ROLUL STATULUI ŞI AL BISERICII ÎN PROMOVAREA VALORILOR AUTORITĂŢII ŞI DEMNITĂŢII UMANE ÎN COMUNITATEA EUROPEANĂ – SCURTE CONSIDERAŢII TEOLOGICE DIN PERSPECTIVĂ ANTROPOLOGICĂ CREŞTINĂ

Abstract

The Role of Church and State in Promoting the Values of Authority and Human Dignity in the European Community—Short Theological Considerations from a Christian Anthropological Perspective.

Our study aims to capture some of the defining aspects of the problem of human authority and dignity, as it is exercised—in disjointed, yet complementary ways—by state and local authorities and by church respectively, in the context created by  the process of integrating national states into the big family of the European Union, the entity that comes to continue, in a different dimension, the dialogue between civilisation and culture of the old continent. The proposed analysis will focus  on the Biblical grounds for the two forms of authority—that from a certain point overlap—over the action of formating the values of the new European area—a corner of a globalizing and leveling world through economy and culture—which  seems to have forgoten everything about its ontological dependence on God, which offered the European world, in particular, a gift of an “intermediate area between anymality and holiness, between time and eternity.” Finally, we will highlight  some references to the way in which the theological concept of prosopon—person—conjugates itself and  enhances the two types of authority in a way that allows the area of the European Community to integrate and to valorize—for everyone’s good— “transcendence and immanence, asceticism and activism, contemplation and work, the East and the  West.” In the following pages we will speak about the common authoritative basis of this process, which starts from the model of communal Personalism in unity or cooperation in the diversity of forms of institutional relational expression of  the two entities, with specific identities and competences.