Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Second Collection

Titel: A Second Collection

Stichwort: Christentum - Realität: Origines (Immaterialität von Vater und Sohn); Partizipation

Kurzinhalt: But the basic contrast lies in differing notions of reality. For Tertullian the real had to be bodily; ... But for Origen the real was idea, as in middle Platonism.

Textausschnitt: 248a While Origen also was later regarded as subordinationist, his thought unfolds in an entirely different climate of opinion. Where Tertullian considered the incorporeal to be nonexistent, Origen strongly and insistently affirmed the strict immateriality of both the Father and the Son.1 While Tertullian could admit the divine wisdom to be eternal, he held that the Son came into existence only at the creation of the world. In contrast, Origen held the Son to be no less eternal than the Father.2 Tertullian thought of the generation of the Son as of a bodily substance proceeding from the bodily substance of the Father but in no way separated from it. Origen rejected any account of the Son's generation that appealed to the analogy of human or animal generation or to some mythic extrusion from the godhead.3 For Origen the Son is the image of the Father; he proceeds from the Father spiritually as a choice from the mind: again, whatever the Father does, he also does (John 5:19).4 (Fs)

248b But the basic contrast lies in differing notions of reality. For Tertullian the real had to be bodily; it was what elsewhere I have named the already-out-there-now of extroverted animal consciousness. But for Origen the real was idea, as in middle Platonism. Moreover, because the Father and the Son were distinct, theirs had to be the reality of distinct ideas. The Father was divinity itself, but the Son was divine only by participation.5 The Father was goodness itself, but the Son was good only by participation.6 On the other hand, the Son was light itself, wisdom itself; truth itself, life itself, and justice itself, but the Father was the source of all of these and in himself something far better, far more profound, far more mysterious.7 (Fs)

249a The distinction between Father and Son is sharp and subordinationist. Their unity is what today would be called moral. We worship, he wrote, the Father of truth and the Son that is truth. They are two realities in respect of hypostasis, but a single one by consent, concord, and identity of will. So he who sees the Son, who is the effulgence of God's splendor and the stamp of God's very being, also will see the Father in him who is the image of God.1 It is an image in which participation reaches its supreme perfection for it consists in the Son's eternal contemplation of the Father and his constant acceptance of the Father's will.2 (Fs)