The Christian intellectual is a frontier being in the midst of the world. He is a “being in the world” and a “being in God.” Its function is to produce historical consciousness in the reality in which it lives.

Stéphane Bratosin is a university professor with a PhD in exceptional classes in public communication and politics at the Université Paul Valéry Montpellier (France). He is an Honoris Causa Doctor of Social Sciences and an Honoris Causa Professor at several universities.

To think about the modern complexity of humanity, which is constantly faced with new social, economic, philosophical, existential, ecological, etc. problems, to contribute to the understanding of the world, the forces that make it move, to allow the emergence of new answers related to the challenges that are offered to man in order to to confront his thinking with the real world without succumbing to the abstract juggling of ideas, to get involved, to speak, to present himself, the intellectual must overcome today’s – in addition to yesterday’s – hellish noise of info-obesity and the Internet, the general noise of digitization and the Babylonian uproar of new technologies and communication networks. Against the backdrop of the rapid hypermediatization of societies and everyday life, the Christian intellectual may differ from the intellectual-humanist-atheist, for example, not by what defines the intellectual’s worldly intelligence, but by an additional dimension or concrete contribution, which is characterized by Christian responsibility to others and to oneself. Sometimes the expression, sometimes the image of negotiations about the choice between being an intellectual and being a Christian, the Christian intellectual in this case is perceived as a guarantee of freedom of conscience. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the Christian intellectual rests on the basis of a Christian creed that makes indiscernible the difference between Christianity and the intellectual function that would allow him to express this difference. Thus, an assumption is born about the lack of freedom of conscience in his intellectual exercises, if only as a result of the limited interpretation of Christianity. Thus, the irreducible difference between the Christian intellectual and the “mere” intellectual is limited, so to speak, to his attitude toward the world.

The Christian intellectual is a frontier being in the midst of the world. He is a “being in the world” and a “being in God.” Its function is to produce historical consciousness in the reality in which it lives. Thanks to his intelligence, he has the ability to read the reality behind the sensory world, to explore the connections between ideas and consider them in perspective, to be sensitive to the questions and lives of his contemporaries. The Christian intellectual has a duty to society outside the Christian sphere. The Christian intellectual must be concretely involved in secular reality, effectively exist in the anti-religious sphere, use not only empirical knowledge, but also reflexive recognition of anti-clerical and anti-intellectual worlds. He is perceived, associated and listened to as a legitimate actor of secular society in its educational and public debates. On the other hand, the Christian intellectual is marked by an evangelical reference and open to transcendence in choosing values ​​that resist the flow of current events without being oppressed by “certainty.” From this point of view, he plays the role of critical awakening in the church itself, justified by the honesty imposed by the moral obligation of his status to respect the rigor and accuracy of the analysis of his personal discourse in relation to scientific, artistic, political, economic realities. The Christian intellectual supports the intra-church debate on the structure and functioning of the institution, the place of laymen and women, the sanctioning of the clergy, the nurturing and renewal of sacramental practice, the promotion of pluralism, etc. Thus, the Christian intellectual occupies an ontologically precarious position in the common-sense economy of society, into which he intervenes with an approach both personal and rooted in the institutionalized religious community inscribed in such phrases as “Orthodox intellectual,” “Catholic.” Christian intellectual”, “Protestant Christian intellectual”, “evangelical Christian intellectual”.

Being an intermediary, an interface between a priori and empirically, the Christian intellectual is needed in the formation of public opinion as an active actor who possesses the public handling of symbolic tools as well as the rational techniques necessary to fulfill his civic mission as a medium that unites and divides at the same time. aestheticization of the political and communication of the political. In a society where democracy becomes the enemy of secrecy and demands immediate answers to all its questions or concerns in the name of transparency, the Christian intellectual has the task of reminding the world that only darkness can be expected in our confrontations with secrecy. As witness and observer, the Christian intellectual intervenes in political debate with the symbolic efficacy of a presence that imposes itself without being aggressive or intrusive. He makes himself the mouthpiece of the silent and unconsulted majority at great risk of playing a decisive role in the current exercise of power, but refuses to be a political embodiment.

Of course, if the whole world were Christian, the existence of a Christian intellectual would be pointless. An intellectual would be a Christian by definition. But the world is not entirely Christian. So, the meaning of being a Christian intellectual, however, is politically constructed from what is universally affirmed and what is historically imposed. It enriches the public space with the functional legitimacy of compromise and pragmatic confusion between profane and sacred truth, thus forcing actors not necessarily to believe in the existence of an absolute truth, but to accept the hypothesis that if this truth exists, then it cannot be even admired by people , nor transmitted otherwise than by ways and means beyond human rationality. – read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro