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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Of the various attempts to turn theology into a systematic science, that of Bernard Lonergan seems to me by far the most impressive. But it is not yet as well known as it deserves. In what follows I shall try to describe Lonergan's method, and to indicate why I think that it is of importance.
page 164 note 1 It has been suggested that in the final analysis Lonergan is a Kantian. Lonergan is certainly at one with Kant in his preoccupation with epistemological problems. But he regards Kant's doctrine that the limits of our knowledge are the limits of our sensation as due to a fundamental misapprehension of the nature and bearing of these problems. For Lonergan, the real world is none other than what we come to know by putting questions to the data provided by sensation and by consciousness. It is thus neither Kant's phenomenal world, nor that of his ‘things in themselves’; neither a mere subjective construction imposed upon the data of sensation, nor completely unknowable. The clearest statement by Lonergan of his view of Kant is to be found in Metaphysics as Horizon, a review of E. Coreth's Metaphysics reprinted in Collection (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967).
page 167 note 1 It may be objected that Barth is not a ‘fideist’ in precisely the sense of the term in which ‘fideism’ was repudiated by the First Vatican Council. However, what Lonergan seems to mean by fideism is rejection of the view that human intelligence and reason working independently of special divine revelation can find valid grounds for asserting the existence of God. In this sense, Barth would appear to be a fideist, both in his general attitude to what he calls ‘natural theology’, and in his well-known insistence that belief cannot argue with unbelief, only preach to it.
page 170 note 1 This reference, together with all subsequent ones not otherwise assigned, is to Method in Theology.
page 173 note 1 Theological Studies, July 1967.
page 178 note 1 What may be called the ‘subjectivism’ of the method, the fact that actual religious claims and doctrines are not commended or refuted, is apt to seem maddening to the reader until he understands the point of the whole procedure—which is the providing of a framework, based on the intelligent and reasonable human subject inquiring about religion, within which all the claims and counterclaims which have to do with religion may be fairly and fruitfully compared. What Lonergan thinks is to be had by applying his method may be found from his other writings.