Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Allgemeine Befangenheit (general bias), d. sündige Zustand des Menschen; Luther, Reformation, Gnade, Werkgerechtigkeit; Kontinuität oder Dis- mit dem Weltprozess

Kurzinhalt: To introduce an element such as essentially corrupted nature would be to explain human reality as sufficiently different in structure to be discontinuous with an explanation of world process which satisfies the canon of parsimony.

Textausschnitt: 7.6.3 Sinful Man and Human Agency

72/7 Now it would seem that this view of the human situation places considerable emphasis upon the role of subjective human agency in social and historical success and failure. And it might seem that in spite of his rather pessimistic account of the human situation, nonetheless Lonergan views the problem in the human situation as one which demands a response at the level of human agency and one for which human agency is an adequate response. Professor Gustafson might argue that such a view lies open to a critique from a Protestant theologian for misconstruing the state of human sinfulness. (236; Fs)

73/7 In his Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics, Professor Gustafson notes that a basic difference in their respective approaches to human sinfulness has traditionally separated Catholic and Protestant theologians. Quite generally, the theologians of the Roman Catholic tradition have tended to conceive man in terms of his origins in God and in terms of his natural orientation towards God and towards his own highest good: (236f; Fs)
The ultimate end of humans is God; [...] Humans are also naturally inclined toward their natural end or good; thus there is a ground for a natural morality available to the knowledge of all rational persons.1

74/7 This view of the continuity between the natural order and the divine order, combined with a recognition of some capacity of intelligence to guide moral action towards this end has led to a conception of moral action, in the Catholic tradition, as contributing towards salvation. (237; Fs)

To be properly oriented toward the natural good is one dimension of being properly oriented toward God. Thus a frame is set in which specific infractions of the natural moral order, specific sins, are salvifically deleterious, and right moral acts (in accord with the natural moral order) are salvifically beneficial.2

75/7 In Professor Gustafson's view, this overall conception of morality and its continuity with salvation (in combination with other factors) tended to shift attention toward particular sins as concrete acts and away from sin as a basic condition of man. (237; Fs)

To Luther, as it has to many Protestants since the time of the Reformation, this preoccupation with avoiding sins for the sake of salvation sounded like 'works-righteousness' (eg: Werkgerechtigkeit). It sounded as if salvation is earned on the basis of meritorious works rather than received as a free gift of God's grace.3

76/7 The Reformers viewed the state of the human condition to be not so much a matter of man's more or less direct orientation towards God as man having turned his back on God and not trusting him. Original sin turned man against God, perverting his desires and distorting his reason.4 And since this original fault was not a moral fault but a religious fault, the only appropriate correction can be an act of God. (237; Fs) (notabene)

If sin is basically unfaith, a lack of trust in God, the antidote had to be faith or trust in God. No moral rectitude could achieve faith; to be properly oriented toward the natural moral good did not set one on a course toward salvation. Faith had to be a response to the free gift of God's grace. Grace was strongly perceived to be mercy, and not so much the rectification, redirection, and fulfillment of nature.5 (notabene)

77/7 There is a sense here in which the Reformers viewed the state of human condition as beyond the capacities of men to rectify, in any significant way, through the development and exercise of natural abilities. Only the free and gracious initiative of God can make a difference in this condition. And man participates in the rectification, not by moral rectitude, but by responding with trust in God's gratuitous activity. The moral action of which man is capable flows as an effect or a consequence of God's gift of righteousness.6 (237; Fs) (notabene)

78/7 It is clear that Lonergan's emphasis upon the upward dynamism of finality, his general preoccupation with cognitional and responsible skills, and most of all his account of the human condition in terms of the relative insufficiency of these developed cognitional and responsible skills place him soundly within the Catholic tradition as Gustafson has characterized it. The question remains, however, whether Lonergan, in his somewhat novel, emergent probability conception of intelligent and responsible activity, still remains open to the Reformers' charge of 'works-righteousness' and their accusation that Catholics have tended to ignore the essentially theological dimension of sin. (237f; Fs)

79/7 It is essential to recall that the general bias is fundamentally a statistical law.7 The relative insufficiency and infrequency of developed capacities and skills is an f-probability for which there is no further explanation in terms of, for example, corrupted nature. To introduce an element such as essentially corrupted nature would be to explain human reality as sufficiently different in structure to be discontinuous with an explanation of world process which satisfies the canon of parsimony. In addition such an explanation would require that human goodness be explained in terms of God's selective dispensation of grace. And whether such a doctrine of election could ever avoid the pitfalls of a gnostic stratification of humanity into the 'children of light' and 'the children of darkness' remains to be seen. In any case Lonergan would argue that introducing such a radical discontinuity as essentially corrupted human nature is neither necessary nor is it unconditionally warranted by the data on human life. His account of the dramatic bias, the egoist bias and the group bias all explain not only the failure of intelligence but also its intermittent and habitual perversion in individuals and groups. And the intimate dialectical relationship between the intellect and the experiential manifold which it orders, allows a distorted intelligence progressively to distort the whole range of human performance so that human spontaneity in all spheres of action becomes perverse. The structure of these biases explains the Reformers' perverse human nature. The structure of history wherein one generation's insights establish the conditions for the activity of the next explains how perversity continues and accelerates. And the statistical fact of the general bias explains the proliferation of the perversion. (238; Fs) (notabene)

80/7 But while the general bias is fundamentally a statistical law, there remains the possibility of occurrence of a systematic element that is in continuity with finality, which would increase the f-probability of developed 'competence.' And this, I would argue, is what Insight, chapter twenty, on 'Special Transcendent Knowledge' is all about. Furthermore, this would explain Lonergan's development of the notion of 'conversion' in Method in Theology. The general relationship of Insight's account of understanding and its biases, to Method's account of the religious subject and his or her conversions can be conceived as a relationship of systematically operative skills to the conditions associated with their f-probably developed performance. The ever-widening circles of intelligent, reasonable and responsive schemes of acts are the systematically operative skills. The developmental stages of growth and, more profoundly, the conversions with their corresponding graces are the conditions whose fulfillment results in the jump in f-probabilities of competent performance. This, too, I would argue, could be the clue to understanding and integrating the respective emphases of the Catholic and Protestant accounts of morality and human sinfulness. But before these insights can be developed a basic presentation of the possibilities for the reversal of the general bias is required. (238f; Fs) (notabene)