Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Tod - Gericht; visio beatifica, Himmel, Schau Gottes: philosophisches Problem: Subjekt - Objekt (Konfrontation, Platon - Assimilation, Aristoteles, Thomas); Freiheit; "quasi-formal": göttliche Natur : individuelle Seele = Form : Materie

Kurzinhalt: ... the Thomistic conception is much more difficult to comprehend, because knowledge by assimilation with the form is not really possible when the form is the divine essence. How can the intellect assimilate the divine form without becoming God?

Textausschnitt: DEATH AND JUDGMENT

182a One of the most difficult things to grasp about death is its definitive character. A traditional theology viewed death as initiating a divine judgment on our life, a definitive act that determined for the rest of eternity what our final state of blessing or suffering would be. However, we might ask why death creates such a definitive moment for us? Rahner poses the question thus:

Does God turn death into judgment because man himself in and through his death determines his own final condition, or does judgment follow death, because God has so ordained that it is this judgment, different in itself from death, and final happiness or unhappiness bestowed by God in this judgment, which brings about the finality of the personal attitude which death by itself could not produce?1
Clearly the notion of a final option adopts the first of these alternatives, but Rahner acknowledges that faith itself does not provide an answer to the question posed. What faith does tell us is that death does bring about something definitive in terms of any ongoing relationship to God and to the world. (Fs)

182b This definitive character of death cuts across any simpleminded view of death as just a transition from one state to the next, where things carry on much as before. According to the position developed above, death is not transition; it is rupture, rupture from the world, from personal relationships and perhaps even from God. Any reestablishment of relationship must come not from us but from God, as a gift of divine grace, doing what human nature as disembodied cannot do for itself Our response to such an offer is definitive because of the impact that such an unmediated experience of the divine has on our human freedom, an issue we can now consider in terms of heaven and the nature of the beatific vision. (Fs)

HEAVEN AND THE BEATIFIC VISION

182c Ask any Christians what they think life will be like in heaven and they probably will not be able to say very much. While our Christian imagination brims full of images of hell, heaven is much more difficult to envision. Even in the Divine Comedy of the great poet Dante, we find that his Inferno is much more interesting and popular than his Paradiso. Various saints warn us with images of hell, but not many attract us with images of heaven. The same could be said of the Scriptures, which are far more fulsome on hell than on heaven. Heaven is being "with Christ"; it is a banquet, a final consolation, a new heavenly city where God himself is the Temple. In more popular imagery, heaven is depicted as clouds and harps with little positively to appeal or attract us. (Fs)

183a The theological problem of heaven is made more acute by Christian belief in the beatific vision.2 Heaven is not just some earthly paradise where every material human want is fulfilled; heaven is the abode of God, the place where we see God face to face. Two scriptural verses stand out in this regard:

Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12)

183b These verses speak of an intimacy of divine presence that goes beyond any human experience of earthly fulfillment. However, they also create a problem for theological understanding, since any account of such an immediate vision of God is full of problems that remain to be overcome. The main problem here lies in our basic anthropology. We have already contrasted Platonic and Aristotelian anthropologies on the question of the relationship between body and soul. Now we can see a further consequence of the differences between these two positions. (Fs)

For the Platonic conception of the soul/intellect in relation to its object, the basic position is one of confrontation of the knower with the known. The image behind this conception is ocular-the eye presents us with an "object" that is "out there" to be seen. The object confronts our senses as something other than ourselves. Such a position takes the "subject/object" distinction as primary and given in consciousness. The object stands over and against the subject. This position is "common sense" for most people, but it is not the position found in Aristotle and Aquinas. (Fs)

183c For both Aristotle and Aquinas the relationship between subject and object is one not of confrontation but of assimilation. What proves the spirituality of the soul/intellect is the fact that it is independent of materiality; what shows this is its ability to "become" what it knows, at least in an intentional sense. When we understand something, we do so because our intellect becomes the thing as understood. The understanding is "in us," not just in the object. So we know anything by assimilating into ourselves the form or intelligibility of the thing understood. In this account the subject/object distinction is not something given and immediate but something constructed through our growing knowledge of the world. Now while the Platonic conception of knowledge can envisage the beatific vision in terms of eternal contemplation of the divine essence on some type of analogy of sight, the Thomistic conception is much more difficult to comprehend, because knowledge by assimilation with the form is not really possible when the form is the divine essence. How can the intellect assimilate the divine form without becoming God? (Fs) (notabene)

184a The speculative difficulties involved in seeking to make some sense of the beatific vision are enormous. On my estimation, Aquinas's handling of this question in the Summa Theologiae is possibly the longest article in the whole Summa. Not only does he consider sixteen distinct objections, but he also provides six distinct sources of authority for the affirmative proposition that we do see God in his essence. In his positive account he suggests that the relationship between the divine essence and the individual soul is like the relationship between form and matter. This is the precursor to the speculations of Karl Rahner on "quasi-formal causality."3 (Fs) (notabene)

184b We might also consider the actual "content" of the beatific vision. Does it entail, for example, an experience of the omniscience of God? Do the blessed in heaven "know" everything? Here Aquinas would deny that the beatific vision involves "seeing all that God sees" or more properly "understanding all that God understands." Even in the beatific vision we do not comprehend God, that is, completely understand God-only God fully understands God. Indeed, his conception of the beatific vision is "dynamic" rather than static: "Thus the knowledge ... of the souls of the saints can go on increasing until the day of judgment, even as other things pertaining to the accidental reward" (ST Suppl. III q. 92, a. 3). One might say that the state of the blessed is dynamic and expansive, an ever-increasing consciousness of all that is. For Aquinas, however, this is a dynamism that definitely stops with the final judgment and resurrection of the dead, when we reach "the final state of things."
185a Further, this relationship to God, which is the beatific vision, grounds the possibility of a communion not only with God but also with all creatures through God. We are able to relate to all others through God's relationship to them. Thus we speak of the "communion of saints" as a vital and loving reality contributing to the ongoing mission of the church on earth. (Fs)

However, this vision of heaven is not egalitarian: some have a greater share in the light of glory than others. For Aquinas, heaven is a well-ordered society, ordered according to the merits of the saints. All enjoy heaven fully, but some have a greater capacity, a capacity developed in this life through the merits of a grace-filled virtuous life. Perhaps in our more democratic and egalitarian culture such an account is less appealing, but it does stress the permanent significance of this life and its consequences, something that is lost in a more egalitarian conception of heaven. (Fs)

185b Finally we must ask, What is the impact on our freedom of such a beatific vision? If freedom is not about choice but about orientation to the good, what are the implications for freedom when the highest good, God in God's own being, is present immediately within our human consciousness? Surely nothing can compare with such an experience, and the thought of choosing against such a divine infinite goodness is in fact unthinkable. If we think of freedom as freedom of choice, then such a statement can only be read as the elimination or destruction of our freedom. If, however, we think of freedom in terms of orientation to the good, then it is the definitive establishment of our freedom. The only example we have of such an existence is that of Jesus himself, where the church believes not only that he did not sin, but in fact he could not sin (impeccability) as a consequence of the hypostatic union.4 (Fs) (notabene)