Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1995 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

THEOLOGY OF PROVOCATIVE RECEPTIVITY 27
incarnation is a free loving act of God. For such an act one cannot
give necessary and decisive arguments, but only reasons that are
convincing because they clarify more and more why this actually took
place (37, p. 367). Especially the remarks about Thomas' use of Deus
and the implications of that use, but also the remarks about the
arguments of fittingness return in De Grijs' criticism of Wiederkehr.
Because Wiederkehr does not recognise sufficiently this character of
fittingness and more importantly, because he overlooks Thomas' use
of Deus, he accuses Thomas of a change of perspective, which in fact
does not take place. There is no textual evidence (37, p. 371).
The second element in De Grijs' criticism is his close
attention to what Thomas in fact writes and how he phrases his
thoughts, to the terms he uses and to the meaning these terms have.
That can be seen in his close reading of the text, his feeling for the
movement of the argument (e.g. the analysis of ST I, q. 13, a. 7: 38,
pp. 11-24; cf. also 37, pp. 367-8). With regard to the meaning of
terms De Grijs refers constantly to what one could call the historical
context. That is to say, De Grijs mentions repeatedly that Thomas
works within the tradition of the Church, that he writes and thinks on
the basis of Scripture: thàt context determines the meaning of terms.
And, he analyses the meaning of terms within the corpus of Aquinas'
work. The first aspect can be noticed when De Grijs in his discussion
with Wiederkehr remarks that deus should not be understood in the
way of the comparative study of religion or in the way philosophy or
natural theology uses de Deo uno, but as referring to Deus verus, who
"creates and saves and redeems and sanctifies and comes and
completes" (37, p. 366). The second aspect is apparent in his
discussion with Schoonenberg. One of the central points of his
criticism is that Schoonenberg translates relatio realis with "real
relation" and understands real as actual, and that he consequently
understands the other term, relatio rationis tantum, as an imaginary,
unreal relation, as unrelatednes (38, pp. 25,31). Realis, De Grijs
argues, refers in Thomas' texts to res, thing and relatio realis denotes
a relation which is part of the thing, belongs to its essence, while
relatio rationis tantum refers to those relations which we form in our
thinking (38, pp. 17-21).
The third element in De Grijs' criticism is that both
theologians do neither show any awareness of the type of theology