Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, February 24, 2023
Speaker: Agnes Desmazieres (Centre Sèvres – Parigi)
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During the ROR Seminar held on 24 February 2023, two chapters extracted from the introductory part of Lonergan’s course on the Trinity were read out with the help of Agnes Desmazieres (Centre Sèvres – Paris): the first, devoted to dogmatic development, and the tenth on the development of the anti-Nicene crisis. The course consists of a first volume collecting the dogmatic part and the doctrinal development and a second one dedicated to the systematic treatment.
During the conversation, two distinctive elements of Lonergan’s theological contribution emerged: the historical approach to dogma; and the foundation of a new method in theology, in the elaboration of which he took into account not only the specificity of theology but also the impact of the scientific and philosophical revolution to which philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Kant and Hegel contributed.
The Method in Theology, published in 1972, is a complex method, which owes much to the professor’s relationship with his students during his courses on the Trinity and which has its roots in the years 1956-57. The eight different functional specialisations (research, interpretation, history, dialectics, foundation, doctrine, systematics, communication), interconnected with each other, underwent a progressive development and marked the intellectual turning point of the theologian with the 1972 publication. With it, Lonergan gave considerable impetus to theological epistemology and interdisciplinary dialogue.
The method aimed at achieving ‘unity in difference’. In Lonergan’s thought, unity in theology is not conceived at the level of statements but of the theological method. Indeed, theology is a mediation between religion and culture, and the method itself can be useful in opening a dialogue between different subjects and between them and the world.
We do not proceed from sensible consciousness but from our conscious operations, all of which are recognised as being related to each other. Lonergan, as Desmazieres explained, did not intend to set criteria of orthodoxy; his doctrine of knowledge, in fact, was not based on the object but on the knowing subject (critical realism), which is why the only normative criterion for him was authenticity. In this context, knowledge is no longer considered a representation but is interiority: its norms are be attentive, be intelligent, be responsible, be interior. For Lonergan, placing the emphasis on the subject and its authenticity did not mean denying the existence of truth but, on the contrary, guaranteeing its custody or discovery from inner conversion. Indeed, one cannot know without a moral, intellectual and religious conversion that can lead to unity. The immutability of dogma was explicitly affirmed, but in Lonergan’s vision, the starting point could no longer be classical metaphysics, since it banished history, an indispensable element for embodying actions and movements, but transcendental metaphysics.
