The Lonergan Review

In this article I propose to do five things. First, I describe the present confusion disturbing the tranquility of the American polity. Next, I hypothesize that an important source of civil confusion is that American civildiscourse is generally conducted in two different moral languages. Neither of these is adequate to the reality of the human good, and their speakers are, perhaps increasingly, given to misunderstanding one another. Third, I propose some reasons why not only misunderstanding but even outright hostility seems to be growing. Fourth, I suggest that if we Christians are to be of genuine service to our fellow citizens, we have to begin by emancipating ourselves from inadequate moral languages and renew our capacity to function in a more properly Christian language. Finally, I suggest a possible contribution Christians might make to the renewal of civil discourse.

To have a vocation is to be called to a life of ongoing participation in the redemptive work of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Being faithful to the vocation we have received requires adopting a stance of continuing alertness, ready to notice, correctly interpret, and effectively respond to the various forms of communication by which God draws us into closer cooperation with the redemptive missions of the Son and the Spirit. In this paper I focus on a particular vehicle by which the divine call is transmitted to us—namely, the God-given desire to know, which we experience whenever we wonder about something, whenever we try to solve a problem, whenever we learn or explore or plan.

In this paper I explore the “Introduction” to Method in Theology and examine the presuppositions of this importanttext. These are concepts that Lonergan deemed necessary for introducing his work on functional specialization. I focus on mediation as a two-way process and the empirical notion of culture. It is interesting how these two significant ideas make their way into the brief introduction, which Lonergan wrote last when composing the text.

In this paper I argue that the eternal unity of Lonergan’s “three divine subjects” must be understood in light of the eternal love of the divine persons, revealed in Christ’s relationship withthe Father (see esp. John 17). This new starting point in triune agapē need not threaten the integrity of Lonergan’s thought, as long as one reads his psychological analogy as a preliminary heuristic structure. Indeed, the tensions and developments in his own systematics justify this move.