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Is Lonergan's Method Theological? Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics, Vol. 5, Number 1 (March 2019): 61–99. ISSN 2050-392X Is Lonergan’s Method Theological? Peter John McGregor n a 1970 commentary on Bernard Lonergan’s “Functional Specialities,” Karl Rahner was critical of Lonergan’s theological methodology because, in I Rahner’s estimation, it disregarded the “completely peculiar and unique relatedness to the concrete person of Jesus, which is not only distinct to Christian faith and life but also, for that reason, distinct to Christian theology.”1 While regarding Lonergan’s method as appropriate for non-theological sciences, he thought that it treated God as “some arbitrary object within the field of categorical objects” rather than “the incomprehensible mystery which can never be subsumed among the objects of the remaining sciences in a similar method.”2 More recently, Aidan Nichols has criticised Lonergan’s theological methodology on the basis that “the distinctiveness of the Christian faith on his view is not a very interesting distinctiveness. It means in effect that Christianity has the key to what is going on 1 Karl Rahner, “Kritische Bermerkungen zu B.J.F. Lonergan’s Aufsatz: ‘Functional Specialities in Theology’,” Gregorianum 51 (1970): 537–40, at 538. Cf. Tracey Rowland, Catholic Theology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), 67. 2 Ibid., 538–39. Cf. Rowland, Catholic Theology, 67. Radical Orthodoxy 5, No. 1 (March 2019). 62 in other religions, and perhaps outside them too. It does not mean that something different is going on in Christianity.”3 Lonergan’s response to these criticisms would be that what makes his method genuinely theological is the place of conversion, specifically, religious, intellectual, and moral conversion, in his methodology.4 Of these three conversions, religious conversion is foundational. 5 So, the deciding factor in this argument will be whether or not Lonergan’s concept of religious conversion is valid. Lonergan’s Concept of Religious Conversion Lonergan holds that the “dynamism of a knowing subject toward Infinite and Absolute Being (i.e. God) is. an a priori condition of knowledge. That is to say, God is in some ways always present as a horizon and necessarily co-affirmed with every act of human knowledge.”6 For him, “an a priori desire for knowledge of the Absolute Being of God is the transcendental condition of all acts of knowledge.”7 In every act of knowing we are seeking God. Lonergan calls this the question of God . which cannot be ignored. The atheist may pronounce it empty. The agnostic may urge that he finds his investigation has been inconclusive. The contemporary humanist will refuse to allow the question to arise. But their negations presuppose the spark in our clod, our native orientation to the divine.8 3 Aidan Nichols, Scribe of the Kingdom, vol. 2 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1994), 63. Cf. Rowland, Catholic Theology, 67. 4 For how these conversions enable dialectic and the subsequent functional specialities of his method, see Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), beginning from 235. 5 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 105. 6 Alan Vincelette, Recent Catholic Philosophy: The Twentieth Century (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2011), 82. Cf. Rowland, Catholic Theology, 61. 7 Ibid. 8 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 103. 63 McGregor, ‘Is Lonergan’s Method Theological?’ Lonergan states that, “Man achieves authenticity in self-transcendence.” 9 According to him, human beings have a capacity for self-transcendence, that is, one beyond the sensitivity that we share with the higher animals, and this capacity is constituted by “our questions for intelligence, for reflection, and for deliberation.”10 This capacity becomes actual when one falls in love, when “one’s being becomes being-in-love.”11 From this “flows one’s desires and fears, one’s joys and sorrows, one’s discernment of values, one’s decisions and deeds.”12 It is being- in-love with God that is the first principle of Lonergan’s theological method. It is what he means by religious conversion. “There is the love of God with one’s whole heart and whole soul, with all one’s mind and all one’s strength (Mk 12:30). It is God’s love flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us (Rom 5:5).”13 This being in love with God “as experienced, is being in love in an unrestricted fashion . [a] being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations.”14 However, this being-in-love with God “is not the product of our knowledge and choice” but “a conscious dynamic state of love, joy, peace, that manifests itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22)”—the fruit of the Holy Spirit.15 [This] dynamic state is conscious without being known, it is an experience of mystery. Because it is being in love, the mystery is not merely attractive but fascinating; to it one belongs; by it one is possessed. Because it is an unmeasured love, the mystery invokes awe. Of itself, then, inasmuch as it is conscious without being known, the gift of God’s love is an experience of the holy, of Rudolf Otto’s mysterium fascinans et tremendum. It is what Paul Tillich named as being grasped by ultimate concern. It corresponds to St. Ignatius Loyola’s 9 Ibid., 104. 10 Ibid., 105. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 106. Radical Orthodoxy 5, No. 1 (March 2019). 64 consolation that has no cause, as expounded by Karl Rahner.16 Lonergan holds that this state of being conscious of God without God being known, this experience of God’s gift of his love flooding our hearts, is the major exception to the Latin tag: Nihil amatum nisi praecognoitum: Knowledge proceeds love.17 According to Lonergan, what this religious conversion does is bring to fulfilment what he calls the fourth level of intentional consciousness. This is the consciousness “that deliberates, makes judgements of value, decides, acts responsibly and freely.”18 The gift of God’s love “occupies the ground and root of the fourth and highest level of man’s intentional consciousness,” enabling one to do all good because one is in love with God.19 Although he admits that there is no clear-cut evidence for it, Lonergan claims that this religious conversion, which he also calls religious experience, is not limited to Christians, but is common “to such world religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrian Mazdaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism.” 20 Theorizing beyond his data, he appeals to “the antecedent probability established by the fact that God is good and gives to all men sufficient grace for salvation.” 21 Following Friedrich Heiler, he identifies as common features that there is a transcendent reality; that he is immanent in human hearts; that he is supreme beauty, truth, righteousness, goodness; that he is love, mercy, compassion; that the way to him is repentance, self-denial, prayer; that the way is love of one’s neighbour, even of one’s enemies; that 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid., 122. 18 Ibid., 107. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 109. See also 108 & 240–41. 21 Ibid. 65 McGregor, ‘Is Lonergan’s Method Theological?’ the way is love of God, so that bliss is conceived as knowledge of God, union with him, or dissolution into him.22 This religious conversion/experience is “interpreted differently in the context of different religious traditions. For Christians, it is God’s love flooding our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.” 23 Once a person undergoes a religious conversion, this conversion needs to develop. This development is presented as a movement to authenticity from inauthenticity, as in understanding from misunderstanding, truth from error, moral development from sin through repentance, and genuine religion from religious aberration.24 According to Lonergan, it is from religious conversion that faith is born.25 He sees this as a specific instance of knowledge born of love, claiming that it was of this kind of knowledge that Pascal wrote in saying that the heart has reasons that the reason does not know. Thus Lonergan says that: By the heart’s reasons I would understand feelings that are intentional responses to values; and I would recall the two aspects of such responses, the absolute aspect that is a recognition of value, and the relative aspect that is a preference of one value for another.26 Following his understanding of Pascal’s remark, Lonergan maintained that besides factual knowledge reached by experiencing, understanding, and verifying, there is another kind of knowledge reached through the discernment of value and the judgments of value of a person in love.27 22 Ibid. Cf. Friedrich Heiler, “The History of Religions as a Preparation for the Cooperation of Religions,” in The History of Religions, ed. Mircea Eliade & Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1959), 132–60, at 142–53. 23 Ibid., 241. 24 Ibid., 110. 25 Ibid., 115. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. Radical Orthodoxy 5, No. 1 (March 2019). 66 When it comes to the nature of the heart, Lonergan says that it is “the subject on the fourth, existential level of intentional consciousness and in the dynamic state of being in love.”28 Thus, “Faith. is such further knowledge when the love is God’s love flooding our hearts.” 29 This faith does not yet have any epistemological content with regard to what God’s existence and nature might be. Rather, it is an apprehension of transcendent value [which] consists in the experienced fulfilment of our unrestricted thrust to self- transcendence, in our actuated orientation towards the mystery of love and awe. the experienced fulfilment of this thrust may be objectified as a clouded revelation of absolute intelligence and intelligibility, absolute truth and reality, absolute goodness and holiness.30 This faith elicits “a question of decision.
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