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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
1 Moore, Sebastian, The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger (New York: Seabury, 1977);Google ScholarThe Fire and the Rose Are One (New York: Seabury, 1980);Google ScholarThe Inner Loneliness (New York: Crossroad, 1982);Google ScholarLet This Mind Be in You (New York: Harper & Row, 1985);Google ScholarJesus the Liberator of Desire (New York: Crossroad, 1989).Google Scholar See also “The Language of Love” in Lawrence, Fred, ed., Lonergan Workshop III (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 83–106;Google Scholar“Original Sin, Sex, Resurrection and Trinity,” Lonergan Workshop IV (1983), 85–98;Google Scholar“The New Life,” Lonergan Workshop V (1985), 145–62;Google Scholar“The Communication of a Dangerous Memory” in Lawrence, Fred, ed., Communicating a Dangerous Memory: Soundings in Political Theology (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), 55–61;Google Scholar and “The Forming and Transforming of Ego: An Explanatory Psychology of Soteriology” in Lawrence, Fred, ed., Lonergan Workshop VIII (1990), 165–90.Google Scholar For An excellent early analysis of Moore's soteriology see Loewe, William, “Encountering the Crucified God: The Soteriology of Sebastian Moore,” Horizons 9 (1982): 216–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 While Moore works out his soteriology in terms of modern psychology, his theological underpinnings are Lonerganian. Lonergan's soteriology, “the just and mysterious law of the cross,” can be found in the last three theses of his De Verbo Incarnato, 3rd ed. (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964).Google ScholarLoewe, William, “Lonergan and the Law of the Cross: A Universalist View of Salvation,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977): 162–74Google Scholar contextualizes Lonergan's soteriology within his overall scheme and his approach to the problem of integration and shows his elucidation of the special theological categories of ’sin” and “redemption” through the general categories used to articulate his analysis of transcendental method.
3 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, 37.Google Scholar
4 This is especially so in The Inner Loneliness.
5 De Perfectione Iustitiae Hominis 9; De Dono Perseverantiae 13.
6 See Ricoeur, Paul, “Original Sin: A Study in Meaning” in Ihde, D., ed., The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 269–86Google Scholar, and “The Unity of the Voluntary and the Involuntary as a Limiting Idea” in Reagan, C. and Stewart, D., eds., The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work (Boston: Beacon, 1978), 3–19.Google Scholar
7 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, 13Google Scholar, and Jesus the Liberator, 25-30.
8 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, 35.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., 8, and Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 667.
10 Moore finds a poignant analogy in Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, who experienced in the love of Sonya not opposition to his sin but its undermining when she takes on in Christlike fashion the suffering he rendered himself incapable of so as to murder an old woman. His rebirth is in the moment when, having confessed to Sonya, he hears her say: “What have you done to yourself?” The ego sufficiently absolutized (to commit murder in this case) puts the self beyond the possibility of the suffering that transforms. It is frozen there until we see another suffer this forgotten pain of ourselves. See Moore, , Jesus the Liberator, 36.Google Scholar
11 Moore, “The Forming and Transforming of Ego,” 182.
12 See Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 306–46.Google Scholar Here, admittedly, I read Moore through Ricoeurian lenses but I think it enhances our perception of Moore's position.
13 Gregson, Vernon, “The Faces of Evil and Our Response: Ricoeur, Lonergan, Moore” in Fallon, T. and Riley, P., eds., Religion in Context (Lanham: University Press of America, 1988), 139.Google Scholar See also Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, 107Google Scholar, and The Fire and the Rose, 13–14, 91.Google Scholar
14 For Moore's reconstruction of the Easter experience, see e.g., Moore, , The Fire and the Rose, 80–91;Google ScholarThe Inner Loneliness, 88-93; Let This Mind Be in You, 117-45; and Jesus the Liberator, 41-76. See also his summation of his views in “Experiencing the Resurrection,” Commonweal 109 (1982): 47–51Google Scholar and his response to critics, 220-22.
15 “To say that the real evidence of the resurrection is in the sense the community has … of being ‘in’ the leader recently done to death is to say that this new sense of relatedness to and in Jesus had to have a start. Thus ‘something is the case’ brings in its train ‘something happened’. … That shortly after his death he became known as the body to which they belonged—that is the resurrection. … Leaving the tomb is probably involved. But to speak of that as the resurrection is totally to miss the point. … [He] became in their midst a life-giving Spirit. To explain this as simply a post-bereavement adjustment seems to me the quintessence of reductionism” (“The Forming and Transforming of Ego,” 180 and 181).
16 Moore's soteriology bears some affinity to Schleiermacher's. Schleiermacher too focuses on the sinlessness of Jesus awakening in us consciousness of sin and views redemption as the transformation of the believer's interiority. See The Christian Faith, Vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 427–28.Google ScholarPubMed
17 Moore, , The Crucified Jesus, 4–5.Google Scholar To see Moore's affinity to Luther one need but read part of the latter's 1535 Lectures on Galatians in Pelikan, J., ed., Luther's Works (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1963), 26:276–91.Google Scholar See on this Loewe, “Encountering the Crucified God,” 225-30. Lonergan, and no doubt Moore, would remind us that Abelard, writing before the theorem of the supernatural had been developed, seems to omit the fact that justification is not won by human effort but is the work of God.
18 See my own attempt to come to grips with this question in “The Galilean Christ: Particularity and Universality,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26 (1989): 154–74.Google Scholar
19 See Pesch, Rudolf, “Zur Enstehung des Glaubens an die Auferstehung Jesu: Ein Vorschlag zur Diskussion,” Theologische Quartalschrift 153 (1973): 201–08 and 270–83;Google Scholar“Das Messiasbekenntnis des Petrus: Neuverhandlung einer alten Frage,” Bibiische Zeitschrift 17 (1973): 178–95 and 18 (1974): 20-31;Google Scholar“Die Passion des Menschensohnes. Eine Studie zu den Menschensohnworten der vormarkinischen Passionsgeschichte” in Pesch, R. and Schnackenburg, R., eds., Jesus und der Menschensohn (Freiburg: Herder, 1975);Google Scholar and Das Abendmahl und Jesu Todesverständnis (Freiburg: Herder, 1979).Google ScholarSchillebeeckx, Edward, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1979), 320–97 and 516–45Google Scholar, and Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 74–93.Google Scholar For a sympathetic exposition of Pesch's views within current options see Galvin, John, “Resurrection as Theologia Crucis Jesu: The Foundational Christology of Rudolf Pesch,” Theological Studies 38 (1977): 513–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Jesus' Approach to Death: An Examination of Some Recent Studies,” Theological Studies 41 (1980): 713–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 See esp. Jesus the Liberator, 51-76.
21 Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York: Seabury, 1978), 276.Google Scholar
22 For what follows I am indebted to the insights of Francis Fiorenza, Schüssler, Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 39–46Google Scholar, and Ricoeur, Paul, Essays in Biblical Interpretation, ed. Mudge, L. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 73–154.Google Scholar See also Ricoeur's, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. Thompson, J. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 274–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23 Using Lonergan's differentiation of stages of meaning—common sense, theory, inferiority—we may locate the New Testament in the stage of common sense. See Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 85–100.Google ScholarPubMed The gospel message of redemption cannot adequately speak to our condition as it stands. It needs mediation. An analysis of the New Testament's concepts of salvation can inspire and enlighten today only when combined with insight into the historical conditions of New Testament times and our own. Thus are born second order interpretations. See Schillebeeckx, Interim Report, 13-19. But all second order interpretations christologically grounding programs of social reform, models of psychological development, calls to authentic existence, etc., necessary as they are, must be subjected to criticism. For “the historical Jesus” forever eludes our programs, subverts our ideologies, and escapes our neat categories. With reason did Schweitzer contend that he will always be “strange and puzzling” for our age.
24 In a presentation at the annual meeting of the College Theology Society in New Orleans in June 1990, Moore quipped that the monks of Downside are said to take a fourth vow, to defend the priority of Matthew over Mark. Se non è vero, è ben trovato.
25 On this problem see Meier, John P., “The Historical Jesus: Rethinking Some Concepts,” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In this lucid essay Meier shows that difficulties surrounding the distinction introduced by Martin Kähler between the historical (historisch) Jesus and the historic (geschichtlich) Christ and suggests an alternative terminology. While he succeeds in clearly synthesizing the ambiguities known to becloud “the speech habits of close-to-a-century of scholars,” he does not, I think, succeed in minting an alternative terminology.
26 Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 227.Google Scholar I have found Tracy's approach to this entire problem most helpful (see 231-338). See also his Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), 204–36.Google Scholar
27 As Tracy points out, in questions concerning “the historical Jesus” these two problems are often confused. For some the problem of “the historical Jesus” is more a problem of intelligibility than of appropriateness. For others, myself included, who do not consider “the historical Jesus” (a construct of research), as distinct from the Jesus witnessed to by the apostolic witness, to be the norm of tradition (the norm is the apostolic witness), the relevance of “the historical Jesus” issue is something else: viz., to retain the vitality of the “dangerous memory” of Jesus in fidelity to the original kerygma. See Tracy, , The Analogical Imagination, 238f.Google Scholar, and Blessed Rage for Order, 217.
28 See, e.g., Karl, ‘Rahner's, “Current Problems in Christology,” Theological Investigations, Vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1961), 149–200Google Scholar, and “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” Theological Investigations, Vol. 4 (Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1966), 105–20.Google Scholar Similar moves were made by Schleiermacher, Ritschl, and Tillich.
29 Tracy, , The Analogical Imagination, 238.Google Scholar
30 “The historical Jesus” is the real Jesus who lived but only insofar as he is knowable today in a construct produced by historical-critical method. This is not identical with the real or actual Jesus who lived, which all christologies acknowledge. The issue is not whether the real Jesus is to be affirmed, but how: through critical historical reconstruction or through the memory of the tradition? I have opted for the latter, though without denying the tradition's foibles and the ongoing needs of correction by a variety of methods.
31 For a critical reflection on some Third World liberation theologians' reflections on “the historical Jesus” see Meier, John P., “The Bible as a Source for Theology,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 43 (1988): 1–14.Google Scholar
32 For an introduction to these questions see, e.g., Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences.