Bernard Lonergan developed a general empirical method by reflecting on basic intentional operations (experiencing, understanding, judging, deliberating), and implemented his method in theology by distinguishing an eight-fold division of labour. Nevertheless, his work as a theologian was primarily in the ‘seventh functional speciality’, that is, systematic theology. From 1953 he taught at the Gregorian university in Rome, and the University of Toronto Press has already published three of the later Latin works on the Trinity and Christology. But Volume 19 in the Collected Works, Early Latin Theology, dates from his teaching in Canada during the previous decade. To assist his students Lonergan produced supplements, seven of which are included. All bear Lonergan's hallmark: the search for a fruitful, albeit imperfect, understanding of the mysteries of faith.
The first supplement is a rare excursus into sacramental theology. In The Notion of Sacrifice, after ‘ploughing through the somewhat rocky soil of multitudinous opinions’ (667) Lonergan turns with relief to Augustine, and is able to explain the unity of the sacrifice of the Mass with the Sacrifice of Calvary: sacrifice is defined as a ‘proper symbol of a sacrificial attitude’ (5).
The Supernatural Order was the subject of a thorough study by Michael Stebbins entitled The Divine Initiative. Lonergan's doctoral work on Grace and Freedom had recovered the position of Aquinas against both the Bannezians who stressed the divine initiative at the expense of human freedom, and the Molinists whose method Lonergan faults. On the controversial topic of the day, the natural desire to see God, Lonergan explains how the natural potency, manifested by the way we spontaneously ask questions, is intrinsically the same as the obediential potency, which can be actuated by God alone. There is a natural desire, but this can easily be misunderstood.
A third part deals with God's Knowledge and Will but here, Lonergan follows an order that is ‘more pedagogical than logical’ (265). God's transcendent efficacy imposes no more than hypothetical necessity: although when Socrates is sitting, he must be sitting, nevertheless, he is free to stand. The reason lies in the fact that contingent predications concerning God are predicated extrinsically. God is the same regardless of whether he creates or not, and so the truth that God wills X, postulates the truth of X. ‘God wills X’ is thus simultaneous with ‘X’ and so the necessity that accrues is simply that of the statement, ‘If X then X.’
Kleutgen called the Analysis of Faith the ‘cross of the theologian,’ and this forms the fourth part. The First Vatican Council taught that ‘right reason can demonstrate the foundations of faith.’ Nevertheless, faith relies on the gift of God's grace. How then do we account for the ‘leap’, so to speak, from natural to supernatural? In this work of 1952, Lonergan draws on ‘the reflective act of understanding’ (in effect, Newman's illative sense) as his key. The work exhibits Lonergan's rejection of extrinsicism, carefully attending to psychological processes. Although the work has been published before in journal form, the editors have included three pages in which other opinions are contrasted, including that of Rousselot (477).
In The Notion of Fittingness Lonergan applies the method that he appreciated in St. Thomas to the Incarnation. Fitting arguments, argumenta convenientiae, are not absolutely probative, but aim at using the (uncertain, perhaps) intelligibility of human reason to enlighten the certainties of faith. Lonergan discusses the concept of order, a concept to which Lonergan will frequently return, always in the context of redemption. Christ is compared with an economist who labours to restore the disorder wrought by recession (529). The work sheds some light on the nature of the apologetics in the final chapter of Insight as regards God's solution to the problem of evil.
Lonergan's account of human consciousness was put to work in his later, Roman Christology. The early account given in part six, The Consciousness of Christ, has some fascinating differences. Lonergan makes a distinction between ‘experience’, the presence of an operation that is received, that refers to a change in the subject, and ‘consciousness,’ the operation referred to as ‘attention or intention or effort or action of the subject’ (547). Lonergan seems to abandon this (confusing) account, and the editors point out various opportunities for those wanting to research Lonergan's development.
A final section of Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace are divided into historical, biblical and systematic points relating to the Catholic understanding of grace as opposed to that of the Reformed tradition. Lonergan traces the problems back to Scotist conceptualism and voluntarism. The work is redolent with scriptural references.
The scholastic style of theses, syllogisms, definitions, objections, distinctions and replies may be daunting to the newcomer, but Lonergan was a conscientious teacher who laboured to provide his students with insight, and this indispensable volume is a welcome addition to the Collected Works. Lonergan's Latin on the left hand page faces a well edited translation which includes references to the archive maintained by Robert Doran at www.bernardlonergan.com
