Bogdan Szlachta

The term “political realism”, often analyzed by historians of political thought and theoreticians of international relations, becomes problematic in the era of popularizing the idea that there is an obvious dependence of “reality”, also “political reality”, from subjects that recognize it, and to an even greater extent from subjects shaping it. It is not the dissolution of reality but its dependence on the subjects that create it that makes it difficult to use old categories and raises the need for critical reflection on them. The attempt made in the paper is to show not only the consequences of abandoning old, “objectivist” approaches to reality (even if only conceptual reality), but also the reasons why on the one hand there is an embarrassment, and on the other hand the need for critical reflection, or perhaps setting new categories.

An attempt to present a few ideas conditioning the thought of the early Christians; the ideas concerning primarily the ways of conceptualizing the Church as a universal community of the faithful. The author shows the perspectives of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John; discusses the theories of Justinus, Ignatius Antiochenus, Irenaeus of Lyon, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Leon I the Great in order to expose the conditioning of birth in the first five centuries after Christ’s reflection on the foundation of unity in the community of the faithful in the East and the West (the picture of Church as the Body of Christ, including the tendencies characteristic of the so‐called Eastern Christian Hellenism); the position of Christ as its “head,” and bishops as “endowed with the Spirit,” in particular the bishop of Rome, and compared to the Apostles, who worked as a replacement of Christ.