GUNTARDO, archbishop of COLOGNE. — Consecrated on 22 April 850, he died in 873. A lavish patron of the arts, he kept the Irish poet Sedulius Scotus at his court; he commissioned artistic paintings and a magnificent Bible for the Cathedral Library. From Fulda he summoned the monk Meginhard to serve as teacher at the cathedral school of Cologne.
At the Council of Aachen in 862, which he presided over, he allowed Lothair to marry his mistress Valdrada without awaiting the reply of Pope Nicholas I, to whom Queen Teutberga had appealed, and he confirmed his action at a synod of Metz. But in 869 Pope Nicholas I annulled these decisions. G. rebelled against the Pope’s sentence in a violent memorial and continued to exercise his episcopal functions. Only under Adrian II was G. readmitted to Communion, but only as a layman, on 1 July 869 at Monte Cassino.
manicarum in usum scholarum, XII: MGH, Poëtae latini Medii Aevi, Poëtae latini aevi Carolini, III, p. 221 ff.; Epistolae papae Nicolai I, in MGH, Epistolae, VI, p. 267 ff.; Epistolae Coloniense, ibid., VI, p. 241 ff.; Fliche-Martin-Frutz, VI, pp. 330, 401–11, 478. Lucchesio Spätling
GÜNTHER, ANTON. Philosopher and semi-rationalist theologian, born at Lindenau (Bohemia) on 27 November 1783, died at Vienna on 24 February 1863. Of humble origin, he began his studies at Leitmeritz and then went to Prague, where he first came into contact with the philosophy of Herder and Kant. At the end of his university studies, having lost his faith, he devoted himself to law and was deeply impressed by the superiority of ecclesiastical legislation over pagan legislation. Lacking means and forced to leave Prague after difficult years, he settled with his family in Vienna (1810), where Michele Korn, parish priest of Brunn, induced him to study Sacred Scripture: this reading proved salutary, and through contact with the religious circle of Schlegel and St Clement Hofbauer he completed his conversion, returning to the Church. After completing two years of theological studies at Jaur (Hungary), he was ordained a priest (1820), and in 1822 entered the Society of Jesus and went to Starawicz (Galicia) for his novitiate; but for health reasons he had to leave it, while retaining an excellent memory of the Jesuits. Having recovered in Vienna, he was appointed by the imperial government censor of works on philosophy and law. He refused chairs at Munich, Bonn and Breslau, hoping to obtain one in Vienna, but was very probably disappointed because of the novelty of the ideas he professed.
Indeed, having devoted himself entirely to philosophy, he conceived the generous plan of harmonizing modern thought with the Catholic faith; but, imbued as he was with the systems of Descartes, Kant and Hegel, he constructed a synthesis that could not fail to be debated.
Starting from the historical fact of Christianity, he admitted that Jesus, in his preaching, enunciated certain principles (summa credendorum principia) which, like germs, contained all the dogmas: a kind of primordial nebula from which the «dogmatic cosmos» would gradually have been formed. This opus distinctionis is due to philosophy, which succeeded in deducing what was virtual and implicit, concealed within the germs of Revelation. Philosophy, in its centuries-long development, gradually attained sparks of truth that were defined by the Church; these definitions, however, are infallible only in a relative sense, since not the whole truth was sanctioned, but only that particle of it which was attainable at the time. In our own day philosophy has reached its maturity and can therefore penetrate any mystery by bringing its intrinsic constituent elements into clear light; the Church, following the progress of human knowledge, must confirm the definitive achievements of philosophy (the objective progress of dogma).
With these premises G. penetrates the sanctuary of faith and rationalizes its mysteries. Earth is the reflection of heaven: from it begins the ascent to the higher spheres. The world comprises three moments: spirit, nature and man. In man two essences are found, spirit (πνεῦμα) and nature (φόσις), each endowed with knowledge, appetite and consciousness: these two primordial substances, antithetical in themselves, find their synthesis in man, in whom inferior nature is united with spirit through the consciousness that the latter has of itself and of everything belonging to nature, whose phenomena it refers to itself, thereby becoming the sole subject of attribution: this is human personality (anthropological dualism). Cognition in the spirit proceeds as follows: the human spirit, insofar as it is created, is also limited; it can therefore know itself only through the stimulus of external phenomena, in which it sees itself as an object, that is, as the antithesis and counterpart of itself, which it then discovers as a reality identical with and caused and dependent upon itself: thus, having become perfectly conscious of itself, it constitutes itself as a person (conscientia sui).
Man is the image of God: from the image it is easy to ascend to the archetype. In God, the uncreated spirit, knowledge (which is a metaphysical requirement of every spirit) does not unfold through phenomena (κατὰ φωνιώμενοι), but immediately, by itself (κατὰ πρᾶγμα); that is, the (absolute) divine substance, unable to know itself through a process of passive receptivity, posits itself (ethical principle) before itself as an object of intuition, in a perfect manner (κατὰ πρᾶγμα), thereby duplicating itself, so that the new substance generated by the first and opposed to it (antithetical principle) may likewise be a substance and an absolute principle. In a third moment of the uncreated Spirit, the two absolute substances affirm their equality, emanating, per modum unius principii, a third absolute substance (the synthetic, or homothetic, principle). This is the theogonic process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis (Hegelian influence), which constitutes three absolute substances, really and numerically distinct, each of which is conscious of its opposition to and identity with the other, whereby each becomes perfectly conscious of itself, constituting itself as a person; this is the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three absolute essences or substances, hypostatized, which form one God and also a single absolute person, not through numerical substantial identity, but through specific identity and an organic dynamic-ethical union (tritheism).
The world is the inverse of the Trinity. The Father, thinking of himself, necessarily thinks that he is not the Son and the Holy Spirit (spiritual nature), the Son that he is not the Father and the Holy Spirit (physical nature), and the Holy Spirit that he is not the Father and the Son (human nature); that is, in affirming itself, God necessarily includes the idea of his non-I (that is, the complex of essences—spiritual, natural, and human: the non-divine triad), which he loves with the same love as himself, that is, necessarily, and therefore cannot fail to produce it: hence the necessary creation (an act completing the inner-Trinitarian life), which is the best possible one (cosmic optimism). It was made not out of impure egoism (as the Scholastics maintain: «creavit ad gloriam suam manifestandam»), but out of pure love, that is, in order to make creatures happy. Among these, man stands out, created in original justice, which was owed to him by divine goodness (Baianism), which necessarily bestows whatever the creature can receive. Sin disrupted the original plan, but God, through a necessary impulse of his love, redeemed it in Jesus Christ, who is the synthesis of the two worlds (heavenly and earthly); for in Christ there are two perfect consciousnesses (the human and the divine), and therefore two complete persons (Nestorianism), who are united intimately in a hierarchical-psychological subordination: the human person is conscious of being wholly dependent upon the divine person and almost abdicates his prerogatives in favor of the hegemonic principle, which is found in the personality of the Word. Thus the human and the divine, heaven and earth, are perfectly harmonized in the Redeemer (hypostatic union).
This imaginative synthesis was elaborated in many works: Vorschule zur spekulativen Theologie des positiven Christenthums (Vienna 1828–29; two parts: de Creatione and de Incarnatione); Peregrins Gastmahl in eif Octaven aus dem deutschen wissenschaftlichen Volksleben (ibid. 1830); Süd- und Nordlichter am Horizonte speculativer Theologie (ibid. 1832); Der letzte Symboliker (ibid. 1834: on the controversy between Moehler and Baur); Thomas a Scrupulis. Zur Transfiguration des Persönlichkeitsphantheismus (ibid. 1835: against Hegelian philosophy); Die Juste-Milieus in der deutschen Philosophie gegenwärtiger Zeit (ibid. 1838: against Baur); Eurystens und Herakles, metalogische Kritiken und Meditationen (ibid. 1843). In collaboration with Pabst he wrote against Baader: Janusköpfe für Philosophie und Theologie (ibid. 1833). Together with J. E. Veith he published from 1849 to 1854 the periodical Lydia, philosophisches Taschenbuch. The work Lentigo's und Peregrins Briefwechsel (ibid. 1857) was not put on the market. G.’s Gesammelte Schriften were printed in Vienna in 1882.
The sensational titles of these works, written in a lively style, imbued with mysticism and rich in poetic images (occasionally strange ones), were bound to make an impression on the Romantic minds of the first half of the nineteenth century, which were unschooled in metaphysics and eager for novelty. In fact, Güntherianism passed through Germany like a mighty current, winning over men of no mean intellect (the physician J. H. Pabst, the Viennese canon J. E. Veith, and the Benedictine abbot Th. Gangauf of Augsburg), gaining access to the foremost chairs through the efforts of distinguished professors (I. Merten of Trier, J. B. Baltzer and P. J. Elvenich of Breslau, J. Nep. Erlich of Prague, C. Werner of St. Pölten, P. Knoodt and B. I. Hilgers of Bonn, and A. von Schmidt of Salzburg), attracting the sympathy of high ecclesiastical personalities (Monsignor Arnoldi, bishop of Trier; Cardinal Diepenbrock of Breslau; Cardinal Schwarzenberg of Salzburg; and, at first, Cardinal D’Andrea, prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Index), and it seemed that the intellectual adventure of Güntherianism would have a long future. But from the ranks of the resurgent Scholasticism there arose formidable adversaries (for example, F. X. Dieringer, J. Clemens, H. Denzinger, J. Kleutgen, I. Schwetz, and J. B. Katschahaler), as well as Viale Prelà, nuncio in Vienna, who had immediately defined G.’s system as a «via pericolosa» and informed the Holy See. After six years of careful investigations and heated debates (the Sacred Congregation of the Index admitted public defenders of the system in the persons of Gangauf, Baltzer, and Knoodt), the condemnation came on 15 June 1857 in Pius IX’s brief Eximium iuxum, addressed to Cardinal Geissel, archbishop of Cologne. G.’s Trinitarian, Christological, anthropological, and cosmological errors were condemned, and the theory of the evolution of dogma was rejected (Denz-U, 1655–58). A month later G. submitted, sending the Pope a beautiful profession of faith drafted by Canon Veith, the movement’s beneficent genius. Many followed the master’s example. Baltzer, on the other hand, rebelled and in 1860 was personally condemned in Pius IX’s letter Dolore haud mediocri to the archbishop of Breslau (Denz-U, 1655, n. 1). The First Vatican Council definitively condemned the error (ibid., 1783, 1795–96, 1800, 1805, 1816, 1818).