Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Theologie, Geschichte allgemein: Bewegung bestimmt vom Ziel her; Häresie - Dogma; Gott, Regierung: das Gute - das Böse

Kurzinhalt: But infallible definitions are certainly good, and heresies are certainly evil; and yet definitions and heresies are not just opposed to each other but also connected with each other.

Textausschnitt: 8 A Further Consideration of the Historical Movement
87c We have distinguished different movements on the basis of their different starting points and goals. Now we have to consider movement itself as it proceeds from the starting point to the goal. Since the issue concerns intellectual movement, we have first to grasp that, no matter how intelligent the people involved in such a movement may be, they cannot understand their own movement clearly and distinctly. Every movement is understood from its goal, and so those who do not understand the goal to which they are moved cannot understand the movement to this goal. Now those who are involved in an intellectual movement are being moved to knowledge as goal, and as long as they are in movement, they do not yet have the knowledge. Therefore they cannot clearly and distinctly grasp what goal they are moving toward; and if they do not so understand the goal, they do not so understand the movement toward the goal. (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (28/03/08): Das Ziel bestimmt die Bewegung ... das ist ein ganz anderer Lonergan als jener von manchen Lonergan-Experten, die kaum über eine Intentionalitäts-Analyse hinauszukommen vermögen.

89a Thus, there is nothing surprising about the fact that popes and Fathers of the church and the greatest theologians have had practically nothing to say about the development of theology and of dogma, even though they were the ones who effected the development. Some human achievements are understood before they happen, while others have first to happen before they can be understood. Every intellectual movement is of the latter kind. (Fs) (notabene)

89b Still, what happens beyond the range of every human intention is hardly beyond God's intention. The God who founded a universal church through a revelation accommodated to a particular culture has not only grasped the transcultural problem but also has prepared, inspired, and guided its solution. It will not be particularly difficult for one who attends to this divine intention to understand theological and dogmatic development from that development itself. For whatever has happened has happened under God's governance. If something good has happened, it has happened in virtue of God positively willing it; but if something evil has happened, it has happened with God simply allowing it to happen. But infallible definitions are certainly good, and heresies are certainly evil; and yet definitions and heresies are not just opposed to each other but also connected with each other. For in the realm of human intention heresy is the occasion of definitions, and definitions are the remedy for heresy, and in the realm of God's intention evil is allowed so that from the very evil there may be drawn a greater good. Thus, if individual infallible definitions are good, the whole series of definitions, that is, the very development of dogma itself, is a still greater good. If individual heresies are evil, the whole series of heresies is a still greater evil. But if evil is allowed only for the sake of a greater good, then a greater evil is allowed only for the sake of a very great good. The very great good in this case, then, is the development of dogma that proceeded under God's guiding action even before human beings gave it any thought. (Fs) (notabene)

89c That is all very general. To move to particulars, we select four examples. The first is homoousion, in which in a solemn definition the 'scriptural prior' is left behind. The second is Chalcedon's two-natures doctrine, in which in a more tacit manner the 'patristic prior' is left behind. The third is the medieval conflict between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism, from which de facto there developed the systematic shift to what is prior in itself. The fourth, finally, is the subsequent methodological uncertainty, which urges us to examine more accurately the relations between the 'scriptural prior' and the 'systematic prior.' (Fs)