Konflikt und Konsens

Ethics seeks consensus in conflicts by focusing on an »elementary ethical triangle« of norms, one's fellow human beings and one's own identity. It evaluates every norm according to its capacity for universalization and by how they prove themselves in conflicts. Paul aimed to overcome conflicts between Jews and Greeks, slaves and free people, men and women. Gerd Theissen shows that the path to this goal and the failures along the way are instructive today for ecumenical ethics with its three fundamental values of integrity of creation, peace, and justice, which must be complemented by freedom. Christians are called to make their ethics comprehensible to non-Christians as well. This can be done without the ultimate justification of norms by replacing unattainable ultimate justifications with a commitment to the penultimate, which corresponds to the finitude of human beings.