Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christentum:infrastructure, suprastructure

Kurzinhalt: As infrastructure it is the dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted fashion,; the distinctiveness of Christianity lies in this suprastructure

Textausschnitt: 56/5 When the choice falls on Christianity, the following points may be noted: (71; Fs)

A classical formulation of Christian religious experience may be found in St. Paul's statement that God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us (Rom. 5:5).

As infrastructure it is the dynamic state of being in love in an unrestricted fashion, a conscious content without an apprehended object.

Its suprastructure, however, is already extant in the account of Christian origins: God sending his only Son for our salvation through death and resurrection and the sending of the Spirit.

The distinctiveness of Christianity lies in this suprastructure. To it the adherents of non-Christian religions may wish to ascribe the characterization of religious experience as being in love.
There is to Christianity an aspiration to universalism, e.g., I Tim. 2:4. Perhaps the simplest explanation of this universalism would be that (1) the salvation of the Christian is in and through charity, and (2) this gift as infrastructure can be the Christian account of religious experience in any and all men.
From this basis one may proceed to a general account of emerging religious consciousness, whether universalist, or ecumenist, or 'bottled effervescence,' or alienated by secular or ecclesiastical bureaucracy, or seeking the integration of religious awakening with a fuller development of the second enlightenment, or distorted by human obtuseness, frailty, wickedness. (71; Fs)