Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Theologie bedarf der Philosophie: primärer, sekundärer Aspekt; 3 Grundfragen: erkenntnistheoretisch, epistemologisch, metaphysisch

Kurzinhalt: The primary need is for the theologian to know what he is doing when he is doing theology. To reach such knowledge three prior questions must be answered. First is the question of cognitional theory: What am I doing ...

Textausschnitt: 136a A second major influence has been philosophic. Catholic theology has been wedded to Aristotle. The beginnings of that wedding were auspicious enough. For medieval theology was doing two things when partly it accepted and partly it reinterpreted the Aristotelian corpus. On the one hand, it was providing itself with a conceptual system that would make it possible for it to work out coherent answers to its endless quaestiones. At the same time, it was christianizing the Greek and Arabic culture that was pouring into Western Europe and threatening to engulf its faith. But what once was achievement, at a later date proved to be an obstacle to vitality and development. Aristotelian thought is unacquainted not merely with the content but also with the nature of modern science. It is not equipped to distinguish and to relate to one another the natural sciences, the human sciences, philosophy, and theology. It is unable to provide the foundations for their proper functioning and collaboration. Its conceptual system in part is to be revised and in part to be replaced by notions drawn from modern philosophy and science. So it is that contemporary theologians are drawing upon personalist, phenomenological, existential, historical, and transcendental types of philosophic thought to find the conceptual tools needed for their own thinking and writing. The results are often eclectic rather than systematic and deeply based, and here I feel there is a real danger in an age when modernist subjectivism and relativism are becoming increasingly common. (Fs)


137a Contemporary Catholic theology, then, not only is open to philosophic influence but profoundly needs philosophy. Here I must distinguish between primary and secondary aspects of that need. The theologian will want to be acquainted with Stoicism in reading Tertullian, with middle Platonism in reading Origen, with Neoplatonism in reading Augustine, with Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes in reading Aquinas, with Aquinas in reading subsequent theologians. But this need is secondary. It is a matter of acquiring the necessary background for particular tasks of interpretation. Again, it is through a study of the philosophers that the theologian will be introduced to philosophic questions, that he will reach answers relevant to his primary need, that he will learn to think and speak on the level of his age and culture. But again this is secondary. It is concerned with the pedagogy of meeting the primary need. It does not define the primary need itself. The primary need is for the theologian to know what he is doing when he is doing theology. To reach such knowledge three prior questions must be answered. First is the question of cognitional theory: What am I doing when I am knowing? Second is the question of epistemology: Why is doing that knowing? Third is the question of metaphysics: What do I know when I do it? To these three questions the theologian needs full, precise, and well-grounded answers. If he has those answers, his essential needs are met. If he does not reach those answers, then he will not know what he is doing, not merely when he reads philosophers but also when he does theology, when he is interpreting a text, when he is ascertaining a historical fact, when he is reconstructing a situation or mentality, when he moves beyond reason to faith, when he determines what is and what is not a matter of faith, when he seeks an understanding of the mysteries of faith, and when he concerns himself with the problem of communicating the faith to all men of all classes and of all cultures. Briefly, theologians have minds and use them, and they had best know what they are doing when they use them. Again, to put the matter historically, to follow Aquinas today is not to repeat Aquinas today, but to do for the twentieth century what Aquinas did for the thirteenth. As Aquinas baptized key elements in Greek and Arabic culture, so the contemporary Catholic philosopher and/or theologian has to effect a baptism of key elements in modern culture. (Fs) (notabene)