Autor: Liddy, Richard M.

Buch: Transforming Light

Titel: Transforming Light

Stichwort: Suarez, distinctio realis, Sein, Wesenheit, Konversion

Kurzinhalt: According to Suarez, existence is nothing else but the actual essence itself, a 'mode' of essential being

Textausschnitt: 1/1 "Characteristic of his generation, Lonergan did not speak easily of his own spiritual life. Later on he noted that in his early training there was a great fear of illusion in the spiritual life and great hesitancy to speak of mystical experience. Years later he would frequently speak and write of the experience of 'falling in love' and 'being in love' with God: 'It is as though the room were filled with music though one can have no sure knowledge of its source. There is in the world, as it were, a charged field of love and meaning; here and there it reaches a notable intensity; but it is ever unobtrusive, hidden, inviting each of us to join. And join we must if we are to perceive it, for our perceiving is through our own loving.'1 Still, this experience is mysterious. It need not be the focal point of attention. As Lonergan once remarked, 'You can be a mystic and not know it.'2" (7)

2/1 "Among the emphases of Suarez'3 thought was his denial of the 'real distinction' between the essence of a thing and its existence, a thesis other Thomists tended to defend. According to Suarez, existence is nothing else but the actual essence itself, a 'mode' of essential being. This issue became a central bone of contention among twentieth century Thomists and was in fact central to what Lonergan later called his own 'intellectual conversion.'4 (10f; Fs)

3/1 Suarez' thought did not lack influence. Diverse Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers had been influenced by him: Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Wolff, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Vico - among others. In fact, when many modern continental thinkers thought of scholastic thought, they were often thinking of Suarezian scholasticism. Perhaps because of this interpenetration by continental thought, German Jesuits had also been greatly influenced by Suarez. Among these were a number who were influential in Rome in the latter nineteenth century. Johannes Baptist Franzelin was a Suarezian Thomist who was the central theological influence on the decrees of Vatican I. A fellow Jesuit, Joseph Kleutgen, exercised the major influence on Leo's writing of Aeterni Patris. (11; Fs)
4/1 A typical Suarezian textbook that Lonergan would have been exposed to at Heythrop was written in Latin by the Jesuit, J. Urraburu ..." (11)