SOTERIOLOGIE, commentaire de texte – Extrait de la Science de la Croix d’Édith Stein

Abstract

Soteriology is that part of theology which aims to study the question of salvation in Jesus Christ. From what, how, by whom, why are  we saved? It is impossible to find answers that are intellectually satisfying and that do not turn into an inevitable aporia. What Jesus  says through his life, theologians are reduced to explain it in endless encyclopaedias. The Cross resolves this difficulty by forbidding,  by its scandal and its madness, to reduce to a human sophism what is more a matter of mystical experience, of encounter and  relationship, than of knowledge. Edith Stein introduces us to this mystery in the Science of the Cross. Seeking harmony between  rationality and mystical experience, her work finds all its meaning in its incompleteness. She was deported before she finished it, but  she actually finished it with her own life, her death in the image of the crucified one and the lived announcement that every cross  initiates the ineluctable work of the definitive victory of the Resurrection.