Autor: Mehrere Autoren: Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, 11,1

Buch: Method, Journal of Lonergan Studies, Volume 11, Number 1

Titel: Lonergan, Bernard - Analytic Concept of History

Stichwort: Geschichte - drei Kategorien: Natur, Sünde, Gnade

Kurzinhalt: 4.1 Human actions fall into three categories ... Man acts according to nature, contrary to nature, above nature. The three categories are nature, sin, grace

Textausschnitt: 4.1 Human actions fall into three categories

14a Man acts according to nature, contrary to nature, above nature. The three categories are nature, sin, grace. (Fs)

4.2 [This division is metaphysically ultimate]

Action according to human nature is intelligible to man. (Fs)
Action contrary to nature is unintelligible. (Fs)

Action above nature is too intelligible for man. (Fs)
But the intelligible, unintelligible and too intelligible are metaphysically ultimate categories: they stand on the confines of our intelligence itself. (Fs)

14b N.B. By stating that action contrary to nature is unintelligible, we do not mean that it is unknowable. Sin is a possible object of the judgment; it is not a possible object of the understanding. For the understanding is the power by which we know why a thing is what it is: but sin of its very nature has no 'why it is what it is.' Sin admits no explanation: it is a desertion of reason and so has no reason that is more than a pretense. Why did the angels sin? Why did Adam sin? There is no 'why.' We do not say there is a why which we cannot know: we say there is no why to be known. We do not say that God had not excellent reasons for permitting sin: so we do not evacuate the 'mystery of lawlessness'; indeed, we add another mystery which however is not a mystery from excess of intelligibility but from lack of it. Hence, "Let no one try to learn from me what I know I do not know; unless perhaps he learns not to know what should be known as something that cannot be known" (Augustine, The City of God 12, 7).1 (Fs)

4.3 Higher synthesis is impossible.

15a To posit a higher synthesis there must be the possibility of setting an antithesis against the thesis. But our thesis includes the intelligible to man, the simply1 unintelligible, and the too intelligible for man. Outside these categories there is nothing, and so an antithesis is impossible. (Fs)