Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Christologie - eine theologische Frage; : historischer Jesus - Christus der Glaubens

Kurzinhalt: Bezug zwischen den drei Arten einer Beschäftigung mit Geschichte und dem Christus des Glaubens; Gegenüberstellung: Fundamentalist - Wissenschaftler

Textausschnitt: () There is the contrast between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. There is the suggested option between a functional and an ontological Christology. There is the problem of uniting the concern of the inquiring subject with the objective wealth of scriptural scholarship. On each of these topics something must be said. (85; Fs)

44/6 The contrast between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith may be approached from the distinction already drawn of three kinds of historical writing, namely, writing that deals mainly
(1) with questions of fact, or
(2) with moral issues, or
(3) with matters pertaining to salvation.
Now different writing supposes difference in competence. A historian trained to deal with questions of fact also is competent to deal with factual issues that serve to introduce matters pertaining to the second and third style of historical writing. But this does not necessarily imply that he will possess the moral sensibility or the religious concern that will fit him for an open and adequate treatment of matters proper to these further fields. In brief, he can treat certain aspects of the Jesus of history, but he may be unequal to discerning the Christ of faith or to determining the factual presuppositions of the Christ of faith. (85; Fs) (notabene)

45/6 Similarly, a religious person will readily discern the Christ of faith but, unless he has been trained in the techniques of scientific history, he will be prone to a fundamentalist interpretation of the New Testament. For him any question of the Jesus of history, as understood by scientific history, will be a matter not of science but of unbelief and infidelity. Nonetheless, there are not only possible but also actually existing religious persons, committed to the Christ of faith, yet also fully cognizant of the nature and procedures of scientific history. They are aware that the New Testament was written by men of faith and addressed to men of faith; they are aware that the authors of the books in the New Testament expressed themselves far more in the vocabulary of their own later day than in the less evolved vocabulary possible in the time of the Jesus of history. And so they not only present the Christ of faith but also join in the new quest for the historical Jesus. (85f; Fs) (notabene)
()
47/6 It is in this coincidence that there is to be found the clue to Christological method. This we have characterized as selecting what is valid in current views without becoming involved in positions open to radical change. Now what is open to radical change, is the incipient and still tentative reconstruction of the thought and language of the Jesus of history. What can be valid in current views is based on the contemporary and so firsthand evidence we possess on the beliefs of the early church. By discerning Christian tradition in that evidence, by coming to grasp its immanent structure and intelligibility, by leaving open the questions still to be settled by the reconstruction of the Jesus of history, the theologian, I submit, will find a first and basic component in a methodically developing Christology. (86; Fs) (notabene)