but shouldn’t always aim to be the substance of that solidarity.” inter-dependence with other creatures. So, the Christian
political task is not to overcome all
forms of dependence,
“Christian social thought begins by posing some fundamental
but to tell apart healthy from unhealthy
social questions: What concept of order, what norms of
dependencies. How does that
change the
goodness, what account of being human underlies the story of
welfare conversation we
have?”
welfare we tell? It also begins by doubting that our current
on
public policy operates on the basis of a ‘naked’ person, entering “Much political speech
the arena of market and state without being clothed already in a welfare posits that
we need to restory of what it means to be human”
turn to the
“Theologians working on welfare have chosen to emphasise the idea of
fullest concept of welfare lies firstly in an account of the life of
contricommunion from which we come and for which we are destined. bution
That life of communion, or shalom, is something we participate
as the
in partially now and has implications for the way we chose to
core for a
order our social life. It brings imperatives to care for the
new welfare
stranger, orphan, widow, to feed the hungry and so on.
settlement. The
But in all the main traditions, this understanding of
Christian tradition
the Kingdom also implies social practices of distribuhas placed a strong
tion and universal access to goods in the here and
emphasis on contribunow: we are called to improvise on new ways
tion, but I think its concept
to ensure the gleanings from the fields after
of contribution is wider than
the harvest can be gathered by those in
that in current policy debate.
need, new ways to practise jubilee in
Firstly, because theologians have
releasing debts of every kind.”
worked with the Aristotelean-Thomist
emphasis on the relationship between three
“[W]hat we seek is the
facets of justice: contributive justice,
grounds for a welfare
distributive justice, and commutative justice.
society, in which
These exist not as a list, but as inter-penetrating
mutuality,
elements of the just. To talk about contribution without
generosity,
talk