Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Sünde als Abweichung; das Böse als Gegenteil zu kultureller Entwicklung; Geschichte - menschliches Bewusstsein; Zeitgeist

Kurzinhalt: And just as consciousness floats according to the orientation of the subject ... so also history has its orientation... There is such a thing as the spirit of an age, and that spirit of an age can be an aberration, it can be folly

Textausschnitt: 1.2.3 Sin as Aberration

29/3 Thirdly, there is sin as aberration, as the evil that is opposite to cultural development, to development on the reflective level, that is, to development in the apprehension of the invariants of the human good. On sin as aberration, the New Testament is rather abundant. See Romans 1:8-32, 2:2-24. Romans 5:1 tells us; 'Sin reigned in the world.'1 John 1.92 has: 'He came unto his own, and his own received him not.' In John 3:9-21, we read, 'All that love the light come to the Son, but those whose works are evil refuse to come to the light, because they do not wish their works to become manifest.'3 Again, in John 8.42-47 and 12,37-41, there is word of the blindness of Israel.4 (62; Fs)

30/3 Now how can sin be aberration? What does that mean? Human history is like human consciousness: if I may use a metaphor, both of them float. Human consciousness is not a fully determined function of sensitive impressions and hereditary equipment. Consciousness also depends upon an orientation within the subject that is accepted and willed by the subject. There is such a thing as freedom of consciousness - principally, of course, in the sense that acts of will are free, but also and by way of a precondition in the sense that consciousness itself is not something determined uniquely by external objects or internal objects, by biological or sensitive conditions and determinants. You think of what you please. In that sense, consciousness floats. It selects. What comes to your attention depends not merely upon the thing's being there to be attended to, but much more upon your being interested. And just as consciousness floats according to the orientation of the subject - these are points on which we shall have to go into more detail later - so also history has its orientation. There is such a thing as the spirit of an age, and that spirit of an age can be an aberration, it can be folly. Whom the gods destroy they first make blind.5 As aberrant consciousness heads to neurosis and psychosis, similarly aberrant history heads to cataclysm6 (62f; Fs) (notabene)