Method as Foundation for Theology: Bernard Lonergan's Option

Abstract

Much has been rumored and much more, I suspect, will be rumored about Bernard Lonergan's work in progress, Method in Theology. It is intended as his major statement on the central question of his own life's work, namely, theological method. A definitive critique of the work will, of course, have to await its completion.' In the meantime, however, a number of interested observers have requested some context for understanding the central thrust of Lonergan's work. This article, it is hoped, may help to fill that information gap. Accordingly the article will be principally expository-and that of one central concept in Lonergan's later work: functional specializations. That concept is, I believe, the key to Lonergan's method in both Insight and Method in Theology (which could almost be named Insight II), and bears careful exposition. The question, then, is that of theological method. To that question, with increasing frequency, Bernard Lonergan has devoted his major attention from 1959 to the present.2 Indeed, the question of method in