Lonergan Studies – serie

In his classic work Method in Theology, Bernard Lonergan left many questions unanswered in regard to his treatment of systematics. In What Is Systematic Theology? Robert M. Doran attempts to articulate and respond to these questions. Doran begins by accepting four emphases presented by Lonergan concerning systematics: first, that its principal function is the hypothetical and analogical understanding of the mysteries of faith; second, that it should begin with those mysteries of faith that have received dogmatic status; third, that it must proceed in the 'order of teaching' rather than the 'order of discovery'; and last, that it must be explanatory rather than merely descriptive. He then addresses questions that are raised by each of these emphases. What Is Systematic Theology? is the most thorough attempt undertaken to date to advance Lonergan's program for systematics, fully in the spirit of his work but addressing issues that he left to others. Doran's idea of a core set of meanings for systematics – or a 'unified field structure' – is highly original, as is the integration of the systematic ideal and contemporary historical consciousness.

In the last few decades, analytical philosophers have rediscovered an interest in the subject of metaphysics. Surveying the contributions made by these philosophers, Method in Metaphysics initiates a critical dialogue between analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. It argues for a basic method in metaphysics, a method that arises from a critically grounded epistemology and cognitional theory. In addition, it serves as a much-needed overview and introduction to current trends in analytical metaphysics.Andrew Beards shows how Lonergan's philosophy can help to clarify not only particular issues in current debates but also the larger question of a basic method. He goes on to apply this method to topics at the forefront of discussions in contemporary philosophy - topics such as universals, tropes, events, causality, and the metaphysics of the self and the social. While the main focus of the study is on Lonergan and analytical philosophy, Beards also introduces the philosophies of Whitehead, Husserl, and Derrida into the debate. He brings Lonergan's critical realist philosophy into finely textured dialogue with a number of well-known contemporary metaphysicians such as Dummet, Putnam, Lewis, and Kripke.

According to the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, a world that has lost sight of beauty is a world riddled with skepticism, moral and aesthetic relativism, conflicting religious worldviews, and escalating ecological crises. In The Eclipse and Recovery of Beauty, John D. Dadosky uses Kierkegaard and Nietzsche’s negative aesthetics to outline the context of that loss, and presents an argument for reclaiming beauty as a metaphysical property of being.Inspired by Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy of consciousness, Dadosky presents a philosophy of beauty that is grounded in contemporary Thomistic thought. Responding to Balthasar, he argues for a concept of beauty that can be experienced, understood, judged, created, contemplated, and even loved.Deeply engaged with the work of Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kant, among others, The Eclipse and Recovery of Beauty will be essential reading for those interested in contemporary philosophy and theology.

In his philosophical classic Insight, Catholic philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan introduced the concept of self-appropriation – the personal search for knowledge of the self, and through that of the world – as the basis for systematic philosophical investigation.In Lonergan in the World, James L. Marsh argues, clearly and passionately, that self-appropriation can serve as the basis for philosophical, ethical, and even political and economic thought. Comparing and applying Lonergan’s principles to major trends in contemporary philosophy, including phenomenology, hermeneutics, postmodernism, analytic philosophy, and Marxism, Marsh uncovers the philosophical and the socio-political implications of Lonergan’s work and its value as the basis for a search for justice and self-understanding.Drawing on Marsh’s more than forty years of studying and teaching Lonergan’s thought, Lonergan in the World is a book that should be read not just by philosophers and theologians, but by anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of a just and authentic life.

In The Givenness of Desire, Randall S. Rosenberg examines the human desire for God through the lens of Lonergan’s "concrete subjectivity."

Frederick G. Lawrence is the authoritative interpreter of the work of Bernard Lonergan and an incisive reader of twentieth-century continental philosophy and hermeneutics.The Fragility of Consciousness is the first published collection of his essays and contains several of his best known writings as well as unpublished work. The essays in this volume exhibit a long interdisciplinary engagement with the relationship between faith and reason in the context of the crisis of culture that has marked twentieth- and twenty-first century thought and practice. Frederick G. Lawrence, with his profound and generous commitment to the intellectual life of the church, has produced a body of work that engages with Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, Ricoeur, Strauss, Voegelin, and Benedict XVI among others. These essays also explore various themes such as the role of religion in a secular age, political theology, economics, neo-Thomism, Christology, and much more. In an age marked by social, cultural, political, and ecclesial fragmentation, Lawrence models a more generous way – one that prioritizes friendship, conversation, and understanding above all else.

The second volume of Robert M. Doran’s magisterial The Trinity in History continues his exploration of the Trinitarian theology of Bernard Lonergan, focusing now on the notions of relations and persons and connecting the systematic proposals with the so-called "Third Quest for the Historical Jesus." Doran not only interprets Lonergan’s major work in Trinitarian theology and Christology but also suggests at least a twofold advance: a new version of the psychological analogy for understanding Trinitarian doctrine and a new starting point for the whole of systematic theology. He links these theological concerns with René Girard’s mimetic theory, proposes a theory of history based in Lonergan’s scale of values, and creates a link between exegetical and historical scholarship and systematic theology.

In his seminary classes and his writings, Frederick Crowe, SJ (1915–2012) sought to understand anew the eternal identity of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s role in the Church’s life. Despite Crowe’s fame as a professor of Trinitarian theology and his groundbreaking work on Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of complacent love as an analogy for the Holy Spirit’s eternal procession, no book has ever been published on this influential Canadian Jesuit, who established centres around the world dedicated to stuyding the theological writings of Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904–84). Drawing on Crowe’s published works and archival materials, Eades emphasizes how Crowe’s Trinitarian pneumatology creatively extended Lonergan’s theology of the Holy Spirit. Making use of Crowe’s own historical methodology, Eades looks for the emergence of new and significant questions about the Holy Spirit in Crowe’s works.

The language of self-fulfilment, self-realization, and self-actualization (in short, ‘authenticity’) has become common in contemporary culture. The desire to be authentic is implicitly a desire to shape one’s self in accordance with an ideal, and the concern for what it means to be authentic is, in many ways, the modern form of the ancient question what is the life of excellence? However, this notion of authenticity has its critics: Christopher Lasch, for instance, who equates it with a form of narcissism and Theodor Adorno, who views it as a glorification of privatism.Brian J. Braman argues that, despite such criticisms, it is possible to speak about human authenticity as something that addresses contemporary concerns as well as the ancient preoccupation with the nature of the good life. He refers to the work of Bernard Lonergan and Charles Taylor, thinkers who place a high value on the search for human authenticity. Lonergan discusses authenticity in terms of a three-fold conversion–intellectual, moral, and religious–while Taylor views authenticity as a rich, vibrant, and important addition to conversations about what it means to be human.Meaning and Authenticity is an engaging dialogue between these two thinkers, both of whom maintain that there is a normative conception of authentic human life that overcomes moral relativism, narcissism, privatism, and the collapse of the public self.

Because of illness and age the Jesuit theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan never completed the systematic study on Christology, the doctrine concerning the person of Christ, that he had planned to write. Christ and History, written by his former student Frederick E. Crowe, is an attempt to rectify that loss by tracing the outline of Lonergan’s possible work on the subject.Moving from the Jesuit philosopher’s early student work, through the fertile and productive years in which he wrote Insight and Method in Theology, to his final lectures on the topic, Crowe presents the evolution of Lonergan’s thinking on Christology in the context of the radical developments contained within his other theological writings. Written in the spirit of piety towards his revered teacher, Christ and History is an important analysis of these works and the Christology that they contain.

Comprising twenty papers, including six never before published, this long-awaited work spans the fifty-year career of noted theologian Frederick E. Crowe, a scholar who has devoted himself to studying, expounding, and making available the writings of Bernard Lonergan, the well-known Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian who died in 1984. The publication of these papers, compiled by Michael Vertin, is a tribute both to their subject and to their author.Developing the Lonergan Legacy both recounts the history of Lonergan's work in philosophy and theology, and offers significant theoretical and existential developments of that work. Divided into two sections - 'studies,' which examines the historical context of Lonergan and his writings, and 'essays,' which applies Lonergan's work in different directions - the essays in this volume are motivated by Crowe's deep concern for the concrete intellectual, moral, and religious welfare of his readers, of all those whom his readers might influence, and ultimately of the entire human community. Vertin's meticulous editing and thoughtful sequencing only add to the uniquely spiritual character of Crowe's works.

According to the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, a world that has lost sight of beauty is a world riddled with skepticism, moral and aesthetic relativism, conflicting religious worldviews, and escalating ecological crises. In The Eclipse and Recovery of Beauty, John D. Dadosky uses Kierkegaard and Nietzsche’s negative aesthetics to outline the context of that loss, and presents an argument for reclaiming beauty as a metaphysical property of being.Inspired by Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy of consciousness, Dadosky presents a philosophy of beauty that is grounded in contemporary Thomistic thought. Responding to Balthasar, he argues for a concept of beauty that can be experienced, understood, judged, created, contemplated, and even loved.Deeply engaged with the work of Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kant, among others, The Eclipse and Recovery of Beauty will be essential reading for those interested in contemporary philosophy and theology.

In The Ethics of Discernment, Patrick H. Byrne presents an approach to ethics that builds upon the cognitional theory and the philosophical method of self-appropriation that Bernard Lonergan introduced in his book Insight, as well as upon Lonergan’s later writing on ethics and values.Extending Lonergan’s method into the realm of ethics, Byrne argues that we can use self-appropriation to come to objective judgements of value. The Ethics of Discernment is an introspective analysis of that process, in which sustained ethical inquiry and attentiveness to feelings as “intentions of value” leads to a rich conception of the good.Written both for those with an interest in Lonergan’s philosophy and for those interested in theories of ethics who have only a limited knowledge of Lonergan’s work, Byrne’s book is the first detailed exposition of an ethical theory based on Lonergan’s philosophical method.

In The Givenness of Desire, Randall S. Rosenberg examines the human desire for God through the lens of Lonergan’s "concrete subjectivity." Rosenberg engages and integrates two major scholarly developments: the tension between Neo-Thomists and scholars of Henri de Lubac over our natural desire to see God and the theological appropriation of the mimetic theory of René Girard, with an emphasis on the saints as models of desire. With Lonergan as an integrating thread, the author engages a variety of thinkers, including Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean-Luc Marion, René Girard, James Alison, Lawrence Feingold, and John Milbank, among others. The theme of concrete subjectivity helps to resist the tendency of equating too easily the natural desire for being with the natural desire for God without at the same time acknowledging the widespread distortion of desire found in the consumer culture that infects contemporary life. The Givenness of Desire investigates our paradoxical desire for God that is rooted in both the natural and supernatural.

The Trinity in History is the first volume in a new series by Robert M. Doran that uses the thought of Bernard Lonergan to develop a unified field structure for systematic work in theology. Building on his successful and thought-provoking Theology and the Dialectics of History and What Is Systematic Theology?, Doran works out a starting point for a contemporary theology of history and proposes a new application of the ‘psychological analogy’ for understanding the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.Advancing the work of Lonergan, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, The Trinity in History also enters into conversation with contemporary philosophical emphases, especially with the mimetic theory of noted anthropological philosopher RenÉ Girard. Doran suggests several refinements of Lonergan’s notion of functional specialization – developing a perspective for including the data of various religious traditions in theological construction, and establishing this theory’s relevance for contemporary interreligious dialogue.

In 1972, renowned Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan published Method in Theology. Now, following the fiftieth anniversary of his landmark work, The Wisdom of Order presents the next step in advancing the thought of this significant religious theorist. In addition to the previously compiled Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, this book aims to provide an appreciation and exploration of Method in Theology. It analyses the first five chapters of the work with commentaries to help readers traverse Lonergan’s thought more effectively and deeply. John D. Dadosky presents compelling exposition and observations to assist readers.The book explores questions related to the philosophical status of beauty, which Lonergan does not address. In addition to Lonergan’s three stages of meaning, the book also seeks to develop a fourth stage that pertains to the turn to alterity emphasizing positive relations with other cultures and religions. As a result, The Wisdom of Order critically analyses an important groundbreaking work while also highlighting areas for further development.

Racism evolves. Black theology must be adaptable. For this reason, Black Theology and the Menace of Racial Apocalypse argues that racism must take centre stage in Black theology because racism is an existential dread that inevitably confronts the Black person in their existential situation.This book unfolds in two interwoven steps. First, it delves into the complex history of Black theology, examining its development across its first, second, and third waves. This critical study exposits the discomforting idea that something is missing and that this "something" makes Black theology seem a little deficient, as noted in the pioneering works of James Baldwin and other contemporary thinkers, challenging the hesitation to engage with ideas outside Black experience. The second step draws from multidisciplinary sources, including brain research on cognitive bias and psychological works on implicit bias and microaggressions. Effectively utilizing the methodological work of Bernard Lonergan, the book argues that incorporating "white" sources can enhance Black theology's articulation against racism. In doing so, the book demonstrates how this interpretative mechanism can help overcome societal ideological differences, as well as help meaningfully address the ever-evolving problem of racism for Christian theology.

In his classic work Method in Theology, Bernard Lonergan left many questions unanswered in regard to his treatment of systematics. In What Is Systematic Theology? Robert M. Doran attempts to articulate and respond to these questions. Doran begins by accepting four emphases presented by Lonergan concerning systematics: first, that its principal function is the hypothetical and analogical understanding of the mysteries of faith; second, that it should begin with those mysteries of faith that have received dogmatic status; third, that it must proceed in the 'order of teaching' rather than the 'order of discovery'; and last, that it must be explanatory rather than merely descriptive. He then addresses questions that are raised by each of these emphases. What Is Systematic Theology? is the most thorough attempt undertaken to date to advance Lonergan's program for systematics, fully in the spirit of his work but addressing issues that he left to others. Doran's idea of a core set of meanings for systematics – or a 'unified field structure' – is highly original, as is the integration of the systematic ideal and contemporary historical consciousness.