Bernard Lonergan

Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan (17 December 1904 – 26 November 1984) was a Canadian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian regarded by many as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century."Lonergan is considered by many intellectuals to be the finest philosophic thinker of the 20th century." Time, April 27, 1970, p. 10. Cf. Fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center, The Realms of Desire: An Introduction to the Thought of Bernard Lonergan, (Washington: Woodstock Theological Center, 2011), pp. 3-6; in addition to recording their own estimate of Lonergan's importance, the authors cite the opinions of many others.

Lonergan's works include Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), as well as two studies of Thomas Aquinas, several theological textbooks, and numerous essays, including two posthumously published essays on macroeconomics. Lonergan held appointments at the Pontifical Gregorian University; Regis College, Toronto, as distinguished visiting professor at Boston College, and as Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University.

Aims

By his own account, Lonergan set out to do for human thought in our time what Thomas Aquinas had done for his own time. Aquinas had successfully applied Aristotelian thought to the service of a Christian understanding of the universe.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas Aquinas, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 1, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000), p. 143. Lonergan's program was to come to terms with modern scientific, historical, and hermeneutical thinking in a comparable way.Cf. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, "Insight Revisited," in A Second Collection, ed. William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), pp. 263-278 at pp. 268, 277; idem, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1972), p. xi. He pursued this program in his two most fundamental works, Insight and Method in Theology.Bernard J.F . Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works vol. 3, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992); idem, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1972).

One key to Lonergan's project is self-appropriation, that is, the personal discovery and personal embrace of the dynamic structure of inquiry, insight, judgment, and decision. By self-appropriation, one finds in one's own intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility the foundation of every kind of inquiry and the basic pattern of operations undergirding methodical investigation in every field.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works vol. 3, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992), pp. 11-24; idem, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1972), pp. 3-25.

A second key, one which subsumes the first, is a global "turn to the idea"The phrase "turn to idea" is a translation of Georg Simmel's die Wendung Zur Idee. of functionally specialized collaboration.In chapter 5 "Functional Specialties" of Method in Theology, Lonergan translates Simmel’s phrase as “shift towards system” (CWL 14, 133), and in another work as “displacement towards system.” (De Deo Trino I. Pars Dogmatica, Gregorian Press, Rome, 1964, 10, n. 10; CWL 11, 19, n. 11). The personal discovery and embrace of self-appropriation are the topic of the background chapter 1 "Method." The importance of this discovery and embrace is highlighted by Lonergan in a footnote (#4, CWL 14, 11) and repeated again in chapter 10 "Dialectic" (CWL 14, 244). Lonergan's hope was that his discovery and articulation of eight dynamically-related but distinct tasks would, in good time, subsume, if not replace, the splintered and oftentimes isolated results of what he called "field specialization" and "subject specialization" that prevail in the modern university.Method in Theology, CWL 14, 121-126. Along the same lines, in the 1969 essay "The Future of Christianity," he wrote that the transition from "classicist culture" to "modern culture" would require "a complete restructuring of Catholic theology." The needed restructuring applies to all academic disciplines"Something similar will be required whenever you have an academic discipline that deals with man's past with a relevance to his future." See also CWL 14, 7-8 and 337-38. and all creeds.At the end of chapter 12 "Doctrines," Lonergan wrote that he had written the chapter "without subscribing to any but the doctrine about doctrine set forth in the First Vatican Council. I have done so deliberately and my purpose has been ecumenical. I desire it to be as simple as possible for theologians of different allegiance to adapt my method to their uses." CWL 14, 309.

Lonergan is often associated—with his fellow Jesuits Karl Rahner and Joseph Maréchal—with "transcendental Thomism", i.e., a philosophy which attempts to combine Thomism with certain views or methods commonly associated with Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism.Otto Muck, The Transcendental Method (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968. However, Lonergan did not regard this label as particularly helpful for understanding his intentions.Method in Theology, pp. 13-14 n. 4.

Life

Bernard Joseph Francis Lonergan was born on 17 December 1904 in Buckingham, Quebec, Canada. After four years at Loyola College (Montreal), he entered the Upper Canada (English) province of the Society of Jesus in 1922 and made his profession of vows on the Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, 31 July 1924.Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), pp. 24-27. After two further years of formation and education, he was assigned to study scholastic philosophy at Heythrop College, then in Oxfordshire, in 1926.Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), pp. 28-30. Lonergan respected the competence and honesty of his professors at Heythrop, but was deeply dissatisfied with their Suarezian philosophy.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, "Insight Revisited," in A Second Collection, ed. William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), pp. 263-278 at p. 263 While at Heythrop, Lonergan also took external degrees in mathematics and classics at the University of London.Frederick E. Crowe, Lonergan (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992) pp. 6-17. In 1930 he returned to Canada, where he taught for three years at Loyola College, Montreal.Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), pp. 30-31.

In 1933, Lonergan was sent for theological studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, "Insight Revisited," in Second Collection pp. 263-278 at p. 266 He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1936.Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), p. 34. After a year of Jesuit formation ("tertianship") in Amiens,Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), pp. 34-36. Lonergan returned to the Gregorian University in 1937 to pursue doctoral studies in theology. Due to the Second World War, he returned to Canada in May 1940, just two days before the scheduled defence of his doctoral dissertation. He began teaching theology at College de l'Immaculee Conception, the Jesuit theology faculty in Montreal in 1940, as well as the Thomas More Institute in 1945–46. In the event, he would not formally defend his dissertation and receive his doctorate until a special board of examiners from the Immaculee Conception was convened in Montreal on 23 December 1946.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas of Aquin, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000), pp. xvii-xxii (Editors' Preface); Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), pp. 60-65.

Lonergan taught theology at Regis College (a theological school attached to the University of Toronto) from 1947 to 1953, and at the Gregorian University from 1953 to 1964. At the Gregorian, Lonergan taught Trinity and Christology in alternate years, and produced substantial textbooks on these topics. In 1964, he made another hasty return to North America, this time to be treated for lung cancer. He was appointed again to Regis College from 1965 to 1975, was Stillman Professor of Divinity at Harvard University in 1971–72, and distinguished visiting professor at Boston College from 1975 until 1983. He died at the Jesuit infirmary in Pickering, Ontario, on 26 November 1984.Frederick E. Crowe, Lonergan (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992) 1-57.

Influences Lonergan described the genesis of his thought up to the mid-1950s in an interview.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, "Insight Revisited," in A Second Collection, pp. 263–278 at p. 263; idem, Caring About Meaning, p. 22. Augustine and John Henry Newman were major influences upon his early thinking. J. A. Stewart's study of Plato's doctrine of ideasJ. A. Stewart, Plato's Doctrine of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909). was also influential.Cf. Mark D. Morelli, At the Threshold of the Halfway House: A Study of Bernard Lonergan's Encounter with John Alexander Stewart (Boston: Lonergan Institute, 2011).

In the epilogue to Insight, Lonergan mentions the important personal transformation wrought in him by a decade's apprenticeship to the thought of Thomas Aquinas.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works vol. 3, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992), p. 769. He produced two major exegetical studies of Thomas Aquinas: Grace and Freedom, and Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas.

Works The University of Toronto Press has published Lonergan's work in a 25-volume series, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan.See a list of UTP's Collected Works at the Lonergan Australia website.

Grace and Freedom Lonergan's doctoral dissertation was an exploration of the theory of operative grace in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. His director, Charles Boyer, S.J., pointed him to a passage in the Summa theologiae and suggested that the received interpretations were mistaken.Pierrot Lambert and Philip McShane, Bernard Lonergan: His Life and Leading Ideas (Vancouver: Axial, 2010), p. 62; Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Caring About Meaning: Patterns in the Life of Bernard Lonergan, edited by Pierrot Lambert, Charlotte Tansey, and Cathleen Going (Montreal: Thomas More Institute, 1982), pp. 4-5. A study of Thomas Aquinas on divine grace and human freedom was well-suited to his interest in working out a theoretical analysis of history.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, "Insight Revisited," in A Second Collection, pp. 263-278 at pp. 271-72. The dissertation was completed in 1940; it was rewritten and published as a series of articles in the journal Theological Studies.Bernard Lonergan, "St Thomas' Thought on Gratia Operans, Theological Studies 2 (1941) 289-324, 3 (1942) 69-88, 375-402, 533-78. The articles were edited into a book by J. Patout Burns in 1972, and both the revised and the original version of his study were subsequently published in his Collected Works as Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St Thomas of Aquin, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000).

Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas