Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Entwicklung im Verstehen 2: Trinität; religiöse Erfahrung - Wort Gottes

Kurzinhalt: ... the categories of religious experience are not the same as those contained implicitly in the word of God ... the Nicene concept of consubstantiality does not go beyond the dogmatic realism that is contained implicitly in the word of God

Textausschnitt: 129c After these preliminary remarks we may return to the question whether the Church, in the decree of the council of Nicea, went beyond the categories of religious experience to embrace a hellenistic ontology. The question, of course, has its own presuppositions: leaving out of account the word of God, it makes a disjunction between religious experience on the one hand and hellenistic ontology on the other. However, if such presuppositions are appropriate to rationalists and liberal theologians, for whom the word of God is but an archaic, not to say mythical, mode of speech, they cannot be admitted by those who accept the word of God in faith; neither can they be admitted by those historians who conceive history not as a disguised polemic but as a science that seeks to understand the mentality of another age. For what Isaiah felt compelled to announce, and Paul to preach, and Athanasius to defend, was not just a personal religious experience, but the word of God, and the categories of religious experience are not the same as those contained implicitly in the word of God. For there is no doubt that the categories derived from religious experience will contain a reference to the subject who has the experience, but "the word of God is not tied", restricted to speaking of things as related to us and unable to speak of things as they are in themselves. For one cannot exclude, a priori, from the range of God's word anything that can be affirmed or denied through human words, on the ground that a particular kind of affirmation or denial does not fit into the categories of what we call religious experience. (Fs) (notabene)

130a Moreover, the Nicene concept of consubstantiality does not go beyond the dogmatic realism that is contained implicitly in the word of God. For it means no more than this, that what is said of the Father is to be said also of the Son, except that the Son is Son and not Father. But what is said of the Father is certainly said: there are propositions that are to be believed and that, being true, correspond to reality. Equally, what is said of the Son are certain propositions that are to be believed and that correspond to reality. And if, excluding from the former set the propositions that apply to the Father, one affirms that the remainder coincide with those that apply to the Son, this further affirmation also remains entirely within the field of dogmatic realism. But in making this further affirmation one has affirmed that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. (Fs) (notabene)