Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Christentum - Realität: Tertullian (alle Wirklichkeit ist körperlich); Materialismus der Stoa

Kurzinhalt: ... while his thinking is largely a matter of simile and metaphor, nonetheless there is to his expression an undertow of Stoic materialism.

Textausschnitt: 244b Insofar as Christianity is a reality, it is involved in the problems of realism. But this involvement is twofold. There is a remote involvement in which the problems of realism have not yet appeared. There is a proximate involvement in which the problems of realism gradually manifest themselves and meet with an implicit solution. Finally, there is the explicit involvement which arises when people discuss whether or not there is a Christian philosophy. Let us consider in turn the first two of these. (Fs)
244c First, then, there is the remote involvement inasmuch as Christianity is mediated by meaning. It is mediated by meaning in its communicative function inasmuch as it is preached. It is mediated by meaning in its cognitive function inasmuch as it is believed. It is mediated by meaning in its constitutive function inasmuch as it is a way of life that is lived. It is mediated by meaning in its effective function inasmuch as its precepts are put into practice. (Fs)

244d However, the ambiguity of realism is not absent from Christianity. For the Christian world is not exclusively a world mediated by meaning. It includes as well a world of immediacy. For there is the new man in Christ Jesus, and the new man is primarily, not the product of the preacher, not the fruit of one's own free choice, but the effect of God's grace. Moreover, though the matter has been disputed in various ways, in my opinion at least God's gift of his grace occurs not unconsciously but consciously. It is not confined to some metaphysical realm so that experiencing it would be impossible. It can come as a thunderclap as when, in the prophet Ezekiel's words, God plucks out man's heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh. But more commonly it comes so quietly and gently that it is conscious indeed but not adverted to, not inquired into, not understood, not identified and named, not verified and affirmed. For, as you know, consciousness is one thing and knowledge is another. (Fs)

245a So much for the remote involvement of Christianity in the problems of realism. This involvement arises inasmuch as Christianity is a reality. It arises in two manners because, in part, Christianity is a reality in the world of immediacy, and in part, it is a reality in the world mediated by meaning. (Fs)

245b The proximate involvement of Christianity in the problems of realism arose in the developments effected in Christological thought in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. We shall take these samples of Christian thought and find them to represent three views on the nature of reality. Tertullian we shall find to represent the influence of Stoic materialism; Origen to represent a variant of Platonist idealism; Athanasius to represent the thrust to realism implicit in the fact that, in part, Christianity is in the world mediated by meaning. (Fs)

245c Tertullian was concerned to refute an otherwise unknown Praxeas who maintained that God the Father was identical with God the Son and consequently that it was God the Father who was crucified on Calvary. Against this view Tertullian recites a creed very similar to our Apostles' Creed. He insists that God the Son is both real and really distinct from God the Father. Inevitably such a contention has its philosophic underpinnings, for it presupposes some notion of reality and some notion of what is really distinct. And so while Tertullian's intention is apologetic, while his main concern is to defend the faith, while his arguments are from Scripture, while his thinking is largely a matter of simile and metaphor, nonetheless there is to his expression an undertow of Stoic materialism. (Fs)

246a Ernest Evans, in his invaluable introduction, edition, translation, and commentary on Tertullian's Treatise against Praxeas,1 remarks that it was a Stoic fancy that all reality was corporeal. Cicero maintains that Zeno held every cause and every effect to be a body. Other authorities concluded that truth, knowledge, understanding, and mind were bodies because they produced effects. So it is that Tertullian approved the Stoic view that the arts were corporeal and, since the soul was nourished by the arts, the soul too must be corporeal (De Anima, 6). He would grant that corporeal and incorporeal constituted a logical disjunction (Adv. Hermog., 35), but he would also claim that what is incorporeal also is non-existent (De Carne Christi, II; De Res. Carnis, ii, 53; De Anima, 7).2 If one were to urge that invisible spirits are real and exist, he would answer that spirits are invisible to us but nonetheless they have their own bodies and shapes by which they are visible to God alone (Adv. Prax., 7). (Fs) (notabene)

246b It is within this horizon that the peculiarities of Tertullian's Christology have to be understood. He was aware that the Greek word logos meant both the rational principle within man and, as well, the language that man speaks. He maintained that God the Father always had within himself his rational principle, his wisdom. But when the Father at the moment of creation uttered his wisdom with the command, "Let there be light," then his wisdom by being uttered became a Son. Tertullian considered the objection that an utterance is just voice and sound and smitten air intelligible in the hearing, and for the rest an empty something void and incorporeal. But Tertullian denied that anything void and empty could come forth from God, least of all the Word through whom were made all things, since nothing can be made through something void and empty (Adv. Prax., 7). (Fs)

247a Further, Tertullian was careful to distinguish his position from that of the Gnostics, such as Valentine, who spoke of emissions from the pleroma. The Valentinian emission, he claimed, was separated from its source. In contrast, the Word is always in the Father, as he says "I am in the Father" On 14: 11); and always with God, as it is written, "And the Word was with God" (Jn 1: 1); and never separate from the Father or other than the Father, because "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30). To the comment that, if there are Father and Son, then there is not just one but two, Tertullian's reply is to distinguish root and shoot, spring and stream, the sun and its beam. He points out that root and shoot are two things but conjoined, and the spring and the river are two manifestations but undivided, that the sun and its beam are two aspects, but they cohere. Whatever proceeds from something must be another beside that from which it proceeds, but is it not for that reason separate from it (Adv. Prax., 8). (Fs) (notabene)

247b While he insisted that the Son was distinct from the Father and that the Holy Spirit was distinct from both Father and Son, Tertullian also insisted that there was only one God, only one substance. His justification was that there are three not in quality but in sequence, not in substance but in aspect, not in power but in manifestation, yet of one substance and one quality and one power (Adv. Prax., 2). (Fs)

247c Although Tertullian found very happy formulae for expressing Christian beliefs, still he did not draw one conclusion that later was drawn. If the Father is God and the Son is God, then all that is true of the Father must also be true of the Son, except that the Son is not the Father. For Tertullian there were things true of the Father but not of the Son. He could write, "There was a time when there was neither sin to make God a judge nor a Son to make God a Father" (Adv. Hermog, 31). Again, he wrote, "The Father is the whole substance, while the Son is an outflow and assignment of the whole, as he Himself professes, 'Because my Father is greater than I'" (Adv. Prax., 9; Jn. [14:28]). Again, he distinguished the Father as giving the order to create and the Son executing it (Adv. Prax., 12). In a later theology such expressions were regarded as subordinating the Son to the Father; for, if the Son is God, he has all the divine attributes and, if he has not all the divine attributes, then he is not God. (Fs)