Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Kriterien für theologisches Verstehen: menschliche Natur, Ursprung der Offenbarung; Erbsünde, intellektuelle Konversion; Autorität der Kirche

Kurzinhalt: ... the two supreme criteria by which the truth of a theological understanding has to be judged. One has to do with human nature ...

Textausschnitt: 57d Twelfth, we still have not mentioned the two supreme criteria by which the truth of a theological understanding has to be judged. One has to do with human nature, the other with the divine source of revelation. (Fs)

57e When we speak of human nature, we must not overlook the wound of original sin. Because of it human beings, immersed in sensible things, more or less create for themselves their own special kind of problems. The questions and the solutions that theology presents1 are generally outside the horizon of wounded human beings, to whom such things seem to wander far from reality, from serious living, and from any kind of usefulness. What people want and need, they say, is completely different from what they are taught and almost feel compelled to parrot. The existential problem is this: people have to emerge from the sensible, so as not only to say but also to agree and, as it were, to feel that the real becomes known not in the 'given' but in the 'true.' But if this existential problem is transferred to the objective level, if it is presupposed that the issue is not the intellectual conversion of the subject but theology itself, a very serious deviation, easily finding large numbers of adherents, has begun. (Fs) (notabene)

59a As for the divine source of revelation, it is clear that the meaning of any truth has to be measured by the understanding of the one from whom the truth proceeds. A revealed truth proceeds from divine understanding and therefore it is measured only by divine understanding. Moreover, since here on earth God has entrusted divine revelation to none other than the church to guard it faithfully and declare it infallibly, it is clear that theologians cannot rely ultimately on their own wisdom but ought always to acknowledge that the church's teaching alone is determinative of the meaning of revealed truth and of sacred dogmas (DB 1788, 1800, 1818; DS 3007, 3020, 3043; ND 217, 136, 139). (Fs) (notabene)

59b Theologians who, as the very nature of the material demands, promptly and gladly submit their own wisdom to that of the church will find in so doing a remedy for the disease, the wound of sin discussed in the preceding point. (Fs) (notabene)