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Theological Instruction and Faith Transmission: Lonergan's Method as Pedagogy Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Hans Urs Von Balthasar's lament that coincidence of the theologian and the saint has not been the norm since the Middle Ages can be emblematic of a methodological issue impacting both academic theology and the Church wholly by separation of that which as a faith tenet should be unified—word and witness. Theologians’ intent today to speak from but not be confused with their location, the theological discipline's reach for respectability in an increasingly secular academy, market forces deliberately shrinking theology's influence except in such as interdisciplinary endeavors supporting other publics’ aims, the contemporary narrow specialization of the theologian, and the sometime view that narrow tasks serving theology are theology itself all result in conflations of theology and religion. So “theology” and “spirituality,” as Balthasar identified the breach, will be separate. Yet we hope that theologians, with all others, will be saints. Does this not, particularly to students, transmit the faith? Although Bernard Lonergan's method might seem to exacerbate the separation given its numerous theological specialties and conversion types, it also offers the way of reunification—without threat to academic integrity. The theological method, with its turn to the subject, can ground a theology (and method) of pedagogy.
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Footnotes
1
The initial reflection for this expanded work was presented as a paper, entitled “Completing a Turn to the Subject: The Implicit Unity of (Academic) Theological Instruction and Faith Transmission in the Age of ‘Religious Studies,’” at the College Theology Society Convention, U.S.A., in the summer of 2013.
References
2 Balthasar, Hans Urs Von, Explorations in Theology: I. The Word Made Flesh, trans. Littledale, A.V. with Dru, Alexander (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 181-6Google Scholar, original edition Verbum Caro (Skizzen zur Theologie I), Einsiedeln, Johannes Verlag, 1960Google Scholar.
3 Ibid.
4 Lonergan, Bernard J.F., Method in Theology, repr. ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 145Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., p. 133.
6 Ibid., p. 143.
7 Ibid., p. 133.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 134.
10 Ibid., pp. 127–33.
11 Ibid., pp. 135–6. Lonergan explained: “Like dialectic, foundations is on the level of decision. Like history, doctrines is on the level of judgment. Like interpretation, systematics aims at understanding. Finally, as research tabulates the data from the past, so communications produces data in the present and for the future” (p. 135). In the first phase, the four specialties correlate “to the four dimensions of the Christian message and the Christian tradition”: “For that message and tradition, first of all, are a range of data. Secondly, the data purport to convey not the phenomena of things, as in the natural sciences, but the meanings entertained and communicated by minds, as in the human sciences. Thirdly, these meanings were uttered at given times and places and transmitted through determinate channels and under sundry vicissitudes. Fourthly, the utterance and the transmission were the work of persons bearing witness to Christ Jesus and, by their words and deeds, bringing about the present religious situation” (Ibid.)
12 Ibid., p. 135.
13 Ibid., p. 292. “The use of the general theological categories occurs in any of the eight functional specialties. The genesis of the special theological categories occurs seminally in dialectic and with explicit commitment in foundations” (Ibid.)
14 Ibid., p. 268.
15 Ibid., p. 290.
16 Ibid., p. 293. He explained: “There is needed in the theologian the spiritual development that will enable him both to enter into the experience of others and to frame the terms and relations that will express that experience” (p. 290).
17 Ibid., p. 268.
18 Ibid., p. 130. Lonergan explained that foundations is different from fundamental theology in that fundamental theology is a “theological first,” before other specialties, “a set of doctrines” (p. 131).
19 Ibid., p. 131.
20 Ibid., p. 131–2. See pp. 281–5 on “Categories.”
21 Ibid., p. 105.
22 Ibid., p. 106. He wrote further here: “That fulfilment is not the product of our knowledge and choice. On the contrary, it dismantles and abolishes the horizon in which our knowing and choosing went on and it sets up a new horizon in which the love of God will transvalue our values and the eyes of that love will transform our knowing.
Though not the product of our knowing and choosing, it is a conscious dynamic state of love, joy, peace, that manifests itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self control (Gal. 5, 22).
To say that this dynamic state is conscious is not to say that it is known. For consciousness is just experience, but knowledge is a compound of experience, understanding, and judging. Because the dynamic state is conscious without being known, it is an experience of mystery. Because it is being in love, the mystery is not merely attractive but fascinating; to it one belongs; by it one is possessed. Because it is an unmeasured love, the mystery evokes awe. Of itself, then, inasmuch as it is conscious without being known, the gift of God's love is an experience of the holy, …”
23 Ibid., pp. 237–44.
24 Ibid., p. 241.
25 Ibid., pp. 281–2.
26 Ibid., p. 282. See Method in Theology, chapter 1, on transcendental method.
27 Ibid., pp. 13–4.
28 Ibid., p. 23. Lonergan wrote that transcendental method “supplies the basic anthropological component” of theological method (p. 25).
29 Ibid., p. 282. Lonergan wrote: “Where other methods aim at meeting the exigences and exploiting the opportunities proper to particular fields, transcendental method is concerned with meeting the exigences and exploiting the opportunities presented by the human mind itself. It is a concern that is both foundational and universally significant and relevant” (p. 14).
30 Ibid., p. 20. The “precepts have a prior existence and reality in the spontaneous, structured dynamism of human consciousness,” Lonergan explained (Ibid).
31 Ibid, p. 282. Lonergan wrote: “Theological categories are either general or special. General categories regard objects that come within the purview of other disciplines as well as theology. Special categories regard the objects proper to theology. The task of working out general and special categories pertains, not to the methodologist, but to the theologian engaged in this fifth functional specialty. The methodologist's task is the preliminary one of indicating what qualities are desirable in theological categories, what measure of validity is to be demanded of them, and how categories with the desired qualities and validity are to be obtained” (Ibid.).
32 Ibid., p. 52. Lonergan wrote that “to advance from transcendental to theological method, it is necessary to add a consideration of religion. And before we can speak of religion, we first must say something about the human good and about human meaning” (p. 25).
33 Ibid., pp. 76–86.
34 Ibid., p. 112.
35 Ibid., pp. 22–5, 257–62, 361–7.
36 Giovanni B. Sala, S.J., “Theological Aspects of Bernard Lonergan's ‘Method in Theology,’” trans. Donald E. Buzzelli, accessed December 30, 2012, http://www.lonergan.org/dialogue_partners/Sala/theological_aspects_of_bernard_l.htm, ori-ginal article, “Aspetti teologici del ‘Metodo in teologia’ di B. Lonergan,” La civilità cattolica, March 17, 1973, pp. 553–67. Sala further explained: “In the functional specialization of ‘foundations,’ strictly methodological discourse becomes theological also. Judgments of fact and value are produced, not only about the structure of human intentionality, but also about a reality, the gratuitous love of God that is given to man and that makes him more than man. Man becomes capable of grasping divine things because he has become connatural with God's nature. Only the theologian enlightened by faith can assert the possibility and the fact of this new horizon of understanding and choosing.”
37 Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 137.
38 Ibid., p. 292.
39 Ibid., p. 145.
40 Ibid., p. 132. He explained: “These are of three kinds. There are interdisciplinary relations with art, language, literature, and other religions, with the natural and the human sciences, with philosophy and history. Further, there are the transpositions that theological thought has to develop if religion is to retain its identity and yet at the same time find access into the minds and hearts of men of all cultures and classes. Finally, there are the adaptations needed to make full and proper use of the diverse media of communication that are available at any place and time” (pp. 132–3).
41 Ibid., pp. 298–9.
42 Ibid., p. 299.
43 Ibid., p. 137.
44 Ibid., pp. 141–2.
45 Ibid., pp. 143–4.
46 Ibid., pp. 283–4.
47 The description of Origen is taken from the title of Hans Urs Von Balthasar's work, Origen, Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1984)Google Scholar, original edition, Origenes, Geist und Feuer, ein Aufbau aus seinen Schriften, [Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1938]Google Scholar.
48 Balthasar, Hans Urs Von, Two Sisters in the Spirit: Thérèse of Lisieux & Elizabeth of the Trinity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), p. 26Google Scholar, original edition, Schwestern im Geist: Therese von Lisieux and Elisabeth von Dijon, [Einsiedeln], Johannes Verlag, 1970Google Scholar.
49 Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 292.