Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Göttliche Personen im Gerechten; Textstellen, Schrift; Gegenwart, Präsenz (verschieden Weisen); personale G. (Akt, Habitus);

Kurzinhalt: QUESTION 32/1 - Is it by way of love that the divine persons are in the just and dwell in them? ... We understand personal presence, therefore, on the basis of acts, but in such a way that the acts have their foundation in habits.

Textausschnitt: 501a With regard to this question, two points must be considered, namely, the fact itself and the understanding of the fact. As to the fact itself, the teaching of the New Testament seems quite clear. (Fs)

1 John 4.16: 'God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.'
Ibid. v. 13: 'By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.' See Galatians 4.6; Romans 8.14-17. (Fs)

Ibid. v. 8: 'Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.'

John 15.4: 'Abide in me as I abide in you ...'; v. 5: 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit ...'; v. 9: 'As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.'

John 14.15: 'If you love me, you will keep my commandments'; v. 16: 'I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him'; v. 17: 'You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you'; v. 20: 'On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you'; v. 21: 'They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them'; v. 23: 'Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love diem, and we will come to them and make our home with them.'

John 17.21: '... that they all may be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me'; v. 22: 'The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one, [v. 23] I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me'; v. 26: 'I made your name known to diem, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.'
Romans 7.17-18, 20: concerning sin as inhabiting and working [in us]. (Fs)

Romans 8.8-11. '... those who are in the flesh cannot please God.1' But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.' See also 1 Corinthians 2.16-17, 6.15-20; 13; 2 Corinthians 5.14-21; 2 Timothy 1.13-14. (Fs)

503a From these and almost countless other texts,2 there is clearly a mutual 'being in' that implies not only the uncreated gift of God but also our acts, by which we habitually keep Christ's commandments through love. St Thomas interprets this indwelling, gift, possessing, and enjoying in accord with the fact that through the grace that renders us pleasing God is in the just as the known in the knower and the beloved in the lover.3 We must determine what this means by beginning from objects of sense and gradually proceeding to higher realities. (Fs) (notabene)

503b At first glance, then, presence would seem to be spatial proximity. But one stone can be close to another, and yet we do not think of stones being present to or absent from one another. (Fs)
Second, presence would seem to be a certain psychic adaptation resulting from spatial proximity. Thus, when one animal meets another we can conclude from external signs that a total internal sensitive adaptation has occurred. But if presence is seen as this sort of adaptation, then spatial proximity is only a condition for presence. (Fs)

503c Third, although other animals apparently form only those phantasms that are grounded in immediate sense experience, humans, since they proceed by intellect to the whole of being as the to-be-known, employ the utmost freedom of imagination.4 Therefore, even apart from the proximity of an object, they can be and generally are greatly moved merely by remembering the past or by imagining some future possibility. Hence, if presence consists in a certain psychic adaptation, we must distinguish two kinds of presence in humans, one that results from spatial proximity and another that is based upon the very freedom of human sensibility. (Fs)

505a Fourth, human beings are persons not because they are animals and use their senses, but because they have an intellectual nature and operate in accordance with it. If, therefore, we are speaking about the presence of one person to another, surely we must not leave out of the discussion the operations that are proper to persons. Besides, that which is known is in the knower with an intentional existence, and what is loved is joined and united to the lover, as the poet says about his friend being 'half of my soul.' Therefore the known in the knower and the beloved in the lover are also instances of presence; and since these operations of knowing and loving, insofar as they are performed in the intellectual part of our being, are proper to persons, this presence can be called personal presence. (Fs)

505b Further, only through many acts do we arrive at true knowledge of a person; and we do not acquire knowledge through many acts without thereby acquiring also a habit of knowing; and so it is a habit that provides the foundation of that knowledge by which a person who is truly known is in the knower. (Fs)

505c Again, although one or other act of the will can constitute an impulse towards union, still without a habit of love there will not be those acts of love that manifest the union of the lovers; and so it is a habit that provides the foundation of that love by which a person who is loved is in the lover as another self. (Fs)

505d We understand personal presence, therefore, on the basis of acts, but in such a way that the acts have their foundation in habits. But if we distinguish personal presence from obsession, we must also say that this presence requires not continuous acts but only that frequency that generally results from habits. Just as someone who lives in a house does not stay in the house all the time, so someone who has another person present to himself or herself still thinks about and wills and does many different things. (Fs)