L’ultima secolarizzazione del cristianesimo: Memoria passionis. La teologia-politica di J.B. Metz al vaglio della critica alla secolarizzazione di H. Blumenberg

This article examines how J. B. Metz’s most recent works discuss Hans Blumenberg’s reflection on the secularization theory. By describing his theological proposal about a “second nominalism”, Metz refers mainly to Blumenberg, and to his attempt to interpret modernity as definitive rejection of any Christian theological absolutism, considered as a failed form of theodicy. Metz’s systematic effort is to found a “political-Theology” on a new, “anti-Augustinian” theodicy, now intended as an insoluble, paradoxical query about the absence of God before the evils of the world, to avoid the Gnostic and idealistic drifts of contemporary theology. Therefore, by establishing a parallel with the pages dedicated by Blumenberg to the “cry of the cross” (in Matthäuspassion), it will be possible to better understand Metz’s attempt to identify the kerygmatic heart of the Christian message in the memoria passionis, as an “anonymous”, dangerous memory, of a humanity that is abandoned by God, but also still believing in Him. Metz outlines the possibility of a “minimalist faith” from the dogmatic point of view, but in order to promote it as an engine of Western secularization, as a universalizing, socially revolutionary and utopian culture, stimulated by the need for social justice. Memoria passionis thus proves to be a political text, focused on the problem of secularization and on the relationship between Christian faith and universal rationality, proposing an anamnestic culture that should come out definitively of the impasse of modern opposition between modern self-affirmation and theological absolutism.