Is the Christian believer conservative or liberal?

摘要

The study attempts to clarify whether the label ‘conservative’ describes the identity of a Christian believer more accurately than that of ‘liberal’. After sketching the anthropological dynamic of the conservative and liberal tempers, the author proposes that both elements are to be found in true Christian identity, though each and every Christian needs to integrate them, overcoming the sinfulness that blocks this integration: the Christian receives in faith from God in Christ through the Church a divine treasure of word and grace, and should ‘conserve’ it not out of a spirit of sterile, traditionalist nostalgia but with a deep sense of gratitude; yet that divine treasure needs to be freely interiorised under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and communicated in hope to future generations of believers; free interiorising and generous communication involve a ‘liberal’ spirit. In this way, it should be possible to overcome the all-too-frequent, simplistic antagonism between the labels of conservatism and liberalism applied to Christians. The personal synthesis between conservatism and liberalism that Christians carry out involves three polarities: between nature and freedom, between the work of Christ and that of the Holy Spirit, and between faith and hope.