Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Subjekt: relativer Ausdruck, viele Bedeutungen; Unterschied: zeitliches - ewiges S.; subsistente Identität bei substantiellen und akzidentellen Änderungen; Substanz: relativer Ausdruck

Kurzinhalt: QUESTION 21/1 - What is the analogy between the temporal and the eternal subject? ... Note that temporal subjects really and truly change and yet remain the same in their subsistent identity through both substantial changes (death, resurrection) and ...

Textausschnitt: QUESTION 21 - What is the analogy between the temporal and the eternal subject?1

399c That which is verified in different ways in different subjects is said to be analogous. (Fs)

399d 'Subject' is a relative term. It has as many different meanings as there are specific instances where something is a subject. (Fs)

We are dealing here not with a logical subject (anything concerning which a predication is made) nor with a recipient subject (that in which something is received, as when act is received in potency, existence in essence, form in matter, or an accident in a substance) nor with a subject of a habit (which is related to a habit as an object is to an act; in this last sense, God is said to be the subject of the science of theology). (Fs)

401a We are dealing rather with a subject that is a person and, indeed, a person as conscious. Hence 'subject' is understood as a distinct subsistent in an intellectual nature; and this subject is considered in relation to his intellectual nature. (Fs)

401b The analogy, then, about which we are inquiring is the analogy of the subject as subject; for a temporal subject as well as an eternal subject is a distinct subsistent in an intellectual nature, but a temporal subject and an eternal subject are related to their respective intellectual natures in different ways. (Fs)

An eternal subject is one that is intrinsically immutable. (Fs)
A temporal subject is one that is not only mutable but also material. (Fs)

401c Consequently, the now of an eternal subject is always the same, while the now of a temporal subject changes. For now is to a subject as time is to the motion of a subject; and therefore the now of an immutable subject is always the same, while the now of a mutable and material subject is continuously flowing.2

401d Note that temporal subjects really and truly change and yet remain the same in their subsistent identity through both substantial changes (death, resurrection) and accidental changes. For a subject is a distinct subsistent, that is, a being in the strict sense, that which is, that which has a substantial essence and other constitutive principles. Therefore, since a subsistent is really and truly constituted by its own intrinsic principles, when they change the subsistent itself really and truly changes; and yet, since the subsistent is not adequately3 the same as its constitutive principles, it remains the same in its subsistent identity even though, within certain limits, its principles may change. (Fs) (notabene)

1.Kommentar (04.11.09): Diese Beständigkeit der zeitlichen Substanz bei allen substantiellen und akzidentellen Änderungen ist Verstehensbrücke zu: Ewige Wahrheit - Geschichte; Eucharistie - Ewigkeit eines geschichtlichen Ereignisses

401e Here one must be aware of the manifold ambiguity of the term 'substance,' which denotes either (1) a substantial essence composed of this form and this matter, or (2) that which has a substantial essence, or (3) in premetaphysical knowledge, the genus or predicament that is divided into first and second substance, or (4) many other and sometimes strange things, in accord with various crude or erroneous notions of substance. And since the word 'accident' is even more ambiguous, one must continually have recourse to basic metaphysical notions whenever objections are raised premised upon a concept of substance or accident or both. (Fs) (notabene)