Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Understanding and Being

Titel: Understanding and Being

Stichwort: Aristoteles, scholastic, analysis, synthesis, Thomist Trinitarian theory

Kurzinhalt: Scholastisches Wissenschaftsideal, Wissen durch Ursachen, resolutio, compositio; Trinität (Augustinus, Thomas) : Verschwinden d. Dinge, Verbleiben der Relationen, Periodensystem

Textausschnitt: () The scholastic definition of a science is 'certain knowledge of things through their causes.' ... The scholastics called the first part of this movement resolution into the causes, resolutio in causas, analysis. The second part of the movement was compositio ex causis, synthesis.
()
What happened is that analysis and synthesis survived, but not the things and causes as understood by Aristotle.
()
There is nothing in the New Testament about persons or nature; these technical terms do not occur. ... Augustine explained the processions by a psychological analogy. He said they were something like the movement in the mind from understanding to conception, from judgment to willing. So first we have missions, then persons and nature, then properties, relations, processions.
()
In Trinitarian theory, then, we have analysis and synthesis. We have the analytic movement up to St Thomas, and the synthetic movement in St Thomas' Summa theologiae. But we do not have things, and we do not have causes. God is not a thing in the sense of the Aristotelian predicaments, and the generation of the Son by the Father is not a matter of causality. The Son is not another God, and neither is the Holy Ghost. Things and causes vanish, but analysis and synthesis remain.