Compassion

For Metz, compassion is not an isolated topic, but must be understood within the broader context of his thought and requires further development using contemporary conceptual frameworks. Drawing on selected critiques of political theology, within which compassion is embedded, it makes sense to develop 'narrative-practical Christianity' into 'mytho-compassionate Christianity'. The task is to provide a philosophical and theological foundation and contextualisation for compassion.
In terms of the theses and arguments, the methodological approaches are re-organising and analytical, constructive and critical, and thus hermeneutical. Furthermore, the ongoing comparison with the selected existential thinkers reveals an existential integration of theology in Metz's work.
Mytho-compassionate Christianity symbiotically unites the transcendent, unapproachable God and the world in need of salvation. If every capacity for reason and language follows the (arche)type; if mythology seeks to put into words precisely that which is beyond words; if religiosity - in particular Christian, ecclesiologically shaped religiosity - is constitutive and memory-forming, if a central element of this anamnetic structure is compassion, and if liturgical practice constantly brings to mind the life and work of Jesus - including in an imperative sense - then an immediate connection arises between the one Being and compassion, between imagery and compassion. For Christians, the power of compassion arises from the mythological, imagery-rich (linguistic) gesture of the liturgical-anamnetic reconnection with the Triune God. Any attempts to differentiate, categorise and prioritise Christian thought and action leave out the original imagery of the One and fail to recognise its immanent interdependent structure.