¹ Gerald O'Collins has written many other brilliant works that introduce readers to Jesus, Christianity, and Catholicism and with special attention to the resurrection. See O'Collins, Gerald, Easter Faith: Believing in the Risen Jesus (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Salvation for All: God's Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Jesus: A Portrait (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008)Google Scholar; Believing in the Resurrection: The Meaning and Promise of the Risen Jesus (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Jesus Our Priest: A Christian Approach to the Priesthood of Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Rethinking Fundamental Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Christology: Origins, Developments, Debates (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

² See O'Collins Gerald, S.J., Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus, 2^nd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. In this revised and expanded edition O'Collins modified some texts to meet the criticisms of some of the scholars who responded to the original edition. For some critical reviews of the original edition see D. Carroll in The Furrow (May 1996), 317‐18; D. Flanagan in Doctrine and Life 46 (1996). 187‐88; C Heffling in Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997), 73‐76; J. Heft in Theological Studies 57 (1996), 547‐49; J.P. Kenny in Australasian Catholic Record 73 (1996), 120‐21; J. McIntyre in The Expository Times 107 (1995), 88; G. T. Montague in Catholic Biblical Quarterly 59 (1997), 168‐69; and J.E. Thiel in Religious Studies Review 23 (1997), 46‐47.

³ See chapter 4 of Christology for an extended discussion of the revelatory and redemptive significance of the resurrection. Here O'Collins offers a cogent rebuttal of skeptics’ argument that the empty tomb and the missing body was a case of theft and fraud. Since what is contentious is not whether the tomb was empty, but why it was empty, O'Collins writes about the historical reliability of the empty tomb: “Women were central: Mary Magdalene (john 20: 1‐2) and perhaps other women with her (Mark 16: 1‐8) found to their astonishment Jesus’ tomb to be open and empty on the first Easter Sunday. If these stories had simply been legends created by early Christians, they would have attributed the discovery of the empty tomb to male disciples, given that in first century Palestine women were for all intents and purposes, disqualified as valid witnesses. Legend‐makers do not normally invent positively unhelpful material” Christology, 100.

⁴ See Snodgrass, Klyne R., “Christology and the Historical Jesus,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 7 (1997), 255‐58, 255CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The importance of O'Collins’ contribution to the subject has been underscored by convergence of essays honoring his work. See Kendall, Daniel, SJ and Davis, Stephen T., The Convergence of Theology: A Festschrift Honoring Gerald O'Collins, SJ (New York: Paulist Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

⁵ The notion of presence also features in O'Collins’ earlier work. See O'Collins, Gerald, Jesus Risen (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987), 201‐208Google Scholar. By O'Collins’ own admission, this new attempt to articulate the reality and notion of presence in this new and expanded edition of Christology takes into cognizance criticisms by Archbishop Peter Carnley, Robert Imbelli, and P. Perkins. Se O'Collins, Gerald, SJ, “The Risen Jesus: Analogies and Presence,” in Resurrection, edited by Porter, Stanley E., Hayes, Michael A., and Tombs, David (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 195‐217Google Scholar, 212. See also Carnley, Peter, The Structure of Resurrection Belief (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)Google Scholar and reviews by R. Imbelli, Commonweal 26 (January 1996), 25‐27 and P. Perkins, America (March 1996), 26‐27.

⁶ O'Collins, Christology, 336.

⁷ “Grace” here is understood in the Rahner sense of the history of grace being the history of Christ's saving presence. See O'Donovan, Leo J., ed., A World of Grace: An Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner's Theology (New York: Seabury, 1989).Google Scholar

⁸ O'Collins, Christology, 337.

⁹ See review by Lucien J. Richard, OMI in Theology/Spirituality (June 2010), 291.

¹⁰ I've borrowed this phrase from Rahner who, like Lonergan, recognized the need for theology to dialogue with the sciences. See Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 8Google Scholar.

¹¹ Lonergan, Bernard, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Phenomenology and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism, vol. 18, edited by McShane, Philip J. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), xxiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 8.

¹³ See Charles Heffling's review of Christology in Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997).

¹⁴ See Moloney, Raymond, SJ, “Lonergan's Soteriology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 78 (2012), 19‐37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Komonchak, Joseph A., “Lonergan's Early Essays on the Redemption of History,” in Lonergan Workshop 10, ed., Lawrence, Frederick G. (Boston, MA: Boston College, 1994), 159‐77Google Scholar; Lonergan, Bernard J. F., De Verbo Incarnato (Rome: Gregorian University, 1960)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Crowe, Frederick E., Christ and History: The Christology of Bernard Lonergan from 1935 to 1982 (Ottawa: Novalis, 2005), 176Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Ibid., 51. One central question that Lonergan explored was: how on the basis of his consciousness did Christ know himself as the Son of God? His answer was that Christ knows all that pertains to his mission: that “He who is God is conscious of his own vision of God in such a way that he could affirm with certainty and did affirm with certainty that the one knowing himself is the same one that is known in the beatific vision” (see Crowe, Christ and History, 60‐61.

¹⁷ Lonergan, Bernard, “Christology Today: Methodological Reflections,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, SJ, edited by Crowe, Frederick E., SJ (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 74‐99Google Scholar. At issue was Piet Schoonenberg's 1969 book that first appeared in Dutch and later translated into German, English and French. See Piet Schoonenberg, Hij is een God van Mensen (‘s‐Hertogenbosch: Malmberg, 1969) [The Christ: A Study of the God‐Man Relationship in the Whole of Creation and in Jesus Christ, translated by Couling, Della (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971Google Scholar) Il est le Dieu de homes (Paris: Cerf, 1973)]. On the evidence of Lonergan, “it was in between the English and the French translations on February 21, 1972, that the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided to oppose certain errors and issued an explicit reaffirmation of the doctrine s of the council of Chalcedon and of the third council of Constantinople.” Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 74‐75.

¹⁸ Crowe, Christ and History, 162.

¹⁹ Ibid., 161.

²⁰ Ibid., 162. Lonergan's important distinction between “systematics” and “doctrine” is helpful here. Because human language is transient and the meaning of words is culturally conditioned and it is possible to know what church doctrines are without knowing what they mean. What he calls “systematics” seeks gradual increase in understanding It proceeds according to ordo disciplinae or ordo doctrinae, the order of learning and teaching—the proper order for systematic ordering of ideas. See Orji, Cyril, “Lonergan and Pannenberg Methodologies: A Critical Examination,” Theological Studies 70 (2009), 555‐76CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Doran, Robert, What is Systematic Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 90.

²² Ibid., 91.

²³ Ibid., 75.

²⁴ Lonergan writes: “The deeper issue at Chalcedon is that its decree is dogmatic and that its pattern results from earlier dogmatic decrees. It results from the rejection by Nicea that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, that he is not made but begotten (DS 125). It results from the rejection by Nicea of those that claimed there was a time when the Son did not exist or that he did not exist before he was begotten (DS 216). It results from Ephesus and from the Formula unionis on which Alexandrines and Antiochenes agreed in the spring of 433 that Jesus Christ the only Son of God was consubstantial with the Father according to his divinity and consubstantial with us according to his humanity” (see “Christology Today,” 90).

²⁵ O'Collins, Christology, 6.

²⁶ Ibid., 217. O'Collins’ admiration for these thinkers does not in any way suggest that he is in complete agreement with them or that he appropriates them uncritically. He thinks, for example, that Pannenberg got it wrong on the question of virginal conception. He seems to single out Pannenberg among the Christians who affirm the incarnation and at the same time deny the virginal conception. For O'Collins for whom the issue is the “virginal conception and not, as many inaccurately do,” of the virgin birth, Pannenberg “uncharacteristically lapses into extreme language when he declares: ‘in its content, the legend [!] of Jesus’ virgin birth [Pannenberg means conception] stands in an irreconcilable contradiction to the Christology of the incarnation of the preexistent Son of God found in Paul and John.’ A few pages later, Pannenberg again insists that the concepts of virginal conception and pre‐existence ‘cannot be connected without contradiction’” (Christology, 286 and 287.

²⁷ See review by Charles Heffling, Anglican Theological Review 79 (1999).

²⁸ O'Collins, Christology, 338.

²⁹ Lonergan, Bernard, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, vol.7, translated by Shields, Michael (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 26.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Ibid.

³³ O'Collins, Christology, 337‐38.

³⁴ Ibid., 337.

³⁵ Ibid., 338. O'Collins correctly notes how there is no entry on “presence” in Borchert, D.M., ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 10 vols. [2^nd edition (Farmington, Hill, MI: Gale‐Macmillan, 2006)]Google Scholar; Craig, E., ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 10 vols. (London: Routledge, 1998)Google Scholar; Edwards, P., ed., Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols. (London: Collier‐McMillan, 1967)Google Scholar; Krings, H., et al., eds., Handbuch Philosophischer Grundbegriffe, 6 vols. (Munich: Kosel Verlag, 1973‐4Google Scholar). It is only in the eighth volume of Encyclopedia Filosofica (Florence: Lucarini, 1982), 790‐1Google Scholar that “presenza” received just one column entry.

³⁶ See Marcel, Gabriel, Homo Viator, trans. Craufurd, E. (London: Victor Gollanz, 1951)Google Scholar and The Mystery of Being, trans, Fraser, G.S. and Hague, R. (London: Harvill Press, 1950‐51Google Scholar).

³⁷ O'Collins, Christology, 338.

³⁸ Ibid., 339.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Ibid., 339‐40.

⁴² Ibid., 340.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 341.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 342.

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 343.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Ibid.243.

⁵² Ibid., 341.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 344.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 342.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 342.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 344.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 349.

⁶¹ Ibid., 343.

⁶² Ibid., 351.

⁶³ Crowe, Christ and History, 71.

⁶⁴ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 74.

⁶⁵ O'Collins, Christology, 217.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 218.

⁶⁷ See Heffling's review in Anglican Theological Review 79 (1997).

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Bernard Lonergan, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Early Works on Theological Method 3, vol. 24, translated by Shields, Michael G., edited by Doran, Robert M. and Monsour, H. Daniel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 122Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Ibid.

⁷¹ Ibid. Lonergan accepts Karl Jaspers insight on the notion of person, particularly Jaspers notion of grenzsituationem (limiting situations), which he interprets to mean that factors like historical period or social milieu of a person, the accidents of birth, age, gender, suffering, life struggles, guilt, and inevitability of death are some of the general limiting situations or grenzsituationem of which Jaspers spoke. See Lonergan, Phenomenology and Logic, 239.

⁷² Bernard Lonergan, “The Subject,” in A Second Collection, 69‐86, 70 (particularly note 2).

⁷³ Ibid.

⁷⁴ Crowe, Christ and History, 80. According to Frederick Crowe, the concept of presence, though not a key concept yet, was already explicit in Lonergan's work of 1956. See Bernard Lonergan, De Constitutione Christi Ontologica et Pyschologica (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1956). On the matter of the knowledge that Christ had, an old question that goes back to the Scholastics, Lonergan concurs with the scholastics that Christ had an immediate knowledge of God, but adds a nuance that besides divine knowledge Christ had human knowledge that was blessed, infused, and acquired. He writes: “Besides divine knowledge Christ living here on earth had human knowledge, both effable and ineffable; for as comprehensor he both knew God immediately by ineffable knowledge, also called beatific knowledge, and by the same act but immediately knew everything else that pertained to his mission (“munus’); as pilgrim, however, he elicited by effable knowledge those cognitive acts, natural and supernatural, which constituted his human and historical life” (see Crowe, Christ and History, 82).

⁷⁵ For discussion of these themes see Crowe, Christ and History, 81‐88.

⁷⁶ Crowe, Christ and History, 80.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 80‐81.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 81.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Ibid.

⁸¹ What Lonergan says here should be understood in the backdrop of his account of the subject—that each of us lives in a bounded world that is fixed with its own range of interests and a fixed horizon. See Bernard Lonergan, “The Subject,” in A Second Collection, 69‐86.

⁸² Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 91.

⁸³ See Bernard Lonergan, “The Dehellenization of Dogma,” in A Second Collection, 11‐32.

⁸⁴ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 75.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 76. In his essay on “The Subject,” Lonergan points out that the existential subject—a person who knows oneself as a knower that experiences, understands, and judges—is “a notion that is overlooked on the schematism of older categories that distinguished faculties, such as intellect and will, or different uses of the same faculty, such as speculative and practical intellect, or different types of human activity, such as theoretical inquiry and practical execution” (see Lonergan, “The Subject,” 79).

⁸⁶ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 76.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 79.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 78.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 91. See Lonergan, Method in Theology for a fuller account of Lonergan's cognitional structure.

⁹¹ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 92.

⁹² Ibid.

⁹³ Ibid., 93.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 91.

⁹⁵ Lonergan, “Unity and Plurality: The Coherence of Christian Truth,” in A Third Collection, 239‐49, 244.

⁹⁶ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 91. In explaining his terms Lonergan points out that there three meanings of “one,” i.e., “one” as meaning “instance,” “one” as meaning intelligible unity, and “one” in Chalcedon's sense of “one and the same.” Thus, “identity,” here refers to this third sense of “one.” By “consciousness” he means sensitive, intellectual, rational, and moral operations that are intentional and conscious. As intentional they make objects present to us and as conscious they us present to ourselves. See Crowe, Christ and History, 162.

⁹⁷ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 94.

⁹⁸ Ibid.

⁹⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 79.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 81.

¹⁰² O'Collins, Christology, 352.

¹⁰³ See Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2^nd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁴ Peterson, Gregory R., “Whose Evolution? Which Theology?” Zygon 35 (2000), 221‐32, 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 22.

¹⁰⁶ Innovations Lonergan introduced are innovations in theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. He uses a language akin to that of Kuhn to describe his paradigm shift: These innovations “have occurred in different times. Each was preceded by earlier stages in which their later separate tasks were undifferentiated parts in previous larger wholes. In each case their emergence generated identity crises in their former hosts and demanded the discovery and the development of new methods and procedures.” See Bernard Lonergan, “Aquinas Today: Tradition and Innovation,” in A Second Collection, 35‐54, 35.

¹⁰⁷ Lonergan, “Unity and Plurality,” 247.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., 246.

¹⁰⁹ Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity 3^rd edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1. For more on the expansion of the Christina faith in the global south see Orji, Cyril, A Semiotic Approach to the Theology of Inculturation (Eugene, OR: Pick Wick, 2015)Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Sanneh, Lamin, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 3.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ O'Collins, Christology, 19.

¹¹² Ibid., 344.

¹¹³ Ibid.

¹¹⁴ Ibid., 347.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., 349.

¹¹⁷ Ibid.

¹¹⁸ Ibid. To those who may object that Christian affirmation of the presence of Christ seems like an appalling piece of arrogance, O'Collins offers the following three points: “First, this claim is personal and not institutional; it maintains the universal impact of Jesus himself and not of the Christian Church as such. Second, we should not forget that some of the religions (e.g., Islam and some forms of Hinduism) honor Christ and include him in one way or another in their faith. They do not endorse the universal significance of Christ that is prosed here, but they certainly do not deny all significance to him. Third, while Christians should not ignore the claims of other religions, they should not play down or misrepresent their own claims about Jesus as universally present to mediate revelation and salvation everywhere” (see O'Collins, Christology, 50).

¹¹⁹ O'Collins, Gerald, “Jacques Dupuis: The Ongoing Debate,” Theological Studies 74 (2013), 632‐54, 635 and 654CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For O'Collins’ further views on the Church's relations with non‐Christians and people of no faith, see O'Collins, Gerald, “Does Vatican II Represent Continuity or Discontinuity?” Theological Studies 73 (2012), 768‐94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Jacques Dupuis's Contributions to Interreligious Dialogue,” Theological Studies 64 (2003), 388‐97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Second Vatican Council on Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. One may say that O'Collins’ foray into the important but complicated matter of how believing Christians can affirm faith in Jesus Christ as universal savior of the whole of humanity while still recognizing the Spirit of Jesus in other religions and cultures was propelled by Jacques Dupuis’ Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (1997) that was investigated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) in 1998, leading to a notification of January 2001 by CDF that Dupuis’ work "contained notable ambiguities and difficulties on important doctrinal points, which could lead a reader to erroneous or harmful opinions." It would seem that O'Collins writings on interreligious dialogue is an attempt to make remove and make clearer “ambiguities” and “difficulties” contained in Dupuis’ work.

¹²⁰ Lonergan, “Christology Today,” 86.

¹²¹ Bernard Lonergan, “Mission and Spirit,” in A Third Collection, 23‐34, 24.

¹²² See Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 176‐321.

¹²³ Lonergan, “Mission and Spirit,” 26.

¹²⁴ Crowe, Christ and History, 166.

¹²⁵ Ibid., 168.

¹²⁶ Ibid., 171.

¹²⁷ Ibid., 174.

¹²⁸ Ibid., 171‐72.

¹²⁹ Lonergan, Method in Theology, 361.

¹³⁰ Ibid., 109.

¹³¹ Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 143.

¹³² Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, 5.