Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Konversion - Pluralismus; der authentische Christ -> 3-fache Konversion

Kurzinhalt: The authentic Christian strives for the fulness of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion

Textausschnitt: 28/15 Conversion involves a new understanding of oneself because, more fundamentally, it brings about a new self to be understood. It is putting off the old man and putting on the new. It is not just a development but the beginning of a new mode of developing. Hence besides the beginning there is to be considered the consequent development. This may be great or average or small. It may be marred by few or by many relapses. The relapses may have been fully corrected, or they may still leave their traces in a bias that may be venial or grave. (247; Fs) (notabene)

29/15 Conversion is three-dimensional. It is intellectual inasmuch as it regards our orientation to the intelligible and the true. It is moral inasmuch as it regards our orientation to the good. It is religious inasmuch as it regards our orientation to God. The three dimensions are distinct, so that conversion can occur in one dimension without occurring in the other two, or in two dimensions without occurring in the other one. At the same time the three dimensions are solidary. Conversion in one leads to conversion in the others, and relapse from one prepares for relapse in the others. (247; Fs)
30/15 By intellectual conversion a person frees himself from confusing the criteria for knowledge of the world of immediacy with the criteria for knowledge of the world mediated by meaning. By moral conversion he becomes motivated primarily not by satisfactions but by values. By religious conversion he comes to love God with his whole heart and his whole soul and all his mind and all his strength; and in consequence he will love his neighbor as himself. (247f; Fs)
31/15 The authentic Christian strives for the fulness of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion. Without intellectual conversion he tends to misapprehend not only the world mediated by meaning but also the word God has spoken within that world. Without moral conversion he tends to pursue not what truly is good but what only apparently is good. Without religious conversion he is radically desolate: in the world without hope and without God (Eph. 2:12). (248; Fs)
32/15 While the importance of moral and religious conversion may readily be granted, hesitation will be felt by many when it comes to intellectual conversion. They will feel it is a philosophic issue and that it is not up to theologians to solve it. But while these contentions are true, they are not decisive. The issue is also existential and methodical. Theologians have minds. They have always used them. They may use them properly and they may use them improperly. Unless they find out the difference for themselves or learn about it from someone else, they will be countenancing a greater pluralism than can be tolerated. (248; Fs)
33/15 Indeed in my opinion intellectual conversion is essentially simple. It occurs spontaneously when one reaches the age of reason, implicitly drops earlier criteria of reality (Are you awake? Do you see it? Is it heavy? etc.), and proceeds to operate on the criteria of sufficient evidence or sufficient reason. But this spontaneous conversion is insecure. The use of the earlier criteria can recur. It is particularly likely to recur when one gets involved in philosophic issues. For then the objectification of what is meant by sufficient evidence or sufficient reason may become exceedingly complex, while the objectification of taking a good look is simplicity itself. So one becomes a naive realist; if one takes that seriously, one becomes an empiricist; if that proves uncomfortable, one can move on to idealism; then to pragmatism; then to phenomenology. But far less laborious than traveling round that circuit is the task of finding out just what sufficient evidence is. I grant that facing that issue calls for some concentration. But enormously more concentration is needed to explore the philosophies that either neglect sufficient evidence or, on the other hand, propose excessive criteria. (248; Fs)