Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: 3 Irrtümer, Synthese; Futurismus, Archaismus (Fundamentalismus); Vatikan I

Kurzinhalt: There are three ways of making the transition to the systematic without achieving a synthesis. First, ... In parallel fashion, when synthesis is lacking there are three ways of going astray on the positive side

Textausschnitt: 95c There are three ways of making the transition to the systematic without achieving a synthesis. First, the philosophical handmaid can be so dominant that theologians are occupied at great length with questions that at root are philosophical. Second, theologians can attend to both speculative and positive issues but achieve, not a joining and a synthesis, but just a juxtaposition and an aggregate. Third, system itself can be so exaggerated that positive elements become superfluous, since they can be demonstrated. The first tendency can be seen quite clearly in the decadence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it also troubled later theology. The second tendency occurs when apologetic exigencies combine with philosophical domination. The third tendency appeared in nineteenth-century semirationalism, whose short life was ended by the First Vatican Council. (Fs)

95d In parallel fashion, when synthesis is lacking there are three ways of going astray on the positive side. The first is an archaism that tempts people to reject at least the later syntheses and return to a more ancient, simple, pure stage of Christianity. The second is a futurism that tempts people to bypass earlier and later syntheses alike and to accept some new and as yet unheard-of overview of everything. The third is the tendency of those whose minds are so exhausted by a plethora of weighty theories that they settle for certitude and exclude all understanding. (Fs)

95e Now the sixteenth-century Reformers and the later Pietists extolled a scriptural archaism; the followers of Baius and Jansenius wanted a patristic and Augustinian archaism; nor are theologians of our own age immune from the same tendency, who so praise biblical or patristic theology that they almost seem to prefer to omit all later theology. Next, futurism is seen in liberals and modernists, who suggest that not only Catholics and Protestants but also the Fathers of the church and the New Testament authors themselves were mistaken regarding the true nature of the Christian religion. Finally, the third error consists, not in the division of labor within positive studies, which is quite proper, nor in insisting on a solid analytic foundation for the way of synthesis, which is also quite proper, but in so highly esteeming the necessity and solidity of the positive path as to end up with a positivistic exclusion of speculation. (Fs)

97a The understanding of mysteries taught by the First Vatican Council is opposed to all of these aberrations. Because there is an understanding of mysteries, there is a strictly theological understanding. Because there is a strictly theological understanding, there are also concepts that express this understanding and principles that will be uttered in these concepts. Because there are concepts and principles that originate from a strictly theological understanding, the proper object of theology, its proper method, and its proper field of activity are vindicated. (Fs)

97b Once these points are grasped, a stable foundation is provided for resisting the domination of philosophy. On the same basis, the notion that theology is a mere aggregate, as if theology had no principles of its own and consisted only in conclusions drawn from revelation alone or from revelation and philosophy, is ruled out. And the positivistic tendency to neglect all understanding is also ruled out. (Fs)

97c Again, since this theological understanding increases age after age, there are ruled out both the archaism that regards later understanding as illegitimate and the anachronism that imagines that later understanding existed much earlier than in fact it did. (Fs)

97d Moreover, because declarations and definitions of the church are protected from error through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the theological understanding that truly enters into these declarations and definitions will not change.1 And so the figments that we have named 'futurism' are ruled out. (Fs)

97e Finally, since theological understanding is imperfect, rationalism and semirationalism are also ruled out. (Fs)