Any philosopher or theologian who has any interest at all in the writing of Bernard Lonergan will have some sense of the enormous debt of gratitude which is owed to Frederick Crowe SJ, who as a friend and associate of Lonergan has dedicated most of his academic and priestly life to the task of promoting Lonergan's work. This promotion of Lonergan's thought has taken place through numerous publications and through Crowe's devoted labours as an archivist of Lonergan's legacy. Crowe has been one of the chief editors of the collected works of Lonergan, published by Toronto University Press: this series has now run to over twenty volumes.
This collection of essays by Crowe, many of which have been published before but some appearing for the first time, is the third in a series of his collected essays put together by Professor Michael Vertin.
As a student in the 1970s I valued greatly, as have many others, Crowe's introductory works on Lonergan. His down-to-earth manner and accessible way of introducing Lonergan's seemingly recondite thought is a talent evident in a number of essays included in this collection. I would highlight those on historicity and theology, the development of dogma, and dogma and ecumenism, as evidence of this. Crowe is at his best, I believe, when writing on some particular aspect of Lonergan's thought as a commentator and researcher. In the two essays on Lonergan's use of analogy and in ‘Transcendental Deduction: A Lonerganian Meaning and Use’, Crowe painstakingly draws together texts from Lonergan, some as yet unpublished, in order to throw light on these aspects of Lonergan's thought. Crowe seems concerned above all in these pieces to underline important specific details of Lonergan's thinking and to point future researchers (PhD students among them) towards possible areas of fruitful investigation. In some of the more speculative essays in the book Crowe shows us how one might begin to apply approaches and ideas from Lonergan to areas of current theological debate and reflection.
Despite these very positive elements in Crowe's writing, as represented in this collection, I am sorry to admit, however, that I do have reservations and serious doubts about not a little of what Crowe offers us in these essays.
In my review of a festschrift for Michael Vertin for this journal which appeared not long ago (New Blackfriars 90 (2009) pp. 743–44) I offered critical comments on the contribution by Crowe, ‘Is God free to create or not create?’, which is also included in the collection under discussion. I first read the essay ‘For a Phenomenology of Rational Consciousness’ ten years ago and I remain convinced that Crowe's conclusions in the piece are seriously confused. On the basis of some very brief comments regarding insights and their symbolic expression which Lonergan made in an interview given late in his life, Crowe argues that Lonergan changed his mind in this area and came to think that we do not have insight directly into insight but indirectly through insight into the symbolic or linguistic expressions referring to insights. I do not have the space here to offer a lengthy critique of the essay. However, I would point out, firstly, that these brief comments of Lonergan (now readily available online http://www.lonergan-lri.ca/news/2010/10/05/father-lonergan-insight-linguistic-symbols) in no way appear to contradict his earlier well-developed views on the matter. Secondly, on this view put forward by Crowe it is a mystery as to how these words and symbols about insights themselves arise. Thirdly, we can briefly consider the case of reflective insight, of judgment. In judgment we rationally grasp that the conditions for the prospective judgment are given, fulfilled in the relevant data. Now it is one thing to judge that the words or symbols which regard or express, say, a judgment of probability are given in my consciousness, as I read these words or perhaps mutter them. It is quite another matter to grasp in judgment that such words as informed by the conscious intentional operations which constitute a judgment of probability, are given in consciousness. In the latter case my judgment (a) about such a judgment (b) is true just in case I have direct conscious awareness of the presence of the said conscious intentional operations informing the words rather than not.
Among other essays in the volume with which I have problems is that on ‘Rethinking Eternal Life: Philosophical Notions’. In this essay Crowe invites us to reflect on the implications of the metaphysical truth that being is of itself non-temporal; that for God all created reality is present in a non-temporal ‘now’. In death, Crowe affirms, we realise fully this non-temporal aspect of our sharing in being by entering eternal life. This is indeed a fascinating area for metaphysical reflection. However, were a philosopher from a different tradition to read the piece I think she might very well question whether, even granted the insights about atemporality, Crowe had argued with sufficiency for why it is the case that the being of a coffee cup does not entitle it to share finally in the eternity of God, whereas our human being does entitle us to do so. At the end of the piece Crowe asserts, without argument, theses on eschatology which seem more akin to those advocated by the later Rahner, than to what we actually find Lonergan arguing in Insight. However, a good number of philosophers and theologians have continued to question the cogency of views like those of Rahner on eschatology, and I agree that Rahner's views seem to land (ironically) in a hyperplatonism. Is it so obvious philosophically that for human beings all temporality ceases in death? I would have thought that given all that a thinker like Lonergan writes on the historicality of the human person, of human knowing and communal sharing, one would have evidence to the contrary. At one point Crowe asserts that, in fact, a ‘resurrection’ occurs for us every moment, as our life informing soul moves on to the next episode in our story. I find this kind of comment overly homiletic in nature given the context of an argument on philosophical theology, and I am afraid to say that it is the kind of thing I find Crowe does rather often in his writing.
After reading ‘The “World” from Anthony of Egypt to Vatican II’ I was left wondering if there is not more philosophy and theology can offer by way of reflection upon the reality of the recent history of religious life in the west, beyond the rather neutral conclusions at which Crowe arrives. That reality has been the widespread collapse of religious life in the west in the last few decades and yet the now well-documented revival taking place in new religious orders and in those older orders which are again attracting vocations.
Despite these criticisms and reservations I would recommend this collection of essays to those interested in Lonergan's thought and ways in which it might be applied. Even in the speculative essays with which my disagreement is most comprehensive I find that Crowe never fails to come up with valuable insights into Lonergan's writing and its implications for current theological debate.
