Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Theologie: Relevanz für andere Wissenschaften; Newman, Universität; Humanwissenschaften; "wertfreie" Wissenschaft

Kurzinhalt: ... I should like to indicate a possible relevance of theology to a basic problem of the human sciences. For the human sciences may be and often are pursued simply on the analogy of the natural sciences

Textausschnitt: 141a So much for my first topic. I have indicated five major areas in which theology has been profoundly influenced or is about to be profoundly influenced by other disciplines: history, philosophy, religious studies, method, and communications. This list, of course, is not exclusive. I have selected them simply on the basis of their enormous contribution to theology or theology's pressing need of them. I now turn to my second topic: What has theology to offer? What relevance does it possess for the concerns of other disciplines? What aid can it bring towards a solution of their problems?

141b These are large and difficult questions and, perhaps, I cannot do better than go back to the basic theorem in Newman's Idea of a University. It contains two parts, one positive, the other negative. Positively, Newman advanced that human knowing was a whole with its parts organically related, and this accords with the contemporary phenomenological notion of horizon, that one's perceptions are functions of one's outlook, that one's meaning is a function of a context and that context of still broader contexts.1 On the negative side, Newman asked what would happen if a significant part of knowledge were omitted, overlooked, ignored, not just by some individual but by the cultural community, and he contended that there would be three consequences. First, people in general would be ignorant of that area. Second, the rounded whole of human knowing would be mutilated. Third, the remaining parts would endeavor to round off the whole once more despite the omission of a part and, as a result, they would suffer distortion from their effort to perform a function for which they were not designed. Such was Newman's theorem.2 In fact, theology has for some time been dropped from most university curricula. So one well may ask whether Newman's inferences have been confirmed in fact, whether there is a widespread ignorance of specifically theological areas, and whether this has resulted in a mutilation and distortion of human knowledge generally. A fair and adequate answer to these questions would have many presuppositions and would involve a very delicately nuanced survey. I cannot here expound the former nor have I been able to undertake the latter. So I must be content with having brought the matter to your attention. (Fs)

142a But it is within this context that I should like to indicate a possible relevance of theology to a basic problem of the human sciences. For the human sciences may be and often are pursued simply on the analogy of the natural sciences. When this is done rigorously, when it is contended that a scientific explanation of human behavior is reached if the same behavior can be had in a robot,1 then everything specifically human disappears from the science. The human sciences become exact by ceasing to treat of man as he is. On the other hand, when human scientists reject such reductionism, and many do,2 not only does the exactitude of the natural sciences vanish but also the human sciences risk becoming captives of some philosophy. For what the reductionist omits are the meaning and value that inform human living and acting. But meaning and value are notions that can be clarified only by painstakingly making one's way through the jungle of the philosophies. (Fs) (notabene)

143a Now the suggestion I wish to make is that theology, and in particular a theology that has carefully and accurately worked out its method, could provide the human sciences with hints or even models for tackling the type of problem I have mentioned. For theology has long worked in conjunction with philosophy. At the present time, Catholic theology is disengaging itself from Aristotle and deriving new categories from personalist, phenomenological, existential, historicist, and transcendental types of philosophic thought. It will possess a certain expertise in using the philosophies without committing itself to more of them than it intends. It is much at home with questions concerning meaning from its study of developing doctrines and its problems of demythologization. Finally, not even the natural sciences can prescind from the question of value, for the very pursuit of science is the pursuit of a value, and the contention that science should be value-free, wertfrei, if taken literally,1 implies that science should be worthless. Theology has long been aware of conflicting judgments of value, even with radical conflicts, and a successful method of theology will have a technique for dealing competently, respectfully, and honestly with this issue. (Fs)