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Lonergan-reformational DialogueBernard Lonergan (1904-1984) is a great philosopher arising out of the long tradition of Catholic thought. His major work, Insight, has attracted readers from other Christian philosophical movements, and indeed from professional philosophers and amateurs of all religions and ideologies. Lonergan is a philosopher of commitment, who at the same time has strong wide-ranging concern for the encyclopedia of the sciences toward overcoming fragmentation and enhancing integration of knowledge. But he avoids scientism, and its twin proposition, by proposing a cognitional theory that deserves serious reflection. His work and that of his followers may be considered the second wave of Neo-Thomism, drawing as he does on the rich heritage of Aristotle as transformed in a Christian direction by St Thomas Aquinas, as some would say - or as introducing a fatal synthesis of alien Greek categories into how Christians do philosophy. One source recites a long list of figures active in the revival of Aquinas in the last century: "Martin Grabmann, M.-D. Chenu, O.P., Etienne Gilson, the Dominican schools of le Saulchoir in France and Blackfriars Hall in Oxford, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, as well as the work of the Lutheran scholar Per Erik Persson, and the Reformed theologian Arvin Vos, to name only a handful."1 (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_200310/ai_n9306456) However, another factor enters the scene. "In 1893, Pope Leo XIII issued his encyclical letter Aeterni Patris, which made the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas normative for the Church. This was a strong impetus for the renewal of Thomist studies that had already been going on. Thomism went on to spread throughout the Church, and was revitalized by a great deal of fine scholarship."2 (http://www.innerexplorations.com/chtheomortext/the.htm) As the quoted writer indicates, the result of this beatification of Aquinas had a glowing and a dark side; the Aristotelian-Aquinian line suffered from its own latterday official institutionalization, in its being taught to every seminarian in every country where the Catholic Church had an outpost. The pedagogical misappropriation of Aquinas had a disastrous effect. That misappropriated understanding lived up well to the Protestant misreading of Aquinas which Arvin Vos traces. In modern times, on the glowing side of the ledger, Thomism underwent a revival, renewal and shift of emphases in the contribution of tienne Gilson and Jacques Maritain. There were as well at least three other major threads of Neo-Thomism: J. Marchal, Hans Kung, and Bernard Lonergan. It is said that Lonergan "was first (and remained{ heavily influenced by Plato and Augustine." And that "Lonergan builds somewhat on the Marchal tradition of Neo-Thomism," to which apparently he was oriented by a fellow student in Rome. By some, Lonergan has been called a transcendental Thomist, but Lonergan demurred from this label. Others have said his philosophy was a form of critical existentialism. Now, with Lonergan's work a whole other range of developments has occurred. A movement comparable to Lonergan's development had already gestated independently among some Protestants. Where Lonergan repristinated the historical contribution stemming from St Thomas with strong resourcing of Plato and St Augustine; Reformational philosophy has desired to stand free of any Thomist influence that drags the categories of Aristotle into Christian philosophical thought, but perhaps somewhat unsuccessfully, according to historian Arvin Vos mentioned above, who wrote a book on Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought,3 (http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1990/9002revw.asp). Still, it must be said in comparison to Lonergan, Reformational philosophy has tended to repristinate more the philosophy of St Augustine, according to Medievalist Robert Sweetman, and following certain seminal conceptions of John Calvin; at the same time Reformational philosophy has also shied away from the Platonic streak in much of Augustine's writings, yet appreciating deeply and keenly "the place of the law" in Plato's thought D. H. Th. Vollenhoven. " ... Lonergan began theological studies in 1933. He delighted in many aspects of his Roman student life. Yet he was dismayed at the standards of education. However, despite his disappointment, Rome provided some decisive influences. Most importantly, J. Marchal was mediated to him through a fellow student, Stefanos Stefanou. Marchal taught Lonergan that human knowledge was discursive, not intuitive, and that its decisive component was judgement. Lonergan found that his position correlated with Augustine's notion of veritas and with Aquinas' notion of esse. This discovery was complemented by Leeming's course on the Incarnate Word, which convinced Lonergan that the Hypostatic Union was impossible without a real distinction between essence and existence. Lonergan was also influenced by Peter Hoenen's 1933 Gregorianum article, in which he argued that "intellect abstracted from phantasm not only terms but also the nexus between them." These sources allowed Lonergan to articulate (i) that intelligence operates first by insight into phantasm, and (ii) that there is a distinct act of judgement."4 (http://www.lonergan.on.ca/reprints/ogilvie.htm) A key problem facing any degree of convergence between Lonergan's school and Reformational philosophy is precisely the problem of all dependence on essentialism (esse) and Aristotelian substantialism (Greek: huperkeimenon). Herman Dooyeweerd spent many long passages in his New Critique of Theoretical Thought (3 volumes + independent Index volume, 1953-1957) deconstructing the substance-thinking in Aquinas, Vos to the contrary notwithstanding. But Lonergan, his colleagues, and the new generation of Lonergonian philosophers - like their Protestant counterparts D. H. Th. Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd - aim to both re-understand their heritage and forge ahead to refine a transformationally Christian approach to the problems, thinking and daily life of all spheres of society and individual human beings today.
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