God, Love and Freedom in Christianity


As I understand Joseph Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict XVI), by "God" he means... 

  1. the God of the philosophers, who shows himself in creation as "originating power", for example
  2. the personal God, who shows himself in human beings as 


In this sense nature shows us images created by the God of the philosophers. Ratzinger calls them 


By "love", Joseph Ratzinger means the power that makes it possible for us to sense the immeasurable freedom in nature and in people. This presentiment is 

and as soon as we have found words for such a presentiment, our connection to the space of freedom is already broken again. 


Ratzinger says: This love gives us immortality because it gives us an inkling of God. Against this, all our stirrings in biological life fade away, e.g. our fears, sufferings, even our death. 


In this sense the whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg loved and was without fear of death. 


According to Ratzinger 

  1. the creation is God's thought, logos,
  2. the world we imagine is our thought (also called "man's memory", "shadow of man's ego").


More

Since the Christian option for the Logos means option for a person-like, creative sense, then it is therein at the same time option for the primacy of the particular over the general. 

  • The highest is not the most general, but just the particular, and 
  • Christian faith is thus above all also option for man as the irreducible being related to infinity. 
  • And in this it is once more option for the primate of freedom opposite to a primacy of cosmic-natural-law necessity.


The supreme construction point of the world is a freedom which carries, wants, knows and loves the whole world as freedom. This means that with the freedom the unpredictability, which is inherent in it, essentially belongs to the world. 



Version: 17.7.2023

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Jochen Gruber