Autor: Stebbins, J. Michael

Buch: The Divine Initiative

Titel: The Divine Initiative

Stichwort: Dogma und Spekulation (spekulative Theologie); Unterscheidung: an it sit - quomodo sit verum

Kurzinhalt: Crucial distinction between dogma and theological speculation; dogma: propositions that believers affirm in faith to be true: speculation: efforts to explain ...

Textausschnitt: l The Distinction between Dogma and Speculation

2/1 In his writings on gratia operans Lonergan established what was to remain for him a crucial distinction between dogma and theological speculation.1 Dogma consists in propositions that believers affirm in faith to be true. But speculation, the fruit of the restless, reverent impulse that Anselm termed fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding), consists in efforts to explain, to interrelate, to reconcile the affirmations of dogma; it strives to bring to light, within the limits of human understanding, the sublime intelligibility of divinely revealed truth and its relevance to the transformation of human living. In other words, dogma and speculation are both distinct from and related to one another because they provide answers to two distinct but related kinds of questions, namely, questions that intend truth and questions that intend an understanding of truth. (3; Fs)

3/1 This distinction surfaces again in the introductory section of De ente supernaturali, where Lonergan anticipates the objection that any attempt to use the notion of the supernatural to explain the gratuity of grace must be ruled invalid because it relies on a concept that was unfamiliar both to the authors of scripture and to the patristic writers. He replies by recommending that anyone who raises the objection ought to listen to these words of Aquinas: (3f; Fs)

[A]ny act should be carried out in accordance with what suits its end. But a disputation can be ordered to two ends. For one kind of disputation aims at removing doubt about whether something is so; and in a theological disputation of this sort one must rely primarily on authorities [...] But another kind of disputation - the magisterial kind, found in the schools - aims not at removing error but at instructing the students so they may be led to an understanding of the truth which the teacher proposes; and in this case one must proceed by relying on reasons that reach to the root of the truth, and by showing the students how what is proposed is true; otherwise, if the teacher settles the question by appealing to authorities alone, the student will indeed reach certainty that something is so; but he will acquire no science or understanding and will go away empty.2 (4; Fs)

4/1 In this passage Aquinas differentiates two questions that can motivate a theological disputation. With respect to any proposition that purports to express some fact or state of affairs, one can ask whether it is so (an ita sit); the corresponding answer takes the form of an affirmation or denial of the proposition's truth. Teachers of theology engaged in a disputation oriented to this end proceed primarily by appealing to authorities whose testimony will be accepted by their students. While Aquinas acknowledges the real usefulness of this kind of disputation in situations where error needs to be dispelled or doubt removed, he warns that in other situations it may be wholly inadequate. For students may pose another kind of question, a question that arises not out of a desire to overcome doubts or settle what in fact is the case but rather out of a desire to understand some truth that is already affirmed in faith. This question, 'How is it true?' (quomodo sit verum), motivates what Aquinas calls the 'magisterial' disputation, and it is answered when one grasps the reason or reasons that in some fashion explain why the proposed truth is true. The explanation Aquinas has in mind here should not be construed as a proof, for he says explicitly that the magisterial disputation does not have as its aim the removal of error or doubt. Just what theological explanation entails will become clearer in the following pages. Here the point is to notice that Lonergan follows Aquinas in claiming that theology involves at least two kinds of activity which, though distinct, have complementary functions. (4; Fs)

5/1 Lonergan's early writings on grace have to do primarily with the second, speculative task of theology. His dissertation bears the subtitle 'A Study of the Speculative Development in the Writings of St Thomas of Aquin'; in De ente supernaturali Lonergan offers no commentary on Aquinas's remarks regarding the two kinds of disputation other than to say to his readers, 'Let us discuss, therefore, the magisterial question, not whether grace is gratuitous, but why it is gratuitous or what the root of this truth is' (DES:2). The remainder of the present chapter is devoted to determining more precisely what Lonergan means when he speaks of understanding in a specifically theological context. To view the matter as he does requires a rather lengthy - but, as I hope this study as a whole will bear out, fruitful - excursus regarding the manner in which he understands understanding in general. What will become apparent is that the distinction between dogma and speculation is neither the product of an oversubtle mind nor a clever bit of scholastic legerdemain; rather, it is a fundamental theological insight grounded in a searching analysis of the activities by which human beings come to know reality. (4f; Fs)