Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Dogma, Dogmen: unklar, obskur; Mensch des Alltagslebens

Kurzinhalt: ... when intellect operates as just one among many diverse powers ... then less attention is focussed on the proper end of intellect

Textausschnitt: 4b It is argued that the dogmas are obscure, whereas the gospels are perfectly clear. In one sense this is true, but in another it is not. It can hardly be said that exegetes find the gospels perfectly clear: today, after almost twenty centuries, the learned articles, the monographs, the commentaries and the dictionaries, the various opinions and hypotheses, the methods and the schools of interpretation would seem to be increasing, not diminishing, in number. And if the gospels are not without obscurity, neither are the dogmas entirely lacking in clarity. Just as Euclid's Elements seem very obscure to those who have never learnt geometry, so dogmas, to the uneducated, seem very strange indeed. Yet to mathematicians the meaning of Euclid's Elements is so clear and precise that they present almost no problems of interpretation and therefore little ground for disputes among commentators or the never-ending labour of exegetes. And as the mathematician views Euclid, so the theologian views the dogmas of the Church. (Fs) (notabene)

5a The explanation is not hard to find. For when one's other powers are subordinated to one's intellect, one is apt to achieve that clarity and precision that is proper to intellect; those who have made some progress in the intellectual life, therefore, and can move with ease into the intellectual pattern of experience, find nothing more clear and precise than the meaning of a geometrical theorem or of a dogmatic definition. On the other hand, when intellect operates as just one among many diverse powers-and this applies to most people most of the time-then less attention is focussed on the proper end of intellect. In ordinary every-day living there is much that is taken for granted as being sufficiently clear; what is thus taken for granted may be described and stated in detail, from many different angles, but it is normally so tied to particular circumstances, so embedded in the intentions of individual people, that it can never be reduced to the clarity of a definition or a theorem. (Fs) (notabene)