Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Religion, Christentum: Funktion im menschlichen Leben; Selbsttranszendenz - Authentizität

Kurzinhalt: ... What is the function of religion in human life? By now, perhaps, the answer will be plain enough ... . I have argued that man exists authentically in the measure that he succeeds in self-transcendence, and I have found that self-transcendence ...

Textausschnitt: 152a Now I have described these four levels of man's intentional consciousness, because I wish to draw a conclusion, namely, that authentic human living consists in self-transcendence. Already on the level of experience we are going beyond ourselves in apprehending and in responding to persons and things about us. But while animals live in a habitat, man lives in a universe. He does so because he asks endless questions, because he draws on the experience and memories of his contemporaries and their predecessors, because he cannot live humanly without forming some view concerning the facts and the possibilities of human existence. With the third level of judgment there emerges a still more radical element in self-transcendence. For the judgment may be, not a simple report on what I feel, or imagine, or think, or am inclined to say, but a quite confident statement of what is or is not so. Indeed, the true statement (concerning objects) intends to state what would be so even if the subject making the statement did not exist. But self-transcendence has a still further dimension. For so far we have considered a self-transcendence that is only cognitional. Beyond it there is a self-transcendence that is real. When he pronounces a project to be worthwhile, a man moves beyond consideration of all merely personal satisfactions and interests, tastes and preferences. He is acknowledging objective values and taking the first step towards authentic human existence. That authenticity is realized when judgments of value are followed by decision and action, when knowing what truly is good leads to doing what truly is good. (Fs)

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153c God's gift of his love to us is the crowning point of our self-transcendence. St. Ausustine wrote: "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee." But that resting in God is something, not that we achieve, but that we receive, accept, ratify. It comes quietly, secretly, unobtrusively. We know about it when we notice its fruits in our lives. It is the profoundest fulfilment of the human spirit. Because it is fulfilment, it gives us peace, the peace that the world cannot give. Because it is fulfilment, it gives us joy, a joy that can endure despite the sorrows of failure, humiliation, privation, pain, betrayal, desertion. Because it is fulfilment, its absence is revealed, now in the trivialization of human life in debauchery, now in the fanaticism with which limited goals are pursued violently and recklessly, now in the despair that condemns man and his world as absurd. (Fs)

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154b I have been endeavoring to meet the question, What is the function of religion in human life? By now, perhaps, the answer will be plain enough. To live intelligently, reasonably, responsibly, an adult has to form some view of the universe, of man's place in the universe, of his role along with other men. He may do so by appealing to myth, or to science, or to philosophy, or to religion. He may do so explicitly, consciously, deliberately, or he may do so implicitly, inadvertently, without deliberation. He may confront what he beholds, or try to escape in debauchery and drugs, or rage fanatically against it, or collapse in existential despair. Such is the human condition and such the human problem. A mythic solution will do only for the immature. A scientific solution is impossible, for science methodically and systematically refuses to consider the issue. A philosophic solution is out-of-date, for philosophy has become existential; it is concerned with man in his concrete existing; and there the issue is authenticity. I have argued that man exists authentically in the measure that he succeeds in self-transcendence, and I have found that self-transcendence has both its fulfilment and its enduring ground in holiness, in God's gift of his love to us. (Fs)