Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Erlösung 2: Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe; G. (Beibehaltung der Wahrheit); H. (Kraft des Widerstehens); Sünde (zwei Wurzeln)

Kurzinhalt: ... faith reestablishes truth as a meaningful category ... there arises hope ... which enables us to resist the pressures and the determinisms ... Redemption in Christ Jesus is the answer to the problem created by sin as a component in social ...

Textausschnitt: 38/3 Faith is the fundamental answer to the problem of sin not only in the next life but also in this life. Against sin as aberration, that is, the sin that verifies the old Greek proverb 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make blind,' faith reestablishes truth as a meaningful category. Pilate asked our Lord, 'What is truth?' The modern human scientist does not ask that question if he is preoccupied with imitating the techniques of the natural sciences. For then knowledge is science only in the measure that it can verify and enable one to predict. The reestablishment of truth as a meaningful category is also a liberation of intelligence and reason. (67; Fs)

39/3 Again, against sin as a component in the social process, sin as changing social process from a matter of freedom and creativity to routine and drudgery with all its determinisms and pressures and in the limit violence, there arises hope, which liberates the pilgrim in us,1 and which enables us to resist the pressures and the determinisms that are, as it were, the necessity of sinning further. Pius XII spoke of the fact that the modern world creates situations in which people have to be heroic to avoid mortal sin. To have that heroism there is needed the virtue of hope; and without that heroism there is no victory over the cumulative effects of sin as a component in social process. (67; Fs)

40/3 Finally, against sin as self-perpetuating, as a chain reaction, there is love of one's enemies and the acceptance of suffering. Sin as a chain reaction has two bases. It has a basis first in the hearts of men, where sin leads to ever further sin insofar as hatred arises. But Christ teaches us, 'Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you.' Secondly, there is a chain reaction of sin in the logic of the objective situation,2 and against that aspect Christianity teaches the acceptance of suffering. 'The servant is not better than his master.' 'Do not resist evil, but overcome evil with good.' The acceptance of suffering puts an end, at least at one point, to the chain reaction of sin that spreads throughout a society. When everyone is dodging suffering, when no one accepts it, the burden is passed ever further on. (67f; Fs)

41/3 Redemption in Christ Jesus is the answer to the problem created by sin as a component in social process and as fundamental aberration, but it has not merely a negative office. It comes through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, through a personal communication of the life of the ever Blessed Trinity to mankind. 'In the fulness of time, God sent his Son, born of woman, made under the law, that those who were under the law might be redeemed and receive the adoption of sons. And now that you are sons, to show that you are sons, he sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father!"' (Galatians 4: 4-6).3 The mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Ghost is the basis of a new society in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in which there is communicated to us personally, through the person of the Son and through the person of the Spirit, a participation of divine perfection, a participation of the order of truth and love that binds the three persons of the Blessed Trinity.4 Sin, suffering, and death remain, but in Christ they have become transition points to an ever fuller life on this earth with God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, with whom we aspire to live in eternal life. The process of redemption, then, as conceived by the Catholic, is first of all the radical answer to sin - not the answer to sin that eliminates sin, but the answer to sin that endures its consequences and nullifies them and transforms man into a child of God, with a participation in the sonship that God the Father acknowledged when Jesus was baptized at the Jordan: 'This is my beloved Son. Hear ye him.'5 In baptism we become adopted sons as Christ was the natural Son of the Father.6 (68; Fs) (notabene)

42/3 So much for the three differentials of the human good. We set up an invariant structure, and then we noticed that the structure was realized differently at different times, and we distinguished three differentials: intellectual development on the two levels of civilization and culture; sin contradicting, deforming both those types of development; and finally, redemption. That analysis of the good, of course, makes it obvious why we want Catholic education. The fact of sin is not any private opinion of Catholics, but something to be noted by all. Our notion of the good cannot prescind from the tension between the good and evil. If we have an answer to the problem of evil, it will influence our education in all its aspects, because it influences our very notion of the good. (69; Fs)