Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Moderne Wissenschaft (Kultur) - Theologie; Krise der Theologie (5 Gründe; Lonergans persönliche Meinung); Dogma: Schwierigkeit der Begründung

Kurzinhalt: ... one would expect it to enable modern theology to speak of God all the more fully and effectively ... But a new integration ... is not yet plainly in sight

Textausschnitt: 108b But if increasing specialization prevents modern science from speaking of God, one would expect it to enable modern theology to speak of God all the more fully and effectively. However, while I hope and labor that this will be so, I have to grant that it is not yet achieved. Contemporary theology and especially contemporary Catholic theology are in a feverish ferment. An old theology is being recognized as obsolete. There is a scattering of new theological fragments. But a new integration-and by this I mean, not another integration of the old type, but a new type of integration-is not yet plainly in sight. Let me describe the situation briefly under five headings. (Fs)

109a First, the modern science or discipline of religious studies has undercut the assumptions and antiquated the methods of a theology structured by Melchior Cano's De locis theologicis. Such a theology was classicist in its assumptions. Truth is eternal. Principles are immutable. Change is accidental. But religious studies deal meticulously with endless matters of detail. They find that the expressions of truth and the enunciations of principles are neither eternal nor immutable. They concentrate on the historical process in which these changes occur. They bring to light whole ranges of interesting facts and quite new types of problems. In brief, religious studies have stripped the old theology of its very sources in Scripture, in patristic writings, in medieval and subsequent religious writers. They have done so by subjecting the sources to a fuller and more penetrating scrutiny than had been attempted by earlier methods. (Fs)

109b Secondly, there is the new demythologization of Scripture. The old demythologization took place at the end of the second century. It consisted in rejecting the Bible's anthropomorphic conception of God. It may be summed up in Clement of Alexandria's statement: "Even though it is written, one must not so much think of the Father of all as having a shape, as moving, as standing or seated or in a place, as having a right hand or a left."1 Now to this old philosophic critique of biblical statement there has been added a literary and historical critique that puts radical questions about the composition of the gospels, about the infancy narratives, the miracle stories, the sayings attributed to Jesus, the accounts of his resurrection, the origins of Pauline and Joannine theologoumena. (Fs)

109c Thirdly, there is the thrust of modern philosophy. Theologians not only repeat the past but also speak to people of today. The old theology was content, for the most part, to operate with technical concepts derived from Greek and medieval thought. But the concreteness of modern science has imposed a similar concreteness on much modern philosophy. Historicism, phenomenology, personalism, existentialism belong to a climate utterly different from that of the per se subject with his necessary principles or processes and his claims to demonstration. Moreover, this movement of philosophy towards concreteness and especially to the concreteness of human living has brought to light a host of notions, approaches, procedures, that are proving very fertile and illuminating in theology. (Fs)

110a Fourthly, there is the collapse of Thomism. In the thirties it seemed still in the ascendant. After the war it seemed for a while to be holding its ground. Since Vatican II it seems to have vanished. Aquinas still is a great and venerated figure in the history of Catholic thought. But Aquinas no longer is thought of or appealed to as an arbiter in contemporary Catholic thought. Nor is the sudden change really surprising. For the assumption on which Thomism rested was typically classicist. It supposed the existence of a single perennial philosophy that might need to be adapted in this or that accidental detail but in substance remained the repository of human wisdom, a permanent oracle, and, like Thucydides' history, a possession for all time. In fact, there are a perennial materialism and a perennial idealism as well as a perennial realism. They all shift and change from one age to the next, for the questions they once treated become obsolete and the methods they employed are superseded. (Fs) (notabene)

110b Fifthly, there is a notable softening, if not weakening, of the dogmatic component once so prominent in Catholic theology. Nor can this be described as simply the correction of a former exaggeration, the advent of charity, ecumenism, dialogue, in place of less pleasant attitudes. The new philosophies are not capable of grounding objective statements about what really is so. (Fs)

111a Further it is not only dogmas that are at stake, for it is not only dogmas that lie outside the range of a modern science. Not only every statement about God but also every statement about scientific method, about hermeneutics, about historiography, supposes a reflective procedure quite distinct from the direct procedures sanctioned by the success of modern science. (Fs)
111b To conclude, Catholic theology at present is at a critical juncture. If I may express a personal view, I should say that the contemporary task of assimilating the fruits both of religious studies and of the new philosophies, of handling the problems of demythologization and of the possibility of objective religious statement, imposes on theology the task of recasting its notion of theological method in the most thoroughgoing and profound fashion. (Fs)