Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erlösung - Sünde; komplexe Intelligibilität (imaginäre Zahlen)

Kurzinhalt: Sin is not something that is understood.... It is the irrationality of a rational creature. ... transcendent intelligibility of God meeting the unintelligibility of sin

Textausschnitt: 3.4 A Complex Intelligibility

12a Again, the redemption is not a simple but a complex intelligibility; and I use the word 'complex' in the sense that the mathematician speaks of 'complex numbers.' The mathematician uses not only rational but also irrational numbers, not only real numbers but also imaginary numbers. And everything goes well, provided he does not mix them up, provided he does not consider that they are all numbers in exactly the same sense and manner. Similarly with regard to the redemption, we must not think of it as something that will fall into a single intelligible pattern. There is in this world the unintelligibility of sin. Sin is not something that is understood. It is not something for which you can give a reason. Why did the angels sin? Why did our first parents sin? Strictly, if there were a reason why, not simply a pretense or an excuse, it would not have been a sin. Sin represents a surd. It is the irrationality of a rational creature. It is not something that arises because God wants it to arise. To think of it that way is to think of it as though it were something intelligible, something that admitted an explanation. Everything that is, everything that is intelligible, has an explanation. But sin is not something that is; it is a failure. It is not something that is intelligible; it is an irrational. And so St Thomas can say that God in no manner whatever wills the evil of guilt, that is, the pure element that is simply sin and nothing more. God in no manner whatever wills sin, and only indirectly does God will the evil of natural defects or of penalties, punishments. The divine will regards the good. The divine will permits sin. The divine will, as a consequence of willing an orderly universe, indirectly wills the accidents of natural defect and the natural consequences of sin. Consequently, in thinking about the redemption one must make an effort - and it requires an effort - to avoid the tendency to think that an explanation casts everything one can think of into a single intelligible pattern. It does that insofar as what one is considering is intelligible, has a reason. But the redemption regards sin, it presupposes sin, and it is the transformation of the situation created by sin. Consequently, in a consideration of the redemption one has to have in mind the existence not of a simple intelligibility but of the transcendent intelligibility of God meeting the
unintelligibility of sin. (Fs)