Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Christentum - andere Religionen; Gnade an alle (1. Brief an Timotheus); Christentum: keine eigentümliche Ethik (Lady Margaret)

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 155a I began by asking two questions. I have said something about the significance of religion in human living, and now I must turn very briefly to the relationship between Christianity and the other world religions. Now I have been quoting St. Paul and St. Augustine and speaking in Christian terms, but I have not been doing so in any exclusive manner, for it is not Christian doctrine that the gift of God's love is restricted to Christians. The First Epistle to Timothy tells us that it is God's will that all men should find salvation and come to knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4). From this many theologians have concluded that, since grace is necessary to salvation, grace sufficient for salvation is given to all men. That this grace does include the great grace, the gift of God's love, may be inferred, I think, from Prof. Heiler's account of the seven areas common to all the high religions. (Fs)

155b For these seven areas are just what one would expect to result from God's gift of his love. That love itself is the seventh common area. It involves love of one's neighbor, which is the sixth. It involves loving attention to God, which is prayer, and self-transcendence, which is self-denial; prayer and self-denial are the fifth common area. Further, love of God is not love of this world or of any part of it, and so it is love of a transcendent being; yet God's love is in us, more intimate than our innermost being, and so God is immanent in human hearts; the transcendence and immanence of God were the first two common areas. Finally, God's gift of his love is fulfilment of our massive thrust to self-transcendence. But we transcend ourselves by seeking the intelligible, the true, the real, the good, love. What fulfils that seeking, the God in whom we rest, must be the summit of intelligibility, truth, reality, goodness, love; and so we conclude to the third and fourth areas. It would seem that the seven areas listed by Prof. Heiler from the viewpoint of a history of religions, may be described from a Christian viewpoint as seven effects of God's gift of his love. (Fs) (notabene)

156a To come now to what is distinctive of Christianity, let me quote the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, C. F. D. Moule. In a recent series of lectures he stated: "At no point within the New Testament is there any evidence that the Christians stood for an original philosophy of life or an original ethic. Their sole function is to bear witness to what they claim as an event-the raising of Jesus from among the dead."1 What distinguishes the Christian, then, is not God's grace, which he shares with others, but the mediation of God's grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Fs)

156b In the Christian, accordingly, God's gift of his love is a love that is in Christ Jesus. From this fact flow the social, historical, doctrinal aspects of Christianity. For the gift of God's love, however intimate and personal, is not so private as to be solitary. It is given to many through Christ Jesus that they may be one in him. They need one another to come to understand the gift that has been given them, to think out what it implies and involves, to support one another in their effort to live Christian lives. (Fs)

157a Normally, the gift of God's love is not a sudden transformation of character or personality. It is like the seed planted in ground that needs to be tilled, like the sprout that needs sunlight and rain and protection from choking weeds, devouring insects, and roving animals. As Charlie Brown needs all the friends he can get, so Christians need all the help they can get. Great saints are rare, and even they call themselves vessels of clay. The need of teaching and preaching, of rituals and common worship, is the need to be members of one another, to share with one another what is deepest in ourselves, to be recalled from our waywardness, to be encouraged in our good intentions. (Fs)