The title of these assembled papers of Bernard Lonergan,A Second Collection, recalls the earlier publication of some of his other papers in the work,Collection.¹ That collection spans twenty-two years. It begins with a study on logic (first published in 1943, though written earlier) and proceeds to a final paper on the notion of meaning (1965). The papers not only take up widely diverse topics, but they also record a crucial shift in Lonergan’s thinking. It is the last two papers, “ExistenzandAggiornamento” and “Dimensions of Meaning,” which record this shift.

This shift, a watershed in Lonergan’s thinking,...

I had best begin by quoting my terms of reference. In the mimeographed circular the ninth topic area was:

“The Church addresses the world. A theological perspective on how a community of love adapts and directs itself for effective mission and witness. Are the transition of forms and the principle of change theological requisites”?

More fully in a letter of July 22, 1966 from Fr. Coriden:²

“It seems to me that the transition of organizational and structural forms in the Church is a pattern that parallels the transcultural transmission and consequent development of dogma. The changing laws and forms and...

With considerable warmth Prof. Leslie Dewart appeals to Pope John’s decision “to adopt a historical perspective: to ‘look to the present, to new conditions and new forms of life … to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us’ ” (p. 172). This decision, he feels, and the unhesitating acclamation that greeted it reversed a policy that had been gaining strength for centuries. “This policy was, for the sake of protecting the truth and purity of the Christian faith, to resist the factual reality, and to deny the moral validity,...

I am extremely grateful to the chairman, Fr. Nash, and to the three contributors for their interest in my work and, no doubt, I can express this best by attempting to answer the questions they have raised. I shall begin with the series Professor Reck has listed at the end of his paper and then go on to Professor Novak’s and Father Burrell’s.

Insight and Inquiry:How specifically are insight and inquiry related?

I think it will be helpful to draw a distinction, at least for present purposes, between inquiry and investigation. By investigation I would mean the process that...

When the Very Reverend Donald Kraus² so kindly invited me to address you, I asked him what might be a suitable topic and he suggested, among others, the one I have chosen, The Future of Thomism. However, in accepting this task, despite the title which refers to the future, I am not presuming to don the mantle of a prophet and so I beg you to excuse me if I devote my time, first, to some account of the work of St. Thomas himself, secondly, to the Thomism developed to meet the needs of the classicist period and, thirdly, to...

Any theology of renewal goes hand in hand with a renewal of theology. For “renewal” is being used in a novel sense. Usually in Catholic circles “renewal” has meant a return to the olden times of pristine virtue and deep wisdom. But good Pope John has made “renewal” mean “aggiornamento,” “bringing things up to date.”

Obviously, if theology is to be brought up to date, it must have fallen behind the times. Again, if we are to know what is to be done to bring theology up to date, we must ascertain when it began to fall behind the times,...

There is a sense in which it may be said that each of us lives in a world of his own. That world usually is a bounded world, and its boundary is fixed by the range of our interests and our knowledge. There are things that exist, that are known to other men, but about them I know nothing at all. There are objects of interest that concern other men, but about them I could not care less. So the extent of our knowledge and the reach of our interests fix a horizon. Within that horizon we are confined.

Such...

Man’s coming to know is a group enterprise. It is not the work of the isolated individual applying his senses, accumulating insights, weighing the evidence, forming his judgment. On the contrary, it is the work of many, with each adding, as it were, to a common fund the fruits of his observations, the perspectives caught by his understanding, the supporting or contrary evidence from his reflection.

Moreover, this division of labor in coming to know is possible just insofar as it is possible for men to believe one another. What you see with your eyes can be contributed to a...

I think I should begin not with modern culture but with its classical predecessor. Even as recently as fifty years ago it was still dominant in American Catholic circles. Then it was named simply culture. It was conceived absolutely, as the opposite of barbarism. It was a matter of acquiring and assimilating the tastes and skills, the ideals, virtues, and ideas, that were pressed upon one in a good home and through a curriculum in the liberal arts. This notion, of course, had a very ancient lineage. It stemmed out of Greekpaideiaand Romandoctrinae studium atque humanitatis, out...

By natural knowledge of God I shall understand the knowledge of God intended by the dogmatic constitutionDei Filiusof the first Vatican Council. Chapter two of the constitution begins with the words:

Eadem sancta mater Ecclesia tenet et docet, Deum, rerum omnium principium et finem, naturali humanae rationis lumine e rebus creatis certo cognosci posse… (DS 3004, DB 1785).

The corresponding canon reads:

Si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum, creatorem et Dominum nostrum, per ea, quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae lumine certo cognosci non posse: anathema sit. (DS 3026, DB 1806).

My interpretation of these statements will...

The correlation between the accelerating expansion of knowledge and socio-cultural change confronts the contemporary university with a grave problem. For the university has ceased to be a storehouse whence traditional wisdom and knowledge are dispensed. It is a center in which ever-increasing knowledge is disseminated to bring about ever-increasing social and cultural change. It has a grave responsibility for the future of man, and it is the concern of St. Louis University in sponsoring the present gathering to ventilate this issue.

My paper will deal indirectly with theology, then, as it is situated in a contemporary university influenced by other...

In a collective work on the history of religions published by the Divinity School of the University of Chicago almost a decade ago, the noted German scholar Friedrich Heiler had occasion to list seven principal areas of unity to be discerned, not only in Christian churches and congregations, but in all the religions of mankind: in Judaism, in Islam, in Zoroastrian Mazdaism, in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism.² I should like to begin this paper with a brief summary of Prof. Heiler’s account. For it will draw attention away from what is outward and towards what is inner and vital in religion....

My remarks may be grouped under the following headings: (1) authenticity, (2) the Spirit, (3) the word, (4) sending, (5) the Renaissance Jesuit, (6) the Jesuit today.

First, then, authenticity. For I wish to begin from what is simply human and, indeed, from a contemporary apprehension of what it is to be human. There is the older, highly logical, and so abstract, static, and minimal apprehension of being human. It holds that being human is something independent of the merely accidental, and so one is pronounced human whether or not one is awake or asleep, a genius or a moron,...

On the relations between religious studies and theology, in the very brief space at my disposal, I can offer not a blueprint, not a sketch, not an outline, but only a suggestion. The suggestion is to point to the example of Gibson Winter. For it seems to me that Prof. Winter has done a remarkable piece of interdisciplinary work in relating sociology to ethics² and that by following his example theologians could relate empirical religious studies with theology or, indeed, empirical human studies with theology. There would result, of course, only one of the various possible manners in which studies...

My title, “Philosophy and Theology,” is far too abrupt. It suggests an endless affair listing all the different conceptions of philosophy, all the different conceptions of theology, and all the ways in which the two might be related. I have no intention of perpetrating such a monster. My aim is far more modest, and, also, more concrete. It is to indicate a certain relevance and need of philosophy in contemporary Catholic theology, and to this end I shall develop briefly three topics: first, the change in Catholic theology, second, the key task in current theology, and third, the contribution of...

The First International Lonergan Congress was held in Florida during Easter, 1970, sponsored by Mr. Joseph Collins of New York. During the Congress Fr. Lonergan was interviewed in public session by three participants: Frs. Joseph Flanagan, Matthew Lamb and Philip McShane. The following is an edited version of that interview.² The editing left Fr. Lonergan’s statements virtually unchanged but cut down the questions for brevity’s sake.

Asked to comment on the present cultural crisis in relation to his own more recent interests and to Jaspers’The Origin and Goal of History, Fr. Lonergan remarked:

“I won’t go back to Jaspers...

I may assume, no doubt, that everyone is aware of the profound changes that have occurred in the thought of Catholic theologians during the present century. But to enumerate in detail just what changes have occurred in the thought of individual theologians seemed to me to be just a long litany that presupposed a great deal of not very illuminating research. So I have been led to think it more profitable to inquire into the causes of such change and to estimate which changes have come to stay.

Now it is in the area of scholarship—of the linguist, the...

My approach to the question of the origins of Christian realism is determined by three topics. Elsewhere I have treated these topics separately. But it is my hope that you will be interested in having them brought together in a single focus.

The first topic is the notion of critical realism, i.e., the attempt to get beyond the empiricism of Hume, the critical idealism of Kant, the absolute idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the subsequent varieties of subjectivism. The second topic is how did it happen that the Christian Church became involved in such issues. To this the...

It will perhaps be of interest if I narrate briefly howInsightcame to be written. I studied philosophy at Heythrop² from 1926 to 1929. At the same time I was to prepare for a degree as an external student at the University of London. Many of my fellow students had a similar lot, and classes on the Latin and Greek authors were regularly held by Fr. Harry Irwin and on mathematics by Fr. Charles O’Hara.

Philosophy, accordingly, had no monopoly on our time or attention. The textbooks were German in origin and Suarezian in conviction. The professors were competent...