Deus-caritas as the Principle of Christian Theocentrism in J. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s Interpretation

Abstract

The meeting of the Biblical understanding of God as love and the Christian concept of theocentrism is an original feature of J. Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's theology. The present Pope shows that in fact both these truths: about God as love and about God as the center of any reality, condition each other and explain each other. It is so because God loves as He exists (in relation, One in the Trinity), creates (all the world and man in it) and saves (giving Himself to the world in Christ, in overabundance). At the same time He Himself remains for man, created in His likeness, a model to be imitated and the only just measure of love of relation (fatherhood) and generosity. This is why it is just the theocentric (heading towards God) thought – and only this – that can give hope to the world and satisfy the desires of the human heart; it is only this thought, which is ultimately love that is more powerful than death.