Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan – Serie

Collection contains short works that span Lonergan's work from 1943 to 1965. The papers deal with scientific, mathematical, theological, and philosophical questions, including discussions of such topics as the proper foundation of metaphysics, the form of inference, the nature of love and marriage, and the role of the university in the modern world.

Bernard Lonergan devoted much of his life's work to developing a generalized method of inquiry, an integrated view which would overcome the fragmentation of knowledge in our time. In Topics in Education Lonergan adapts that concern to the practical needs of educators. Traditionalist and modernist notions of education are both criticized. Lonergan attempts to work out, in the context of the human good and the 'new learning,' the rudiments of a philosophy of education based on his well-known discovery of norms in the unfolding of intelligent, reasonable, and responsible consciousness. He explores how the scientific revolution has changed ways of understanding reality, and examines the implications of this revolution for education. Topics in Education, the first publication of his 1959 lectures, follows Lonergan on his early explorations of human development, studies the theories of Jean Piaget and others, and concludes with his own original ideas in the realms of ethics, art, and history.

Insight is Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. It aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, a comprehensive view of knowledge and understanding, and to state what one needs to understand and how one proceeds to understand it.In Lonergan's own words: 'Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, and invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding.'The editors of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan have established the definitive text for Insight after examining all the variant forms in Lonergan's manuscripts and papers. The volume includes introductory material and annotation to enable the reader to appreciate more fully this challenging work.

The period during which Bernard Lonergan delivered the eleven lectures in this volume was one of important transition for him: he was moving rapidly toward a new conception of theology and its method; and he was on the verge of what is now recognized as a major breakthrough in his thought on method, the idea that came to him in February 1965 of the eight functional specialities.While the lectures maintain a continuity with Lonergan's previous work, they also reveal new and significant ideas, especially in regard to his drive toward a new conception of theology as a whole, and his particular concern for the relevance of theology to the spiritual life. The lectures here include 'The Redemption,' 'Method in Catholic Theology,' 'The Philosophy of History,' 'The Origins of Christian Realism,' `Time and Meaning,' 'Consciousness and the Trinity,' `Exegesis and Dogma,' 'The Mediation of Christ in Prayer,' 'The Analogy of Meaning,' 'Philosophical Positions with Regard to Knowing,' and 'Theology as Christian Phenomenon.'This volume provides a key to understanding the development of Lonergan's philosophical and theological thought, his major influences, and the pivotal moments of transition in the road leading up to Method in Theology and beyond.

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was a noted Canadian philosopher and theologian. He devoted his life to articulating a generalized method of inquiry and its implications, not only for the human and natural sciences, but also for a better world and a higher quality of human life. His own clear vision showed him the need to overcome the terrible fragmentation of knowledge and life in our time. The struggle to achieve an integrated view is the theme that unified the body of his work. In the history of that struggle, Understanding and Being plays a central role. Published a year after his profound and complex Insight, it is the edited transcription of some thirty hours of Lonergan's lectures on that seminal book. Understanding and Being serves as a guide to the very challenging terrain of Insight, or, as one commentator put it, if Insight is the Everest in the range of Lonergan's works, Understanding and Being is the approach through rolling foothills. This edition, the second, incorporates more of the historical setting in the text and adds a wealth of explanatory notes, as well as previously unedited discussions that followed the lectures.

Bernard Lonergan's theological writings have influenced religious scholars ever since the first publication in the 1940s of the series of five articles which make up Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. These articles first appeared in Theological Studies and were subsequently republished in book form in 1967 under the present title. This volume contains a new preface by the editors and full translations of all Latin texts.Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas is a product of Lonergan's eleven years of study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The work is considered by many to be a breakthrough in the history of Lonergan's theology and a foundation upon which his later contributions were constructed. Here he interprets aspects in the writing of Aquinas relevant to trinitarian theory and, as in most of Lonergan's work, one of the principal aims is to assist the reader in the search to understand the workings of the human mind.Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas is a vital component of Lonergan's oeuvre, and of continuing relevance to trinitarian theology, Aquinas studies, and inquiries into human cognition.

Few theologians in history have matched Bernard Lonergan's range of learning. Fewer still have written on the "dismal science" of economics. Rooted so solidly in the concerns of this world, economics is not a discipline we associate with the more rarified pursuit of theology. In this long-awaited volume, Lonergan demonstrates the short-sightedness of this view.This companion volume to For A New Political Economy (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 21) continues the work of bringing together the various elements of Lonergan's economic thought. His economic writings span forty years and represent one of the most important intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. They have previously been inaccessible outside of the Lonergan research community as the majority of them have not been formally published, and exist only as a group of unfinished essays and material for courses on economics taught by Lonergan. Lonergan's economic ideas track a different line of thought from that taken by contemporary economists. Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis represents the economic thought of Lonergan at the end of his career. His analysis, while taking a fresh look at fundamental variables, breaks from centralist theory and practice towards a radically democratic perspective on surplus income and non-political control, and explores more fully the ideas introduced in For a New Political Economy. This work will be read not only by economists but also by liberation theologians, political theologians, and others inside and outside of religious organizations interested in social justice issues and alternative approaches to economics.

Bernard Lonergan's economic writings span forty years and represent one of the most important intellectual achievements of the twentieth century. Unfortunately they have been inaccessible outside of the Lonergan research community as the majority of them have not been formally published, and exist only as a group of unfinished essays and material for courses on economics taught by Lonergan. The publication of For a New Political Economy, along with its companion volume, Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 15), seeks to remedy this by bringing together the various elements of Lonergan's economic thought.Lonergan's concept of economics differs radically from that of contemporary economists and represent a major paradigm shift. He takes a fresh look at fundamental variables and breaks from centralist theory and practice, offering a uniquely democratic perspective on surplus income and non-political control. For a New Political Economy is a collection of drafts, notes, and essays written by Lonergan in the 1940s on various aspects of economics. This volume provides the intellectual underpinnings of ideas more fully explored in Macroeconomic Dynamics.

Collected here for the first time, this series of lectures delivered by Lonergan at Boston College in 1957 illustrates a pivotal time in Lonergan's intellectual history, marking both the transition from the faculty psychology still present in his work Insight to intentionality analysis and his initial differentiation of the existential level of consciousness.The lectures on logic deal with the general character of mathematical logic and its relation to truth, Scholasticism, and Aristotelian logic. Continuing Lonergan's long-standing interest in the foundations of thought, the lectures on existentialism offer a penetrating account of Husserl and his influence. They also deal with Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and Marcel. They offer reflections on such topics as being oneself, dread, horizon, and the existential gap. Perhaps more dramatically than in any other work these papers reveal Lonergan's dual commitment to the rigor of scientific analysis (in the field of mathematical logic) and to the sensitivity of continental philosophies to existential issues.

Bernard Lonergan's De constitutione Christi was written to accompany a course being taught in Latin at the Gregorian University, Rome during the 1950s and 60s. This little-known treatise, volume seven in the series, is presented in English translation, accompanied by the original Latin text.Here, Lonergan tackles the metaphysical and psychological questions raised by the unique makeup of Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine, according to traditional Christian theology. His analysis falls into two parts: ontological and psychological. In dealing with the ontology of the incarnate Word, Lonergan explores the notion of person, and in doing so provides an interesting treatment of the existential question of personal authenticity raised by Kierkegaard and treated by Lonergan under the heading of Existez. Moving into his psychological analysis, he argues that consciousness is not a matter of introspection, a perception of oneself as object, but rather an awareness of oneself as subject. He then applies this understanding to the self-awareness of Christ, with particular reference to the question of Christ's knowledge of himself as both human and divine.This book is a foundational text in critical areas of contemporary theology; however, it was never widely circulated and has remained effectively unknown to contemporary scholars. With this translation the work will finally be made accessible.

A companion to Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964 (Volume 6 in the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan series), this anthology contains Lonergan's lectures on philosophy and theology given during the later period of his life, 1965-1980. These papers document his development in the discipline during the years leading up to the publication of Method in Theology, and beyond to 1980 when he was more engaged in his writings and seminars on macroeconomics.Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980 is divided into five sections, forming units on the basis of dates. The three central sections are each a set of lectures respectively given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gonzaga University in Spokane, and Trinity College (University of Toronto). Although there is some repetition amongst the lecture sets and in relation to other more familiar works, this repetition displays occasional new turns of phrase that the careful reader will note. In at least one instance, familiar material suddenly opens out onto expressions not to be found anywhere else in Lonergan's work. Other very interesting developments regard the movement from speaking of the immutability of dogmas to their permanence of meaning and the permutations among 'real self-transcendence,' 'performative self-transcendence,' and 'moral self-transcendence.'

A companion to Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964 (Volume 6 in the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan series), this anthology contains Lonergan's lectures on philosophy and theology given during the later period of his life, 1965-1980. These papers document his development in the discipline during the years leading up to the publication of Method in Theology, and beyond to 1980 when he was more engaged in his writings and seminars on macroeconomics.Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980 is divided into five sections, forming units on the basis of dates. The three central sections are each a set of lectures respectively given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Gonzaga University in Spokane, and Trinity College (University of Toronto). Although there is some repetition amongst the lecture sets and in relation to other more familiar works, this repetition displays occasional new turns of phrase that the careful reader will note. In at least one instance, familiar material suddenly opens out onto expressions not to be found anywhere else in Lonergan's work. Other very interesting developments regard the movement from speaking of the immutability of dogmas to their permanence of meaning and the permutations among 'real self-transcendence,' 'performative self-transcendence,' and 'moral self-transcendence.'

Buried for more than forty years in a Latin text written for seminarians at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bernard Lonergan’s important work on systematic theology, De Deo Trino: Pars systematica, is presented here for the first time in a facing-page edition that includes the original Latin along with a precise English translation. De Deo Trino, or The Triune God, the second part of which is the pars systematica, continues a particular strand in trinitarian theology, namely, the tradition that appeals to a psychological analogy for understanding trinitarian processions and relations.The psychological analogy dates back to St Augustine but was significantly developed by St Thomas Aquinas. Lonergan advances it to a new level of understanding by bringing to it his extensive exploration of cognitional theory and deliberative process. Suggestions for a further development of the analogy appear in Lonergan’s late work, but these cannot be fully comprehended and implemented without the background provided in this volume. With this definitive translated edition, one of the masterpieces of systematic theology, will at last be available to contemporary scholars.

As a prolific scholar and theologian, Bernard Lonergan authored a significant amount of material aside from the works with which he is commonly associated. Shorter Papers is a collection of lesser-known items written by Lonergan over the course of his career. Together, they offer privileged access to the author's thought and work, as well as a glimpse at some of his most personal qualities. The items in this volume extend from some of the earliest writings – the Blandyke Papers, for instance, which predates any of the materials represented in the Collected Works – to pieces written near the end of Lonergan's life. Organized chronologically, they give an impression of his development as a writer, his ever-strengthening religious commitment, and his role as teacher. As a sampling of pieces from the late 1920s to the early 1980s, Shorter Papers testifies to the cumulative impact of Lonergan's work, as well as to the amazing continuity that he maintained throughout his career as an author and intellectual.

Written in Latin for students at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bernard Lonergan's De Deo Trino (The Triune God) is a monumental two-part examination of trinitarian theology published initially in 1961 and again, in revised form, in 1964. The first part, the pars dogmatica, is here translated into English in an edition that includes the original Latin on facing pages. The work begins with the Prolegomena, which traces the dialectical development of trinitarian doctrine by Christian thinkers from the time of the New Testament to the Council of Nicea (AD 325). Following is a discussion of five theses outlining the evolution of the principal features of trinitarian doctrine from the New Testament through the patristic era.Along with its companion volume on systematics, The Triune God: Doctrines represents the most comprehensive treatment of trinitarian theology in recent centuries. This English translation ensures that Lonergan's masterpiece will at last be available in its entirety to contemporary readers.

The renowned Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan was also a professor, teaching courses on theological method at universities in Canada, the United States, and Italy. This volume records his lectures and teaching materials, thus preserving and elucidating his intellectual development between the publication of Insight in 1957 and Method in Theology in 1972.The present volume contains a record of the lectures delivered in 1962 (Regis College, Toronto), 1964 (Georgetown University), and 1968 (Boston College). This is the most 'interactive' volume yet published in the Collected Works series. The audio recordings of the 1962 and 1968 lectures are now available on the website www.bernardlonergan.com, as are PDF files of original papers from his 1964 institute at Georgetown. These lectures help to elucidate the development of Lonergan's ideas on such key notions as horizon, conversion, and meaning, as well as his evolving opinion on how best to divide theology into fields of specialization.

Early Latin Theology presents seven of Bernard Lonergan's most important early theological works in English translation and the original Latin on facing pages under one cover for the first time. First composed as supplements to the texts he used in his courses, these writings are considered to be Lonergan's initial efforts in the functional specialty he would come to call ‘systematics.’ They also represent ideas that would remain constant throughout his career.Among the significant works included is ‘Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace.’ This seminal essay contains what is likely Lonergan's most complete systematic treatment of the topic, and a much more extensive presentation of Lonergan's four-point hypothesis regarding the divine relations and created grace than many have previously read.

Continuing where Volume 23 left off, Volume 24 of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan traces the background to Lonergan’s notion of functional specialization as it emerges in his Latin courses and seminars on method.This volume contains editorial reports based on Lonergan’s handwritten notes for two courses in 1963, both entitled “Method in Theology.” Also included is the lecture “De Notione Structurae,” dating from 1964, along with an English translation on facing pages.Together with Volumes 22 and 23, Early Works on Theological Method 3 provides readers with a thorough presentation of the data on Lonergan’s development through the 1960s as he worked out what became the classic book Method in Theology (1972).

This volume is the first of two that treat Bernard Lonergan’s courses on method at the Gregorian University in Rome between 1959 and 1963. An earlier volume (22), Early Works on Theological Method 1, contains a record of the institutes on method that Lonergan conducted in North America between 1962 and 1968. This volume is presented with the original Latin and an English translation on facing pages.Among the documents featured in Volume 23 are two complete texts written or approved by Lonergan: “Understanding and Method” (1959) and “The Method of Theology” (1962). Also included are Lonergan’s own text of a portion of the 1959 course “System and Method,” as well as editorial reports on the remainder of that course and on the 1961 revised course on “Understanding and Method.” Finally, the book contains an appendix with short materials found in the Lonergan archives relevant to the 1962 course “The Method of Theology.”

The Incarnate Word contains the first four of five parts in Bernard Lonergan’s De Verbo Incarnato, a Latin textbook for the course he taught at the Gregorian University in Rome. Fully translated and annotated, it brings to a wider audience Lonergan’s major contribution to Christology, the doctrine concerning the person of Christ. In this work, Lonergan applies his unique theory of consciousness to the question of the nature of Christ, the book offers a rich and provocative treatment of Christ’s consciousness and his human knowledge.The Incarnate Word presents the original Latin and the first-ever English translation of the text on facing pages. The volume includes not only the final text of De Verbo Incarnato but also material which Lonergan had rewritten or eliminated from the 1964 Gregorian University edition.

The Incarnate Word contains the first four of five parts in Bernard Lonergan’s De Verbo Incarnato, a Latin textbook for the course he taught at the Gregorian University in Rome. Fully translated and annotated, it brings to a wider audience Lonergan’s major contribution to Christology, the doctrine concerning the person of Christ. In this work, Lonergan applies his unique theory of consciousness to the question of the nature of Christ, the book offers a rich and provocative treatment of Christ’s consciousness and his human knowledge.The Incarnate Word presents the original Latin and the first-ever English translation of the text on facing pages. The volume includes not only the final text of De Verbo Incarnato but also material which Lonergan had rewritten or eliminated from the 1964 Gregorian University edition.

For the edition of A Second Collection prepared for the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, editors Robert M. Doran and John D. Dadosky have added archival materials directly related to almost every one of the papers, bringing the reader closer to the original compositions. The papers date from 1966 to 1973, and span the most creative period in Lonergan’s development. Two major themes run through these papers: the primacy of the fourth, existential level of human consciousness, and the significance of historical mindedness with all its implications for culture, hermeneutics, and phenomenological thinking. The theme of conversion makes a grand entrance in ‘Theology in Its New Context,’ a paper that charted the course for the unfolding of Method in Theology. This new edition makes extensive use of original manuscripts, variants in drafts of the essays, and hand-written corrections.

A Third Collection, prepared for the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan by editors Robert M. Doran and John D. Dadosky, is a helpful companion to volumes four and thirteen in the series. The volume contains fifteen papers, written between 1974 and 1982, and includes some of his most important shorter writings such as "Prolegomena to the Study of the Emerging Religious Consciousness of Our Time" and "Natural Right and Historical Mindedness." The relevant archival entries are specified, so that readers can consult them. The papers in this volume rehearse in a new key the themes of a lifetime. Without in any way going back on the major emphases of Lonergan's early work–cognitional theory and then the exploration of a fourth, existential level of consciousness– they are focused more on love and on the movement from above downwards in consciousness. Community is emphasized as the context and the fruit of the emergence of authentic subjects.

Method in Theology stands with Insight as Bernard Lonergan’s most important work. It is Lonergan’s answer to those who would argue that in this time of cultural change and dissolution, the believer is afloat on a sea of multiplying theologies, without rudder or compass. Lonergan was resolute in his refusal to be defeatist on this point. While agreeing that theology must continually change to mediate between religion and culture, he worked out an integral method to guide and control this ongoing process. Method in Theology is the fruit of this labour.This critical edition has benefited from extensive research into Lonergan's typescripts and from consulting the recordings from several institutes where he lectured over the course of the work’s development. Lonergan's intention was to provide a set of methods that would guide a collaborative community in the ongoing construction of a theology that would move from recovery of the data through resolution of conflicts to contemporary formulations and applications. With this work, the cognitional theory of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding underwent a surprising set of developments in the form of what he calls functional specialization.

Thematically focused on the theology of redemption or what is called in theology "soteriology," each of the two sections of The Redemption addresses biblical literature and significant moments in the history of Christian theology, and especially the work of Anselm of Canterbury. The second part of the book presents a significant treatment of the problem of good and evil, and introduces the important category of cultural evil. Most significant from the standpoint of Lonergan's original contribution is the treatment accorded in both Part 1 and Part 2 to what he calls "the just and mysterious law of the cross." The treatment of biblical literature contains a valuable distinction between "redemption as end" and "redemption as medium." Beginning with theses 15-17 from Lonergan's Collected Works, The Incarnate Word, this volume also includes rare and never-before-published texts originally written in the late 1950s.

In the mid- to late-1930s, while he was a student at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bernard Lonergan wrote a series of eight essays on the philosophy and theology of history. These essays foreshadow a number of the major themes in his life’s work.The significance of these essays is enormous, not only for an understanding of the later trajectory of Lonergan’s own work but also for the development of a contemporary systematic theology. In an important entry from 1965 in his archival papers, Lonergan wrote that the "mediated object" of systematics is Geschichte or the history that is lived and written about. In the same entry, he stated that the "doctrines" that this systematic theology would attempt to understand are focused on "redemption." The seeds of such a theology are planted in the current volume, where the formulae that are so pronounced in his later work first appear. Students of Lonergan’s work will find their understanding of his philosophy profoundly affected by the essays in this volume.

For the edition of A Second Collection prepared for the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, editors Robert M. Doran and John D. Dadosky have added archival materials directly related to almost every one of the papers, bringing the reader closer to the original compositions. The papers date from 1966 to 1973, and span the most creative period in Lonergan’s development. Two major themes run through these papers: the primacy of the fourth, existential level of human consciousness, and the significance of historical mindedness with all its implications for culture, hermeneutics, and phenomenological thinking. The theme of conversion makes a grand entrance in ‘Theology in Its New Context,’ a paper that charted the course for the unfolding of Method in Theology. This new edition makes extensive use of original manuscripts, variants in drafts of the essays, and hand-written corrections.

Method in Theology stands with Insight as Bernard Lonergan’s most important work. It is Lonergan’s answer to those who would argue that in this time of cultural change and dissolution, the believer is afloat on a sea of multiplying theologies, without rudder or compass. Lonergan was resolute in his refusal to be defeatist on this point. While agreeing that theology must continually change to mediate between religion and culture, he worked out an integral method to guide and control this ongoing process. Method in Theology is the fruit of this labour.This critical edition has benefited from extensive research into Lonergan's typescripts and from consulting the recordings from several institutes where he lectured over the course of the work’s development. Lonergan's intention was to provide a set of methods that would guide a collaborative community in the ongoing construction of a theology that would move from recovery of the data through resolution of conflicts to contemporary formulations and applications. With this work, the cognitional theory of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding underwent a surprising set of developments in the form of what he calls functional specialization.

Thematically focused on the theology of redemption or what is called in theology "soteriology," each of the two sections of The Redemption addresses biblical literature and significant moments in the history of Christian theology, and especially the work of Anselm of Canterbury. The second part of the book presents a significant treatment of the problem of good and evil, and introduces the important category of cultural evil. Most significant from the standpoint of Lonergan's original contribution is the treatment accorded in both Part 1 and Part 2 to what he calls "the just and mysterious law of the cross." The treatment of biblical literature contains a valuable distinction between "redemption as end" and "redemption as medium." Beginning with theses 15-17 from Lonergan's Collected Works, The Incarnate Word, this volume also includes rare and never-before-published texts originally written in the late 1950s.