Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Trinität; Person: Kommunikation - Unmitteilbarkeit (incommunicability); geschaffene Personen: Kommunikationsmöglichkeit durch intellektuelle Natur

Kurzinhalt: QUESTION 17/2 -- How is person related to incommunicability and to interpersonal communication?; ... there is no real communication except between things that are really distinct. Nor does incommunicability mean anything more than ...

Textausschnitt: 349b With this in mind, then, we must now consider how the divine persons and created persons are with respect to incommunicability and communication. (Fs)

First, by incommunicability we mean just that real distinction by which one that is real is not another that is real. (Fs)

Second, this incommunicability is not only not opposed to communication but in fact is necessarily presupposed by it [eg: incommunicability]. For there is no real relation except between things that are really distinct. Therefore, there is no real communication except between things that are really distinct. Nor does incommunicability mean anything more than the real distinction by which this is not that. (Fs)

Third, it is through the same real relations that the divine persons are both incommunicable and in communication. For through the real relations they are really distinct from one another and therefore incommunicable, and through the same relations they are in communication with one another, both because one relation includes another in its meaning and because the relations are really identical with the processions by which the Father communicates his essence to the Son, and the Father and the Son communicate the same essence to the Holy Spirit. (Fs)

Fourth, the divine persons are not really distinct from one another on the basis of substance or of existence or of essential operation, since in God everything is one where there is no distinction by relational opposition (DB 703, DS 1330, ND 325). (Fs)

Fifth, created persons are really distinct from one another on the basis of substance, and consequently also on the basis of existence and operation. For the substance of Socrates is not the substance of Plato, and likewise the existence and operation of one of them is not the existence and operation of the other. Created persons, therefore, are incommunicable by reason of substance, existence, and operation. (Fs) (notabene)

351a
Sixth, in the case of created persons, communication results from their intellectual nature. As for communication present in natures below the intellectual, unless it is informed by intelligence, reason, and will, such communication is more fittingly called animal or biological or bodily than personal. On the other hand, since intellectual nature is that which regards the totality of being, truth, and goodness, once there is an intellectual nature, interpersonal relationships and communications follow. (Fs)

Seventh, divine persons differ from created persons as the simple differs from the composite. For it is through the same that a divine person is being and one and subsistent and distinct and intellectual and in communication. A created person, on the other hand, is composed of intrinsic causes, so that it subsists through causes that are not subsistent. Hence, although intellectual nature denotes a relation to the totality of being and therefore to all persons, and although this relation is identical with intellectual nature itself, nevertheless a finite person that exists is not the same as the nature by which it exists, and therefore a created person subsists, whereas that relation by which it is radically related to other persons does not subsist. Otherwise, if a created person were constituted through its own intellectual nature, Christ would have assumed not only a human nature but also a human person; but this is contrary to Christian faith. (Fs)