Suchergebnisse

The ethical distress of the (post)modern world stimulates and directs us to reflect our ethical and cultural grounds. Man is a transcendent being. He cannot reach or put in order immediate goods he needs if he is not prepared to acknowledge the grounds of his person and develop the virtues of prudence, love, hope, faith, wisdom, justice, courage, temperance etc. These are ethical questions concerning different worldviews and cannot be solved only by scientific methods. Many people who in the past did not care for religion as such, now take seriously religious personal and societal aspects of humane life. The fundamental crucial questions of man are ethical questions. They are in various ways related or perplexed with the question of faith and of science.

According to Luhmann, religion transforms the indefinable/un-defined into the definable/defined complexity, thus outlining the problems of the whole society. Due to this function, religion remains bound to the level of the entirety of a social system. Nevertheless, in time, in the course of the functional differentiation of society, different sub-systems have been created for different tasks (economy, science, politics, education, etc) & religion has been accorded the status of one such system. Besides distinguishing among various subsystems, this process implies the separation of diverse task-areas within the religious system itself. By & by, within the Christian religion, three functionally differentiated spheres have emerged which Luhmann labels as a) the church, ie, the entirety of spiritual communication in which the function of the system of religion is fulfilled for the whole social system; b) Diaconate (Diakonie), which performs the system's tasks towards other social sub-systems (these tasks, in line with the theory of systems, may be termed services Leistungen) as well as towards personal systems (in line with the theory of systems they may be termed pastoral -- Seelsorge); & c) theology (Theologie) whose role within the religious system may be described as reflexion (Reflexion) ie, the task of the reflexive contact of one's own identity. 1 Table, 10 References. Adapted from the source document.