Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Epilog, Zusammenfassung

Kurzinhalt: It enables us also to bring what we know about the Holy Trinity into an intelligible unity bodth with philosophical conclusions about God and with other theological treatises.

Textausschnitt: 523a We have been considering the part of trinitarian theology that aims at an understanding of truths that are certain. Thus, the order we have followed is not one that generates certainties but one that enlarges our understanding. (Fs)

Hence, we have presupposed as having been investigated, determined, and proven in the way of analysis, and needing no repetition here, whatever conclusions have been arrived at from the teaching of Christ and the church, from scripture, from the Fathers, and from the common opinion among theologians. Our task, therefore, has not been to establish that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are (1) really distinct from one another, (2) numerically one God and therefore (3) consubstantial, and (4) distinct from one another by their relations alone, which (5) are founded on origins or emanations (6) by generation, that is, in accordance with intellect, and (7) by spiration, in accordance with will. Nor has it been our procedure to follow the order that begins from the missions as related in the New Testament so as to arrive at the psychological analogy. We have had another objective, that is, taking for granted those doctrines that are not disputed among Catholics, to seek that fruitful understanding of them commended by the [First] Vatican Council, proceeding according to an order in which we deferred consideration of whatever would have required a prior understanding of something else. (Fs) (notabene)

523b If we wish now to view the work as a unified whole, we discover that there is one fundamental notion in virtually all of it. Just as in the material objects of sense perception there is a discernible order, so also there is an order within our intellectual and rational consciousness. After abstracting from it the imperfections of a finite nature and transferring it by analogy to God, this consciously rational order, in which volitional acts are ordered through intellectual judgments and these intellectual judgments are ordered through grasping the evidence for things, produces some understanding of the two processions in God and the four real relations, three of which are really distinct from one another. And if to this we add the fact that there is nothing real in God that is not God, it is clear that these relations are subsistent, and therefore that there are three divine persons, each of whom is conscious both of himself and of each of the others. Besides, since many things in an order constitute a unity and a good, we further conclude both to the perfection proper to the three divine persons and also to the perfection they communicate to us in that good of order which is the kingdom of God, the body of Christ, the church, and the economy of salvation. (Fs) (notabene)

525a This understanding, however imperfect, analogical, and obscure, is the principal fruit of the way of synthesis. Indeed, it enables us to hold the Catholic doctrine on the divine persons so firmly that we speak about these persons with alacrity, ease, and delight. It enables us also to bring what we know about the Holy Trinity into an intelligible unity bodth with philosophical conclusions about God and with other theological treatises. Moreover, it frees us from interposing the obstacle of subjective slow-wittedness when we are attempting to reach up to the mind of scripture, of the Fathers, and of theologians. Lastly it enables us, in judging contemporary intellectual movements, to detect more quickly what is false and apprehend more easily what is true. (Fs)