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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
In Method in Theology Bernard Lonergan acknowledged the reality of intersubjectivity in human life and sought to incorporate it in various ways into his understanding of theological method. Building upon Lonergan's insights, this essay indicates how his three stages of meaning and different realms of meaning can be expanded in terms of the author's Neo-Whiteheadian metaphysics of universal intersubjectivity so as to justify a communal and processive approach to truth and objectivity in human affairs. In this way, Lonergan's transcendental method is clearly vindicated in a Neo-Whiteheadian as well as a Thomistic context and the resulting synthesis of metaphysical perspectives notably strengthens the position of those who advocate discussion and dialogue over the use of force for the resolution of persistent controversial issues.
1 Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 292Google Scholar; see also 265.
2 Bracken, Joseph A., “Authentic Subjectivity and Genuine Objectivity,” Horizons 11 (1984): 290–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Lonergan, Bernard, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 3rd ed. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1970), 115–28Google Scholar; see also Doran, Robert M., Theology and the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), esp. 527–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an extension of Lonergan's approach to more cosmological perspectives.
4 Lonergan, , Method in Theology, 57.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., 60.
6 Ibid., 70.
7 Ibid., 74.
8 Ibid., 53.
9 Ibid., 76–81.
10 Ibid., 77.
11 Ibid., 78.
12 Ibid., 81–85.
13 Ibid., 84.
14 An example of what I have in mind is provided by Daniel Helminiak in a recent article where he indicates how Lonergan's analysis of the human spirit could ground a science of spirituality with a claim to truth and objectivity distinct from the belief-systems of different world religions. As he notes, “if attention to the human spirit is the key to a theoretical understanding of spirituality, attention to the interaction of the human spirit, psyche, and organism in a physical and social environment would provide a basis for explaining the rich phenomena of lived spiritualities, and attention to the embeddedness of spiritualities in social groups and organizations would open unto consideration of religion, culture, and society” (Helminiak, Daniel A., “The Role of Spirituality in Formulating a Theory of the Psychology of Religion,” Zygon 41 [2006]: 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Yet such a science of spirituality based on Lonergan's transcendental precepts would still be instrumental to a further goal, namely, the communal sharing of insights by participants to the dialogue with a view to setting forth consensus positions on matters of common concern.
15 Toulmin, Stephen, The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 1.Google ScholarToulmin, is also the author of Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972)Google Scholar, a book comparable in many respects to Lonergan's Insight.
16 Toulmin, , The Return to Cosmology, 16.Google Scholar
17 Lonergan, , Method in Theology, 85.Google Scholar
18 Whitehead, Alfred North, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967), 58–59.Google Scholar
19 Ibid.
20 Whitehead, , Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin, David Ray and Sherburne, Donald W. (New York: Free Press, 1978), 18.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., 34–35.
22 Ibid., 35: “the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism.”
23 Ibid., 103.
24 Ibid., 85.
25 See Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1967), 204.Google Scholar
26 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 90.Google Scholar
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 91: “Thus in a society [field], the members can only exist by reason of the laws which dominate the society, and the laws only come into being by reason of the analogous characters of the members of the society.”
29 See Royce, Josiah, The Problem of Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 248–49.Google Scholar
30 See, e.g., Bracken, Joseph A., The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 157–78Google Scholar; also Bracken, , “Emergent Monism and the Classical Doctrine of the Soul,” Zygon 39 (2004): 161–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 Bracken, , The One in the Many, 120–30Google Scholar; also Bracken, , “Panentheism: A Field-Oriented Approach,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being, ed. Clayton, Philip and Peacocke, Arthur (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 211–21.Google Scholar
32 Bracken, , “Authentic Subjectivity and Genuine Objectivity,” 295.Google Scholar
33 Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Lingis, Alphonso (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 51.Google Scholar
34 This presupposes, of course, that there is process or change within the divine life, at least with respect to the relations of the divine persons with their creatures. But it also raises the question of whether there is a logical inconsistency in the affirmation of the existence of an actually infinite being, even in the case of a purely spiritual being like God. On this point see my book The Divine Matrix: Creativity as Link between East and West (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), 11–37; 142–43, nn. 1–4; 145 nn. 4 and 8, where I discuss the understanding of infinity in Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.
35 See Bracken, Joseph A., “A New Look at Time and Eternity,” Theology and Science 2 (2004): 77–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am heavily reliant in this article on Pannenberg's, Wolfgang understanding of time and eternity in his Systematic Theology, Vol. 3, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 592–95Google Scholar; likewise Neville's, Robert C. understanding of eternity as the “togetherness” of past, present and future in his Eternity and Time's Flow (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 109–20.Google Scholar
36 Whitehead, , Process and Reality, 346.Google Scholar
37 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, IGoogle Scholar, Q. 14, a. 13, resp.