ABSTRACT
The relationship between critical theory and theology can be correctly determined only when we take into account the challenge that confronts both of them in our historical situation. It is a situation in which it has become more and more apparent that certain trends within our social-cultural formation threaten us. It is a situation in which-to put it a bit dramatically-humanity as a whole has become the object of our political decisions and of our economic activity, yet in which it is not yet the subject of its activity: that we would have available regular forms of public decision making or even have the necessary insights at our disposal that would be adequate to the size of the problems. This may meanwhile appear as something banal. But it is still our situation, and nothing is more resistant to analysis than a banality or something that has been declared a banality.
