Bernard Lonergan orthodox?

[Geremia]

What do orthodox Thomists think about Bernard Lonergan? Many people compare him with Rahner, but Lonergan didn’t think it fair to be classified with him. Lonergan came out of Toronto, as did the excellent philosophers De Koninck, Maurer, et al.

Is Lonergan worth reading? His Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957), especially the chapter entitled “Isomorphism of Thomist and Scientific Thought”, seems interesting. His Method in Theology (1972), an attack on the Scholastic approach to theology, seems heterodox, however.

Thanks

 

[edward_george]

Just out of curiosity, why does Method seem heterodox? Being a critique of the scholastic method is not heterodox, as no particular system of theology is orthodox or heterodox. The Church allows freedom on the various methods and schools of thought within theology.

-ACEGC

 

[Geremia]

Just out of curiosity, why does Method seem heterodox? Being a critique of the scholastic method is not heterodox, as no particular system of theology is orthodox or heterodox. The Church allows freedom on the various methods and schools of thought within theology.

Perhaps, but, e.g., 78.Fides et Ratio seems to give preference to St. Thomas’s method:

1. It should be clear in the light of these reflections why the Magisterium has repeatedly acclaimed the merits of Saint Thomas’ thought and made him the guide and model for theological studies. This has not been in order to take a position on properly philosophical questions nor to demand adherence to particular theses. The Magisterium’s intention has always been to show how Saint Thomas is an authentic model for all who seek the truth. In his thinking, the demands of reason and the power of faith found the most elevated synthesis ever attained by human thought, for he could defend the radical newness introduced by Revelation without ever demeaning the venture proper to reason.

There’s also Pope Leo XIII’s Æterni Patris 17. (my emphasis):

1. Among the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because “he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all.” The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. Philosophy has no part which he did not touch finely at once and thoroughly; on the laws of reasoning, on God and incorporeal substances, on man and other sensible things, on human actions and their principles, he [St. Thomas] reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting neither a full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts, nor the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or strength of argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a facility for explaining what is abstruse.

 

[edward_george]

Both encyclicals testify to the goodness of Aquinas’ system and even the fact that it is an excellent model. But I’m still not sure how to criticize it is “heterodox.” It’s not been declared to be divinely revealed; certainly which philosophical system one uses is a matter of discipline. But perhaps I’m missing something; please elaborate. Also, what specifically is “heterodox” about Longergan’s Method? I’ve read that book and found nothing in it that is suspect.

-ACEGC

 

[Geremia]

Both encyclicals testify to the goodness of Aquinas’ system and even the fact that it is an excellent model. But I’m still not sure how to criticize it is “heterodox.”

Lonergan, like Rahner and Marechal, “buys into Kantian presuppositions in order to respond to them along Thomistic lines. The whole approach of transcendental Thomism has been deemed by traditional and non-traditional Thomists alike to be a failure, as something more Kantian than Thomistic. Cf. Gilson, Methodical Realism.” (source).

Edward Feser describes the transcendental Thomists here:

4. Transcendental Thomism: Unlike the first three schools mentioned, this approach, associated with Joseph Marechal (1878-1944), Karl Rahner (1904-84), and Bernard Lonergan (1904-84), does not oppose modern philosophy wholesale, but seeks to reconcile Thomism with a Cartesian subjectivist approach to knowledge in general, and Kantian epistemology in particular. It seems fair to say that most Thomists otherwise tolerant of diverse approaches to Aquinas’s thought tend to regard transcendental Thomism as having conceded too much to modern philosophy genuinely to count as a variety of Thomism, strictly speaking, and this school of thought has in any event been far more influential among theologians than among philosophers.

It’s not been declared to be divinely revealed; certainly which philosophical system one uses is a matter of discipline.

The choice of a philosophy to use as an instrument in theology is not purely a disciplinary matter because there are some philosophies, like “materialism, monism, pantheism, socialism and modernism”, that are completely incompatible with doing theology. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., outlines, in his “[The structure of the encyclical Humani Generis (The structure of the encyclical "Humani Generis" by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.),” the following philosophical errors Pope Pius XII sought to denounce in his encyclical [Humani Generis (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/p.../hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html) as incompatible with the faith:

1. • Relativism:
   • “human knowledge does not ever have a real, absolute, and immutable value, but only a relative value.”
   • Empiricism
   • “does not see the essential difference and the immense distance between the intellect and the senses, between the idea and the image, between judgement and the empirical association, and through this it strongly reduces the value of the first notions of being, of unity, of truth, of goodness, of substance, of cause and the value of the first correlative principles of identity, of contradiction, of causality, etc.”
   • Kantianism
   • “is opposed, it is true, to empiricism inasmuch as it recognizes the necessity of first principles, but according to this system the principles are only subjective laws of our mind, which come from us applied to phenomena, but they do not allow us to raise ourselves up beyond some phenomena themselves.”
   • Hegelianism:
   • “If one cannot prove with objectively sufficient certainty the existence of God really and essentially distinct from the world, it is better to say that God is made in the humanity that keeps evolving itself and in the mind of the men that passes continually from one thesis to an antithesis, then to a superior synthesis, and so on.”

 

[Geremia]

Pope St. Pius X writes in his 1914 motu proprio Doctoris Angelici:

Now because the word We used in the text of that letter motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum] recommending the philosophy of Aquinas was ‘particularly,’ and not ‘exclusively,’ certain persons persuaded themselves that they were acting in conformity to Our Will or at any rate not actively opposing it, in adopting indiscriminately and adhering to the philosophical opinions of any other Doctor of the School, even though such opinions were contrary to the principles of St. Thomas. They were greatly deceived. In recommending St. Thomas to Our subjects as supreme guide in the Scholastic philosophy, it goes without saying that Our intention was to be understood as referring above all to those principles upon which that philosophy is based as its foundation. For just as the opinion of certain ancients is to be rejected which maintains that it makes no difference to the truth of the Faith what any man thinks about the nature of creation, provided his opinions on the nature of God be sound, because error with regard to the nature of creation begets a false knowledge of God; so the principles of philosophy laid down by St. Thomas Aquinas are to be religiously and inviolably observed, because they are the means of acquiring such a knowledge of creation as is most congruent with the Faith (Contra Gentiles, II, 2, 3) …].

St. Thomas perfected and augmented still further by the almost   angelic quality of his intellect all this superb patrimony of wisdom   which he inherited from his predecessors and applied  it to prepare,   illustrate and protect sacred doctrine in the minds of men (*In  Librum Boethii de Trinitate*,  quaest, ii, 3). Sound reason suggests  that it would be foolish to  neglect it and religion will not suffer it  to be in any way attenuated.  And rightly, because, if Catholic doctrine  is once deprived of this  strong bulwark, it is useless to seek the  slightest assistance for its  defence in a philosophy whose principles  are either common to the  errors of materialism, monism, pantheism,  socialism and modernism, or  certainly not opposed to such systems. The  reason is that the capital  theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are  not to be placed in the  category of opinions capable of being debated  one way or another, but  are to be considered as the foundations upon  which the whole science of  natural and divine things is based; if such  principles are once  removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily  follow that  students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to  perceive so  much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of  divine  revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church.

Cf. also this excellent compilation of papal quotes about the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas in philosophy and theology.

But perhaps I’m missing something; please elaborate. Also, what specifically is “heterodox” about Longergan’s Method? I’ve read that book and found nothing in it that is suspect.

Can Kantian agnosticism, subjectivism, and idealism be reconciled with the Faith? Pope St. Pius X said in his 1905 encyclical on Modernism, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, that these philosophical errors are the bases of the heresy of Modernism (cf. §6Pascendi ff.). As a remedy to these errors, Pope St. Pius X proposes §45)Pascendi.

Cf. also

1. 
   *]Greenstock, David L., T.O.P., “Thomism and the New Theology,” The Thomist, 13 (1950) p. 567.
   *]Ramirez, O.P., Authority of St. Thomas

 

[edward_george]

Again, you’ve multiplied Papal quotes about philosophical systems and what others have said about Lonergan. Is there anything specific in Lonergan that you can identify as being somehow in conflict with the faith?

-ACEGC

 

[Geremia]

Is there anything specific in Lonergan that you can identify as being somehow in conflict with the faith?

One specific example would be his dissent from Humanæ Vitæ.

 

[edward_george]

I was talking specifically in the book Method in Theology, as that is what this conversation is about to begin with. You seem hell-bent on labeling certain theologians as “heretics” and “dissenters,” and I know that there are things in each of them that is questionable, but dig a little deeper and come up with specifics before you criticize.

-ACEGC

 

[TS_Aquinas]

Am I reading Bernard wrong or does he employ Hegelian Dialectics? If so, then there’s the problem.

 

[Gregoriana]

I consider myself somewhat of an expert in Lonergan studies.

In regards to the questions asked, having spent years reading Lonergan, I have not encountered anything unorthodox. While he did write one private letter in which he criticized the arguments put forth by Humanae Vitae, he had previously defended Church teaching on contraception. Saying that arguments are weak is not the same as saying the conclusions are wrong. He was a loyal son of the Church who never publicly dissented from Humanae Vitae.

Lonergan resisted the label transcendental Thomist, and most Thomists who have read him also say it is false to label him that way. The reason he was put into that category is because he wrote Insight as a response to Kant and other problematic modern epistemologies, but unlike transcendental Thomists, he did not begin with the question, “Is it possible to know?” Starting with that question is exactly what Gilson rightly critiqued in “Thomistic Realism and the Critique of Knowledge.” Lonergan began Insight with the question, “What am I doing when I am knowing?” In order to do so, he looked at acts of knowing such as the traditional sciences, statistical sciences, and and every day acts of knowing. Thus, by beginning with science, he is not following Kant but Aristotle, whose Physics came before the Metaphysics.

Lonergan does make us of dialectical but not in a Hegelian fashion. He did not think history was always progressing towards a more accurate synthesis but thought that errors in human knowing could lead to larger cycles of cultural decline.

Lastly, I do not think it accurate to describe Method in Theology as a critique of scholastic method. Method in Theology describes an eight-step process of doing theology. Scholastics are employing the method on a daily basis without articulating what they are doing. A simplified example: when someone does research into Saint Thomas, they first do research to find the text, then they attempt to understand the text, judge they have understood it correctly. Then they will make a decision about whether they agree with what he says or not (no, in the case of the Immaculate Conception, yes, on the Eucharist, for example). One then can construct a systematic understanding, and then use that to preach in a language coherent to someone else, based on their own age, knowledge, etc. There is no conflict between scholastic method and his book Method. He does have some critiques of where scholasticism was during his lifetime, but that is for another discussion. His Latin theology manuals are all examples of scholasticism.

 

[Devoted_to_Jude]

…by beginning with science, he is not following Kant but Aristotle, whose Physics came before the Metaphysics.

A small correction: this is almost certainly not correct. Later editors did place the metaphysics after the physics this is true and hence the name. However the first philosophy is just that the first philosophy. It is necessarily first.This is just as true today as then.

Materialists would like to do away with metaphysics altogether, and although we seemingly have a successful scientific program the fact is that its supporting foundation is completely incoherent. Modern metaphysics divorced from Thomism makes ultimately only incoherent statements on such basic and necessary first things as causation–or even such things as the so-called scientific “laws”. All of this in the name of getting rid of “spooky metaphysics” by which is really meant teleology. In truth no metaphysics is as spooky as the dystelogical because nothing then makes sense. In any event the physics doesn’t really work–as a truly rational program–without first having a consistent metaphysics.

So I believe your conclusion about Lonergan to be right, however your supporting reasoning appears to be deeply flawed.

 

[Gregoriana]

A small correction: this is almost certainly not correct. Later editors did place the metaphysics after the physics this is true and hence the name. However the first philosophy is just that the first philosophy. It is necessarily first.This is just as true today as then.

We have stumbled upon a debate in Thomism that is larger than just Lonergan. River Forest Thomism, also known as Laval Thomism, would not agree with what you have said. Figures in the River Forest school include, (just copying and pasting from Wikipedia here): Charles De Koninck (1906–1965), Raymond Jude Nogar, OP (1915-1966), James A. Weisheipl, OP (1923–1984), William A. Wallace, OP, and Benedict Ashley, OP.

While you might be right about it, it’s a lot more complicated than we are going to settle here, since major Thomist scholars debate this exact point. Suffice to say, whether Lonergan is right or wrong on this point, it would not change his orthodoxy, as you seem to note.