Lonergan's Method Research Articles

Theological Instruction and Faith Transmission: Lonergan's Method as Pedagogy Theology

Abstract Hans Urs Von Balthasar's lament that coincidence of the theologian and the saint has not been the norm since the Middle Ages can be emblematic of a methodological issue impacting both academic theology and the Church wholly by separation of that which as a faith tenet should be unified—word and witness. Theologians’ intent today to speak from but not be confused with their location, the theological discipline's reach for respectability in an increasingly secular academy, market forces deliberately shrinking theology's influence except in such as interdisciplinary endeavors supporting other publics’ aims, the contemporary narrow specialization of the theologian, and the sometime view that narrow tasks serving theology are theology itself all result in conflations of theology and religion. So “theology” and “spirituality,” as Balthasar identified the breach, will be separate. Yet we hope that theologians, with all others, will be saints. Does this not, particularly to students, transmit the faith? Although Bernard Lonergan's method might seem to exacerbate the separation given its numerous theological specialties and conversion types, it also offers the way of reunification—without threat to academic integrity. The theological method, with its turn to the subject, can ground a theology (and method) of pedagogy.

Why Theology Can and Should be Taught at Secular Universities: Lonergan on Intellectual Conversion

Drawing on Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (1972) I argue that theology can be taught because personal knowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry; and it should be taught because critical engagement with basic ways of taking one's life as a whole (religion in a broad sense) furnishes a critique of the typical oversights of contemporary culture. The appropriation of one's subjectivity entails an awareness of an existential dialectic that pushes towards a decisive option for affirming the possibility and worth of growth in one's powers of self-determination and self-transcendence. Thus conversion—precisely defined in terms of this dialectic—has moral and intellectual dimensions whose promotion goes to the heart of the academic enterprise. By separating out those disciplines (systematics, for example) which are mediated by the existential stance taken by the scholar, Lonergan allows theology to be seen as one world view among others.

Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytic Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytic Philosophy Thomas McPartland (bio) Andrew Beards . Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytic Philosophy. University of Toronto Press. xii, 384. $75.00 We live, according to Jürgen Habermas, in a 'post-metaphysical age.' Much of the analytical tradition in philosophy throughout the twentieth century - whether of the logical positivist variety (Russell) or of the ordinary language variety (the later Wittgenstein) - would be in agreement. It is therefore a significant departure, as Andrew Beards notes in his Method in Metaphysics, when a number of prominent analytical philosophers have begun seriously to address metaphysical issues. Beards demonstrates that there is such a 'post-Wittgenstein' trend as he examines in detail such thinkers as Hilary Putman, Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, David Lewis, David Armstrong, Derek Parfit, Saul Kripke, C.B. Martin, and David Wiggins, among others. Equally as striking as the existence of the movement is the range of metaphysical claims it generates, ranging from naturalism, to conceptualist essentialism, to varieties of realism. While the creativity, boldness, and careful formulation of these claims may elicit our admiration, their proliferation, Beards argues, shows a lack of rigour, since the claims at crucial junctures are based too frequently on vague appeals to intuition. Beards, as a strong supporter of the direction of this movement, sees the needed precision coming from [End Page 406] the method of Bernard Lonergan, applied to epistemology and metaphysics in his Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. The burden of the first three chapters of Beards's book is to demonstrate the relevance of method, as Lonergan conceives of it, for the project of analytical philosophy of metaphysics. Beards is at pains to indicate that Lonergan's philosophical method is not a modernist technique, whether Cartesian or neo-Kantian. Rooted in a phenomenology of cognition, while fully accepting the historicity and hermeneutical dimension of human existence, it issues into an epistemology of critical realism that establishes a basic semantics for handling metaphysical problems. The crux of Lonergan's argument for methodological control is the claim that his epistemology and the consequent metaphysics are verified in the data of consciousness. This raises decisive questions about the nature of consciousness and the nature, indeed the very existence, of the self. So in chapter 4 Beards turns to consider the metaphysics of the self, where he shows that Lonergan's distinct notion of consciousness as 'self presence' breaks fundamentally with theory of consciousness as an 'inner look,' thereby validating the philosophical integrity of concept of a self against such skeptics as G.E.M. Anscombe. Lonergan's critical realism explicates the process, structure, and norms of questioning across all the fields of human inquiry. The norms are ingredients in the process as it spontaneously unfolds through attention to experience, insights, formulations of insights, reflective insights into the criteria for sound judgment, and judgments. Beards fully exploits the nuances of Lonergan's cognitional theory, only hinted at here, to engage in dialogue with prominent analytic philosophers on such metaphysical issues as reference and demonstratives, natural kinds, universals, substances, events, causality, emergence, and social reality. Beards uses Lonergan's method to show the limitations of other approaches. Empiricism, for example, focuses on only part of the process of inquiry (experience), and so does conceptualism (formulation of concepts). Most importantly, according to Beards, Lonergan's critical realism, breaking, as it does, completely from the confrontational theory of truth, outflanks the empiricist and essentialist debate, overcomes the distinction of primary and secondary qualities to reach a fully explanatory notion of substance, and examines causality in a move beyond Hume that allows for both classical and statistical laws and for an emergent universe. These metaphysical distinctions also identify the distinct ontology of social relations without resorting to either nominalism or essentialism. Beards is fully conversant with Lonergan's philosophy (and its striking break from prevalent assumptions) and thoroughly familiar with leading analytical philosophers. This book brings to analytic philosophy, whose hallmark has always been clarity, a much-needed rigour in dealing with a range of vexing metaphysical issues. For philosophers engaged in Lonergan [End Page 407] studies, the book offers the most systematic application and...

Taking A(nother) Look at Lonergan's Method

Taking A(nother) Look at Lonergan's Method

The Dynamism of Desire: Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S. J. on The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. By James L. Connor

S. J. and Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center . Pp. xii, 492 , Saint Louis , The Institute of Jesuit Sources , 2006 , $10.00. This is an excellent book, though possibly limited in its appeal. As the title leads one to expect, it presents an extended commentary on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola applying, in the main, categories taken from the philosophical and theological reflection of Bernard Lonergan. There are lots of other valuable points made about the Exercises and lots of other interesting references and quotations, but the clear focus is on the use of Lonergan to understand Ignatius better. For anyone formed in both the Ignatian Exercises and Lonergan, the book is an absolute must read. It challenges and excites, offering illumination in both directions. For such a one, the understanding of both the Exercises and Lonergan cannot remain unaffected by the reading of this book. It is not at all clear however what a person with no background in Lonergan's thought is going to make of it all. Lonergan has created a vocabulary of his own, and for the outsider it must all appear somewhat opaque. Familiarity with the Exercises has to be presumed for anyone even opening this book, and I cannot but believe that any ordinary person coming to it unprepared is going to find things here that will be found to be distinctly odd, even bizarre. There is a major presupposition of this book which is highly questionable, even for a devotee of Lonergan, and it is that the Lonergan's project and the project of the Spiritual Exercises are basically one and the same. In Insight, Lonergan's sums up the goal of his book as promoting a process of self-appropriation, coming to recognize in one's own experience the dynamism of the human spirit and the process of coming to know. The authors of this book consider that the Spiritual Exercises is another form of self-appropriation also. In a way it no doubt is, for self knowledge is essential to Christian conversion, but the two are quite different in their source and their goal. Self-appropriation is a theoretical goal, leading to an epistemology, a metaphysics and an ethics, indeed a whole philosophy. Christian conversion is quite a different process entirely. Lonergan's use of the word ‘conversion’ for his breakthrough to a heightened self-awareness and an epistemology is misguided. Becoming aware of one's intentional operations in the new way which underpins Lonergan's approach involves a sense of newness, a startling strangeness, and can be associated with an experience of conversion, even moral and religious. But in itself it is simply a heightening of awareness together with a number of particular philosophical judgments, and in no true sense a conversion at all. It is open to each and all, with no need for the help of divine grace which genuine conversion requires. Lonergan's particular solution to the critical problem is not so well established that it can arrogate to itself the language of conversion in this manner. A perfectly valid result of one's self-appropriation would be to reject Lonergan's critical realism as mistaken and more akin in the end to Kantian Idealism than to Thomistic Realism. Behind this misidentification there lurks what appears to me to be a profound flaw in the Lonergan synthesis. Lonergan, and with him the authors of this book, claims that the deepest dynamism of desire in the human heart, underlying all science and philosophy, human relations and religion, is ‘the Eros of the mind, the desire and the drive to understand’ (p. 44). This, however, is simply not so. There is a deeper desire of the human heart which Lonergan failed to uncover, the desire for love and communion, the desire for the finis ultimus, the desire for happiness. The deepest well-spring of human motivation is not curiosity and the desire to know which leads to science and philosophy, but loneliness and the desire for love which is fulfilled by friendship and communion, ultimately with God. The authors of this book have done us all a service by putting these two fundamental projects together for analysis and comparison. As well as giving many useful insights into both, they have raised fundamental questions about Lonergan's project and method and his basic synthesis. Errata: The first line on page 44 repeats the last line of page 43. On page 51 the capital T introducing chapter 4 is missing, and on page 197 the capital I introducing chapter 9 is missing.

A theory of health science and the healing arts based on the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan

This paper represents a preliminary investigation relating Bernard Lonergan's thought to health science and the healing arts. First, I provide background for basic elements of Lonergan's theoretical terminology that I employ. As inquiry is the engine of Lonergan's method, next I specify two questions that underlie medical insights and define several terms, including health, disease, and illness, in relation to these questions. Then I expand the frame of reference to include all disciplines involved in the cycle of clinical interaction under the heading health science and the healing arts. Finally, I analyze the cycle of clinical interaction in terms of Lonergan's cognitive theory. I compare and contrast my analysis, based on Lonergan, with that of Pellegrino, Thomasma and Sulmasy as I proceed. In closing, I comment briefly on the next stage of this project regarding Lonergan's theory of the human good in relation to the practice of the healing arts.

Renewing the Identity of Catholic Colleges: Implementing Lonergan's Method for Education

. This article addresses the epistemological disarray and secularizing trends in American culture, while also suggesting a way for Catholic institutions to meet their responsibilities under Ex Corde Ecclesiae. It employs Bernard Lonergan's work to establish a theoretical foundation for education and outlines two specific liberal arts courses, Beginning with Knowing, in which students develop a methodological foundation for objective knowledge, and The Catholic Tradition, which transmits important Catholic perspectives and values.

The Role of Faith in Theology: A Critique of Lonergan's Method

Theology has been traditionally defined as `faith seeking understanding,' the science taking the faith of the Church as its starting point. Lonergan, in Method, says that positive theology has no normative presuppositions. This article sets out to show that the faith of the Church is the presupposition of all theology.

Mezirow's Theory of Transformative Learning and Lonergan's Method in Theology: Resources for Adult Theological Education

Mezirow's theory of transformative learning proposes that deep transformations of perspectives occur only when learners are able to reflect critically on the underlying premises of their understandings. This article presents an overview of transformative learning theory and offers a theological reflection rooted in the Christian tradition and, in particular, in Bernard Lonergan's theological anthropology and method. One graduate program in ministry, the Loyola Institute for Ministry Extension program, serves as an example of how transformative learning theory may be applied to adult theological education.

Intentionality Analysis and Intersubjectivity

ABSTRACTIn Method in Theology Bernard Lonergan acknowledged the reality of intersubjectivity in human life and sought to incorporate it in various ways into his understanding of theological method. Building upon Lonergan's insights, this essay indicates how his three stages of meaning and different realms of meaning can be expanded in terms of the author's Neo-Whiteheadian metaphysics of universal intersubjectivity so as to justify a communal and processive approach to truth and objectivity in human affairs. In this way, Lonergan's transcendental method is clearly vindicated in a Neo-Whiteheadian as well as a Thomistic context and the resulting synthesis of metaphysical perspectives notably strengthens the position of those who advocate discussion and dialogue over the use of force for the resolution of persistent controversial issues.

Applying Lonergan's Method

Applying Lonergan's Method

Augustine's de Trinitate and Lonergan's Realms of Meaning

[After reviewing various proposals concerning the structure of Augustine's De Trinitate, the author presents a structural analysis of that work using the notion of “realms of meaning” found in Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology. It suggests that Augustine's treatise comprises four distinct sections which present an account of the Trinity from the perspective of a biblically informed common sense (Books 1–4); of theory (Books 5–7); of interiority (Books 8–11); and finally of transcendence (Books 12–15).]

Lonergan's Contribution to Ecumenism

[The author suggests that the reception of ecumenical consensus is related to an adequate appreciation of theological method. The functional approach outlined in Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology provides a framework for reflecting on the role of ecumenical consensus statements and their relation to diverse expressions of the apostolic faith in the past, present, and future. She then proposes that ecumenical dialogues not limit themselves to the elaboration of consensus but make explicit the implications in relation to past judgments and future articulations of faith.]

Rolston, Lonergan, and the Intrinsic Value of Nature

In recent metaethical debate over ways to justify the notion of intrinsic natural value, some neopragmatists have challenged realist conceptions of scientific and moral truth. Holmes Rolston defends a critical‐realist epistemology as the basis for a metaphysics of “projective nature” and a cosmological narrative—both of which set up a historical ontology of objective natural value. Pure ecological science informs the wilderness experience of Rolston's ideal epistemic subject, the “sensitive naturalist.” The author argues that Rolston's account of the relation between knowing and valuing can be clarified and strengthened by appropriating Bernard Lonergan's transcendental method. Conversely, Lonergan's view of moral self‐transcendence can be developed further in light of Rolston's virtue epistemology, which is embodied in the figure of the sensitive naturalist.

Lonergan's Cognitional Theory and Method in Psychology

It is proposed that the thought of Bernard Lonergan has a great deal to contribute to the long-standing questions of what is the right method of inquiry in psychology; of how far, and in what sense, psychology should aspire to be a science; and of to what degree it should pursue the methods of such sciences as physics and chemistry. Lonergan shows that any attempt to eliminate `mentalism' from the explanation of human behavior is self-destructive, since this implies that the theory which purports to eliminate it can itself never be accepted for good reasons. To illustrate the point, B.F. Skinner's account of psychology as a science is summarized, and subjected to criticism in the light of Lonergan's principles. Finally, the moral is applied to some other conceptions of psychology.

Conflict Management: Lonergan's Method

Conflict Management: Lonergan's Method

Lonergan's Method and the Dummett‐Lash Dispute

Not the least of the things that are interesting about the vigorous dispute between Professor Michael Dummett and Professor Nicholas Lash in the October and December 1987 issues of New Blackfriars is that it provides an excellent opportunity for testing the practical relevance of Bernard Lonergan’s much-discussed method for theology. The dispute is at heart a dispute about the appropriate way of doing theology, at least within the Roman Catholic church, and here is a chance for seeing how Lonergan helps us to discern the flaws (and the strong points too). But first of all quite a lot must be said about that method of Lonergan’s, and this will fill two-thirds of this article. Lonergan may well be the theologian who will best assist us in delivering Christian theology safely into the twenty- first century, and beyond. His thinking bears the stamp of the Catholic trust in the compatibility of reason and faith, of science and religion, of the God of philosophy and the God of revelation, while at the same time the foundational role he allocates to conversion accords with one of Protestantism’s basic religious insights. And, in a world in which religious fundamentalism holds such sway, he also insists on the indispensability for theological inquiry and doctrinal enrichment of objective research and scientific rigour. Nevertheless, in Lonergan’s writings it is at times difficult to see the wood for the trees. So here is an impressionistic account of the wood.

Response to Donald Keefe on Lonergan

RESPONSE TO DONALD KEEFE ON LONERGAN DONALD KEEFE'S "A Methodological Critique of Lonergan's Theological Method " in a previous issue of The Thomist is one of the most challenging and thought-provoking articles I have seen recently.1 He appears to mount a sophisticated and devastating critique of Lonergan 's theological method. I would like to suggest lines along which a Lonerganian might respond. Many points call for challenge, but I read Keefe to be making two central affirmations: (I) I,onergan holds to a distorted understanding of the nature-grace distinction, by which nature is the prior and determining reality, and grace an accidental and extrinsic a.fter-thought: (~) Lonergan continues to hold to the out-moded natural-supernatural distinction. I believe Keefe is half-right in both cases. The two theses I attribute to Keefe are distinguished by the words "distorted" and "out-moded." The first assumes (at least for the sake of the argument) there is such a thing as the nature-grace distinction, and claims that Lonergan misconstrues it. The second, more radical thesis is that this distinction was current in the Middle Ages as the natural-supernatural distinction, but is now to be abandoned. In other words, it is possible to misunderstand a tradition, and it is possible to belong to a mistaken tradition. I take Keefe to be accusing Lonergan on both counts: Lonergan misunderstands the nature -grace distinction; but further, that distinction is itself erroneous and so Lonergan, holding to it (with whatever misconceptions ), stands doubly condemned. I believe Keefe is half-right in both cases. In the first instance , he is right on the substance, but incorrect in his read1 Full reference: The Thomist 50 :28-65 (1986) . All internal references to Keefe will be to this article. 88 RESPONSE TO DONALD KEEFE ON LONERGAN 89 ing of Lonergan. That is, there is indeed a valid distinction between grace and nature; but Lonergan understands it correctly, not incorrectly. In the second case, he reads Lonergan correctly , but is mistaken on the issue. That is, Lonergan does indeed espouse the nature-grace or natural-supernatural distinction; but that distinction is not out-moded, but perenially valid. Point I. Thesis: "Lonergan holds to a distorted version of the nature-grace distinction, by which nature is the determining reality, and grace an extrinsic after-thought." This is my wording, but I am attributing the thought to Keefe. The following quotations from his article are intended to justify and expand this thesis. "Lonergan's thought on the nature-grace relation is finally moored to the supposition that created grace (being in love with God) is a contingent modification of a preexisting natural entity ..." (Keefe, 33). Translated into epistemological terms, this means that reason is the controlling reality, faith an adventitious late-comer. A theology based on such a notion is inescapably rationalistic. "To refuse such accountability ... is to suppose interiority to be self-validating and autonomous: this is Lonergan's supposition, and it reveals a rationalism little at peace with a gratuitous intellectual horizon , the horizon of faith " (Keefe, 34) . Further, this transcendental method, as self-validating, is inescapable , and therefore deterministic. " Such a consequence is the very hallmark of determinism" (Keefe, 36n). As such it has no openness to history; the method thus in advance excludes the proper content of theology. "It carries an emphasis upon fallenness and the need for redemption which, as has been said above, is curiously absent from Lonergan's anthropology" (Keefe, 41) . In sum, Keefe outlines here the kind of extrinsic, twolayered theology of a self-enclosed natural world into which grace penetrates adventitiously as a strange and foreign intruder , an awkward after-thought-the very understanding that Rahner was attacking in his early writings on grace.2 2 Karl Rahner, "Concerning the Relationship Between Nature and Grace." Theological Investigations !:297-317. Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961. 90 TERRY J. TEKIPPE My response: Keefe is quite right to reject such a conception of the nature-grace relationship. Unfortunately for his case, Lonergan never held any such thing. Though Keefe is obviously familiar with a great range of Lonergan's writings, he has missed the point of a whole number of...

The Ethics of Jesus, Christ-Centered Ethics and Lonergan's Method

The Ethics of Jesus, Christ-Centered Ethics and Lonergan's Method

Aesthetic Subjectivity and Generalized Empirical Method

AESTHETIC SUBJECTIVITY AND GENERALIZED EMPIRICAL METHOD T HE GENERALIZED EMPIRICAL method proposed by Bernard Lonergan 1 e:ffects a mediation through self-appropriation of the subject's intelligent, reasonable, and responsible intentionality. More precisely, the work of Lonergan is a quite thorough maieutic of intelligent and reasonable consciousness, of what Lonergan would call the second and third levels of conscious intentionality,2 and a significant pointer to the other levels. The developing articulation of the dynamics of the fourth level, the level of responsible or existential consciousness, is currently the principal concern of many of Lonergan's students.8 What constitutes self-ap1 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957); as applied to theology, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). 2 On the levels of consciousness, see Method in Theology, Chapter Oue. Lonergan there discusses four levels. Consciousness is so structured as to move by questioning from experience of the data of sense and of the data of consciousness (the empirical level) to insight into the experienced data and conceptualization and formulation of one's insights (the intelligent level), and then to reflection on the adequacy of one's understanding and to judgment in accord with the adequacy reflectively grasped (the reasonable level) , and finally to deliberation, decision, and action, i.e. to constitution of the world and of oneself (the responsible or existential level) . In the lecture, " The Subject" (A Seoond Collection, edited by William F. J. Ryan, S. J., and Bernard J. Tyrrell, S. J., Philadelphia: Westminster , 1974, pp. 69-86, cf. esp. p. 80), Lonergan adds a lower level of dr.eaming consciousness, and in Philosophy of God, and Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973, p. 38), he adds a highest level of religious love. 3 Scholars Press is undertaking the publication of papers delivered at the annual Lonergan Workshops held at Boston College. The volumes, edited by Frederick Lawrence, will be entitled Lonergan Workshop·. Oue volume was published in 1978. Almost all of the papers in some way reflect concern with the mediation of existential subjectivity. Furthermore, an annual seminar at the American Academy of Religion meeting is devoted to the study of what Lonergan means by dialectic, a functional specialty in Lonergan's method that is correlated with the fourth level of consciousness. 257 258 ROBERT M. DORAN, S.J. propriation of the level of consciousness concerned with evaluation , deliberation, decision, and action? The present paper proposes to advance discussion of this issue. The core of my argument is to the effect that the selfappropriation of existential subjectivity depends on a maieutic of consciousness distinct from but complementary to that proposed by Lonergan, a second mediation of the subject as subject , a psychic mediation of one's dramatic artistry, of the aesthetic subjectivity whose concern is to make a work of art out of one's living:4 The aesthetic and dramatic dimension of our being attends the operations which occur at all levels of conscious intentionality . There is a drama not only to one's self-constitution as existential subject and to one's constitution of the world through decisive action but also to one's pursuit of intelligibility and truth.5 The drama is more than adverted to in Lonergan's •It is obvious, then, that I am employing the term, aesthetic subjectivity, in a manner quite different from the usage of Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method, New York: Seabury, 1975). For Gadamer, the term is pejorative, and designates an immediacy of taste that would empty the work of art of its distinctive claim to truth. In my usage, the term also designates an immediacy of feeling, but to a world already mediated and constituted by meaning. As such, it is not simply the immediacy of empirical consciousness to data of sense, but permeaks all of the levels of conscious intentionality disclosed by Lonergan. Thus, insights, judgments, and decisions are all dramatic events; permeating their quality as intentional operations is a dispositional character, a quality of feeling, of " mass and momentum," of energic compositions and distributions, without which "our knowing and deciding would be paper thin" (Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology , pp. 30-31). When...