Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Authentizität (kleine u. große); sekulare Welt; Sünde (Todsünde, lässliche Sünde, habituelle Sünde); operative Gnade

Kurzinhalt: authenticity is twofold; this-worldly secularists - other-worldly believers; barriers to enlightenment, barriers to loving God above all; sin: mortal, occasional; grace: operative (Aquinas), sanctifying, actual

Textausschnitt: 4. AUTHENTICITY

27/14 The question of authenticity is twofold: there is the minor authenticity of the subject with respect to the tradition that has nourished him; there is the major authenticity that justifies or condemns the tradition itself. The first passes a human judgment on persons; the second is the judgment of history and ultimately the judgment of divine providence upon traditions. (233; Fs)

28/14 As Kierkegaard asked himself whether he was a Christian, so divers men can ask themselves whether or not they are genuine Catholics or Protestants, Muslims or Buddhists, Platonists or Aristotelians, and so on. They may answer that they are, and be correct in their answers. But they also may answer affirmatively and still be mistaken. In this case there will exist a series of points in which what they are coincides with what the ideals of the tradition demand, but there will be another series in which there is a greater or less divergence. These points of difference are overlooked, whether from a selective inattention, or a failure to understand, or an undetected rationalization. What I am is one thing, what a genuine Christian or Buddhist is, is another, and I am unaware of the difference. My unawareness is unexpressed; I have no language to express what I really am, so I use the language of the tradition I unauthentically appropriate, and thereby I devaluate, distort, water down, corrupt that language. (233; Fs)

29/14 Such devaluation, distortion, corruption may occur only in scattered individuals. But it may occur on a more massive scale, and then the words are repeated but the meaning is gone. The chair is still the chair of Moses, but it is occupied by scribes and Pharisees. Traditional doctrine is still taught, but it is no longer convincing. The religious order still reads out the rules, but one may doubt that the home fires are still burning. The sacred name of science is still invoked, but when each field is divided into more and more specialties and these specialties cultivated by ever smaller groups, one may be led to ask with Edmund Husserl to what extent any significant ideal of science actually functions, indeed to what extent the ideals of science are being replaced by the conventions of a clique. If, in such eventualities, anyone were to accept a tradition as it stands, he could hardly do more than authentically realize unauthenticity. (233; Fs)

30/14 Truly enough, the modern world is in advance of its predecessors in its mathematics, its natural science, its human science, and the wealth and variety of its literary potentialities. But it was on the basis of his trust in God that modern man had erected his states and cultures, yet more and more he has opted to sustain them by an appeal to man's complete autonomy. He would acknowledge man's intelligence, his rationality, his responsibility, but he would not acknowledge more. For the consistent secularist to speak of God is, at best, irrelevant; to turn to God-except by way of a political gesture or an emotional outlet-is to sacrifice the good that man both knows and, by his own resources, can attain. (234; Fs) (notabene)

31/14 Such has been the mounting challenge to religion and, since it provides a paradigm for its many parallels, it seems worthwhile to analyze its elements. I shall first indicate ambiguities that arise when a people, sharing a common language, divides into this-worldly secularists and other-worldly believers. For the two groups will differ both in the realities and in the values they acknowledge. The otherworldly believers hold that God exists and is operative in religious living; the this-worldly secularists do not. Again, the other-worldly believers acknowledge other-worldly values, and this acknowledgment influences in varying degrees their this-worldly valuations; but the this-worldly secularists avoid such a complication for they acknowledge no other-worldly values and so are free to concentrate on the values of this world. (234; Fs) (notabene)

32/14 Next, a person's horizon is the boundary of what he knows and values. There follows a notable difference in the horizons of this-worldly secularists and other-worldly believers. For what we know and how we arrange our scale of values determines our horizons, and our horizons determine the range of our attention, our consideration, our valuations, our conduct. (234; Fs)

33/14 Further, there are two main components in a person's horizon. There is the main stem: what we know and what we value. There are extensions through the persons we know and care for, since knowing them and caring for them involve us in what they know and care for. (234; Fs)

34/14 Moreover, such extensions may be mutual, and then the horizon of each is an extension of the horizon of the other. They may interrelate all the members of a group, and as such a cohesive group increases in size, there is a need for organizing-for distinguishing, within the whole, smaller groups comparable to the organs of a living body. (234f; Fs)

35/14 Horizons develop both in their main stem of knowing and caring and in their extensions through involvement in the knowing and caring of others. Development in the main stem increases the depth and range of the consequent horizon; and this increase leads to a development in the extensions, since our knowing others and our concern for them involve some sharing in the objects they know and care for. Moreover, inasmuch as among such objects there will be persons that know and care for their own circle, there will result a mediation of involvement at a second remove. Finally, developing horizons open the way to reciprocity on the part of those with whom one has become involved. (235; Fs)

36/14 There are many ways, familiar and perhaps unfamiliar, in which people come to know and care for others. But I think it best to omit the familiar and to avoid the obscurity of the unfamiliar. What seems more pressing is to turn to three things: barriers, breakthroughs, and breakdowns. Barriers block development. Breakthroughs overcome barriers. Breakdowns undo past achievement.1

37/14 We have already illustrated the notion of a barrier in contrasting this-worldly secularists and other-worldly believers. The realities they acknowledge and the values they esteem diverge, and for St. Paul that divergence is extremely grave: (235; Fs)
[...] only the Spirit of God knows what God is. This is the Spirit that we have received from God, and not the spirit of the world, so that we may know all that God of his own grace gives us. [...] A man who is unspiritual refuses what belongs to the Spirit of God; it is folly to him; he cannot grasp it, because it needs to be judged in the light of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:11-14).

38/14 Such was the message of St. Paul to the Corinthians almost two millennia ago. While I think it relevant to an account of the barrier between secularists and believers, I must recall what I have already said tonight, that people may accept in good faith mistaken views that have become traditional, and that even the original mistake would hardly have occurred without the scandal given by otherworldly believers. (235; Fs)

39/14 In this campaign one does well to turn to John Henry Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent and, specifically, to the passages in which he distinguishes notional apprehension from real apprehension, and notional assent from real assent. For the barriers to enlightenment are merely notional apprehension and merely notional assent, when we are content with understanding the general idea and give no more than an esthetic response that it is indeed a fine idea. On the other hand, the attainment of enlightenment is the attainment of real apprehension, real assent, and the motivation to live out what we have learnt. It is brought about through regular and sustained meditation on what it really means to be a Christian, a real meaning to be grasped not through definitions and systems but through the living words and deeds of our Lord, our Lady, and the saints, a meaning to be brought home to me in the measure that I come to realize how much of such meaning I have overlooked, how much I have greeted with selective inattention, how much I have been unwilling to recognize as a genuine element in Christian living. So gradually we replace shallowness and superficiality, weakness and self-indulgence, with the imagination and the feelings, with the solid knowledge and heartfelt willingness of a true follower of Christ. (236; Fs)

40/14 Both in the process of purification and in the process of enlightenment there are times when we resemble the two disciples on the Pope John's road to Emmaus before the stranger joined them on their journey, when they recalled with dismay how high had been their hopes before Jesus was scourged, condemned, and crucified; and there are other times when we resemble the disciples as they listened to the stranger's account of all that the scriptures had foretold and, as they later remarked, "Did we not feel our hearts on fire as he talked with us on the road [...]?" (Luke 24:32). Such times of spiritual dismay and spiritual elation have been interpreted as the language used by the inner teacher in his converse with our hearts. And if the elation is accompanied by a willingness to do good that hitherto we were unwilling to do, then it is the sign of a grace that Aquinas named operative, a grace foretold by Ezekiel with the words: "I will.[...] put a new spirit into them; I will take the heart of stone out of their bodies and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will conform to my statutes and keep my laws. They will become my people, and I will become their God" (Ezek. 11:19-20). (236f; Fs)

41/14 Both in the Old Testament and in the New there are given the two commandments. (237; Fs)

Then one of the lawyers [...] asked him, 'Which commandment is first of all?' Jesus answered, 'The first is, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God is the only Lord; love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." The second is this: "Love your neighbour as yourself.'' There is no other commandment greater than these' (Mark 12:28-31; cf. Deut.6:4-5, Lev. 19:18).

42/14 A real apprehension of these commandments and a real assent to their binding force for each of us are given us by sanctifying grace, for then "God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us" (Rom.5:5). But even then we must watch and pray that we enter not into temptation, for beyond sanctifying grace we also need actual graces, even operative actual graces, that take us through the processes of purification and enlightenment towards the state of union with God. (237; Fs)

43/14 I began by recalling how Pope John XXIII desired the church to leap forward in its apostolic mission by preaching to mankind the living Christ. I spoke in turn of the meaning, the function, and the relevance of a pastoral council. I ended by speaking of authenticity, of the genuine fruit of religious education and of pastoral ministry. Since that fruit fundamentally comes through God's grace, since that grace is given in answer to prayer, I would conclude by begging you one and all to pray that this Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry, and all similar undertakings, prove to be instruments that bountifully promote the realization of Pope John's intentions. It is a prayer that the members of Christ's body on earth bring forth fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. (237f; Fs)

A lecture given twice at Boston College, 1981, first in June, during the eighth annual Lonergan Workshop, then in July, during the tenth-anniversary celebration of The Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry. To be published in the proceedings of that celebration and in a future volume of Lonergan Workshop.