Autor: Liddy, Richard M.

Buch: Transforming Light

Titel: Transforming Light

Stichwort: Transzendenz; Grundirrtum: Freiheit, Gnade; Bilderdenken, Thomas, Lonergan - Konversion;

Kurzinhalt: The Transcendence of Imaginative Thinking

Textausschnitt: 2. The Transcendence of Imaginative Thinking

23/8 Besides the pervasive evidence of Lonergan's 'systematic' understanding of Aquinas that made it possible for him to understand both the development of Christian thought up to Aquinas and the development within Aquinas' own understanding, perhaps the most evident instance of Lonergan's own intellectual conversion can be discerned in the sections dealing with Aquinas' understanding of divine transcendence and human liberty. According to Lonergan Aquinas had at hand the tools, such as a theory of human liberty, with which it was possible to show actual grace as both operative and cooperative. (130f; Fs)

The free act emerges from, and is conditioned by, created antecedents over which freedom has no direct control. It follows that it is possible for God to manipulate these antecedents and through such manipulation to exercise a control over free acts themselves [...]. Indeed, both above and below, both right and left, the free choice has determinants over which it exercises no control. God directly controls the orientation of the will to ends; indirectly he controls the situations which intellect apprehends and in which will has to choose; indirectly he also controls both the higher determinants of intellectual attitude or mental pattern and the lower determinants of mood and temperament; finally, each choice is free only hic et nunc, for no man can decide today what he is to will tomorrow. There is no end of room for God to work on the free choice without violating it, to govern above its self-governance, to set the stage and guide the reactions and give each character its personal role in the drama of life.1

24/8 Still, none of these created antecedents can be rigorous determinants of the person's free choice: God alone has the property of transcendence. As Augustine's major intellectual break-through was from a corporeal way of thinking about the divine, so Lonergan articulated the same breakthrough systematically in Gratia Operans. (131; Fs)
It is only in the logico-metaphysical simultaneity of the atemporal present that God's knowledge is infallible, his will irresistible, his action efficacious. He exercises control through the created antecedents-true enough; but that is not the infallible, the irresistible, the efficacious, which has its ground not in the creature but in the uncreated, which has its moment not in time but in the cooperation of eternal uncreated action with created and temporal action. Again, the antecedents per se always incline to the right and good. But the consequent act may be good or it may be sinful: if it is good, all the credit is God's, and the creature is only his instrument; but if it is evil, then inasmuch as it is sin as such, it is a surd [...] and so in the causal order a first for which the sinner alone is responsible.2
25/8 Furthermore, God acts in human lives, both providentially and through actual grace. But such action does not involve any change in God. In fact, the projection of such change onto the divine involves a 'picture thinking,' a projection of human common sense categories onto the transcendent action of God. It is similar to the intellectual error from which Augustine had to break on the way to his own religious conversion. (131f; Fs)

26/8 In this regard Lonergan considers the objection that if God knows every event infallibly, if he wills it irresistibly, if he effects it with absolute efficacy, then every event must be necessary and none can be contingent. To this objection Lonergan, following St. Thomas, replies: 'The first fallacy lies in a misconception of time. To a temporal being our four-dimensional universe has three sections: past, present and future. To an eternal 'now' this division is meaningless. On this point St. Thomas never had the slightest doubt: he was always above our pre-Einsteinian illusions that still are maintained by our cosmology manuals; strenuously and consistently he maintained that all events are present to God.'3 He adds in a footnote, 'before time' is 'an illusory figment of the imagination.' (132; Fs)

27/8 The second fallacy lies in supposing God's knowledge of the creature or his activity are some reality in God that would not be there if He had not created. Yet,
God is immutable. He is entitatively identical whether he creates or does not create. His knowledge or will or production of the created universe adds only a relatio rationis to the actus purus. They are predications by extrinsic denomination. Further, it is to be observed that a fallacy on this point is closely connected with fallacious ideas of time. For there can be no predication by extrinsic denomination without the actuality of the extrinsic denominator: else the adaequatio veritatis is not satisfied. Accordingly, to assert that God knows this creature or event, that he wills it, that he effects it, is also ipso facto to assert that the creature or event actually is.4

28/8 To assert that God acts in time is not to project any real change onto God. It is to assert that the assertion 'God acts in time' is true.5 Finally, Lonergan points to another and more basic fallacy often present in conceiving the divine action. (132f; Fs)
It fails to grasp that God is not some datum to be explained, that he is absolute explanation, pure intelligibility in himself, and the first cause and last end of everything else. Accordingly, attempts are made to explain God, to explain the attributes that are identical with God, to reconcile the predicates that have their ontological ground in the absolute simplicity of God. The result is a pseudo-profundity ending in insoluble problems, such as: How can God know the contingent? How can his concursus make him omnipotent without destroying human liberty? and so forth. So much for the fallacies that befog the issue and lead down blind alleys.6

29/8 I am reminded of an interview Lonergan gave in 1970 in which he was asked about 'critically grounding' a religion. His response links religion with intellectual conversion. (133; Fs)
I put the question the other night. A person was demanding that I critically ground this religion and he was talking to Professor So and So and I went up to him and said, 'Would you require Professor So and So to critically ground the love he has for his wife and children?' Being in love is a fact, and it's what you are, it's existential. And your living flows from it. It's the first principle, as long as it lasts. It has its causes and its occasions and its conditions and all the rest of it. But while it's there it's the first principle and it's the source of all one's desires and fears, all the good one can see, and so on. And critically grounding knowledge isn't finding the ground for knowledge. It's already there. Being critical means eliminating the ordinary nonsense, the systematically misleading images and so on; the mythical account. Every scientific or philosophic breakthrough is the elimination of some myth in the pejorative sense; the flat earth, right on. But if you are in love it doesn't need any justification. It's the justification beyond anything else. Just as you don't explain God, God is the ultimate explanation.7

30/8 On being asked: 'Might not one then be deceived?' Lonergan replied: (133; Fs)
One can be deceiving himself. If one is deceiving oneself one is not in love. One is mistaking something for love. Love is something that proves itself. 'By their fruits you shall know them,' and 'in fear and trembling work out your salvation' and all the rest of it. Love isn't cocksure, either.