Autor: Little, Joyce

Buch: The Church and the Culture War

Titel: The Church and the Culture War

Stichwort: Trinität, trinitarische Struktur; Tyrannei: Gegenteil von Autorität; Macht, Nihilismus, Totalitarismus; Chesterton (über die kommende Zeit)

Kurzinhalt: ... every other contemporary conflict covered in this book is a variant on the conflict between the secular exaltation of human power, and the Christian witness to that divine authority which transcends all things merely human and commands ...

Textausschnitt: TRINITARIANISM

19a Theology is "faith seeking understanding". While it is true that Christians could practice their faith in the absence of theologians, it is also true that the practice of that faith is likely to go off the tracks if people do not properly understand it. Indeed, there are some periods in history where a renewal in our understanding of the faith is indispensable to its practice. Henri de Lubac characterizes such periods thusly:

For the most part this sort of thing happens when the whole inheritance of Tradition, hitherto held without question, becomes, in one way or another, disputed territory. Doubts arise as to its value, and insidious comparisons are made between its original form and that which it has at that time; every element in it is put to the test, and there is as much criticism from the man of religion himself as there is from the scholar pure and simple. People begin to ask themselves whether the whole of this assemblage of beliefs and customs is really authentic, and whether there hasn't been in the course of the centuries, a process of accretion which has also been one of corruption. The thing seems to have become a burden rather than a source of vitality, and thus to constitute an obstruction of the very life which it is supposed to feed and transmit.1
19b Our age is just such a period. Everywhere one turns today, one finds among Christians themselves a host of doubts, questions and confusing notions about their own faith. If this age poses to us an "either/or" choice between the inclusivity of popular American culture and the truth of Jesus Christ, we must recognize the general features of each of these alternatives and the implications which flow from those features. The purpose of this book is to set out the major features of these two choices and the manner in which they contrast with one another. (Fs)

20a Broadly speaking, if inclusivity is nihilistic, Christian faith is trinitarian. What confronts us at the outset in the revelation given us by Christ is the unique singularity of the Trinity, three distinct and different Persons in the unity of one divine substance. Everything else in the Christian faith in general, and in the Catholic faith in particular, is an implication of the Trinity. The Creator of the universe is not just one God in the absolute unity of one Person, but one God in the triune communion of three Relations. Everything in creation manifests this triune communion. When we speak of the universe and of ourselves, therefore, as incarnational (Chapter 2), sacramental (Chapter 3), hierarchical (Chapter 4) and free (Chapter 5), we are simply saying that universe reflects the unique singularity of its trinitarian origins. When we stress the importance of motherhood (Chapter 6) and trust (Chapter 7), we recognize the particular significance of the specifically female sphere of God's creation, a sphere which is given special consideration here in light of a pressing need today to understand better the meaning of sexual differentiation, especially the significance of the female in relationship to the male. (Fs)

20b We begin however, with a consideration of Church authority and the nihilistic alternative to it, power, for three reasons. First, there is an enormous ignorance of the true meaning of authority in the world today, reflected in the fact that rarely does one hear the word "authoritative", but only the word "authoritarian", and the latter always in negative or censurious ways. To be "authoritarian" is always, without exception, to be bad. This reflects an enormous misunderstanding about the character of authority. Authority is not the same thing as tyranny. (Fs)
Tyranny is the opposite of authority. For authority simply means right; and nothing is authoritative except when somebody has a right to do, and there is right in doing.... Moreover, a man can only have authority by admitting something better than himself; and the bully does not get his claim from anybody but himself. It is not a question, therefore, of there being authority, and then tyranny, which is too much authority; for tyranny is no authority. Tyranny means too little authority; for though, of course, an individual may use wrongly the power that may go with it, he is in that act disloyal to the law of right, which should be his own authority.2

21a Second, only power can fill the void created by the rejection of authority. Power in the absence of authority, however, is entirely nihilistic, for it rests upon the assumption that there is no God to whom it is accountable and no law to which it must submit. It is no coincidence that this century which has rejected authority has also given rise to totalitarianism, that is, the exercise of unlimited power. (Fs) (notabene)

21b Third, every other contemporary conflict covered in this book is a variant on the conflict between the secular exaltation of human power, and the Christian witness to that divine authority which transcends all things merely human and commands our allegiance to it. In a sense this key conflict defines all of the others. And so, as we take up the theme of power versus authority, we might do well to call to mind one of Chesterton's most striking prophecies about our age:

Christendom has a new battle before it; no longer with the Lust that was called Liberty; no longer with the Scorn that was called Scepticism; no longer with the Envy that was called Divine Discontent; but with something much less mixed with sympathetic elements than any of these: with that primeval Spirit and Prince of the Powers of the world which it first came upon earth to defy.... A Pagan pride, freed from democratic as from religious restraints, is the next foe we have to face; and it may be hoped, in whatever form, that we shall all face it together.3