Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Göttliche Hervorgänge; Emanation; Licht der Vernunft: geschaffene Teilnahme am ungeschaffenen Licht - Prinzipien (Identität, Widerspruch) - weitere Bestimmung: Materie, Form (Verstehen), Akt; Thomas

Kurzinhalt: The fundamental and utterly general light is our created participation in uncreated light, the source in us that gives rise to all our wonder, ...

Textausschnitt: 139a If we have adverted to all of this in our own internal experience, we can go on to a conception of intellectual emanation. For we are conscious in two ways: in one way, through our sensibility, we undergo rather passively what we sense and imagine, our desires and fears, our delights and sorrows, our joys and sadness; in another way, through our intellectuality, we are more active when we consciously inquire in order to understand, understand in order to utter a word, weigh evidence in order to judge, deliberate in order to choose, and exercise our will in order to act. Accordingly, in this active intellectual consciousness we can distinguish a general fundamental light and further determinations of the same light. The fundamental and utterly general light is our created participation in uncreated light, the source in us that gives rise to all our wonder, all our inquiry, all our reflection. Again, we attribute to this light those most general principles that contain no determination drawn from experience; for example, the principles of identity, noncontradiction, and sufficient reason, or the precept that good must be done and evil must be avoided. Still, what is consciously and intellectually operative in us not only consists in this general light, but is further determined by our own conscious acts. Sensible data determine us after the manner of matter; acts of understanding determine us after the manner of form; grasping evidence, judging, and deliberating further determine us after the manner of second act as intellectually, rationally, and morally conscious and as consciously active and functioning. (Fs)

139b Bearing all this in mind, let us listen once more to St Thomas: 'Whenever we understand, by the mere fact that we do understand, something proceeds within us, which is the conception of the thing understood, issuing from our intellective power and proceeding from its knowledge.'1 Accordingly, when we understand and by the very fact that we understand, from our intellective power, which is the general light of intellectual consciousness, and from the knowledge contained in the act of understanding that adds a determination to the general light, there proceeds within our intellectual consciousness a conception or definition of the reality understood. Similarly, when we grasp that the evidence is sufficient, by the very fact that we grasp it, and from the exigency of intellectual light as determined through that grasp, there proceeds within our intellectual consciousness either a true affirmation or a true negative assertion. Similarly again, when we judge some good as obligatory, by the very fact that we so judge, through our intellectuality, our rationality, we spirate an act of will. (Fs)