The Social Mission of the Church: Orthodox and Patristic Perspectives

Mnogi teolozi i sociolozi tvrde kako je za reafirmaciju socijalne i postmoderne izvorne čovjekove slike i sličnosti s Bogom potrebno čovjeka iznova pretvoriti u „cjelovitu osobu“, sa svim njegovim duhovnim, religijskim ili kulturnim potrebama, a za to je svakako potreban složen teološki pristup. Ova vrsta pristupa, poznata kao socijalna teologija, uključuje društvenu i teološku dimenziju u kalcedonskom jedinstvu te moralno regulira odnos čovjeka i društva, napose odnos između Crkve i modernog te postmodernog sekularnog društva. Ovim izrazom Pravoslavna Crkva i teologija žele ponovno afirmirati društvenost, baš kao što „sekularizirana kultura doživljava ponovnu afirmaciju religije, koju je prenijela u sferu privatnosti ljudskoga života“; poziva na društveni dijalog, suradnju i uzajamnu odgovornost, sa svrhom afirmiranja „suvremenog pojedinca“.Many theologians and sociologists claim that in order to restore the social and postmodern man’s original image and resemblance to God, turning him into a “complete person,” with spiritual, religious, or cultural needs, it is needed a complex theological approach. This approach, known as Social Theology, includes both a social dimension and a theological one in a Chalcedonian unity and morally regulates the relationship between man and society, between Church and modern and postmodern secular society. By means of this term, the Orthodox Church and Theology want to recover the social, just as “secularized culture experiences the recovery of religion, which it has transferred to the private sphere of people’s life;” it summons the social to dialogue, collaboration and mutual responsibility, in order to recover the “contemporary individual.