A New Project in Systematic Theology

The article explores the possibility of a new collaborative venture in systematic theology based in the work of Bernard Lonergan and Robert Doran. A prospectus is offered of five volumes intended as texts to be used at the level of MA and MDiv students

Actual Grace and the Elevation of the Secular

This paper develops and integrates several strands of thought represented in recent contributions that the author has tried to make to the secularization-sacralization debate.1 That debate is both ecclesial and theological, and the two contexts are related. The theological debate will not be resolved short of discovering the key to discerning grace everywhere. Resolution of the ecclesial debate will take much longer, if not in the sensus fidelium at least in magisterial attitudes. This paper proposes a central element in the relevant discernment

Redemption as End and Redemption as Mediation

This article explores the distinction between redemption as end and redemption as mediation introduced by Bernard Lonergan in lectures delivered at the Pontifical Gregorian University between 1955-1965. Regarding redemption as end, the author states: «it is the redemption of human history itself in the reign of God in accord with the social grace that is manifest whenever, and to the extent that, the scale of values is realized in history». Regarding redemption as mediation, the author focuses on the person of Jesus Christ and the events of the crucifixion and resurrection. He states: «These events are redemptive mediation. They are also revelatory events displaying a universal pattern through which the reign of God is advanced, a pattern of returning good for evil and so transforming the evil into a greater good». He comments on how Pope Francis helps to model the evangelical role of the Church, both in encyclicals such as Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si’ and in a pastoral practice: «which continues to mediate the reign of good through the suffering that returns good for evil»

A Reconstruction of Bernard Lonergan\u27s 1947-48 Course On Grace, Part 2

As noted at the end of part 1 of this reconstruction, Lonergan moved on quite early in the course from commenting on Charles Boyer\u27s text Tractatus de Gratia Divina. Boyer had moved next to a treatment of the necessity of grace. Lonergan indicated that it is better to treat first the question, Just what precisely is grace? He answers this question in the form of nineteen propositions consisting almost entirely of a presentation of biblical doctrine on the point, with abundant references and quotations and attempts to respond to Reformation positions. Other propositions follow these nineteen, with the total eventually coming to fifty-four, but these further propositions represent efforts at a systematic understanding of the biblical doctrine. These systematic propositions are preceded by a lengthy treatment in English of primitive notions. The treatment of these notions, lengthy as it is, culminates in the methodological principle of contingent predication, which seems to be the principal purpose of this interruption. This is perhaps Lonergan\u27s most extensive treatment of the reasoning behind his understanding of the position on contingent predication or extrinsic denomination