (54)

The commandments show in practical terms what it means to believe in Yahweh, to accept the covenant with Yahweh. At the same time they define the figure of God himself, whose nature is manifested through them. They are part of the concept of God, showing who this God is. (55-56)

The concept of the "holy" as the specific category of the divine (i.e. the totally other) has already coalesced with the concept of the "moral": that is what is new and unique about this God and his holiness. (57)

In one sense, Christianity is most definitely an "orthopraxy," i.e. a realization of Jesus Christ's manner of life. The very name "Christian" implies fellowship with Christ, hence readiness to take upon oneself martyrdom in the cause of goodness (christos--chrestos) (61)

Faith and life: Paul emphasizes intimate connection between faith and "imitating" him, who in turn imitates Christ. This manner of life ("walking") is part of the transmitted tradition. (62)

Paul was confronted, not with a particular scholarly consensus on the subject of the "good" to be simply adopted, but with a maze of conflicting positions (e.g. Epicurus, Seneca). The only way to proceed here was not to accept the given, but through resolute critical discernment. (64)

A faulty concept of God leads to faulty moral behavior in the pagan world; returning to God in Jesus Christ is identical with a return to the manner of life of Jesus Christ. (65)

Paul's apostolic exhortation is not some moralizing appendix with a variable content, but a very practical setting forth of what faith means; thus, it is inseparable from faith's core. The apostle is in fact only following the pattern of Christ, who linked admission to the Kingdom of God with fundamental moral decisions. (65)

Christian faith does indeed involve a praxis on the part of faith; orthodoxy without orthopraxy fails to reach the core of the Christian reality, namely, love proceeding from grace. This also implies that Christian praxis is nourished by the core of Christian faith, that is, the grace that appeared in Christ and that is appropriated in the sacrament of the Church. Faith's praxis depends on faith's truth, in which man's truth is made visible and lifted up to a new level by God's truth. By looking to the example of Jesus Christ, faith recognizes fundamental human values and rescues them from all manipulation. (70)

The faith of the apostles is convinced that reason is capable of embracing truth, and that, therefore, faith does not have to erect its edifice apart from the tradition of reason, but finds its language in communication with the reason of the nations through a process of reception and dialectic. (71)

Faith involves fundamental decisions (with definite content) in moral matters. The first obligation of the teaching office is to continue the apostolic exhortation and to protect these fundamental decisions against reason's capitulation to the age. There must be a correspondence with basic insights of human reason, albeit these insights have been purified, deepened and broadened through contact with the way of faith. (72)