Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: The Trinune God: Systematics

Titel: The Triune God: Systematics

Stichwort: Divinarum Personarum; Theologie; vertieftes theologisches Vestehen von Wahrheiten (4 Schritte); das V. ändert sich, nicht das Objekt; systematische Exegese - theologisches Vestehen; historische Exegese - Theologie (geschichtliche Heilsökonomie)

Kurzinhalt: Just as the higher angels understand more things through fewer species, so also those who are proficient in understanding revealed truths do not understand one thing after another, but understand the same thing more and more comprehensively...

Textausschnitt: 751a But you may wonder how it can be that the same truth, understood in the same sense, can be less well understood at one time and better understood at another. The answer, of course, is because it is not the object but the very mode of understanding that varies. Just as the higher angels understand more things through fewer species, so also those who are proficient in understanding revealed truths do not understand one thing after another, but understand the same thing more and more comprehensively. This is best illustrated through examples. (Fs)

751b First, then, let us suppose that someone has read all of scripture and correctly understands each and every one of its statements. He understands many things quite well, but, because he understands each thing separately, he simply lacks a comprehensive way of understanding. (Fs) (notabene)

751c Now let us suppose someone else who has not only read all of scripture and correctly understood each of its statements, but has also begun to take a further step. This person makes comparisons between various scriptural texts, prescinds from purely accidental differences, and discovers essentially the same meaning in a number of texts. What she deems to be essentially the same she accurately conceives and expresses in technical terms; and when she has gone over the whole of scripture, comparing, prescinding, discovering, and expressing what she has found, she comes finally to formulate in new technical terms the same revealed truth understood in the same sense. (Fs)

751d In this example, even though the very same truth is expressed, and even though the same truth is understood in the same sense, still it is understood in a different way. For in the first example many things were understood separately, whereas in this they are understood together and as a unity. In the first example not only the essential elements were understood but also all the accidental ones - who is speaking in each of the scriptural utterances and with whom, on what occasion, in what circumstances, for what purpose, what actions were described, what images, figures of speech, or parables were reported, and what emotions, sentiments, and feelings were aroused. But in the second example the focus is on the essentials alone, prescinding from practically all accidental features. And whereas previously only biblical expressions and concepts were used, now only new technical terminology and abstract and essential concepts are employed. (Fs)

751e But let us imagine a third person, one who undertakes a further inquiry. This person has not only read all of scripture, understood all of its diverse texts and compared their differences, prescinded from its accidental elements and discovered, conceived, and technically expressed its essentials, but also has delved more deeply into it. For it is not easy to understand how the truths of revelation, even when reduced to their essentials, are consistent with one another. God is one, yet there are three persons. Christ is God and yet is man. Everything depends upon the gratuitous will of God, yet only by our own merits are we granted the heavenly crown. And there are 600-odd further points1 that call for a new kind of understanding. For the systematic exegesis of the words of scripture is not the same as the understanding of the facts and deeds that are related in scripture. One who understands the essential elements of what is stated in scripture is doing a systematic exegesis and comes upon theological problems. One who seeks an understanding of truths taught in the scriptures has set out upon the road of theology. In the next section, the fourth, we shall tell what this road is like and how multifaceted it is. But right now this point must be well understood, that although a theologian introduces another kind of understanding, he is intent upon understanding the same revealed truth. The meaning of a revealed truth is not changed by theological understanding; rather, that very truth itself, understood in the same sense, is grasped more fully, more clearly, and in a more ordered way. (Fs)

753a Finally, the fourth way in which the same truth is understood is a new step in comprehension. According to Aristotle, science has two meanings: it is science in potency when it is merely of universals; it is science in act when it is applied to particular things.2 Besides systematic exegesis, therefore, there is historical exegesis, which, far from omitting the accidentals, includes them synthetically. Besides systematic theology, there is a theology that is more concrete and more comprehensive, which deals with and seeks to understand the economy of salvation as it evolves historically. This new step in comprehension has over a lengthy period of time been gradually prepared by copious studies in the biblical, conciliar, patristic, medieval, liturgical, ascetical, and other areas of research, but in such a way that its synthetic character is not yet clearly apparent, since today's scholars seem to resemble more the twelfth-century compilers than they do the thirteenth-century theologians in the proper sense. Still, just as the diligence of Peter Lombard and other collectors of 'sentences' initiated and laid the groundwork for the theology that followed, so also those today who are engaged in learned and solid research in scripture and patristics and other fields can surely look forward to a theology at some time in the future that is at once more concrete and more comprehensive. But a legitimate expectation of a future reality is one thing, while a bold premature assertion that it has already arrived is quite another. For if in other sciences all true progress consists in adding new elements while exactly including the old (physicists do not repeat measurements made long ago, although they accept new theories), no one, I think, will fail to notice how much more this conservative law of progress is operative in theology, which is intent solely upon attaining a fuller understanding of the same truth. (Fs) (notabene)

755a We have presented, therefore, four ways in which the same revealed truth can be more and more comprehensively understood. When to these is added the way in which God understands revealed truth and the way in which the blessed participate in the divine understanding, it seems quite obvious that the same truth can be understood in many different ways. (Fs)

755b These observations on the act by which the goal is attained should suffice. For understanding the mysteries is the first operation of the intellect, is imperfect, analogical, obscure, gradually developing, synthetic, fruitful. This understanding, although in itself it is neither true nor false, and although of itself it does not necessarily lead to truth, nevertheless it gets its truth from other sources, both because it follows from the revealed truths themselves, or is at least consistent with them, and because it is an understanding of the revealed truth itself. (Fs)

755c Let it not be said that these distinctions are more subtle than they are useful. It is surely the same being that has both essence and existence. It is the same proposition that expresses either the intelligible, which is also true, or the true, which is also intelligible. But the object that is an intelligible truth as intelligible is formally different from the object that is an intelligible truth as true. The former object as such is attained through the first operation of the intellect, and the latter object as such is attained through the second operation of the intellect. Therefore, although the formal objects are distinguished only through a rather subtle reduplication, still the operations by which these formal objects are attained are really different. But furthermore, as we shall soon see, not only are these operations really distinct from each other, but also the ways or methods that lead to an understanding of the faith through the first operation and those that lead to the certitude of the conclusions through the second operation are vastly different. With good reason Aquinas took very seriously the distinction between arguments from authority and the magisterial disputations. (Fs)