Autor: Crowe, Frederich E., S.J.

Buch: Theology of the Christian Word

Titel: Theology of the Christian Word

Stichwort: 4. Stufe in d. Entfaltung des Wortes: Frage nach der Legitimität; von Nizäa (Nicea) -> Trient

Kurzinhalt: After truth comes the question of our grounds for asserting something as true; so that one may say that the chronological leap from our third to our fourth chapter is measured by the distance between Nicea and Trent

Textausschnitt: 58b It seems to me that we may indeed hope by such a question to discover a clue, and I suggest that it will point to the "sources" of truth as the next thematization of the Christian word. That is, after truth comes the question of our grounds for asserting something as true. This is a normal sequence in daily life: If you tell a plain man something new, he is apt to ask: How do you know? It is the sequence in science: When a scientist forms an opinion on a question in his field, he is driven on to devise a crucial experiment that may settle the question on the basis of sufficient evidence. We can find a hint of this sequence in the instruction of 1 Peter: "Be always ready with your defence whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you" (3:15). As a final preliminary, we might ask whether such a step is not latent in the procedures of the Nicene council that brought the previous chapter into focus; that is, was there not a feature of the Nicene debate that was not then the central theme but was very much a background factor in the movement of history at that time, namely, the authority by which the council pronounced on Arius and defined the faith of the church? (Fs) (notabene)

60a This at any rate is the view I will propose in this chapter, that, latent in the history of Nicea, there was the question once put to Jesus: "By what authority are you acting like this? Who gave you this authority?" (Mt. 21:23), and that this question will later, very much later, become the theme that dominates the theology of the Christian word. It will indeed require centuries for the thematizing to occur; though it arises immediately in the swift atemporal unfolding of logic, it is not till the 16th century and the controversies between Lutherans and Roman Catholics that historically the theme seems to come directly into focus, so that one may say that the chronological leap from our third to our fourth chapter is measured by the distance between Nicea and Trent. Maybe we could choose a more definite symbol of the new stage in Melchior Cano's De locis theologicis, a work published posthumously in the year 1563. From Nicea to the Reformation is a long interval, and the reader may wonder, as I did, whether the next significant transition is not to be located in some other emerging question; or, if it does lie in the question of loci, whether that question did not come into focus before the 16th century. There are surely important anticipatory steps in the long history between 325 and 1563, but it seems to me, after pondering the evidence, that this thematization occurs in exact form only at that later date. Let me set forth that evidence now for the reader to examine. (Fs)