ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we made note of the characteristics of Third Space social
ethics, which we also defined as a reformulated, post-liberal or radical Christian
Realist position. The hallmarks of this emerging position are a commitment to
partnership and reconciliation that nevertheless is prepared to adopt non-mainstream
perspectives in the service of understanding power and how it perpetuates both global
and local forms of exclusion (see John Atherton’s political economy). It is also
committed to working with plurality and diversity, but from the perspective of
solidarity and relationship rather than abstract theory, even though the reformulation
of theory and theology in the light of experience is an important ongoing task of
Christian social ethics. To that end, it is a form of social ethics that will prefer to work
with a provisional teleology that stresses the importance of establishing processes of
inclusivity in order to prioritize the solution of the problems of increased polarization
and marginalization that postmodernity has brought. However, this approach also
welcomes the opportunities and possibilities to work in new and creative partnerships
that postmodern society also brings, with the Church as part of a matrix of social,
political, economic and spiritual transformation. We have summed this up by
updating Niebuhr’s famous dictum so that by the ‘opportunities’ for growth and
transformation, as well as by the ‘fruits’ of any political or economic programme, ‘ye
shall know them.’
