Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie - Philosophie; Unmittelbarkeit, Welt der Bedeutung; Offenbarung: signate not exercite

Kurzinhalt: divine revelation comes to us through the mediation of meaning; human development more commonly is from below upwards but more importantly, as we have urged, it is from above downwards

Textausschnitt: 17/6 Contemporary Catholic theology deprecates any intrusion from philosophy. The result inevitably is, not no philosophy, but unconscious philosophy, and only too easily bad philosophy. (77; Fs) (notabene)
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19/6 For all of us have lived from infancy in a world of immediacy, a world of sights and sounds, of tastes and smells, of touching and feeling, of joys and sorrows. It was from within that world (as described by Jean Piaget) that we first developed operationally by assimilating new objects to objects already dealt with, by adjusting old operations to new occasions, by combining differentiated operations into groups, and by grouping groups in an ascending hierarchy. (77f; Fs)
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22/6 In contrast the world mediated by meaning goes beyond experiencing through inquiry to ever fuller understanding, beyond mere understanding through reflection to truth and reality, beyond mere knowing through deliberation to evaluated and freely chosen courses of action. Now mere experiencing has to be enhanced by deliberate attention. Chance insights have to submit to the discipline of the schoolroom and to the prescriptions of method. Sound judgment has to release us from the seduction of myth and magic, alchemy and astrology, legend and folktale; and it has to move us to the comprehensive reasonableness named wisdom. Most of all we have to enter the existential sphere, where consciousness becomes conscience, where the cognitional yields to the moral and the moral to the religious, where we discern between right and wrong and head for holiness or sin. (78; Fs) (notabene)
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23/6 No one is simply ignorant of these two worlds, of their different procedures, of the differences between their respective criteria. But commonly this advertence is not thematic; it is only lived. As the Scholastics put it, men possess it not signate but only exercite. And because the possession is only latent and implicit, confusions easily arise. Besides the presence of parents to their infant child, there also is the presence of the parents to one another. No one would fail to notice the difference between these two instances of presence. But when a theologian gets along with a minimal philosophy, he can tell us without further ado that he argues for a Christology of presence. When the absence of philosophy is taken as proof of sincere pastoral concern, many will be entranced by his proposal. (78f; Fs) (notabene)

24/6 But the fact is that the presence of Christ to us is not presence in the world of immediacy: "Happy are they who never saw me and yet have found faith" {John 20:29). The fact is that divine revelation comes to us through the mediation of meaning. It comes through meaning transmitted by tradition, meaning translated from ancient to modern tongues, meaning here clarified and there distorted by human understanding, meaning reaffirmed and crystalized in dogmas, meaning ever coming to life in God's grace and God's love. (79; Fs) (notabene)

26/6 But this claim, I feel, would be more attractive if it were not involved in vast oversimplifications. However much the one-way traffic law may suit a Christology of presence, it runs counter to the structure and procedures of the world mediated by meaning. Human development more commonly is from below upwards but more importantly, as we have urged, it is from above downwards. Logic would have us argue from the causa essendi no less than from the causa cognoscendi, from the sphericity of the moon to its phases as well as from the phases to the moon's sphericity. In a contemporary transcendental method one clarifies the subject from objects and one clarifies the objects from the operations by which they are known. In each of the empirical sciences one proceeds not only from the data of observation and experiment to the formulation of laws, but also from the ranges of theoretical possibility explored by mathematicians to physical systems that include empirical laws as particular cases. In theology, finally, one proceeds not only from the data of revelation to more comprehensive statements but also from an imperfect, analogous yet most fruitful understanding of mystery to the syntheses that complement a via inventionis with a via doctrinae. (79f; Fs)