Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Christentum - Realität: Tertullian, Origines, Athanasius -> 3. Möglichkeit; ens per verum innotescit

Kurzinhalt: But there is a third possibility, in which one's apprehension of reality is in the world mediated by meaning, where the meanings in question are affirmations and negations, that is, answers to questions for reflection.

Textausschnitt: 249b Let us now briefly revert to our discussion of the ambiguity of realism. There we distinguished two different meanings of the immediate object of our knowledge. There was the object in the world of immediacy and the object in the world mediated by meaning. The first is immediately experienced in the data of sense or of consciousness. The second is immediately intended in the questions we raise but mediately known in the correct answers we reach. We now must add that the questions we raise are of different kinds. There are questions for intelligence that ask, What? Why? How? There are questions for reflection that ask whether or not this or that really is so. There are questions for deliberation that ask whether or not this or that course of action is truly good. (Fs)

250a Now it would seem that Tertullian's Christology and, specifically, his identification of the incorporeal with the non-existent, are connected with an apprehension of reality in terms of the world of immediacy. Again, it would seem that Origen's Christology pertains to the world mediated by meaning, where the meanings in question are ideas, that is, answers to questions for intelligence. But there is a third possibility, in which one's apprehension of reality is in the world mediated by meaning, where the meanings in question are affirmations and negations, that is, answers to questions for reflection. It is this third view that finds expression in the Scholastic tag, ens per verum innotescit, reality becomes known through knowing what is true. It is this third view that we find in Christian preaching and teaching and more generally, in Christianity as a reality mediated by meaning. Finally, it is this third view that is implicit in conciliar pronouncements and particularly in the canons to the effect, if anyone says so and so, then let him be anathema. What is said is all-important to a group whose reality, in part, is mediated by meaning. (Fs) (notabene)

250b The origins, then, of Christian realism are twofold. Their root lies in Christian preaching and teaching and in local, regional, and ecumenical gatherings that sought to control preaching and teaching. But that root remained implicit for a long time. Tertullian wrote against Praxeas because he considered Praxeas' teaching to be mistaken and pernicious. Origen rejected Stoic materialism and opted for Platonism because that enabled him to treat of things of the spirit. But it was the Council of Nicea and the ensuing controversies that provoked from Athanasius, along with his other clarifications, the fundamental little rule that all that is said of the Father also is to be said of the Son except that the Son is Son and not Father.1 (Fs)