Radicalidade da vocação cristã e comunhão eclesial: interpelações das comunidades paulinas

Our starting point is an affirmation by Romano Penna, an important specialist in the world of Pauline studies. He states, “The ex-Pharisee of Tarsus helps us all to purify the concept of Christianity.” Is this true? Can Paul’s thinking serve as a guide to a revisitation and prophetic reconfiguration of current Christian morphology? Does Paul indeed provide us with a set of interpellations that are valid not only “for all seasons” of the ecclesial path, but for the age in which we ourselves live? Well now, if we had to explain why Penna’s observation seems to us positively instigating, we would put forward four fundamental challenges: the challenge to receive metamorphosis as a grammar of belief; the challenge to build a Church consigned to Christ, more than to itself; the challenge of taking the community nature of Faith seriously; the challenge of living in a state of renewed beginning.