Autor: Haaland, Janne Matlary

Buch: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Titel: Veruntreute Menschenrechte

Stichwort: Theologie: 1 positive, 2 spekulative, 3 Theologie der Enthüllung (theology of disclosure, theology of manifestation); Phänomenologie; Lehre d. Kirche - Th.; Rationalismus, Historismus, Psychologismus; Erscheinung (Phänomen)

Kurzinhalt: the theology of disclosure differs from speculative theology because it examines the manifestation of Christian things and not, primarily, their nature, definition, and causes; and it differs from positive theology because it is concerned with ...

Textausschnitt: 1 THREE FORMS OF THEOLOGY

5a Christian theology has traditionally been distinguished into the positive and the speculative. It would be helpful to introduce a type of theological thinking that comes between these two. I would like to call this intermediate form of reflective thought the "theology of disclosure" or "theology of manifestation." We can describe the theology of disclosure by contrasting it with both positive and speculative theology. (Fs; tblStw: Theologie)

5b Positive and speculative theology exemplify two ways in which faith seeks understanding. In pursuing their understanding, both forms of theology make use of human reason, but each does so in a different way: positive theology draws especially on the art and science of history, while speculative theology draws primarily on philosophy and the philosophical aspects of other sciences. Both forms of theology are critical sciences conscious of their methods; positive theology began in the Renaissance and speculative theology was most fully developed in the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages. (Fs)

5c Positive theology attempts to show how the articles of faith are found and developed in Scripture and Tradition; it also attempts to formulate the truths of revelation in contemporary terms.1 Biblical studies are the primary part of positive theology, but other parts examine the Fathers of the Church, the Papacy, the Councils, the liturgy, and the general history of the Church as it is related to the articles of faith. Positive theology discusses the historical settings in which the truths of faith have been revealed, confirmed, and transmitted; it tries to shed light on these truths by discussing the historical contexts in which they have been presented to us, and it also tries to formulate them again in terms appropriate to our own context. (Fs)

6a Speculative theology attempts to do more than restate the truths of faith in a contemporary manner; it attempts to provide an ordered and comprehensive understanding of these truths, using distinctions, definitions, causal explanations, and analogies. Speculative theology is concerned with what we might call Christian realities or Christian "things," the things that have been presented to us in biblical and Christian revelation. Its primary task is to reflect on God, his divine nature and attributes, and his actions in the world. It also studies things such as human being, human responsibility, language, society, even things like time, matter, and life, but it studies them specifically in their relation to the God who has revealed himself to us. Speculative theology attempts to bring out more clearly the meaning of what has been revealed; it tries to explain some truths by showing how they can be derived from, clarified, or supported by others; and it draws analogies between various things that are known or believed. Its explanations work, of course, within the domain of faith; the reasons and causes it appeals to come from revelation. It is not the case that speculative theological arguments would "explain away" an article of faith by making it rest simply on natural truths.2 (Fs)

7a Both positive and speculative theology must be distinguished from the teaching of the Church, which receives and hands on the elements of faith, the things that are believed. The Church conveys these things both in its ordinary life and instruction and in the particularly solemn pronouncements that it must formulate from time to time. Both positive and speculative theology are reflective; those who pursue these sciences presuppose the treasury of faith and go on to think about it according to the ways of thinking proper to their disciplines. The work of positive and speculative theologians is important for the preservation of faith, because by their questioning and investigation they help deepen the Church's possession of what it believes, and they are often able to help the Church draw distinctions between what is essential and what is coincidental in its practice and its revealed beliefs. (Fs) (notabene)

7b Normally the relationship between both forms of theology and the teaching Church is cooperative, but on occasion tensions may arise. It may sometimes appear that speculative theology puts its own reasoning in the place of the articles of faith, and it may at times seem that positive theology reduces the articles of faith to opinions prevailing in certain historical circumstances. The first error is called "rationalism" and the second "historicism"; they are the pitfalls that the two forms of theology must avoid. Theology may be tempted to fall into either rationalism or historicism because the truths of faith so greatly transcend human reason; the truths of faith are highly intelligible in themselves but only slightly intelligible to us, and so we may be inclined to allow the instruments used in theology (philosophy and history, with their more accessible intelligibility) to overshadow what has been revealed to us and what is believed. (Fs)

7c There is room for another form of reflective theological thinking. This third form, which I will call the theology of disclosure, would have the task of describing how the Christian things taught by the Church and studied by speculative theology come to light. It is to examine how they appear. If speculative theology, with its focus on Christian things or Christian realities, were to be considered an "ontological" investigation, the theology of disclosure could be called "phenomenological." (Fs)

8a At first glance it might seem that such a study of the appearance of Christian things resembles the work done by positive theology, which examines how the elements of faith have been made manifest in certain historical events, statements, and texts; but the approach followed by the two theologies is not the same. While historical theology examines facts, the theology of disclosure examines structures of disclosure; it describes the forms of manifestation proper to Christian things. It tries to describe how Christian things must display themselves, in keeping with what they are, and how they must distinguish themselves from things that resemble them and with which they may be confused. Thus, the theology of disclosure differs from speculative theology because it examines the manifestation of Christian things and not, primarily, their nature, definition, and causes; and it differs from positive theology because it is concerned with essential structures of disclosure, which would hold in all times and places, and not with matters of historical fact. Although it differs from these two theologies, it is obviously closely related to them and does not contradict anything they establish as true. (Fs)

8b When we say that the theology of disclosure is supposed to examine the way of appearing of Christian things, many readers will immediately conclude that this theology is a type of psychology. But the theology of disclosure is not a form of psychology. It is not meant to be a psychology of religious experience, nor a psychology of Christian religious experience. If it were to be done as a kind of psychology, it would almost certainly become reductionist. It would fall into an error analogous to the historicism that positive theology can fall into when it is not done properly. The error into which the theology of disclosure would fall is called "psychologism," the reduction of things and objects into human projections, mental acts, or mere appearances in the human mind and sensibility. To interpret the theology of disclosure psychologistically would imply that this form of theology had nothing to do with Christian things themselves but only with certain subjective, psychological states. But this would be a misconception of the theology of disclosure, and it would also betray a misunderstanding of the being of appearances: it would misconceive the display of being. Thus, just as speculative theology must be distinguished from rationalism and positive theology from historicism, so must the theology of disclosure be distinguished from psychologism. I hope to elaborate and illustrate this distinction in the course of this book. (Fs)

9a The hostile reaction we have described, which equates the theology of disclosure with psychology and which is highly suspicious of any study of appearances, is a response that one quite commonly encounters on the philosophical level when one tries to explain what phenomenology is. Phenomenology is often taken as a kind of psychology, and what it studies is often taken to be mere subjective experience. The reason why people frequently interpret phenomenology in this way is that in our cultural tradition, since the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, appearances have been badly misunderstood. Appearances have been turned into mere ideas, into subjective impacts that at best only hint at what things in themselves really are and at worst prevent us from ever reaching things at all; sometimes appearances are even said to be all that there is, with no "things" behind them whatsoever. Thus, when we begin to speak about a theology that investigates appearances, the average listener will immediately suppose that we intend to examine "merely" the way things appear, not the way they are. When one tries to describe and carry out the theology of disclosure, one is obliged to work against deeply ingrained prejudices that distort both our religious and our cultural understanding. A successful formulation of such a theology may be of benefit not only for religious thought but also for our general comprehension of how things come to light. (Fs)

9b It is my conviction that Edmund Husserl has accomplished in principle a more adequate understanding of the relationships among things, displays, and ourselves as datives of display, but his achievement still needs to be adapted to various intellectual disciplines and still needs to be made better known. Husserl (1859-1938) was the founder of phenomenology, the philosophical movement that set the tone for Continental European philosophy in the twentieth century. Although his influence has already been very great, it seems to me that there are aspects of his thought that deserve further development and application, particularly in overcoming the limitations of modernity. I will discuss these possibilities more extensively in Chapter 13. (Fs)